rically operated
gyrocompass, of no use to him now. But he did use it to check the
direction of Hovedstad, as he remembered it from the map, and found
it lined up perfectly with the tracks the car had cut into the
sand. It had come directly from the city. They could find their way
by back-tracking.

Time was slipping away. He would have liked to bury Ihjel and the
men from the car, but the night hours were too valuable to be
wasted. The best he could do was put the three corpses in the car,
for protection from the Disan animals. He locked the door and threw
the key as far as he could into the blackness. Lea had slipped into
a restless sleep and he carefully shook her awake.

"Come," Brion said. "We have a little walking to do."

VII

With the cool air and firmly packed sand under foot, walking should
have been easy. Lea spoiled that. The concussion seemed to have
temporarily cut off the reasoning part of her brain, leaving a
direct connection to her vocal cords. As she stumbled along, only
half conscious, she mumbled all of her darkest fears that were
better left unvoiced. Occasionally there was relevancy in her
complaints. They would lose their way, never find the city, die of
thirst, freezing, heat or hunger. Interspersed and entwined with
these were fears from her past that still floated, submerged in the
timeless ocean of her subconscious. Some Brion could understand,
though he tried not to listen. Fears of losing credits, not getting
the highest grade, falling behind, a woman alone in a world of men,
leaving school, being lost, trampled among the nameless hordes that
struggled for survival in the crowded city-states of Earth.

There were other things she was afraid of that made no sense to a
man of Anvhar. Who were the alkians that seemed to trouble her? Or
what was canceri? Daydle and haydle? Who was Manstan, whose name
kept coming up, over and over, each time accompanied by a little
moan?

Brion stopped and picked her up in both arms. With a sigh she
settled against the hard width of his chest and was instantly
asleep. Even with the additional weight he made better time now, and
he stretched to his fastest, kilometre-consuming stride to make good
use of these best hours.

Somewhere on a stretch of gravel and shelving rock he lost the track
of the sand car. He wasted no time looking for it. By carefully
watching the glistening stars rise and set he had made a good
estimate of the geographic nort