e even with laughter rumbling in its
throat.

He walked slowly forward until he reached the third set of tracks and
he saw that he had been right. The little area ahead was smoother than
it should be.

"Cytha!" he called.

His voice was far louder than he had meant it to be and he stood
astonished and a bit abashed.

Then he realized why it was so loud.

It was the only sound there was!

The forest suddenly had fallen silent. The insects and birds were
quiet and the thing in the distance had quit falling down the stairs.
Even the leaves were silent. There was no rustle in them and they hung
limp upon their stems.

There was a feeling of doom and the green light had changed to a
copper light and everything was still.

And the light was _copper_!

Duncan spun around in panic. There was no place for him to hide.

Before he could take another step, the _skun_ came and the winds
rushed out of nowhere. The air was clogged with flying leaves and
debris. Trees snapped and popped and tumbled in the air.

The wind hurled Duncan to his knees, and as he fought to regain his
feet, he remembered, in a blinding flash of total recall, how it had
looked from atop the escarpment--the boiling fury of the winds and the
mad swirling of the coppery mist and how the trees had whipped in
whirlpool fashion.

He came half erect and stumbled, clawing at the ground in an attempt
to get up again, while inside his brain an insistent, clicking voice
cried out for him to run, and somewhere another voice said to lie flat
upon the ground, to dig in as best he could.

Something struck him from behind and he went down, pinned flat, with
his rifle wedged beneath him. He cracked his head upon the ground and
the world whirled sickeningly and plastered his face with a handful of
mud and tattered leaves.

He tried to crawl and couldn't, for something had grabbed him by the
ankle and was hanging on.

* * * * *

With a frantic hand, he clawed the mess out of his eyes, spat it from
his mouth.

Across the spinning ground, something black and angular tumbled
rapidly. It was coming straight toward him and he saw it was the Cytha
and that in another second it would be on top of him.

He threw up an arm across his face, with the elbow crooked, to take
the impact of the wind-blown Cytha and to ward it off.

But it never reached him. Less than a yard away, the ground opened up
to take the Cytha and it was no long