go now.
The city will burn an hour after the count-down."

"We will be safe, outside the city." Dana gripped her husband's hand,
trying to transmit to him some part of her strength and confidence.
"Wish us the best, Nehmon. If a link can be forged, we will forge it."

"I wish you the best in everything." There were tears in the old man's
eyes as he turned and left the room.

* * * * *

They stood in the Jungle-land, listening to the scurry of frightened
animals, and shivering in the cool night air as the bright sparks of the
ships' exhausts faded into the black starry sky. A man and a woman
alone, speechless, watching, staring with awful longing into the skies
as the bright rocket jets dwindled to specks and flickered out.

The city burned. Purple spumes of flame shot high into the air, throwing
a ghastly light on the frightened Jungle-land. Spires of flame seemed to
be seeking the stars with their fingers as the plastic walls and streets
of the city hissed and shriveled, blackening, bubbling into a vanishing
memory before their eyes. The flames shot high, carrying with them the
last remnants of the city which had stood proud and tall an hour before.
Then a silence fell, deathly, like the lifeless silence of a grave. Out
of the silence, little whispering sounds of the Jungle-land crept to
their ears, first frightened, then curious, then bolder and bolder as
the wisps of grass and little animals ventured out and out toward the
clearing where the city had stood. Bit by bit the Jungle-land gathered
courage, and the clearing slowly, silently, began to disappear.

Days later new sparks of light appeared in the black sky. They grew to
larger specks, then to flares, and finally settled to the earth as
powerful, flaming jets.

They were squat, misshapen vessels, circling down like vultures,
hissing, screeching, landing with a grinding crash in the tall thicket
near the place where the city had stood. Ravdin's signal had guided them
in, and the Hunters had seen them, standing on a hilltop above the
demolished amphitheater. Men had come out of the ships, large men with
cold faces and dull eyes, weapons strapped to their trim uniforms. The
Hunters had blinked at them, unbelieving, with their weapons held at
ready. Ravdin and Dana were seized and led to the flagship.

As they approached it, their hearts sank and they clasped hands to
bolster their failing hope.

The leader of the Hunters lo