itter. But the globes
continued to hover over them.

"We are still traveling in the direction they want," Vye speculated.

Hume had gone to hands and knees to negotiate an ascent so steep he
had to search for head and toe holds. When they were safely past that
point they took a breather, and Vye glanced aloft again. Now the sky
was empty.

"We may have arrived, or are about to do so," said Hume.

"Where?"

Hume shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine. And both of us can be
wrong."

The steep ascent did not quite reach the top of the cliff around the
face of which the ledge curled. Instead their path now leveled off and
began to widen out so that they could walk with more confidence. Then
it threaded into a crevice between two towering rock walls and sloped
downward.

A path unnaturally smooth, Vye thought, as if shaped to funnel
wayfarers on. And they came out on the rim of a valley, a valley
centered with a wood-encircled lake. They stepped from the rock of the
passage onto a springy turf which gave elastically to their tread.

Vye's sandal struck a round stone. It started from its bed in the
black-green vegetation, turned over so that round pits stared
eyelessly up at him. He was faced by the fleshless grin of a human
skull.

Hume went down on one knee, examined the ground growth, gingerly
lifted the lace of vertebrae forming a spine. That ended in a crushed
break which he studied briefly before he laid the bones gently back
into the concealing cover of the mossy stuff.

"That was done by teeth!"

The cup of green valley had not changed, it was the same as it had
been when they had emerged from the crevice. But now every clump of
trees, every wind-rippled mound of brush promised cover.

Vye moistened his lips, diverted his eyes from the skull.

"Weathered," Hume said slowly, "must have been here for seasons, maybe
planet years."

"A survivor from the L-B?" Yet this spot lay days of travel from that
clearing back in the plains.

"How did he get here?"

"Probably the same way we would have, had we not holed up on that
river island."

Driven! Perhaps the lone human on Jumala herded up into this dead-end
valley by the globes or the blue beasts. "This process must have been
in action for some time."

"Why?"

"I can give you two reasons." Hume studied the nearest trees narrowly.
"First--for some purpose, whatever we are up against wants all
interlopers moved out of the lowlands into this section