Far Frontiers Part 23

"Come with us," North said, offering a hand to Annin. "You can't stay here."

Annin hugged her sister's body. "1 will not last an hour," she said. "I was the first, an experiment. I am.. ." she searched for the right word, ..... uncompleted. The machinery that sustained me is destroyed. Or beyond our understanding." She gazed up again into that dark, empty corner. "You can't imagine what we've lost." She shook her head.

North knew what he had lost.

Annin arranged Katrin gently on the floor and stretched out beside her. Spooning her body against her sister, draping one arm protectively over her, she seemed just to go to sleep.

After a while, North and Yoru made their way wordlessly out of the structure. The first hints of dawn colored the sky. A Tauran airs.h.i.+p lay parked on the harsh rock next to the Leviathan.

North bit down the anger that had been building inside him. With icy calm, he said to Yoru, "You knew they were behind us."

"No," the Technalien answered, "but I know Warhounds. I knew they would sniff out our trail from the bar to the docks and realize we'd headed to sea. Recall that when the skip-boat landed here, I commandeered its computers and scanned for pursuit. Its sensors revealed nothing.

Still, I thought they would come, so I opened a radio channel. If they were not following, no harm was done." He paused; then his eyes narrowed, turned hard. "But if they were, I made us easy to find. I do not like Warhounds sniffing my trail."

North fought to control his anger. Clenching his fists, he marched ahead. But harder to master was his anger with himself, for the Technalien was right. North should have been on his guard. Yorn was his partner, and a man in his position depended on his partner.

Yoru caught up with him, followed him into the jungle and to the beach. They might have taken the airs.h.i.+p back to the mainland, but North needed the skipboat, needed the hours'-long trip, the rolling sea beneath him to numb his heart.

"I am sorry about the woman," Yoru said before he climbed aboard. He settled himself at the console, spread his fingers over it, merged with it.North took a place in the stern as the skip-boat lifted on a cus.h.i.+on of gravitic force and headed out to sea. When they reached port, he would sell the boat and exploitation rights to the Alphan ruins. They would bring more than enough to pay for the upgrades to his own s.h.i.+p.

The island faded in the distance. As far as he could see, the white-capped waves rolled and rolled, seemingly forever onward to strange sh.o.r.es, new worlds.

North closed his eyes. Without the moonlight, it was just a lot of water.

The End.