"How about it, friends?" Cirocco said, addressing the Titanides. "Can you keep up this pace until we reach the cable?"
"It shouldn't be any problem," Hornpipe assured her.
"Then we're all right," Gaby said. "Rocky, you'd better throw a small bomb ahead of us every few minutes. That ought to scatter any ambushes."
"Will do. Robin, Chris, stop looking at the ground!"
Robin forced herself to look at the sky, still painfully clear and fortunately empty of buzz bombs. It was one of the hardest things she had ever done. It could not have been harder if her own feet were touching the hated sea of sand; like a backseat driver reaching for an imaginary brake, she found herself lifting her feet in an effort to make Hautbois step more carefully.
The group had crested a dune and was starting down the other side when Cirocco called out a warning.
"Hard right, people. Hang on!"
Robin put her arms around Hautbois's trunk as the Titanide dug her hooves into the sand, heeling over almost forty-five degrees as she turned. The ride was definitely getting bumpier as Hautbois began to tire. Robin caught a glimpse of a commotion at the foot of the dune, saw several of the telltale trails as wraiths fled from the bladderfuit that had suddenly exploded in their midst. A stream of water came from behind her, angled left, sizzled when it hit. There was a fountain of sand. For a moment a supple insubstantial tentacle writhed in the air. Where the water touched it, the thing hissed and shed glass scales that turned slowly in the low gravity. Robin freed one hand and took the butt of her water pistol in the other, peering around Hautbois's broad shoulder. She squeezed the trigger and sprayed what turned out to be a harmless patch of desert.
"Save it," Gaby cautioned. Robin nodded quickly, mortified that the gun was shaking in her hand. She hoped Gaby couldn't see it. Gaby's voice was calm and controlled and made Robin feel ten years old.
The Titanides had made a wide circle around the nest of wraiths Cirocco had exposed; now they were back on course for the Tethys cable. Robin remembered to look up at the sky, saw nothing, looked back at the sand, once more forced herself to look up. She did that for an hour while the cable base grew no closer. Finally she asked Gaby how long they had been running.
"About ten minutes," she said, and looked behind them again. When she turned back, she was frowning. On the crest of a dune five or six hundred meters to the rear Robin thought she saw a wraith track. It paralleled the imprints of the Titanides' hooves.
"They're still back there, Rocky."
The Wizard looked, frowned, then shrugged.
"So? They can't catch us if we keep going."
"I know. They must know that, too. So why do they keep coming?"
Cirocco frowned again, and Robin didn't like that. Eventually Gaby reported she could no longer see the pursuers. Though the Titanides were tired, they agreed not to slacken their pace until the cable was reached.
Hautbois topped the final giant dune before the cable. Ahead Robin could see the land rising unbroken. She estimated the distance to the welcoming darkness between the strands at about a kilometer.
"Buzz bomb to the right," Chris called out. "Don't go down yet! It's still a long way off." Robin found it, banking around the eastern side of the cable, perhaps a thousand meters high.
"Back over the dune," Cirocco ordered. "I don't think it's seen us yet."
Hautbois wheeled, and in a few seconds the seven of them were prone together on the far side.
All of them but Robin.
"Get down, you silly idiot! What's the matter with you?"
She was on her knees, leaning forward, her hands almost touching the sand.
She could not make them move. The sand seemed to writhe before her eyes. She could not make herself reach out and touch its loathsome heat, could not press her belly to it and await the arrival of the wraiths.
A great weight fell on her, and she cried out. She screamed when she felt the sand press against her, then began to vomit.
"That's good," Hautbois said, easing up enough to allow Robin to turn her head. "I wish I'd thought of that. All that moisture will keep them away."
Moisture, moisture ... Robin heard only that word on a conscious level and quickly blocked everything but that thought. The sand was wet. Wet would keep the monsters away. Sweat, weep, spit, vomit ... any of those things were suddenly the smart thing to do. She hugged the sand and thought about how wonderfully wet it was.
"What's the matter? Is she having a seizure?" Cirocco called out.
"I think so," Hautbois said. "I'll take care of her."
"Just keep her down. It still may not see us."
Robin heard the sound of a buzz bomb high and far away. She turned her head enough to see it come into sight over the edge of the dune, still at altitude. It turned sharply, showing a swept-wing profile, and began to come toward them.
"That's that," Cirocco said. "Everyone stay low. It's not at a good angle to hurt us."
They watched the buzz bomb in growing doubt until it became clear that the creature was not going to make a low pass. It cruised over them at five or six hundred meters, going much more slowly than Robin remembered from the last time.
"That thing looks odd," Gaby said, daring to sit up a little.
"Never mind that," Cirocco said, standing to scan the air. "It's going to come back around. Gaby, keep a watch for more, and the rest of you start digging. I'd like a wide hole two meters deep, but I'd settle for one. It's going to be tough in this sand. Throw some water around before you dig. Oh, and if anyone has even the slightest urge to pee, do it now, don't be shy. It's useless in your bladder." Cirocco stopped talking when she saw the look on Robin's face and realized the condition of the younger woman's pants was not intentional.
Robin had disgraced herself. She thanked the Great Mother that none of her sisters was here to see it, but it was small consolation. These six were her sisters now, for the duration of the trip and probably beyond.
But things are never so bad they cannot get worse. Robin appreciated the truth of that principle when she tried to move and found she could not. Hautbois's statement-certainly meant as a facesaving out for Robin-had come true; she was paralyzed.
For a moment she thought she would surely lose her mind. She was sprawled bonelessly, face down, on the hateful sands of Tethys, a surface she feared so much that she had possibly betrayed the whole group by her inability to touch it. But instead of insanity, she achieved a fatalistic detachment. Mindless, serene, she heard the sounds of frenzied activity and understood little of it. It was no longer important if a wraith emerged beneath her and tore her apart. There were grains of sand and the taste of vomit in her mouth. She felt a trickle of sweat run down her nose. She could see a few meters of sand and her own arm extended across it. She listened.
Cirocco: "Since they can't get too close to us, they have to use some kind of medium-range weapon. They used to chunk rocks, but in the last ten years they've used some kind of spear thrower or bow and arrow."
Chris: "That sounds bad. We're not going to get much cover in this sand."
Cirocco: "It's good and bad. They were pretty mean shots with those rocks. They're built ... well, you haven't seen them, and they're hard to describe, but they were very good at throwing rocks. But they're basically cowardly, and they had to get in pretty close to throw them. With the arrows they can stand farther back."
Hautbois: "Now tell us the bad news, Rocky."
Cirocco: "That's it. The good news is that they're lousy shots with arrows. They can't aim them. But they'd rather stay back and take potshots."