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  Up the path was more accurate. The landscape had become punishingly vertical. Mac prided herself on her conditioning; even so, she struggled to make any speed. The footing was wet and slick, so her boots slid backward with every step. Progress was measured in altitude gained, not the number of strides it took. Achievement? How quickly she could stand after a fall that slammed her against tree trunks, not the number of times she slipped.

  “I’ve got you now,” she whispered to herself.

  Every so often, Mac snatched leaves and licked the moisture from their surfaces. The lifting fog had condensed in the upper canopy, drops runneling down every branch and dripping from leaf tips. This time of year, it wouldn’t be long before real rain followed, so dehydration wasn’t a problem. The hollow feeling in her gut she could ignore. A good thing she’d shared leftovers with Trojanowski last night.

  Her growing ability to see her surroundings was something else again. Mac blinked and stopped, leaning against a redwood wider than her last apartment. She blew out the candle and tucked the lantern away.

  Not quite bright enough for color, but her dark-adapted eyes could easily discern the shapes of tree, log, and rock from the background mist. The slime’s faint glow could no longer compete with the rising sun. The morning rain would wash it away soon anyway, Mac thought resignedly. She tightened the collar of her slicker, but left the hood down. She’d have to listen for her quarry now.

  It helped that most birds were finished singing for the season. A few twittered sleepily around her. A squirrel complained about intruders in the distance. That way. Mac lifted her head from its rest against the tree like a hound taking point. She was willing to gamble the intruder was hers.

  Crack.

  From behind, down the hill. Mac pressed herself against the redwood again.

  It might be nothing. Forests cracked and snapped all the time. She waited, hardly breathing. The squirrel continued to chatter furiously, not far at all. She could be gaining on the creature at last.

  To take advantage of that meant moving. Mac shoved away from the shelter of the tree, feeling every muscle protest, and began to climb toward the outraged squirrel.

  The clearing was new. Mac didn’t need a vegetation survey map to tell her, she’d been able to smell the sap and bruised leaves, the spicy tang of freshly cut—or rather freshly smashed—cedar well before she’d reached it.

  Poor Mudge would be horrified.

  As she’d expected, the fog had slipped from under the forest canopy to make room for the rain that replaced it, the kind of steady, soaking deluge that promoted the lush growth of fern and moss and mocked even the best slicker’s ability to keep a body dry. Mac shivered spasmodically as she crouched under the partial shelter of a leaning nurse log, distracting herself with daydreams of hot showers, hot towels, and hot sunshine.

  She hadn’t found her quarry. Not yet. But this had to be its destination. The clearing had been made either for or by a landing craft. Within the past day, she guessed. The broken vegetation was still green and unwilted. Dark exposed soil marked a too-regular series of depressions, now filling with rainwater.

  Mac refused to believe she’d arrived too late. There’d been no sound or flash, no vibration. Even a t-lev on hush would have stirred the treetops on its way down.

  Crack.

  Only Mac’s eyes shifted to search the wall of green and brown to her left. The contrast to the clearing, despite the low cloud and rain, was enough to darken the forest beyond into night.

  Rabbit or deer, she told herself, licking water from her lips. Grizzlies weren’t so careless.

  A scrap of moss floated down past her eyes, like the tuft of a feather dislodged from a bird. Mac froze.

  Scurry . . . scurry. The log above her vibrated. More moss fell. Mac launched herself from the shelter that now felt like a trap, looking around frantically for any sign of it. Nothing. She was alone. “The fun’s worn off,” she muttered, heart still pounding with shock. Louder. “Look—I just want to talk to you—”

  “Get down—!”

  The shout, in a man’s voice, was lost in the roar of an engine where no engine existed. Mac stared into the empty clearing, hearing what she couldn’t see. Wind from nowhere buffeted her, driving the rain sideways into her face. She staggered back, grabbing at branches to keep her footing.

  But there was nothing there!

  A blinding flash of light as heat struck her, both preludes to a wind that shoved her backward. Mac threw her arms in front of her face and turned with the force, throwing herself to the ground. The roar grew louder, then, as suddenly as it had started, ceased.

  Mac spat out a mouthful of fern and dirt as she pushed herself up to sit. She opened and closed her eyes, fighting to see past the fiery specks blurring her vision.

  “Are you all right?”

  Her ears might be ringing, but she recognized the voice now. Trojanowski? She didn’t waste time in “hows” or “whys.” “Did you see what—who—it was?” Mac demanded.

  “No.” A wealth of self-disgust in the word.

  Mac swore under her breath and fought her way to her feet, grateful to find her eyes sore but functioning. He was standing a couple of meters away, looking not at her but at the presumably now-empty clearing. There were new scars in the ground as if whatever had landed had put down feet. “An invisible ship?” she said in wonder. “Who has such technology?”

  “Good question,” he said, taking what looked to be an unusually small scanner from a pocket and walking into the opening.

  So, Mac thought. His device wasn’t keyed to Norcoast’s power broadcast, or Norcoast was up and running again. She was inclined to believe the latter. A technology that could hide a ship from view? Once the need had passed, they’d probably restored power to the inlet with a nod—if they had heads and bendable necks. No guarantees on either point.

  Mac followed, studying the man, not the place. Bureaucrat? Diplomatic flunky? Not likely. The glasses were gone, as was the apologetic slouch. This version of Nikolai Piotr Trojanowski was all business, stepping easily over the uneven surface, dressed in a jacket and pants that might have been made from the forest, their camouflage so perfect Mac found him hard to see even this close. He wore a pack on his shoulders and her stomach chose that moment to remind her about breakfast.

  Mac fought for patience. Her eyes were improving by the minute; they weren’t helping her make sense of any of this. “Anything?” she asked, watching him scowl at his device.

  Trojanowski might not have heard. He made an adjustment, then crouched to pass his scanner close to the dark soil exposed in one of the scars.

  With a shiver, Mac pulled her slicker tighter to her neck and followed. The rain had eased to the mist-in-your-face variety that could last all day. The sun was high enough now to add pastel colors to the trees and ground, if not send its warmth through the clouds. Pleasant enough weather, if you weren’t already soaking wet. She tried again. “Do you know what it wanted?”

  That drew a look. “You should go—” he began to say, then, perversely: “Don’t move.” He took three quick strides to stand in front of her. Mac fought the impulse to back away as he raised the scanner to the side of her face. His expression was cold, clinical.

  This wasn’t the man who’d laughed and shared his supper with her, who’d held her hand, who’d kissed her fingers like some centuries-past gallant. Yesterday might have been something she’d dreamed.

  “What is it?” she asked, reaching up with one hand. “What’s wrong?” The question was about more than her face.

  “Don’t touch your skin, Dr. Connor.” He put away the device. “Minor flash burn. You didn’t move fast enough.”

  Mac’s fingers hovered near her cheeks. “I don’t feel any pain,” she said doubtfully.

  He raised an eyebrow. “I suspect that’s temporary. You’d better go and have it treated.”

  Go? Given the effort involved in retracing her steps downslope and in the rain, Mac was in
no hurry. She looked Trojanowski over from head to boot-encased foot. No stains. No rips. Unlike her poor abused slicker. It meant he had transport of his own. And something else. “You didn’t follow me,” she deduced. “You were already here. Waiting. I want to know why.”

  His eyes narrowed, their hazel turning almost green. Mac supposed intimidating looks were part of his training. She was too full of adrenaline to be impressed. “Same side, remember?” she told him. “Protecting the species. Working with Brymn to solve this mysterious threat.” She tilted her head back and gave him her own intimidating look. “Or are we?”

  “You know the Secretary General assigned me to accompany the Honorable Delegate—”

  “ ‘Accompany,’ ” Mac repeated, interrupting him. “Or was that a convenient excuse to come here? I don’t think you or the Secretary General are paying any attention to Brymn’s work at all. I think you are here because you expected this!” She waved somewhat wildly at the clearing, lacking any better idea of what this was.

  “Is that why you’re here, Dr. Connor?” Oh, he was good. The return accusation was sharp and slick.

  Mac would have stomped her foot if it would have done more than splatter mud. “Look, this—thing—woke me. I followed it—”

  “You what? Did you see it?” Trojanowski demanded. “Did you see anything?”

  Mac shook her head. “Only its tracks . . . Hey!” She found herself talking to his back. His moving-away-from-her, you-are-irrelevant-and-dismissed back. She spat a rude phrase Emily had taught her and forced her tired legs in pursuit. “Wait! What did you expect to find here?”

  That stopped him in the middle of the clearing. His eyebrows drew together as he glared down at her. “I didn’t expect to find you.”

  Mac bristled. “What was I supposed to do, Mr. Trojanowski? The thing was in my office. It ran away when I woke up.”

  “Woke up? So, you were asleep in your office,” he re-phrased as if trying to make sense of what she was telling him, “and, when a ‘thing’ you couldn’t see woke you, you chased it up here. Alone.”

  “I didn’t see a choice. Someone had to follow it, find out what it wanted—”

  “What if it had wanted you dead?”

  Mac shook her head, soaking wet hair falling in her eyes. She tucked it behind an ear, careful of her numb skin. “Then I would have been dead,” she said reasonably. “It wanted something else. What?”

  “In your office,” he echoed, in the same skeptical tone he’d used for “alone.” His look became intense, as though he could somehow read the answer in her face, burned or otherwise. It was like being transfixed by a spotlight—an unfriendly one at that. “Why your office? And how could you possibly follow it here . . . unless you already knew where to go.” Clear threat now. “Which brings us back to the key question. How did you know to come here, Dr. Connor?”

  “And who the hell are you, Mr. Trojanowski, to stand here and ask me questions of any kind?” Mac retorted, despite feeling that arguing with a man who secretly skulked in the forest in camouflage gear wasn’t necessarily wise. “You aren’t who you pretend to be, that’s for sure. Let me finish,” she snapped, but quietly when he opened his mouth.

  A wary nod.

  “You’re the one who handed me the message that dragged me away from my work, remember? You’re the one who brought that Dhryn—and the media—into my life. You want to know why some weird, invisible alien was running across my ceiling in the middle of the night? Well, that makes two of us.”

  Trojanowski pursed his lips and considered her. She did the same, waiting. He remained a contradiction, Mac decided. The camouflage gear and pack, how naturally he wore them, his sudden shift in personality . . . clearly he’d been trained to handle situations other than ferrying diplomatic messages to biologists. For all she knew, he was some kind of spy, like those in Em’s old movies, if less glamorous.

  But Trojanowski’s face didn’t suit the man-of-action mode. When he was thinking, as now, little perplexed lines formed at the corners of his eyes and mouth. He doesn’t like mysteries, she thought abruptly. Neither did she. So Mac wasn’t surprised when his very next words addressed another. “How did you find your way through the dark, Dr. Connor? Please.”

  Mac put her hand in her pocket. He tensed and she blinked at him. “It’s only a lantern,” she said before pulling it out, in case he needed reassurance. “Combustible. A candle.” She offered the lantern to him and he took it, giving her an inscrutable look. “Whatever—whoever—was in my office left a trail of slime that fluoresced under its light. The glow didn’t last long; just enough that I could follow it. No mystery, Mr. Trojanowski.”

  He handed the lantern back. “Quick thinking.”

  His praise was unexpected. Mac had begun to believe “foolhardy” and “stupid” were better descriptions of what she’d done. “Fair’s fair,” she suggested, replacing the lantern in her pocket. “How did you know to be here?”

  Trojanowski frowned, but not, this time, at her, Mac thought. “There was a collision yesterday, northeast of here, involving a low-orbit freighter. All hands were lost. No evidence of what it collided with until this—” he nodded at the flattened clearing, “—appeared on the monitors. I was contacted to check it out as soon as I could get away from Brymn. I played a hunch and stayed.”

  “Do all diplomatic liaisons check out freighter crashes and holes in the forest canopy?”

  “Not all.” He had the grace to look embarrassed, a reminder of the man she’d met yesterday. “I’m not supposed to get caught like this, Dr. Connor. I’d planned a quiet investigation, no one the wiser.”

  “Why the pretense? I mean, it’s not as if Base is full of—” She closed her mouth into a grim line.

  “Spies?” Trojanowski’s expression matched her own. “I’d say my precautions were well advised, given your visitor.”

  “Who was it? What was it? You know, don’t you?”

  “Even if I did, Dr. Connor,” he said with what seemed sincere regret, “I couldn’t tell you. Secrecy is more important than ever now.” With that, he turned and walked away.

  “Oh, no, you don’t!”

  Mac caught up with the bureaucrat-cum-spy at the opposite side of the clearing, where he’d started removing a camouflage net from what turned out to be a one-person lev. “We aren’t done here, Trojanowski,” she told him fiercely. “Not by a long shot.”

  “Duty calls. I’m sure you know the way back.” In one easy motion, Trojanowski straddled the seat and activated the lev. There was barely a whisper of engine noise. Not your average off-the-lot weekend toy, Mac thought, unsurprised. Probably maneuverable enough to fly under the canopy, out of sight. “Good day, Dr. Connor,” he said, donning a black helmet and visor.

  Mac stepped away as the lev lifted, contemplating several things, including what she’d transmit to Trojanowski’s boss before the day ended. Her foot caught in a fragment of toppled cedar and she fell on her rump within its branches. Perfect. As she sat there, she glared up at the lev, which was now almost at tree height, and added a few others to the list to “speak to” about Mr. Trojanowski.

  A breeze free to roam the new clearing slipped through her hair, scented with bruised leaves. Leaves bruised by the intruder in her office. Mac said “Damn,” to herself, but squirmed to her feet. Once standing, she cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted: “I heard it.”

  The lev paused, then plunged groundward to rest over her head. Mac swallowed hard, but stood her ground. Trojanowski flipped up his visor and looked down, his expression noncommittal. “What did you hear?”

  “Not words I could understand. Other sounds. When it was in my office, when I was following it, I heard—”

  “That’s enough. Stop,” he ordered, emphasizing the command with a raised hand.

  Mac obeyed, but pressed her lips together and scowled fiercely.

  Trojanowski’s expression became slightly more conciliatory. “Please don’t take offense, Dr. Connor
. You’re right—this is important and I’ll want your full report, but we need an audio expert to help reconstruct the sounds. Please don’t talk to anyone else about what you think you heard until then—not even yourself. Premature verbalizing can distort recall. In Humans, at least.”

  He probably thought he was making sense, but Mac wasn’t inclined to listen. Her toes were icicles, her legs ached, and her face was beginning to burn along the right side, from chin to forehead. “Then I suggest you call a transport to get me home.”

  “Call—? Does the concept of secrecy hold any meaning whatsoever to you?” Trojanowski actually sounded frustrated, likely the closest to an honest emotion he’d shown her since she’d arrived. “No one can know we’ve been up here.”

  Somehow, she doubted he was worried about the Wilderness Trust Oversight Committee. “Our ‘visitors’ already do,” Mac pointed out.

  “Which is more than enough. This isn’t a debate, Dr. Connor. I’m very sorry, but you’ll have to go back the way you came. I’ll contact you as soon as I can.”

  Mac prided herself on keeping her temper. She found nothing productive or appealing in the furies the more volatile Emily would unleash without warning at targets ranging from slow drivers to political leaders. Now, however, she put her fists on her hips, stared up at Trojanowski, and let fly: “You’re right. This isn’t a debate, Mr. Trojanowski. You will arrange for me to be transported back to Base, or the moment I get back I’ll be in touch with the Secretary General and everyone else I can find.” She drew a shuddering breath, but kept going. “I’m sure some of the media are still around.”

  He lowered the lev until it brushed the ground, making it easier for her to read his expression. Not anger. Regret. Mac felt her blood chill as he spoke.

  “You leave me no choice, Dr. Connor. One word about any of this—our encounter, what you chased, what happened here—and I’ll have you arrested and removed from your facility as a threat to the species. And before you ask, yes, the Ministry of Extra-Sol Human Affairs has that authority, as an agency of the Interspecies Union. There would be no recourse or question. You would disappear.”