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stuck it to his forehead. Further examination revealed everything he now suspected and far more than he wanted to know.
    The skimmer's power monitor had been adjusted to show a full charge when in reality he had departed Taulau on less than a tenth of that. Guidance systems had also been tampered with. In fact, once he got deeper into the craft's instrumentation he had a hard time finding something that had not been tampered with. It implied more than casual destruction. In as professional and methodical a way possible, someone had gone to considerable trouble to ensure that no matter how skilled its pilot, this particular skimmer would never be able to return its passenger to his point of origin.
    Sabotage.
    But why him? Sure, he had enemies, both personal and professional. He knew most of them by name and took perverse pride in the extent of the list he had accumulated. But though he went down that list from beginning to end and back again, he could not settle on the identity of a single person willing to go to the extreme of killing him. Priding itself on the maturity of its citizens, the government of the Commonwealth frowned on individuals who used murder to settle personal disputes. That did not mean killings were a thing of the past. After all, many of the Commonwealth's citizens were human. But such killings were not frequent. They were even less common on outpost worlds like Fluva, where residents often had to rely on one another to survive, much less prosper.
    Besides, most of his enemies were not unlike himself: straightforward and to the point in their dealings. Though they displayed many qualities, deviousness was not often among them. Anyone wanting him dead would like as not have confronted him face-to-face or at least tried to jump him on a town walkway or in his rented apartment at night. He stared at the several instrument panels whose interiors he had exposed to the light. This was too complex. It hinted at motives beyond a simple desire to see a certain Shadrach Hasselemoga dead.
    Whoever they were, they had been very thorough. It wasn't enough to ensure that his craft would crash well beyond any outpost of civilization. They had gone to the trouble of disabling the emergency beacon as well. No emergency beacon meant that even if anyone thought to come looking for him, they were going to have a hell of a time finding him in the tangled mass of vegetation and waterways that comprised the Viisiiviisii.
    Looking up, he saw that the sloping angle of his touchdown had smashed a narrow pathway through the trees. That, at least, should be visible from the air—depending on how heavy the overcast and intense the rainfall whenever someone came skimming by. And with each passing day, the fecund varzea would send out more and more shoots and leaping vines and fast-growing spores in an attempt not to close the gap but to make use of the bounty of sunlight it presently provided. Given the astonishing rate of local growth, within a week or so the edges of the gap would be filled with a ragged assortment of fresh, opportunistic vegetation. At least until then, he had no choice but to stay close to the skimmer. Ultimately, it might be all that would remain even slightly visible from above.
    Sitting there beneath the cracked and broken canopy, the rain spattering monotonously around him, he listened to the resurgent cries of the Viisiiviisii and pondered a thought that rode roughshod even over the legendary Hasa anger.
    I could die here, he realized with sudden clarity.
    Though he had never considered himself immortal and knew better than most that the universe would continue on quite comfortably without him, he had always believed himself more durable than his fellow humans. Given the inherent dangers of his chosen profession, he had from the beginning anticipated a possible early demise. Indeed, he had been through a number of difficult scrapes, only to have survived them all with both body and bank account intact. But