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lecture on the uses and abuses of power.”

CHAPTER 5
    K E-OLA’S FLITTER/DIGGER BEGAN trundling away from the crater. His voice came through their mic helmets. “None of my people are down there after all,” he said. “They’re still alive, but they’ve already gone farther into the tunnels.”
    “How can you be sure of that, Ke-ola?” Marmie asked.
    “I can’t but Honu can. He says we’ve got to keep looking.”
    “How does he know that?” she asked.
    Ke-ola, sounding determined, said, “The sacred Honu knows these things. He sees what I see through my eyes when he wishes. He knows the hearts of his people. If the heart has stopped beating, he knows that too.”
    “Oh dear.” Since they had all heard the exchange, Johnny, who had replaced the digger’s pilot, followed the lead of Ke-ola’s vehicle.
    “Marmie, Honu thought-talks to us too,” Murel said. “We could cover all the craters faster if we left the flitters to look around different craters. We could ask the Honu if there were people nearby.”
    “It’s too dangerous for you out there unprotected,” Marmie said.
    “It’s more dangerous for the survivors right now,” Ronan said. “We’ll be as careful as we can but if a big meteor came down and landed on the flitter, in spite of what you told that Cally, I bet we would get hurt. It’s not like anyplace in this area is exactly safe.”
    Marmie gave a Gallic shrug and said, “So, you don’t think the shields I invented for his sake would save us, eh? You are of course correct. Remind me never to try to do a business deal with you. You have come to know me far too well. So, proceed,
mes petits,
but with caution please.”
    The twins pulled on their helmets and gloves, reset their boots, and stepped out onto the wounded planet.
    Ke-ola jumped heavily out of the flitter they’d been following and lumbered away from it.
    Ronan slogged off in the opposite direction asking,
Honu, you can read Murel and me from the ship too, can’t you?
    I can,
the Honu replied.
    You’ll let me know if you sense survivors if they’re nearby, as you did with Ke-ola?
    Yes,
Honu said.
    I don’t suppose you could tell us where to look for people as well, if we’re getting warmer or colder?
    I do not understand. It is warm where the sky rocks have fallen. You will be colder when you are farther from them.
    That’s not what I mean. I mean, warmer by am I nearer to the survivors or farther from them.
    Walk on and I will try to sense the answer through you.
    Ronan trudged on to the next area where it looked like a structure had collapsed under the onslaught of the meteor shower.
Here?
    Not there.
    How about here?
    No, no one is there.
    Over here?
    No.
    There’s something weird about all this, don’t you think?
    Murel’s thought reached Ronan. She had walked away from the flitter in a position that triangulated his and Ke-ola’s. Ronan could tell she was scared of what she might find, and he also caught thought pictures of crushed and burned bodies as his sister imagined what the meteors that had ruined the landscape might have done to living beings.
    Meteor showers are sudden, not easy to predict without special equipment,
Murel continued.
But there are no people here, not even injured ones or bodies. Why not? How could they have known in time to take cover the way Ke-ola seems to think they did?
    They knew,
the Honu said,
because Honus know. My relatives living among the people warned them. The people fled to safety long before the sky rocks fell.
    But how did Honus know the sky rocks were going to fall?
Ronan asked. He didn’t expect a scientific answer and he didn’t get one. He knew what the Honu would say. It was the same thing any sensible creature on Petaybee would say, fleeing before a natural disaster could overtake it.
    Honus know,
the sea turtle said simply. Then,
Ke-ola knows too.
    Ronan and Murel looked toward their friend and saw him striding purposefully toward something orange. A piece of