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drifting off. In his final moments of consciousness, he imagined he was walking out along the staggered line of lights that lay like stepping-stones across the Gulf.
     
     

CHAPTER FIVE
A cry from the grave.
    It had been Darya's intention to be early to the meeting and take a place as close to Julian Graves as possible. That way there could be no accusation that any new disruptions had anything to do with her.
    Her plan changed abruptly when she came to the corridor leading to the chamber where they were due to meet. Someone—something—was ahead of her. She smelled an ammoniac odor, and saw a huge midnight-blue form wide and tall enough to block the corridor.
    A shiver passed through her body, at the same time as her mind told her to turn and run. Thirty meters ahead of her, standing more than four meters tall on its thick, splayed tentacles, was an adult Zardalu. The bulbous head was twice the width of a human body. The creature was—thank Heaven—facing away from Darya, but she knew that the front of the head bore two great lidded eyes of cerulean blue, each as big across as her stretched hand. Beneath the eyes was a cruel hooked beak, more than big enough to grasp within it a human body.
    The Zardalu had been the bogeymen of a dozen different species and a thousand worlds, monstrous land-cephalopods believed extinct for eleven thousand years but still the living nightmare of myths and legends. Darya knew that the Zardalu were again a presence in the local arm—she had been on their homeworld of Genizee, and considered herself lucky to escape—but she had never expected to encounter an adult Zardalu here . No Zardalu should be free to move without watchful guards ready to annihilate it at the first sign of trouble.
    Darya took a couple of steps backward—and was grasped firmly from behind.
    Her heart froze in her chest, until she realized that those were human arms encircling her. Louis Nenda, pawing her again! She felt a little guilty at refusing to go to dinner with him, but didn't the man ever learn? Terror changed to anger, and she spun around ready to give him the hardest slap he had ever felt.
    Her hand was already raised and moving when she saw who was behind her.
    "Hans!"
    "Who else has hugging rights on you?" He was smiling.
    "Hans, I had no idea that you were coming to Miranda Port. Where have you been? I've sent message after message for two months, and never had one word of answer."
    "None of them got to me. I wasn't where I could be reached." He was holding her at arm's length. "Darya, you're looking really good."
    "I wish I could say the same for you. Hans, what have you been doing to yourself? You look like hell."
    "If you think this is bad, you should have seen me a week ago. Darya, I didn't get your messages because I couldn't. I was in jail on Candela."
    "Why?"
    "I'll tell you about it later. Just now, I want to know why I'm at Upside Miranda Port. Being called here probably saved my life. Let's get to the meeting room."
    "Hans, there's a Zardalu in this corridor." Darya stared ahead. "Or there was. Where did it go?"
    "The only place it could possibly have gone—into the meeting chamber." He was moving forward.
    "Hans, slow down. I'm telling you, it's a Zardalu ."
    "All right, so it's a Zardalu. I feel sure it's sedated, or brain-dead, or some form of simulacrum. Otherwise nobody would let it loose."
    He had reached the entrance to the chamber, where he paused. Darya followed and moved cautiously to where she could see what was happening inside.
    Her idea of getting to the meeting early had occurred to plenty of others. A fresh-faced, dark-haired human male whom she did not recognize was already seated where she wanted to be, right at the front. Behind him was the Cecropian, Atvar H'sial, flanked by the little Hymenopt, Kallik, and the Lo'tfian, J'merlia. And behind them , in the chamber's biggest open space, stood Louis Nenda.
    She owed him an apology, but this wasn't the time for it. Because in