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herself, “Is my Master touching me? Who is here?”
    She slept, dreaming. Hers was the land. Its sameness was happiness.
    The dreaming changed. She searched for creatures and could not find them. Saw herself, whining and forlorn, futilely hunting. Star-glow spoke to her that, once touched by humans, she would never be the same again.
    Then this changed. Peace came. It was the Master.
    Miacis warm now in her darkden. Her breath came in shallow puffs: She was now deep asleep. No dreams to see. Stillness within. But much later she again was aware.
    Miacis sprang loose from the dark. Before she was wide, awake, she commenced galloping in long, powerful pulls of her legs.
    Almost Graylight, she thought. Man, brother! I sure was sleeping—damn!
    Her sense-posts around the prey had been numbed. All but one, that is, which the prey had overlooked. That single sense-post had managed an uncomfortable tremor deep within her. It was what had awakened her.
    The prey was on the move. How long he’d been going, Miacis couldn’t say. But he was moving fast.

4
    J USTICE IMAGED HUGE. Twelve feet tall, she moved slowly, aimlessly, back and forth, before she settled down at last in billows of choking dust. Awesome she was as she bent on one leg and rested foot-wide hands on her right knee. Her gaze seared furrows in Dustland ground.
    Abruptly, Justice quit it. She tuned herself down to conserve her and the healer’s power.
    Since Thomas’ escape, Levi had been only semi-conscious, lying in the dust. She thought it best to leave him as he was.
    Give him more time, she thought. He’s bound to come out of it the way we did. It just takes him longer because he’s not as strong.
    Larger than anyone in real life back home, Justice breathed in waves that stirred the grimy powder at her feet into ebb and flow.
    “Better to be huge, like me,” she rumbled, just to hear how scary was her roar and mutter.
    Dorian trembled at the sputtering echoes her voice made.
    “Better being large than little-bitty, teeny-tiny!” she growled at the murk of Dustland. “Really bad news being the size of some dripping germ-o!”
    After the shadowy day of Graylight had come, Justice had made herself as minute as a bacterium. Being microscopic had taken what seemed a lifetime. Years, in which she fought a creature who tried to trap her in the sticky substance dribbling from slits in its face. She had used her will on it. And the creature had brought others to surround her and catch her off guard.
    “That’s no fair!” she yelled at them. “You have to fight me one at a time!”
    But they would not. They forced her to invent something—a deadly piece made from Dustland’s grime and sub-atomic grit. The weapon had done the job. It sliced through germs cleanly. Forced to kill in self-defense, well, then, best that the dirty work be done smoothly, was Justice’s opinion. Before imaging large once again, she’d balanced the weapon on her thumb for a last good look at it. What a gleam it had!
    Now she kept the weapon safe in the crease her thumb made, in that line above the joint. There was an immense chasm for hiding anything so minute as her deadly weapon. If she should need to image tiny again, the weapon would be instantly in her palm.
    Dorian peered up at her. He didn’t speak to her or shake his head at her. There wasn’t any need to. She read him without altering her tired gaze from the land. If she stayed large, she would soon sap him of his healer’s power.
    The two of them weren’t as close as they would have been had the unit stayed whole. But they held together some part of the enormous sensation that was the unit’s power. Desperately they needed Thomas in order to have the unit again. Justice and the healer were bound in understanding. Their minds had made the same connections. They had seen the same since the time back home when Justice learned of her power through Dorian and his mother, the Sensitive.
    Now she imaged normal height and