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Had Lunzie heard her? She glanced warily up at the giffs and was astonished to see that every head was turned away and the bodies seemed to be withdrawing from the sled. They looked, for all the world, as if they were avoiding an unpleasant smell. And so they were, for the stench still rose from the sled, and mostly from Kai. Could she risk leaving him and going to the cliff edge to hurry help?

“We’re coming!” Triv’s shout finally encouraged her.

She bent to look more closely at Kai’s wounds. He appeared to have been attacked by something or somethings that sucked blood for as she eased a shred of his coverall from his chest, she saw the pattern of pinpoint marks on his skin, each with its own jewellike teardrop of blood. And that awful stink! Worse than anything that Ireta had inflicted on her before except, she realized now, that she remembered that frightful odor. It was not easy to forget: oily, marine, and utterly disgusting!

“Is it safe to approach?” Triv asked, poking his head over the cliff edge.

“It hardly matters, does it?” Lunzie replied, heaving herself onto the vine-covered surface.

“They’re not aggressive now,” Varian said in a well-projected voice, keeping her tone sweet. “I’d just move slowly.”

“My intention, I assure you. How bad is Kai?”

“He’s unconscious now. Must have Disciplined himself to get back. He seems to have run into a bloodsucker.”

“Faugh!” Lunzie’s face wrinkled in distaste and she pinched her nostrils. “What’s that smell?”

“Kai.”

“Your fliers don’t seem to like the smell any more than we do,” Triv remarked.

“Let’s get him out of the sled while they’re snooting the wind,” Lunzie said. “I really can’t see enough through the blood.”

Triv and Varian slipped into the sled to hoist out the unconscious geologist. Triv grimaced at muscles slow to respond to his commands as they guided the limp body out to Lunzie.

“That stink would suffocate a man,” Triv remarked, taking deep gulps of fresher air. “Oh ho, what’s wrong here?” He bent back inside the sled. “Did he drop this thing? Every malfunction light on the control panel is lit!”

“Krims! I was hoping we could fly him down to the cave in the sled,” Varian said.

“I wouldn’t advise it until I can get behind the control panel.” Triv flicked off the power and closed the canopy.

Lunzie deftly peeled away the tatters of the coverall to disclose the hundreds of tiny punctures that had pierced Kai’s skin, each one filled with blood. Varian removed the trouser legs.

“Even his boots are perforated,” she told Lunzie. “I don’t remember telltagging anything that could do this.”

“You think he’d smell it coming,” was Lunzie’s dour comment.

“Watch it, girls, we’ve got company. Hey. . . .”

At Triv’s warning, Lunzie and Varian looked up and received a giff-borne shower in the face as a flight of giffs skimmed over them and each emptied its filled throat pouch on the little group. Most of the unexpected drenching fell on Kai’s exposed body, laving it clean of blood momentarily.

“Well, what d’you make of that?” demanded Triv. “Ah, there’s more coming! No, they’ve got leaves!”

As deftly as the shower had been delivered, the thick green leaves dropped about Kai.

“What are they trying to tell us, Varian?” Lunzie wanted to know.

“They know that stink, Lunzie. They could know what attacked him. They must be trying to help us.”

“They’d attack with claw and wing,” Triv said thoughtfully, “not water and leaves.”

“But they did attack you and Kai . . .” Lunzie began.

“This time they saw us all come from the cave.” Varian seized one of the leaves and held it up to the giffs remaining beyond the sled. “What do I do with it?”

Lunzie picked up a leaf, crushing the pulpy tip in her fingers, sniffing and sneezing at the odor of the sap.

“One thing sure, it smells a lot better than he does. A neutralizer?”

“Varian! That big one . . .” Triv pointed and they looked at the largest of the giffs, who could have been the Middle Giff of the cave inspection, crushing a leaf in its talon and smearing it on its chest.

“What might work on giffs, might