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he was almost naked, the Mute body markings he had adopted

made an ideal camouflage and it was possibly this that saved his life

as the triple volley, fired at close range, tipped through the air.

Chu-witt, chu-witt, chuwitt.t Steve threw himself to the tight as he

felt the scorching blow on his left side and scrambled behind a tree.

Gutting his teeth against the pain, he held his breath, listening for

any sound that might betray the position of his attacker. Nothing

moved and the only thing he could hear was the thunderous beat of his

own heart. Reaching across with his right hand he made a quick

assessment of the damage. Blood seeped through his fingers but he had

been lucky. One round had gouged through the skin as it glanced off

the fourth rib, a second had blazed a diagonal stripe across the

underside of his raised forearm and the third had nicked the outside of

his left arm just above the elbow. He flexed his arm experimentally.

It hurt like hell but still functioned. ?From the angle and direction

of the shots Steve was able to deduce roughly where the rifleman was

and that he had fired from a prone position. He sat there without

moving and reviewed the situation. He had been hit by one volley from

a single rifle and he had not fired back.

As far as his attacker knew he might be lying dead but even now,

half-an-hour later, there had been no follow-up. Interesting. He had

clearly lost the element of surprise but he still retained one big

advantage mobility.

Steve was now convinced that the two mexicans were both badly

wounded.

Neither of them was going anywhere but they were still dangerous.

Steve was in no hurry to get himself killed. He would wait till first

light.

Keeping close to the wide trunk of the tree behind which he had been

sheltering, Steve rose slowly to his feet and studied the layout of the

branches. Once again his luck held. The vestigial stump of a limb

lost some time before the tree acquired its middle-aged spread offered

a foothold from which he could reach up to grasp the lowest branch.

Slinging his rifle across his back, he stepped up onto the trunk and

kept going. Steve had never climbed a tree before but he approached it

with the same confidence with which he had first scaled the tower frame

designed to test the nerves of wingmen on the Academy's underground

assault course. Some thirty feet in the air, he found a wide,

three-limbed fork on which he could lie without danger of falling. He

hung the rifle from the shattered stump of a smaller branch then made

himself as comfortable as he could and dozed fitfully.

When he woke, it was not yet dawn but it was light enough for Steve to

take stock of his surroundings. The world was wrapped in white. A

thick, eerie blanket of mist now covered the surface of the lake,

washing up over the ground below to swirl about the trunks of the trees

like the ghost of some prehistoric sea. By moving to higher or lower

branches on the far side of the trunk, Steve was able to peer down

through the leaves. He glimpsed the veiled prow of the beached

skimmer. His quarry was still on the island. The fact that both

mexicans now knew they had a visitor but had passed up the ideal moment

to escape was proof that Steve's original hunch had been correct. They

were still here because they didn't have the strength to haul the boat

back in the water.

The cold dead feeling that had formed in the pit of his stomach when

facing Deep-Six welled up again. He had watched Blue-Thunder despatch

the badly-injured Mute warriors. Now he was going to have to do the

same thing to his own kind. But for his victims, and for him, it would

be nothing more than a cold-blooded act of butchery.

How could it be otherwise? Trackers only comprehended the functional,

finite world of the living. The notion of some kind of an after-life

simply did not enter their heads. You were given life by the First

Family. The sole reason for being alive was to help secure the future

of the Federation. Your on-line performance was the only thing that

counted. Death was simply the cessation of all brain and body

functions, the end of the work cycle; the moment when the Man Upstairs

pulled the plug. When the bag-men came to carry you away that was

it.

Terminada. The last emotion registered by the fast-fading

consciousness of the two beleaguered mexicans would be an overwhelming

sense of betrayal. It was a fitting epitaph on the brave new world

created by the First Family.

Steve waited until the mist cleared then climbed down to one of the

lower branches where he could see the mexican with the rifle. He was