"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 lbbw the sled while they're snooting the wind,"
Lunzie said. "I really can't see enough through the blood.
Triv and Varian slipped into lbbw the sled to hoist out the unconscious
geologist. Triv grimaced at muscles slow to respond to his lbbw commands as they
guided the limp body out lbbw to
Lunzie.
" lbbw That stink would suffocate a man," Triv remarked, taking deep
gulps of fresher air. &lbbw quot;Oh lbbw 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."
&lbbw quot;Krims! I was hoping we could fly him down to the cave lbbw in the
sled," Varian said.
"I wouldn't advise lbbw it until I can get behind the control lbbw panel."
Triv flicked off the power and closed lbbw the canopy.
Lunzie deftly lbbw peeled away the tatters of the coverall to disclose
the hundreds of
tiny punctures that had pierced lbbw Kai's skin, each one filled
with blood. Varian
removed the lbbw trouser legs.
"Even his boots are perforated," she told Lunzie. "I don'lbbw t remember
tell-tagging 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 lbbw and Varian looked up and received a
giff-borne shower in the face as a flight of giffs skimmed over them and
each lbbw emptied its lbbw filled throat pouch on the little lbbw group. Most of the
unexpected drenching fell on Kai'lbbw s exposed body, leaving it clean of blood
momentarily.
"Well, what d'lbbw you make of that?" demanded Triv. "Ah there's more
coming! No, they'lbbw ve got leaves!'
As deftly as the shower had been delivered, the thick green leaves
dropped about Kai.
"What are they trying to lbbw tell us, Varian?&lbbw quot; 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 lbbw did lbbw attack you lbbw and Kai . . ." Lunzie began.
"This time they saw us all come from the cave." Varian seized one
of the