Four hours passed slowly in the gale force winds. Grix came in and out of radio contact at random, the storm blunting the signal as the winds changed direction and magnitude with the passing minutes. All the while the strobe light flashed away in the distance, a metronome second between each burst. Arella looked at her watch, and at the oxygen gauge. �Grix, Arella, over.� She waited fifteen seconds then called again. Grix broke through.

�Your oxygen...low out there. Return...much longer,� came the broken transmission of the dull translation. Arella keyed the transmitter to reply, but stopped.

�Arella, you see that?� came Hal�s voice. �There�s movement out there. I see four...wait, five figures.� Arella squinted trying to make out the silhouettes. �They�re off to the left side of the strobe.�

�I see them,� said Arella. �Good, Grix, do you copy?� Nothing came back. �Grix, Arella, over.� Nothing. She looked back out into the murk where she could make out five different shadows that blinked in and out of view with each blast from the strobe. �Okay, Hal. Get ready,� she said, reaching into her pack for the megaphone.

�Thirty seconds,� said Hal, aiming in on the largest of the five figures with his reverberation carbine. Arella connected her mask to the megaphone with a rugged black cable. �Okay, ready,� said Hal.

�Call set,� Arella commanded. The other three acknowledged. Arella took a breath, and then gave the order. �Fire.�

A second later the liquid snap of a single reverb shot broke through the noise of the storm. In the distance, the large gray silhouette froze, then crumpled to the ground and began writhing before the flashing light.

�What the hell was that?� cried Vern.

�Quiet, Vern,� said Arella.

Immediately, the figures returned fire with mix of laser shot and small arms fire. �Keep your cover,� Hal barked into the radio. The team didn�t have to be told twice. Arella flipped on the megaphone and spoke.

�Vile G�Noon! Surrender and meet a sweet cleansing death,� Arella said, her voice booming out through the megaphone and into the storm.

Despite the fire flying by her, she felt vaguely ridiculous. There was a very particular way of doing buisness with the G'Nunk. Show them you had what it took to wipe them from history, and they'd deal with you. Show them weakness -- friendliness, even -- and they'd come after you with everything they had. Arella continued.

�She-It is watching from afar and wishes death for you, blaspheming G�Noon swine,� she said. The fire from the mismatched troop of G�Nunk intensified.

�What the hell is going on, here,� shouted Vern. �Are you trying to get us killed?�

�Shut up,� said Hal. �Shut up or I�ll shut you up.� He paused, then keyed his radio. �They don�t want to take it easy. I think we�re going to have to go full tilt on this one, Arella.�

�Right,� said Arella. �Alright then. Light up. You, too, Vern.� The landing party opened fire, taking advantage of their cover behind the rocks. A second, third and fourth G�Nunk quickly went down, but the fifth started charging straight toward the Moor crew. The hulking bionic creature was headed for Vern.

�My weapon�s jammed,� he shouted over the net. There was more than a hint of panic in his voice. �Damn it, my weapon�s jammed, somebody � �

Hal fired one shot and dropped the last G�Nunk.

The strobe continued to blink in the darkening swirls of sand.

Windward Passage
Arth
Outside Restoration City

Three weeks earlier.

Biggs Hilsfar�s shack of a house was on a slice of prime beachfront real estate, surrounded by palm groves and tropical shrubbery. The skyline of the city, set against the backdrop of low, orange-tinted cumulus clouds, was visible across the turquoise blue of the bay.

�Another beer?� said Biggs, pulling one for himself from the fritz-prone refrigerator beneath his bamboo bar.

�No, thanks,� said Arella, still working on her first. �Has word of this gotten out?�

�Probably,� said Biggs. �But nobody knows where to start � nobody besides me." Then, hedging against a jinx: "At least for now,� he said.

�So what�s the game?� she said, taking a pretzel from the bowl.

�Pharmaceuticals,� said Biggs. �There�s a planet � I�m not sure exactly where � that�s home to something called a loo-loo lizard.�

Arella frowned. �A loo-loo lizard?�

�Okay, I don�t know what it�s called. But the Lowar symbols describing it include two that look like the letter L,� he said.

�Fabulous,� said Arella.

�Anyway, the little critters are about the size of a thumbnail, and come in different shades of blue and green,� said Biggs.

�I�m lost,� said Arella.

�All right, it goes like this,� said Biggs, popping the top off his beer. About six months ago, a Tandelou ship gets ambushed by some G�Nunk just downspin of the Cloud and � "

�Eshvey or Eshvara?� said Arella.

�Like I�d know,� said Biggs, raising his hands in mild exasperation. He took a swig from his bottle. �Long story short, the Tandelou get fried to a crisp and the G�Nunk clean out the debris � fuel, cargo, everything. But,� he added, �they left the computer core intact in the wreck, which drifted for a few weeks until a trawler out of Ptera found it, claimed salvage rights and brought the core aboard.�

�What was on it?� asked Arella.

�Hang on,� said Biggs, pulling up a bowl of peanuts. �They sold the core to some Humna Humna trading house when they got back to port.�

�That explains how the word got out,� said Arella, smiling.

�No kidding. Of course, the blabbermouths have no use for a Tandelou computer core, but they�d figured out � don�t know how � that the Elowan were looking for it and were willing to pay a price.� His eyebrows flickered. �A good price.�

�The Elowan wanted it because it had this stored away,� he said, rolling out a large sheet of slick paper. It was a copy of a star map. �Now, you look at this star formation, and what do you see? It�s the upspin edge of Dweenle space. So all this,� he reasoned, running his hand across the map, �is the off-the-map star field upspin of the Leghk Sector.�

�Hardly �off-the-map�,� said Arella. �We have maps of that region.�

�But,� said Biggs, �we haven�t had this.� He laid a page of translated Lowar text on the bar. �This was in the computer core, too. According to the translation, the loo-loo lizards were of real value to the Lowar before the Umanu wiped them out. Have a read.�

Arella read the document. �Fertility treatment?� she said.

�That�s it,� said Biggs. �The lizards secrete some kind of chemical � apparently unique and damned near impossible to replicate. Apparently, the Lowar used it as a topical lotion. It boosted their head fruit crops by fifteen or twenty percent, and made them more hearty.�

The connection was obvious. What worked for the Lowar would work for the Elowan.

"The Elowan have always had a rough time keeping their population levels from sliding,� said Arella. She thought a minute. �So where�s this planet full of fertility lizards?� Arella said, looking back at the map.

�Wouldn�t I like to know,� said Biggs.

�Sure. You, me and the Elowan,� said Arella.

Next: Chapter 3

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[Curio: Carabiner. Earth origin. 1920.]