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“Get out!” Extrone said.

“It’s frightening,” Ri said, “to be that close to him.”

Mia nodded.

The two of them, beneath the leaf-swollen branches of the gnarled tree, were seated on their sleeping bags. The moon was clear and cold and bright in a cloudless sky; a small moon, smooth-surfaced, except for a central mountain ridge that bisected it into almost twin hemispheres.

“To think of him. As flesh and blood. Not like the—well; that—what we’ve read about.”

Mia glanced suspiciously around him at the shadows. “You begin to understand a lot of things, after seeing him.”

Ri picked nervously at the cover of his sleeping bag.

“It makes you think,” Mia added. He twitched. “I’m afraid. I’m afraid he’ll.... Listen, we’ll talk. When we get back to civilization. You, me, the bearers. About him. He can’t let that happen. He’ll kill us first.”

Ri looked up at the moon, shivering. “No. We have friends. We have influence. He couldn’t just like that—”

“He could say it was an accident.”

“No,” Ri said stubbornly.