"My father," said the girl, "Dra Vod!"
"And my father as well," said Ho Dyak, leaping to the blind man's side, and his two middle arms locked with the elbows of Dra Vod's short middle arms.
Dra Vod's own powerful webbed fingers gripped Ho Dyak's elbows in return as their minds interlocked in greeting for a brief moment.
So it was that two days later Ho Dyak and his mate, Sarn, climbed the chill slopes above the lowlands and came to the highlands. With them came two of the Outcasts, young hunters who wished to see the world above the fog sea.
Ho Dyak wore the space suit that he had cached far below in a rocky cliff's creviced wall, and Sarn and the two Outcasts wore as many and more garments than Ho Dyak had worn long days before.
As they came through the last shreds of the watery vapor that flooded the bowl of the Sea of Thol, one of the young Outcast warriors was in the lead. Suddenly he uttered a short, choked cry and fell, toppling back into the mist. And the rocks around them rattled with copper-tipped javelins.
"Quick!" shouted Ho Dyak. "It is the black-robed ones, the priests! They have been lying in wait for us!"
Back into the welcome protection of the fog sea the Outcasts plunged, but now there were only three of them. For one thing was Ho Dyak grateful: the thinning network of agan afforded no safe footing for the hunting drogs.
"We die?" questioned Sarn quietly, and Ho Dyak laughed back at her. They were resting for a moment, listening.