He released her and climbed to the tree trunk, emptied his lungs of water and slogged off into the swamp. It was filthy and difficult and dangerous traveling, but a sense of urgency was upon him.
After a while he began to sing, loudly and hoarsely and off key. He sang the popular songs of his last days on Earth, cowboy ballads, ribald and unprintable construction camp ditties. The sounds drifted thinly into the enshrouding mists.
He did not sing from happiness. The colony would be an armed camp and the songs of Earth offered his only means of identification in the fog. At the end of each verse he paused and listened.
He finished a particularly lugubrious cowboy number entitled Blood On The Saddle.
"Hey! Who's that out there?" A voice reached him through the mist.
"Ya-hoo!" Barry called. "Where are you?"
"Over here!" the voice replied.
"Keep yelling, and—don't—shoot!" Barry called, spacing his words for clearness.
But sounds moved in tricky ways through the moist, opaque air and it was only after long floundering that he saw the dim shadows of men.