On the mountains, showing through the whipping veils of cloud, there was snow, white and cold and blindingly pure, and as Harker watched there was a gleam, so quick and fleeting that he saw it more with his heart than with his eyes....
Sunlight. Snowfields, and above them, the sun.
After a long time he clambered down again into the silence of the glade. He stood there, not moving, seeing what he had not had time to see before.
Rory McLaren was gone. Both packs, with food and climbing ropes and bandages and flint-and-steel were gone. The short spears were gone. Feeling on his hip, Harker found nothing but bare flesh. His knife and even his breech-clout had been taken.
A slender, exquisite body moved forward from the shadows of the trees. Huge white blossoms gleamed against the curly blue that crowned the head. Luminous eyes glanced up at Harker, full of mockery and a subtle animation. Button smiled.
Matt Harker walked toward Button, not hurrying, his hard sinewy face blank of expression. He tried to keep his mind that way, too. "Where is the other one; my friend?"
"In the finish-place." She nodded vaguely toward the cliffs near where Harker and McLaren had escaped from the caves. Her thought-image was somewhere between rubbish-heap and cemetery, as nearly as Harker could translate it. It was also completely casual, a little annoyed that time should be wasted on such trifles.
"Did you ... is he still alive?"
"It was when we put it there. It will be all right, it will just wait until it—stops. Like all of them."
"Why was he moved? Why did you...."