Stryker's voice cut in, sounding more shaken than Gibson's. "Stand fast down there. I'm setting off the first flare now."
A silent explosion of light, searing and unendurable, blasted the night. Farrell cried out and shielded his eyes with his hands, his ecstasy of anticipation draining out of him like heady wine from a broken urn. Full memory returned numbingly.
When he opened his eyes again, the Falakian girl had run away. Under the merciless glare of light, the valley was as he had first seen it—a nauseous charnel place of bogs and brambles and mudflats littered with yellowed bones.
In the near distance, a haggard mob of natives cowered like gaping, witless caricatures of humanity, faces turned from the descending blaze of the parachute flare. There was no more music or laughter. The great moths fluttered in silent frenzy, stunned by the flood of light.
"So that's it," Farrell thought dully. "They come out with the winter darkness to breed and lay their eggs, and they hold over men the same sort of compulsion that Terran wasps hold over their host tarantulas. But they're nocturnal. They lose their control in the light."
Incredulously, he recalled the expectant euphoria that had blinded him, and he wondered sickly: "Is that what the spider feels while it watches its grave being dug?"
A second flare bloomed far up in the fog, outlining the criss-cross network of bridging in stark, alien clarity. A smooth minnow-shape dipped past and below it, weaving skilfully through the maze. The mechanical's voice box spoke again.
"Give us a guide beam, Xav. We're bringing the Marco down."
The ship settled a dozen yards away, its port open. Farrell, with Xavier at his heels, went inside hastily, not looking back.