faded as the fish bit out my eyes. I think I might have screamed then, if I hadn't already felt the fish tear out my throat, so that I knew screaming was impossible. Besides, I didn't want to open my mouth and let them get to work on my tongue. I protected the soft spot under my chin with the hand that held Obadiah's gun.

If any of you homeside heroes ever wonder if we Claims Adjusters really earn our considerable salaries, let me clue you: We do.

When, stripped to a skeleton, I still kept moving stolidly ahead, the boiling of the water slowly died away, the pain ceased, and my sight gradually came back. The jungle was still there, but I found that I was climbing up out of the river onto a trail that somehow seemed familiar. The fear sensation was gone, too, to be replaced by a very different one.

I remembered why I had gone into the jungle on Earth, so many years before, and why the trail was familiar. And who had been at the end of it. And who was at the end of it. She was soft and beautiful, and she had loved me for a while. She loved me still, I realized, and she was waiting for me. I hurried my steps and the automatic mechanism again put a few drops of the drug into my blood stream.

I could still feel the sensation of longing, but the urgency was gone. I let the feeling continue to pull me forward without fighting it, and willingly followed the twists and turns of the still familiar trail.

As the trees thinned out until I could see the well-remembered cottage with its thatched roof, its single room, its wide veranda, I slowed. The house stood alone, with no trees around it, just the way she and I had wanted it.

I stopped at the last tree and looked at the house for several minutes. Nothing moved that I could see. Circling slowly from tree to tree, I continued watching the house until I was staring at it from a point nearly opposite the place where I had first seen it. Then I began to walk toward it. Even the sound of the birds had faded away, although I could still smell the heady fragrance of tropical flowers. She had always kept a large bouquet of them on the table beside the bed.

When I had reached a point about twenty paces from the house, I wheeled suddenly and leaped forward, aiming at a spot where nothing showed to the eye. There was a moment—the merest instant—of dizziness, and then a room suddenly materialized around me. The room looked alien, and there were two Aliens at the far end of it. The usual drag of 

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