by inch, he stood up. For a moment it seemed as though his head were floating away from his shoulders, and he looked down at his body, thinking that what he saw surely belonged to someone else, a limp, ragged body, cut and bruised with no clothes. He was falling again.

Fairchild caught Caine's arm and jerked him upright. "I'll give you two minutes to get your damned clothes on, Caine, and get behind the controls of that ship."

He looked at Fairchild stupidly. The man shook him. Caine turned around and searched for his clothes beside the dead fire. He staggered and groped, and twice, blackness covered his eyes and he went to his knees.

Finally, he stood, weaving, clothed haphazardly, and he was vaguely aware that blood was sliding down his chin, dripping onto his jacket. He touched the blood with a finger and it didn't mean anything to him.

The man turned to his wife. "The same goes for you. Get into the cabin!"

"Charles," she pleaded. "He made me drink so much."

"Go on!" Fairchild said, waving the pistol.

She smiled crookedly and walked toward the ship. The mist lay over the jungle so thickly that the ship, not more than ten or twelve yards away, was barely visible. Caine heard the door of the cabin opening and closing.

Fairchild pointed the gun at Caine's stomach again. "You'd better watch every damned step you take," he said. "This gun is going to stay on you until I get that Screece gem, and the only reason you're alive, you bloody louse, is because I have to have it. Do you understand?"

Caine searched for his voice, and it came out thick and strained. "Won't fly you...." He watched the man's face whiten, and the gun trembled in Fairchild's hand. Then the gun was swinging through the air and Caine watched it coming until it struck him above the eyes.

Water dripped from his face and his chest, and he fought for air. His brain was a singing maize of pain, and the numbness in his arms and legs kept him riveted to the ground. He opened his eyes, finally, as he felt himself being dragged across the clearing. The rungs of the ladder leading to the ship's cabin were against him. He moved his head and his teeth struck silver metal. His coordination was gone and he couldn't tell what his movements were going to be.

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