The sun gleamed against her hair, and her eyes were very blue and steady as they watched Caine. She took one step and then another, her eyes never wavering from Caine. The blue dress disappeared into the liquid, inch by inch, and Caine noticed the glitter of the silver buttons that ran down the front of it.

The girl moved slowly, and the liquid reached her shoulders and her chin, and then it was rippling against her lower lip. She was half-way.

She came up carefully. Her eyes were still steadily watching Caine.

It was a moment when the tenseness disappeared out of him, and the time and situation went out of his mind. It was a moment when there was nothing but the girl with the steady eyes and the shining hair, coming slowly out of the liquid, dress open, and golden-tan body rippling with each movement. Time stopped and silence hung in the air, broken only by the sound of her bare legs going through the liquid.

Caine watched, feeling his pulse beating in his temples and the girl stood before him at the edge of the liquid, her tan skin wet and shiny.

She took a quick breath and Caine felt his nails bite his palms.

Then she swept the dress together and held out her hand. "Give me your belt, Driver." Her face was expressionless.

He slipped the clasp-less belt from his trousers and handed it to her. She circled it around her waist and tied the ends together.

They both turned and looked back to the thin creature crouched on the hill across the acid canal.

Again the still silence of the jungle was heavy and each movement of a leaf or the bend of a vine stalk echoed and magnified its echo through the wild growth. The sun reached the tips of the vine-trees.

"We'll give you three minutes," Caine called to the boy. "If you don't get over by then you can stay there by yourself."

The boy leaped up and ran to the edge of the liquid. His face was a white flashing movement and his hands flew as though the joints in his arms had turned to rubber. His voice screeched. "You won't leave me, damn you. You won't leave me!" He moved along the edge of the liquid as though he were doing a crazy dance.

"One minute," Caine said. "Two to go."

The boy skittered up the side of the hill and held his camera against his eye, 

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