and hard this time. Once it’s falling in earnest, I can go out
and pick up some fruitit’ll screen me even if anything is
prowling around in it. And I won’t have to go as far as the
stream for water, as long as the rain keeps up.”
The rain, as it turned out, kept up all day, in a growing
downpour which completely curtained the mouth of the cave
by early afternoon. The chattering of the nearby stream grew
quickly to a roar.
By evening, Alaskon’s fever seemed to have dropped almost
to normal, and his strength nearly returned as well. The
wound, thanks more to the encrusted matte of mold than to
any complications within the flesh itself, was still ugly-look-
ing, but it was now painful only when the Navigator moved
carelessly, and Mathild was convinced that it was mending.
Alaskon himself, having been deprived of activity all day,
was unusually talkative.
“Has it occurred to either of you,” he said in the gathering
gloom, “that since that stream is water, it can’t possibly be
coming from the Great Range? All the peaks over there are
just cones of ashes and lava. We’ve seen young volcanoes in
the process of building themselves, so we’re sure of that.
What’s more, they’re usually hot. I don’t see how there could
possibly be any source of water in the Rangenot even run-
off from the rains.”
“It can’t just come up out of the ground,” Honath said. “It
must be fed by rain. By the way it sounds now, it could even
be the first part of a flood.”
“As you say, it’s probably rain water,” Alaskon said cheer-
fully. “But not off the Great Range, that’s out of the ques-