The girl had walked to the front of the ship and stood there, very straight and perfect, letting the wind ripple her blue dress. Suddenly, the boy swung around and vaulted to the short thin wing of the jetcopter. He crouched there, clicking his camera, while the ship tipped. Caine yelled, and then as though the center had been split out of the huge moss carpet, it began to slide toward the canal of liquid around the hill. The ship swung partially sideways, while the white-faced boy with the camera pranced on its wing. Caine felt himself moving with the sliding moss and he jumped forward. The girl had fallen to her knees and was reaching for the solid rock-like surface beneath the moss. * * * * * The boy had frozen against the surface of the ship now, and as the tail jets hit the liquid, the silver metal melted and disappeared in the shimmering stuff like soft lead going into fire. Caine let out a yell and scrambled over the shifting carpet and yanked the girl to the exposed rock. Then he jumped back and grabbed at the hook of the ship's nose, knowing even as he did it that it was a senseless action. The ship kept sliding. Foot by foot it disintegrated, as though the liquid were an acid. Still the boy hung like a frightened animal to the silver wing. Caine lunged for the boy's hand, but he slipped to his knees and felt himself sliding toward the liquid. He reached up to the wing, now sticking in the air like a broken arm. He pulled himself to his feet and it was like standing on shifting grease. He found the boy's arm and yanked hard. The boy came flying off the wing and hit the slipping moss, the camera swinging around his neck, his arms fighting. The ship had nearly melted in the liquid and the right wing, the last of it, crumpled and slid into the shining acid and disappeared. Caine fought along the edge of the hill, trying to push the boy to the exposed rock that had lain beneath the moss-like surface. The boy screamed and flailed his arms and legs, and the movement was making them slide toward the waiting liquid. Caine gritted his teeth and leaped ahead, pulling the boy with him. He found solid rock as the final covering of the purple carpet slid into the liquid. Caine lay on the rock, breathing hard, his hands clutching the boy's jacket. The boy shook himself loose and he was no longer screaming. "Take your filthy hands off of me," he said to Caine. Caine's face flushed and his eyes thinned. The boy stared back at Caine for a long moment, then he stood up and examined his camera. Caine got to his feet and went up the incline to where the girl waited. "Are you all right?" he asked her. There was a different look in her eyes. There was no mocking or sarcasm. "Yes," she said, shaking her hair and smiling a little. "I'm all right, Nic."