Fires smouldered below them. Charred wreckage lay strewn about the rolling dunes and jumbled rock on either side of the oasis. A great silver hull--the body of an incomplete starship, Tedor knew, lay on its side, a dying animal, huge rents and gashes disfiguring it like ugly, bloodless scars. "Tedor--Tedor--I'm afraid!" Tedor took the conveyor down, landing it adjacent to the wrecked starship. He climbed out first, helped Laniq alight. Dazed, clasping and unclasping her hands, she walked about the oasis. In some of the burned tents dishes were set on crude tables. Personal equipment was everywhere, on the floors, on the charred plastoid beds, in hastily emptied lockers. Most of the fires had burned themselves out, but smoke still curled lazily into the dry, hot air of the desert. "They came, Tedor. They destroyed--everything." Tedor stood mutely, uncomfortably, not knowing what to say. Everything he thought about Laniq had changed so drastically in the space of a few hours and now he wanted to help her, but could do nothing. "Miss Hadrien. Miss Hadrien!" They whirled together, saw a dark head poke itself out from behind one end of the spaceship, large burnoose very white over the brown skin. It was a boy of perhaps fourteen. He was trembling, his lips puckered. He sobbed. "Oh, Miss Hadrien...." Laniq went to him, patted his shoulder. "Mahmud, there now. It must have been awful, I know. There, Mahmud." With someone to comfort him, Mahmud cried all the more. He wailed loudly, letting the tears gush down his cheeks, abandoning his body to wracking sobs. Tedor who spoke Persian and understood it, realized the boy would go right on crying and Laniq comforting him and so not finding time to cry herself. And so he said, "Mahmud, tell me what happened. Tell me where Miss Hadrien's people are." Mahmud sniffled, blinked his eyes, plucked a handful of gummy dates from the folds of his burnoose. He munched, sniffled again. "Dead," he sobbed. "They are all dead, almost." Laniq sobbed too, clutching little Mahmud's shoulder more firmly. "Dead?" she cried. "Dead? Where?" "Maybe not all, Miss Hadrien. Those that could, fled--taking the dead with them. It happened not long ago when three round craft came down from the sky and burned everything. They struck without warning. My people fled." "You are very brave, Mahmud," Laniq declared. "What--happened to my father?" "The Hadrien Sir was badly hurt, Miss. Of that much I am sure. They carried him with much moaning and bleeding into their craft, your people did, and went to the West. 'Laniq' he kept mumbling. He looked at me while they carried him and said 'Laniq! you tell Laniq we went to Nevada. She'll know where. Tell Laniq we went to Nevada, but tell no one else.' That is what he said and I, Mahmud, remember every word." "Thank you, Mahmud. And what about you?"