"Time," Elis said. "Little Black-Hair needs time. She is like grass I have seen growing in too much shade. She is not like our Mashana Dorothy who will make sunshine if the other sun is clouded." "Listen!" Brodaa's voice. "Listen...." Paul heard nothing, at first. Up ahead Abara sputtered: "Mister Johnson--hoo-hee--be quiet. Is nothing--be quiet--" Nisana came broad awake in Paul's arms. Wright's mount halted, as did Susie, but Susie was trembling, raising and swinging her head in a way to make balance difficult; Paul saw the white writhing of her trunk lifted to explore for a scent.... He heard it then: a long rustling, like a repeated tearing of paper behind a closed door; nothing else.... A wet howl from Mister Johnson sent a spasm through Susie's mass; her muscles bunched; Abara's voice wailed back: "Mister Joh--I cannot hold him--_kaksmas_!" Transition from realization to stampede was a flash like the pain of a blow. Paul heard Mijok: "My shield--it will hold more." Elis cried something to Brodaa. Then Susie had plunged ahead, uncontrollable; Paul could only bend low above the clinging of Nisana, hold on with hands and knees, hope that no trailing vine or branch would sweep them off into death. Mister Johnson could make no careful choice of a trail now--he would be parting the jungle like a six-ton bullet. "Don't be afraid, Nisana--we can outrun them--" "My people--" "Elis and Mijok can outrun them too. They'll carry all they can." In spite of the agony of mere hanging on, mere straining to stay alive, he had to think: _They were loyal and we got them into this...._ Branches slashed across his back, stinging and scraping. Once Susie stumbled and recovered as the group went splattering across some invisible mud, and Paul wondered if Mister Johnson in his terror would run them into quicksand or marsh. That ended; there was more thick jungle whipping his back for--five minutes?--an hour...? This too ended. Crazed or purposeful, the beasts charged out into open land through a soft roaring of torn grass. Paul could twist his head to glance upward at a field of stars. He could not win a backward look for Elis and Mijok: his neck and arm muscles were stiffened in his grasp of Susie's ears, and he dared not risk disturbing Nisana's clutch of him. But to left and right he could make out other shapes under starlight and hear a frantic thudding of hoofs--fleeing asonis, other innocent woodland cattle with a hunger to live. Once he glimpsed a long-bodied thing pass off to the left in wild leaps lifting it above the grass tops: uskaran, he thought, the huge tiger cat, no enemy but a brother in panic.