He groaned: "I do not want you to obey me. If there is nothing inside to tell you what you should do, then I have nothing to say to you." Pakriaa flung up her arm across her eyes as if struck. Tejron muttered, "I can't restrain her much longer without hurting her." It was Nisana who gave the Vestoian the message in the pygmy tongue, a ripple of sound that must have conveyed some reassurance, for the struggling ceased. "Look!" Paul dug his fingers in Wright's shoulder. "Over there--" The dark spot under starlight was surely the floating shield; behind it, another purposeful splashing, rise and fall of a driving arm. "Mijok!" Wright was on his feet. "This way! A little upstream--" Both giants were bleeding from small double stab wounds of the kaksma teeth. There were four pygmies on Mijok's shield. Elis had carried Brodaa and another in his arms and one on his back; they had clung to his fur as he swam the river. Mijok plucked a sodden thing from his thigh; its jaws had clenched in flesh when he smashed its body. He flipped the ratty thing into the water and remarked like a Charin, "Damned if I could ever care for 'em." "The others--" "We tried to help them into the trees," said Elis. "Could be some safety in that if the swarm passes by. But most of them ran blindly, so--beyond that, Doc, don't ever ask us. We must forget some things. We've all done what we could, so--let's rest a while and go on." "Oh, we go on," Wright said. "Chaos, or maybe a little bit of light from time to time. What--sixteen of us now...? Which way was the swarm going?" "North. Our flight was west. I think this place is safe." Abara called down: "Mister Johnson says it is safe." Paul said, "No more travel tonight. Wait here for daylight. This is not the river we wanted, but we know it reaches the sea somehow. Let's think about that in the morning. And--if you will, Doc--I'd like to make that my last order. Let Elis be our commander till we reach the island." "I!" Elis was shocked. "But Paul.... I am a big baby, I wonder and wonder and never find the answer to anything." Wright laughed; it sounded like laughter. At any rate when his voice found words it was warm, relieved, more like his own than it had been at any time since the drums sounded on Lake Argo. "That doesn't matter, Elis. Paul has done all anyone could, done it well, and leadership's a wearing thing. But you can carry it." Paul wished he could see the black face in the dark; he might learn from it, he thought, so far as a Charin was capable of learning. Elis said dazedly, "If you all wish it--" "I wish it," said Abro Brodaa. "Yes," Mijok said. "Let's not trouble to vote. We know you, Elis." "I'll do my best...."