8THE DREAM RETURNED. HE shifted. Josh lay against his legs. There was mud. Mud everywhere—slick, yet sticky. Above, in rain-sky, came two double-rotored Chinooks, huge cargo helicopters. But not normal Chinooks. The ships’ bodies were vertical, not horizontal, and the overlapping rotors were one on each end making the machine look like a giant spool. One passed over. He hunkered down, hugged the mud, waiting in ambush to look up the trail, the road, across to the stone wall. The second chopper passed. The rotor wash ripped the brush, whipped up the debris of previously exploded trees. He covered his head. In the wake of the second passing was a single disk of whirling light, a nebula spinning low toward the ground, searching. It found him. Lifted him. Exposed him. Thud! Hit! It began carry
