WITH A FRANTIC HAND, he clawed the mess out of his eyes, spat it from his mouth.
Across the spinning ground, something black and angular tumbled rapidly. It was coming straight toward him and he saw it was the Cytha and that in another second it would be on top of him.
He threw up an arm across his face, with the elbow crooked, to take the impact of the wind-blown Cytha and to ward it off.
But it never reached him. Less than a yard away, the ground opened up to take the Cytha and it was no longer there.
Suddenly the wind cut off and the leaves once more hung motionless and the heat clamped down again and that was the end of it. The skun had come and struck and gone.
Minutes, Duncan wondered, or perhaps no more than seconds. But in those seconds, the forest had been flattened and the t
