y nightmares �you don want to know about,�Turnbull said at once, pausing to look back from the lead position where he hacked a way through low underbrush with his new pincer weapon. ow do you reckon you make out in a war in Afghanistan, or an IRA bomb scare in Belfast�s for yours truly,�said Stannersly, not even sure I have nightmares!�nd I sure I don,�said Waite. elieve me I like to help out, but I can hardly remember dreaming a single dream.�o maybe youe our best bet,�Gill told him. And Miranda said, f it was up to mend if my life was the only one at stake say let stay right here. I say let make Sith come to us. Meanwhile we could enjoy this place. But I know that while we were enjoying it people would be dying. And I suppose we would, too, in the end.� know how you feel,�said Angela, nd I can sympathize. I gladly spend what little time I might have left with Spencer in this place. But I know Sith wouldn leave us alone for a minute, you can bet on that. And meanwhile the real world is still out there.�till out there,�Gill repeated, till going to hell, and still capable of surviving. But only if we keep going. Give in now �that the end. Of everything.�ut of course we can, and won,�Jack Turnbull growled. Then, changing the subject: ook here: tracks from last night. Our tracks. Another hundred yards or so, wel find the clearing and the stone. So on you go, Barneyniff it out, boy!�Barney took the lead, went bounding off through the trees, led them straight to their destination. Then it was decision time �They sat around the clearing not saying a lot; mainly psyching themselves up, Gill suspected. And he sat alone (though not too far from Angela, who knew enough to leave him alone for the moment) with the artificial eye and the stinger device-cum-antenna, if that what it was. These items were machines, yes, or parts of machines, and Gill had a way with mechanical things, a weird rapport. But right now these were ead�machines, and his empathy was at a low ebb. Within the severed eye a concave, dishlike surface (a lens of sorts, Gill supposed) reflected an inverted image of his own face, his frowning gaze. It told him nothing, merely confirmed that this had been an eye. As yet he hadn had time to find a way to disassemble the eye and study its inner workings, but it was important that he do so eventually. For it was only by understanding such esser�intricacies that he might eventually get in sync with that greater mystery known as the synthesizer. As for the bulbous part of the cylindrical stinger appendage immediately behind the telescopic syringe itself: Gill believed it to house not only an antenna but a direction finder, and possibly a onduit�for beamed Thone energy. But this was ntelligent,�flexible metal; indeed, it might even be caused to flow like water, and uphill at that, if only he was able to focus his talent upon itive it his total concentrationn the almost forgotten luxury of peace, quiet, and privacy. An antenna or receiver, yes, for power beamed direct from the synthesizer. An antenna hich even now was working! Gill almost dropped the thing, very nearly started to his feet. But no, it wasn actually working, merely �what, resonating Reacting, maybe, to some unseen presence It was like a fine wineglass humming to the note of a tuning fork. And yet only a moment ago it had been stone dead in his handsould still be dead, to anyone except Spencer Gill. And from moment to moment, the vibrations were