What if something like Pax
ruled here? They had no way of knowing for sure.
Raf's eyes met Soriki's, and the com-tech's hand dropped to hook
fingers in his belt within touching distance of his side arm. The
flitter pilot nodded.
"Kurbi!" Hobart's impatient call sent him on his way. But there was
some measure of relief in knowing that Soriki was left behind and that
they had this slender link with escape.
He had tramped the streets of that other alien city. There there had
been some semblance of habitation; here was abandonment. Earth drifted
in dunes to half block the lanes, and here and there climbing vines
had broken down masonry and had dislodged blocks of the paved sideways
and courtyards.
The party threaded their way from one narrow lane to another, seeming
to avoid the wider open stretches of the principal thoroughfares, Raf
became aware of an unpleasant odor in the air which he vaguely
associated with water, and a few minutes afterward he caught glimpses
of the river between the buildings which fronted on it. Here the party
turned abruptly at a right angle, heading westward once more, passing
vast, blank-walled structures which might have been warehouses.
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