of nearby spotters.
He did not climb straight up the tree. The branches were not uniformly steady enough for that. He followed a spiraling course up and around the trunk. When he was fifty feet above the ground he stopped. That was high enough. None of the branches above him looked able to hold his weight.
In his treetop perch Kilroy took his bearings. Heat, haze, clouds, and the long shadows of falling day all conspired to obscure his vision and blur the view, hemming in the horizon.
Below, swampland extended in all directions out and away from him. No structures, no signs of human habitation showed as far as the eye could see. A pale sun disk hung about thirty degrees above the western horizon, floating amid towering gray clouds.
Nearer, a quarter mile west of the basin, a branch of the river wound and coiled its way down from the north, sluggishly flowing south. The water was so brown it was almost black, the color of coffee murky with coffee grounds.
Kilroy and Raynor had come down from the northwest, striking a roughly southeasterly course. Kilroy scanned the northwest quadrant, searching in vain for some sign of the derricks of the Vurukoo oil fields rising above the treeline. An unbroken vista of swampland unrolled toward the north.
East of the basin lay a vast tract of flooded forest, masses of gray-green foliage held in a web whose strands were channels of stagnant water.
South, the swamp extended to a low ridge that stretched east–west along the horizon. Beyond it, a tantalizing sliver of silver emptiness wavered at the limits of visibility. It glimmered like a mirage, winking in and out of sight.
That razor line of open space could be the Kondo, the big river into which all the water-courses of the swampland ultimately drained. An avenue of escape to the coast, the goal that he and Raynor sought.
That would make the water west of the basin the Rada River, which flowed southwest to meet the Kondo somewhere beyond the ridge.
Kilroy’s spirits lifted.
They received a swift check from a glimpse of motion on his right.
A boat rounded a bend of the Rada and came into view. A long, open bargelike boat with a stern-mounted motor. In it were about eight to ten men—soldiers armed with rifles.
The boat came downriver, creeping along at several miles per hour. There was something ominous in its slow, steady advance. It rippled the water’s surface with an arrow-shaped wake. Its stern was tailed by a thin, fan-shaped plume of blue-gray exhaust from the motor.
Now Kilroy could hear the engine’s stuttering putt-putt. He squirmed around on his perch, putting the tree trunk between him and the boat. The troops betrayed no sudden excitement or alarm, fired no shots. He guessed they hadn’t seen him.
On the far side of the river, a line of soldiers inched into view, marching south in single file on a path that ran along the top of the west bank. There was something about them suggestive of a column of ants.
Kilroy was unable to see the Rada’s east bank, hidden from him by an overhanging canopy of foliage. Was there a second column of soldiers prowling the river’s near side?
He didn’t intend to stick around and find out. He started his descent, covering behind the tree trunk as much as possible to screen himself from the hunters on and along the river.
He looked east, beyond the basin rim where a flooded forest was webbed by dozens of waterways. Several of the widest channels were speckled with objects floating on the surface. At this distance they were mere blurs, but they could have been small boats filled with more hunters.
Kilroy climbed down as quickly as he dared, careful to avoid breaking any branches, whose sharp cracking sound would alert the troops. About halfway down to the ground, he stepped onto what he thought was a sturdy branch—only to have it move underfoot.
Recoiling, he looked down. Coiled around the branch below was a huge snake, a python twenty feet long and as thick around as his thigh. Its scaly hide was brown with dark brown bands.
It writhed, its sinuous body one giant muscle. It lifted a massive, boxy head, yellow eyes glaring. Jaws gaped, baring a fanged maw and wicked forked tongue, as it hissed a warning.
Kilroy’s heart felt like it jumped up into his mouth as he was seized for an instant by primal fear. Adrenaline flooded him.
His nerve returned. He drew the survival knife from his belt sheath and brandished it, holding on to a branch with his other hand.
The python was curled around the branch below so that its swaying head was at the far end of the branch. A long upswooping curve of its neck raised its heavy head, bringing it to Kilroy’s eye level.
Kilroy knew that the python kills not by its bite but by constriction, wrapping its muscular coils around its prey and crushing the life out of it. Lethal or not, though, a bite from those curved and gleaming three-inch fangs would be no picnic. The python also uses its hard head as a club to stun its victim into insensibility.
He and the python were eye to eye. “I’ll cut your fucking head off,” Kilroy rasped throatily. He wasn’t sure he believed it, and he didn’t think the python did, either.
The python hissed in response, a sound like the venting of a steam engine.
Steadily eyeing the serpent, Kilroy squirmed away from it, circling to the other side of the trunk. One foot extended, he felt around with it until he found a lower branch opposite that wasn’t occupied by the python.
Clenching the flat of his blade between his teeth to free his hand, Kilroy hastily climbed from his perch, scrambling down the side of the tree. Coming to a branch twelve feet above the ground, he gripped it in both hands, extended his arms full length beneath it, and hang-dropped to the earth below. Soft, marshy soil cushioned his fall, which he took on bent legs.
The python remained where it was on the branch, looping its head around the trunk to follow Kilroy’s progress. Kilroy scrambled out from under the tree.
Raynor was on his feet, holding the M-16 in one hand, muzzle angled toward the serpent. Kilroy sheathed his knife, securing the butt strap that held it in place. “Don’t shoot—he’s harmless.”
Raynor laughed without mirth. “That must be why you got down that tree so fast.”
Kilroy grabbed his rifle. The python made no move to pursue. Kilroy gave the snake a dirty look. “You’re lucky I didn’t turn you into a pair of cowboy boots, you prick,” he said to it.
The python seemed unimpressed.
“What’d you see up there? Apart from your new buddy, that is,” Raynor asked.
“One of those good news, bad news deals,” Kilroy said. “The bad news is that there’re troops a quarter mile west of us. There’s a river there—the Rada, I think. They’ve got a boat looking for us. Ground troops, too.”
“How many?”
“A shitload. There’s a flooded area to our east. Looked like there were boats out there, too.”
“And the good news?”
“There’s a big river to the south. The Kondo, the one that’ll take us to the
