With that tingling of sense, she snatched desperately at substance, as if clutching a rock in a vast, dark river. The hayuman and hrruban traders, chafing from their enforced idleness while waiting for the outcome of the postponed conference, had spent a lot of time in the pub of the space centre.
It would be the kind of hoax that a trickster loves to play - and would give him time to get away in safety.
But the dragons were behind, circling lower now above the rocky isles and the blood-stained beach, and overhead was nothing but the blue sky and the sun of noon.