Free Seas of Ernathe by Jeffrey A. Carver

wide, bowl-shaped depression, where he had thought for an instant he had seen something moving. Trees obscured the far background, making it impossible to distinguish anything clearly, and he could only guess at what he might have seen.
    He turned to alert the others; but they had already moved on into the mist. Seth had not even been conscious of stopping, but he realized now that he had in fact stepped away from the path. Silvery vapor curled about him, reaching to touch his waist, and obliterating the topography. "Lanka!" he called, moving hesitantly in the direction that seemed to be the correct one. "Andol! Lanka! Hold it a minute!"
    He repeated the cry—and when there was no answer he thought quickly, and nervously, that the last thing he wanted was a repeat of his experience with Racart. When the group found him missing, though, they would surely retrace their path—but, in this confusion of land and mist, could they really backtrack flawlessly? Perhaps; but more likely not. Still, it was probably best to stay put, and not try blindly to catch them.
    After a minute of prolonged shouting, the only other sound he had heard was the cry of a wheeling skrell overhead. Fog lay over the land like snow, but above knee-height it moved in great curling masses, sometimes permitting a view and sometimes not; it seemed to absorb the sound of Seth's shouts like a wreath of insulation. Seth wished devoutly for a reliable communicator, but so erratic were the transmitting conditions in this country that only one had been provided for the party—and that with no great hopes for successful use.
    But he did carry flares.
    He quickly unslung his pack and unfastened the top. Sliding his hand along the inside surface of the fabric, he groped for the distress signals—and as he did so he looked up, across the rock hollow, and was startled to see the mists part to reveal a moving figure, or several.
    The mists closed.
    The figures, he was sure, had been Nale'nid.
    He located the flares, and pulled them out of the pack. Should he use them and perhaps alarm the Nale'nid—or would it be better to investigate while he could, and hope later to attract the attention of the others? No, he decided, he could not afford to let the party get too far away. And, for all he knew, the flares would attract rather than frighten the Nale'nid.
    The first flare, when he snapped the trigger, shot upward in a blossom of light, and as it settled into position high above Seth's head it commenced a loud, whistling wail. Seth crouched, and listened as the signal passed through a startling range of pitches, stuttering and ululating and hooting; the fire itself blazed pulsatingly from red to white and back. After a minute or so, the tirade collapsed, the light went out, and the empty casing fluttered lightly to the ground just beyond a small rise. Seth looked about, and waited. Presumably, if the flare had been heard or seen it would be answered.
    The silence was unstirring, and Seth took time to unwrap a biscuit-ration and drink from his canteen. The biscuit was dense and chewy, but he was hungrier than he had realized, and he gnawed at it vigorously until it was gone. The land was quiet, perhaps illusorily so; through the gauzy, and now thinning, mist to his left he saw a glint of water, perhaps another lagoon or a stream. He could not believe that the others—who could not, after all, be that far away—had not heard his signal or seen his flare. But on Ernathe nothing was to be taken for granted, seemingly. The mists, perhaps, had swallowed the sound of his signal as they had swallowed his companions.
    Could he truly be lost? He triggered off two more flares, one by one, and waited futilely for a sign of notice.
    Apprehension began to prey at him again, so he stood up for the sake of doing something , and paced carefully back and forth along a small and, by now, well-scouted length of rock path; and he studied the area in which he had seen the Nale'nid. If,