We ran, Marco and I, jumping fallen logs, swerving through trees, and skirting patches of thorns. Across sunset-lit meadows, and through dark stands of tall pines. We splashed happily through streams and skittered across rocks.

We were running on sensation, our heads swimming with smell and sound and sight. There was nothing within a thousand yards that we didn't know about. We were plugged into the data stream of nature itself.

We smelled the logging camp long before we reached it. Then we heard the sounds of machines. And we heard the murmurs of conversation. Human voices.

Then we got a reminder that we were not the only hyper-alert predators in the forest.

<Is that you guys?> a thought-speak voice asked. Jake's voice.

<Yes. Where are you?> I asked.

<Way up above you,> Jake said with a laugh. I stopped running and craned my head back like I was going to howl at the moon. Through a break in the trees I saw a patch of sky. And way, way up in that sky, I saw two tiny black dots.

Tobias and Jake, floating a quarter-mile up. Even in the weakening light they had seen us from clear up in the bellies of the clouds.

<The place is just ahead. Lots of heavy equipment. Guards. But go take a look. Just be careful.>

<We'd hang out, but the sun's going down and we won't be able to see much more anyway,> Tobias remarked.

<You saw us,> I said, a bit grumpily.

Tobias laughed. <Yeah, but you're a pair of great big wolves. That's not much of a challenge. Now, that flea crawling by your ear...>

<You can't see a flea,> I said.

<Heh,heh,heh,> Tobias answered. <Can't I?>

Marco and I started moving forward again, but slower than before. More cautiously.

Through the trees we began to see light. Artificial light.

We crept slowly nearer, shoulders hunched, heads low, ears aimed forward, sniffing the wind for clues.

The command center building was bigger than it had looked at first. It was made of logs, like some kind of rustic ranger station. It was two-stories tall, with a porch on the front.

On the back-and-side ground levels there were no windows. None at all. There were windows on the upper level, but they were dark. Too dark for me to see into.

There were blindingly bright spotlights mounted atop the building. The forest had been cut back a hundred feet or so on all sides of the bu