Jungle.

Without knowing how it came about, he understood his surroundings: a large crater nestled in black rock, a captive cloud layer creating an inversion with protected warmth beneath the crater's rim.

One of the hovering hylighter's tentacles snaked toward him, touched the back of his left hand. It felt as warm and soft as his own flesh. A small trickle of condensation ran down the back of his neck. He looked up at the hylighter. Another tentacle dripping condensation dangled directly above him.

Calmness fled.

What's it going to do to me?

His gaze moved all around: warm blue mist.

Crack!

Far overhead, a bright flash of lightning flared horizontally across the haze. He felt the prickling presence of it along the hairs on the back of his neck and arms.

Where is this place?

"Nest."

He felt that he was not really hearing that voice. N.... it played on his aural centers the way Ship's voice played, but it was not Ship.

Still, he sensed reality in what his eyes reported. A hylighter tentacle touched his hand; another hovered over him. The jungle remained right out there. Perhaps he was seeing what he desired most: the legendary refuge, the place of the horn of plenty, where there were no worries and no passage of time: Eden.

I've taken refuge in my own mind because of Ship's decision to end us.

He ventured another look at the mist-wrapped jungle all around - mottled clumps of trees and vines with odd colors hidden in the green.

"Your senses do not lie, Raja Thomas. Those are real trees and vines. Do you see the flowers?"

The colors were blossoms - red, magenta, draping cascades of golden yellow. It was all too perfect, a delicate fiction.

"We find the flowers quite pleasant."

"Wh.... i.... talkin.... t.... me?"

"Avata talks to you. Avata also admires the wheat and corn, the apple trees and cedars. Avata planted here what was swept away and abandoned by your kind."

"Who is Avata?"

Thomas stared up at the hovering hylighter, afraid of the answer he might get.

"This is Avata!"

Visions flooded his senses: the planet in light and darkness, the crags of Black Dragon and the plains of The Egg, seas and horizon...confusion which overwhelmed his ability to discriminate. He tried to cringe away from it, but the visions persisted.

"The hylighters," he whispered.

"We choose to be called 'Avata' by you, for we are many and yet one."

Slowly, the visions withdrew.

"Avata brings Panille to help you. See?"

He swung his gaze wide and saw, on his left, another hylighter descending through the blue mist, a naked Kerro Panille clutched in a loop of tentacle. Panille swam in the air like a persistent aftervision. The hylighter dropped him centimeters from the ground. He landed on his feet and strode toward Thomas. The sound of Panille's feet scuffing in sand could not be denied. The poet was real. He had not died on the plain or been killed by the hylighters.

"You are not hallucinating," Panille said. "Remember that. This is not Fraggo. It is a trading of Self."

Thomas climbed to his feet and the trailing tentacle of his hylighter moved with him, not breaking the contact against the back of his hand.

"Where are we, Kerro?"

"As you surmised - Eden."

"You read my thoughts?"

"Some of them. Who are you, Thomas? Avata expresses great curiosity about the mystery of you."

Who am I? He spoke what was in the front of his mind: "I am the bearer of evil tidings. Ship is going to end humankind forever. We hav.... less than seven diurns."

"Why would Ship do such a thing?" Panille stopped less than a pace from Thomas, head cocked to one side, a quizzical, half-amused expression on his face.

"Because we cannot learn how to WorShip."

FOR A long heartbeat, Hali stood immobile in the passage while she stared at Murdoch and the weapon he carried - that deadly laser scalpel. She could see Docking Bay Eight directly behind him - the freighter and escape lay there. They had less than two minutes now until the automatic system propelled that freighter into space for the long dive to Pandora. A quick glance at the unconscious Waela on the gurney beside her showed no change there, but the target of that laser scalpel appeared obvious. Hali interposed her own body between Murdoch and Waela. She heard old Win Ferry gasp as she moved.

Hali kept her attention on the scalpel, cleared her throat, and found her voice astonishingly calm. "Those things are meant to save lives, Murdoch, not take them."

"I'll be saving a lot of lives by getting rid of this TaoLini woman." His voice reminded her of that faraway time when Ship had allowed her to be confronted by Foul-breath below the Hill of Skulls.

Ship? The unspoken plea filled her mind.

Ship made no response. It all depended on her then.

Ferry had stopped the gurney two paces from Murdoch and stood now at Hali's left, trembling.

Murdoch waved the scalpel at them. "This is made to excise unnatural growth from a healthy body. Sh...." He glared at the unconscious Waela. "...defiles us."

Again, Hali found her memory filled with the faces of the Hill of Skulls - passionate eyes and violence thinly restrained behind them. Murdoch's face was one of those.

"You have no right," she said.

"I have this." He flicked the scalpel's laser blade in a searing arc past her right cheek. "That's all the right I need."

"But Shi...."

"The ship be damned!" He took one step toward her, thrusting out with his free hand to sweep her aside.

In this instant, Ferry moved. He was so fast that Hali saw only the backwards jerk of Murdoch's chin, the blur of old Ferry's elbow. Murdoch went sprawling to the deck, the scalpel spinning from his hand. Hali was as shocked by the old man's speed as by his action. Desperation moved Ferry.

"Go!" Ferry yelled at her. "Get Waela out of here!"

Murdoch was scrambling to his feet as Ferry lunged for him.

Hali moved instinctively. She grabbed the gurney, jerked it past the struggling men. Its howling wheels grated on her senses.

How much time do we have?

And she asked herself as she swept the gurney through the Bay Eight hatch: What made Ferry so desperate?

The sealed hatch into the freighter lay directly beyond the Bay Eight opening. She wheeled the gurney across the bump of the interlock and in ten steps brought it up short against the freighter's hatch. It was then that she realized she could not escape without Ferry. He carried the freighter's transit program. She stared at the control panel beside the hatch. Without the program, the freighter would land them at Colony. Her instincts told her that something worse than Murdoch awaited them there. Without that program, they could not enter the freighter - they would be cooked alive here in the Docking Bay. Without that program, she could not switch the freighter from automatic to life-support.

The inventory in her mind stopped as she heard the panel relays click into the final stages before separation. She whirled at a grunting sound and saw Murdoch and Ferry struggling in the short passage to the freighter's hatch, Murdoch slowly pushing the old man backward toward Hali. Once more, the panel clicked. One by one, the hatches to the docking bay hissed shut. Bolts clicked into their locks, sealing the bay and the four of them from the rest of Ship.