Did you shake hands with a Tinker Composite? If so, with what? Bony said, “I am Bonifant Rombelle. You can call me Bony.”

The other occupant of the cabin had been crouching in a corner, telescoping thin limbs and narrow body into a small space. Now the Pipe-Rilla unfolded, taller and taller, until she brushed against the four-meter cabin ceiling. Her rear legs were still partly bent.

“So it is true.” The head bobbed in greeting. “Eager Seeker was right and I, Vow-of-Silence, was wrong. It is as the Sea-wanderers told us, there is a third ship.”

“Sea-wanderers? Third ship?” Bony had so many questions he hardly knew where to begin. He opened his helmet. The air smelled of peppermint, overlain with a faint odor of ripe peaches, but it was perfectly breathable. He began to remove his suit.

“The natives of this planet,” the Pipe-Rilla said. She and the Tinker Composite were watching with interest, as though the removal of Bony’s suit represented some molting action unique to humans. “Sea-wanderers is what they call themselves, as you surely know.”

“We didn’t know. We have been calling this planet Limbo, and these natives, Limbics.”

“Hm.” Vow-of-Silence bent her head to one side. “Limbo. Not bad, not bad at all. I think we may adopt it also. But since you are here, you must have been talking to your Limbics.”

“We have.” Bony didn’t want the aliens to think that humans were total fools, but honesty made him add, “We had trouble with the language at first.”

“That is understandable. It is unusually high in liquid consonants.” Vow-of-Silence tittered.

After an awkward moment — was it a joke, and was he supposed to laugh? — Bony went on, “In fact it was Liddy who made the language breakthrough.”

The Pipe-Rilla followed his gesture. Liddy was removing her suit also, and Vow-of-Silence stared at her breasts with enormous interest.

“Why, you are a human female. This is wonderful. I have never before met one. I would very much like the opportunity of extended conversation with you.”

“Sure. Although this isn’t the best time for it. We have more questions.” Liddy glanced at Bony. “Right?”

“We sure do. And we have some answers, too, that you may find useful. This is not just a water-world. There’s land here, too — and there may be great dangers.”

The Pipe-Rilla leaned far forward, looking not into Bony’s face but into Liddy’s. “Would you please inform your mate, with as much respect as I am capable of offering, that we came to this world well before he did, have done more exploration, had more conversations with the natives, and may be well aware of what he seeks to inform us. We will exchange information gladly, but we suggest it may save time if we speak first.”

“Exploration.” Bony seized that one word. “But until we built the extension to your airlock, you could not leave your ship.”

“Not true. Certain of us did leave it. Now, the rest of us choose not to leave it.” Vow-of-Silence crouched low in front of the two humans, her vestigial forelimbs clasped across her narrow chest in a misleading gesture of supplication. The pleasant peppermint odor strengthened. “Listen, please, to our tale. The crew of this ship, the Finder , originally comprised myself and an extra-large Tinker Composite, Eager Seeker. We entered a Link point located in the Fomalhaut system and expected to arrive in the region of empty space within the Geyser Swirl. Instead, we found our ship under water. However, we learned from the Sea-wanderers here that there exists a nearby land mass. We decided to explore it.”

Bony, wanting to ask how you explored a place when you couldn’t leave the ship, bit his tongue.

Vow-of-Silence went on: “My colleague, Eager Seeker, detached a sizeable collective, to whom we gave a temporary name, Blessed Union. The components of Blessed Union would leave this ship and travel to the surface, from which they would fly to the land. They did not need a suit. The waters of — Limbo, you call it? — are high in oxygen, enough for individual Tinker components to survive without artificial assistance. Preparations for the journey were made with great care. Blessed Union would re-assemble when ashore, except when a few components were needed to fly ahead as scouts. Is this clear?”

Bony nodded. His self-image as smart savior of the Pipe-Rilla ship was steadily declining. It nose-dived when Vow-of-Silence continued, “We had been told that this could be a perilous undertaking. We had spoken extensively to the Sea-wanderers, and they said that death had come recently to many of their companions near the shore. However, we were confident. We did not believe that we were in danger, since we have ways unknown to the Sea-wanderers to protect ourselves against attack from native life-forms.

“The new collective of Blessed Union left, promising to return no later than nightfall. After components of the collective had departed we pumped the airlock dry, slowly and laboriously; and we waited. That was days ago. We are waiting still, though our time of hope is ending.”

The Pipe-Rilla began to rock slowly up and down, half-extending her hind limbs. Finally Bony asked, “Do you think that Blessed Union has been killed?”

At the question, the Pipe-Rilla covered her eyes with her forelimbs. Bony wondered if he had committed some dreadful inter-species violation of protocol.

Finally Vow-of-Silence said, “This is a matter of some delicacy. It is possible, yes, that Blessed Union was destroyed. However, it is rather more likely that Blessed Union swarmed . You see” — the narrow head bowed low and the sibilant voice dropped in volume — “we knew at the outset that there was a risk. Eager Seeker was, by intention, an unusually abundant Composite. Once on land, the urge of Blessed Union to swarm and breed and form a second independent Composite may have been irresistible. This possibility is, of course, a matter of great potential embarrassment to Eager-Seeker. A Tinker never admits to such unsanctioned breeding. And still we do not know what lies ashore. The Sea-wanderers cannot tell us. Are you able to answer the question?”

“Not completely. But how do you talk to the Sea-wanderers, if you can’t leave the ship?”

“Through the translator, of course, on the hull. Did you not see it?”

Bony hadn’t. Among the thousand devices that festooned the outside of the Finder , it was easy to miss any particular one. But Bony also had the feeling that he had seen too little overall, and understood even less.

“We did go ashore,” he said. “Once. But we found no sign of your companions. Of course, we were there for only a little while, and it would have been very easy to miss them.”

He described his and Liddy’s experience, including the brief glimpse of a great trifoliate flying vehicle. He offered his impression of what the land interior looked like. Finally he told of the foaming circle in the sea, a place that might form part of a Link entry point.

That grabbed the attention of his audience. Vow-of-Silence said at once, “Aha! Where was this anomaly located?”

“It’s hard to describe in words. If only we had a map …”

“One moment.” Vow-of-Silence picked up a flat plate and a marker and began to draw. She did it without looking, and her movements were so fast it seemed impossible for them to be accurate. In less than thirty seconds she was showing the result to Bony and Liddy. She said diffidently, “This is based on conversations with the Sea-wanderers and our own observations. It is, of course, no more than a tiny region of the whole of Limbo, but it represents our current knowledge. Here is where we are.”

She touched the plate, where she had drawn a tiny but recognizable picture of the Finder . “And here is the shoreline. Now, where was the steaming circle in the water?”