“Main airlock, with an emergency signal that’s not working quite right. Like everything else around here.” Bony stood up. “It must the shore party, returning to the ship. Come on.”

He led the rush out of the control room. After a few seconds of hesitation Elke and Tully followed, leaving the Angel to fend for itself.

“I didn’t get to tell them the most interesting part of all,” Elke complained to Tully as they went. “Every universe runs at its own individual clock rate. For instance, as the Angel pointed out, time passes in this world more than sixty times as fast as on Earth. If we’re here for another two days, four months will elapse for people back home. But it could be a lot worse. Gressel estimates from the structure of the multiverse that some places run a million times as fast. If we stayed in a place like that for just a week, twenty thousand years would pass back on Earth. That’s longer than the whole of human recorded history. We’re mapping multiverse coordinates so we can be sure to avoid places like that.”

Elke paused. Even she, swept away by her enthusiasm for science, realized that Tully was not listening. He was pretending to, but he was staring ahead in anticipation as they came closer to the airlock. Chan Dalton and Dag Korin had appeared from nowhere, and the General was bustling along as fast as anyone and cursing his aged legs. Bony, still muck-splattered and grimy, earned only a raised eyebrow.

“Not too close,” Chan snapped when they were at the lock. He spread his arms to keep the others away from the hatch. “I hope I know who’s coming out of there, but we can’t be sure.”

It was a new and disturbing thought. Everyone but Dag Korin took a pace back. The lock seemed to be cycling slower than usual, and the tension was huge until at last the hatch slid open and Danny Casement stepped out.

Stepped was perhaps the wrong word. He staggered forward, sagged against Chan, and allowed himself to be supported. When he saw the waiting group he reached up and wearily opened his suit’s visor. “I made it, but I’m on my last legs.” He jerked his head back toward the lock’s interior. “She’s in bad shape.”

“Deb!” Chan released his hold on Danny and jumped forward. But there was no sign of Deb Bisson inside the lock. All it held was the giant form of Vow-of-Silence, her pipe-stem body tightly curled and her spindly limbs wrapped tight around it.

“What happened?” Chan was reaching down to lift the Pipe-Rilla, but her body remained rigidly knotted.

“Long story.” Danny was sitting on the floor, taking deep breaths. “I’ll tell you everything when I can sit down and have a drink — a strong one. Short version: we saw Chrissie and Tarbush cut down right in front of our eyes.”

“Chrissie and the Tarb have been murdered ?”

“I’m not sure. Either murdered, or they’re hostages. They went closer to the alien camp than they were supposed to, and they were spotted. They tried to run, but the land aliens pointed some kind of gun at them and they went down. I’d have said they were dead, except that there was another human in the encampment. It had to be Friday Indigo, from the Mood Indigo , and he was walking around free.” Danny slowly rose to his feet. “So I’m hoping that Chrissie and the Tarb are alive. But you know how the Stellar Group feels about violence. When it looked like two of our party were killed, Vow-of-Silence went over the edge into some kind of catatonic state. Deb and I couldn’t get her out of it.” Danny glanced at the Pipe-Rilla, unconscious in Chan Dalton’s grip. “Don’t ever tell me again that it’s easier to move things underwater. I dragged and carried her on land and sea for five hours, and the last part was the hardest.”

“But where’s Deb?”

“Still ashore. I wanted her to come with me, but she wouldn’t. She said that she couldn’t desert Chrissie and Tarb, and she was also waiting to see if the Tinker Composite showed up. Eager Seeker scattered all over the place. When I left not a single component had come back.”

“Look after Vow-of-Silence.” Chan placed the Pipe-Rilla on the floor. “I’m going after Deb.”

“The hell you are.” Dag Korin moved to block the entrance to the lock. “We’ve lost two already — maybe three. I know how you feel about Deb Bisson, but common sense trumps emotion. It’s night up there. You stay here until morning. Then we’ll review the situation.”

“You expect me to sit and do nothing?”

“No. I expect you to listen to what Dan Casement has to say, and then sleep. If you can’t sleep, you sit and think. I need brains, not martyrs. Now, the rest of you.” Korin turned to the others in the group to emphasize that he was not going to listen to any more argument from Chan. “We’ll have a full debriefing on shore party activities in my quarters. Don’t worry, Casement, you’ll get your drink there — I’ll guarantee it.” Korin frowned at the group. “We’re one missing. Where’s the Angel?”

“In the control room,” Elke said. “We were in such a hurry to get here, we left Gressel behind.”

Korin hesitated. “I’m tempted to say, let’s leave Gressel right out of things for the moment. But if we do, Casement will have to do his debriefing all over again later on, and I’m not sure what to do about her.” He pointed a gnarled finger at Vow-of-Silence, still tight-curled and motionless on the floor. “Oh, all right. Rombelle and Morse, you go get the Angel and bring it to my quarters. Dalton, give me a hand with the Pipe-Rilla. I don’t know a thing about alien physiology, but the ship’s computer should. We’ll drop her off in the med center and hope the unit can give her treatment. Dr. Siry, I’d like a summary of what you and the Angel have found out since last we talked, and you can give me that while we deal with Vow-of-Silence.”

“What about me?” Danny said, as Bony and Liddy hurried away to the control room and Chan hoisted Vow-of-Silence to waist level, so Dag Korin could grab the long, curved abdomen.

The General stared at him. “You save your strength and put your thoughts in order. Before any drink goes to your head, I need you to tell us every last thing that happened before you went ashore and after you arrived there. I’d like to know what the land looks like, feels like, and smells like. Describe the plants and animals. Describe the encampment. Describe the aliens. Describe the human you saw, if you saw him. Describe anything and describe everything.” Korin took his share of the load of Vow-of-Silence, and grunted at the weight. “You carried her back here all alone? Then you deserve to drink the ship dry if you feel like it. But you won’t see a drop until the rest of us know as much about life ashore as you do.”

Danny did his best. What he would really have liked was a long, strong drink immediately followed by a long, deep sleep, but he recognized his responsibility and tried to make sure that the others learned everything he had seen, heard, thought, and suspected during his day ashore.

The Angel didn’t make his job any easier. Bony Rombelle and Liddy Morse had trundled it in on an improvised trolley, and either its desertion in the control room or the rough journey along the ship’s corridors was not to its liking. For the first few minutes, Gressel sat hunched as far down in the pot of earth as possible, fronds folded. And when the Angel finally began to open and take notice and even interrupt, there was a sideways jump to its logic that left Danny blinking.

“At what exact local time of day was it when you emerged from the sea?” the Angel asked, as Danny was busy trying to give every detail of their arrival ashore.

“I’m not sure. Why do you want to know?”

“We wish to develop an exact chronology of all events affecting the shore party.”

“Well, I can’t tell you to better than an hour.”