While she was pondering that, Atvar H’sial surprised her by coming across and offering a meal of Opal fruit and bottled water. Darya took it and nodded her thanks. That was a shared gesture. The Cecropian nodded back and retreated to the interior of the aircar.

As Darya ate she wondered about her two companions. She had never seen either of them eat. Perhaps, like the people on some Alliance worlds, they regarded the taking of food as a private function. Or maybe they were like the tortoises on Opal, who according to the crewmen at Starside Port could survive quite happily for a full year on just water. But then why would Atvar H’sial think to feed the human of the group?

She lay back on the camp bed, pulled the waterproof sheet up to her neck, and watched the heavens reeling above her. The stars moved so fast… on Sentinel Gate, with its thirty-eight-hour day, the swing of the starry vault was almost imperceptible. Which direction in space did her homeworld lie? She puzzled over the unfamiliar constellations. That way… or that… Her mind drifted off toward the stars. She wrenched her thoughts back with an effort to the present. She still had a decision to make.

Should they proceed to the place that her calculations pointed to as the focus of activity at Summertide? They could go, knowing that others would be there also. Or should she hang back and wait? Or should they go just partway, pause for a while…

Go partway, pause…

Darya Lang passed easily into a deep sleep, a dreamless slumber so profound that nearby noise and vibration did not wake her. Brief dawn came; day passed, and again it was night and flaming day. The sounds of tunneling animals ended. Opal and Quake had made two complete turns about each other before Darya drifted back to consciousness.

She woke slowly to the half day of Amaranth’s light. It was a full minute before she knew where she was, another before she felt ready to sit up and look around her.

Atvar H’sial and J’merlia were nowhere to be seen. The aircar was gone. A small heap of supplies and equipment had been placed under a thin rainproof sheet next to the camp bed. Nothing else, from horizon to horizon, suggested that humans or aliens had ever been there.

She dropped to her knees and scrabbled through the pile, searching for a message. There was no note, no recording, no sign. Nothing that might help her except a few containers of food and drink, a miniature signal generator, a gun, and a flashlight.

Darya looked at her watch. Nine more Dobelle days. Seventy-two hours to go before the worst Summertide ever. And she was stranded on Quake, alone, six thousand kilometers from the safety of the Umbilical…

The panic that she had felt on first leaving Sentinel Gate crept back into her heart.

CHAPTER 13

Summertide minus ten

…the orange glow on the horizon was continuous, the burning ground reflecting from high dust clouds. As they watched, a new burst of crimson arose, no more than a kilometer from where they stood. It developed smoky tendrils and grew taller. Soon it stretched from earth to sky. As the lava bubbled to the summit of the crater he turned to Amy.

In spite of his warning she still stood outside the car. When the flash of the explosion was replaced by a glow of red-hot lava she clapped her hands, entranced by the colors and the shapes. Shock waves of sound rolled and echoed from the hills behind. The stream of fire crested the cone and began to roll toward them, as easy-flowing and fast as running water. Where it touched the cooler earth, white flux sputtered and sparked.

Max stared at her face. He saw no fear, only the rapt entrancement of a child at a birthday party.

That was what it was. She saw it all as a fireworks display. Caution had to come from him. He leaned forward from the car seat to pluck at her sleeve.

“Get in.” He was forced to shout to be heard. “We have to start back for the Stalk. You know it’s a five-hour journey.”

She glared at him and pulled away. He knew the pout very well. “Not now, Max.” He read the words from her lips, but he could not hear her. “I want to wait until the lava reaches the water.”

“No!” He was yelling. “Absolutely not. I’ll take no more risks! It’s boiling hot out there, and it’s getting nearly as bad in the car.”

She was walking away, not listening to him. He felt tight-chested and overheated despite the air curtain that held a sheath of cooler air at the open hatch. It was mostly in his mind, he knew that — the fiery furnace of his own worries that consumed him. And yet the outside heat was real enough. He stumbled out of the car and followed her across the steaming surface.

“Stop pestering me. I’ll come in a minute.” Amy had turned around to look at the whole infernal scene. There was — thank God! — no sign yet of another eruption, but one could happen at any second.

“Max, you have to relax.” She came close, shouting right into his ear. “Learn to have fun. All the time we’ve been here, you’ve sat like a lump of Sling underside. Let yourself go — get into the swing of things.”

He took her hand and began to pull her toward the car. After a moment of resistance she allowed herself to be steered along. With her eyes still on the volcano’s bright fury, she did not look where they were going.

And then, when they were no more than a few meters from the car, she broke loose and ran laughing across the flat, steaming surface of heat-baked rock. She was ten paces ahead of him before he could start after her. By then it was too late.

Graves and Perry made it sound simple. Rebka argued it was impossible.

“Look at the arithmetic,” he said as the Umbilical’s capsule lowered them gently to the surface of Quake. “We have a planetary radius of fifty-one hundred kilometers, and a surface that’s less than three percent covered by water. That gives over three hundred million square kilometers of land. Three hundred million! Think how long it can take to search one square kilometer. We could look for years and never find them.”

“We don’t have years,” Perry said. “And I know it’s a big area. But you seem to assume we’ll do a random search, and of course we won’t. I can rule out most areas before we start.”

“And I know that the Carmel twins will avoid all open spaces,” Graves added.

“How can you possibly know that?” Rebka was being the pessimist.

“Because Quake is usually cloud-free.” Graves was unmoved by the other’s skepticism. “Their homeworld of Shasta has a high-resolution spaceborne system that gives continuous surveillance of the surface.”

“But Quake doesn’t.”

“Ah, but the twins don’t know that. They’ll assume that if they’re out on the open surface, they’ll be spotted and picked up. They’ll have run for deep cover and stayed there.”

“And I can tell you now,” Perry said, “that cuts the problem way down. There are only three places that a sane human would take refuge on Quake. We’ll start with these three areas — and we’ll have to finish with them, too.”

“But if we don’t find them there,” Graves began, “we can broaden—”

“No, we can’t,” Perry said, cutting him off. “Summertide, Councilor. It will hit maximum strength in less than eighty hours. We’d better not be here then, not you, not me, and not the twins.”

Max Perry listed the three most likely areas: in the high forests of the Morgenstern Uplands; upon — or probably within — one of the Thousand Lakes; or in the deep vegetation pockets of the Pentacline Depression.

“Which reduces the area to be searched by a factor of thousands,” he said.