Geni Carmel gave Perry another hooded glance and looked to her sister for direction.

Elena gripped her knees more tightly with her hands. “From the beginning?” Her voice was deep for her slender frame.

“Not from the beginning. You don’t need to tell how you won the trip on Shasta — we have all that on record. I’d like you to begin with your arrival on Pavonis Four.” Graves held forward a small recording unit. “Whenever you are ready, we can begin.”

Elena Carmel nodded uncertainly and cleared her throat several times. “It was going to be the last planet,” she began at last. “The last one that we visited before we went back to Shasta. Before we went home.” Her voice cracked on the final word. “So we decided we would like to stay out on the surface, away from people. We bought special equipment” — she gestured around her — “this equipment, so we could live comfortably away from everything. And we took the Summer Dreamboat out to one of the dryland turf hummocks in the middle of the marshes — Pavonis Four is mostly marshes. We wanted to get right away from civilization, and we wanted to camp away from the ship.”

She paused.

“That was my fault,” Geni Carmel said, in a beaten voice a tone higher than her sister’s. “We’d seen so many people, on so many worlds, and the ship was smaller than we realized before we started. I was tired of living cramped up in it.”

“We were both tired.” Elena was defending her little sister. “We camped maybe thirty meters from the ship, close to the edge of the hummock. When twilight came we thought it would be a great idea to go really primitive, just as if we were back on Earth ten thousand years ago, and light a fire. We did that, and it was nice and warm, with no threat of rain. So we decided that we would even sleep outside. When it was completely dark, we put out sleeping bags next to each other, and lay looking up at the stars.” She frowned. “I don’t know what we talked about.”

“I do,” Geni said. “We talked about that being our last stop, and how dull it would be to go back to school on Shasta. We tried to see our own sun, but the constellations looked too different, and we weren’t sure where home was…” Her voice trailed off, and she glanced again at her sister.

“So we fell asleep.” Elena was speaking less easily. “And while we were asleep, they came. They — the—”

“The Bercia?” Julius Graves prompted. Both twins nodded.

“Wait a moment, Elena,” he went on. “I want to note for the record here a number of facts about the Bercia. These facts are well established and easily verified. The Bercia were large, slow vertebrates. As nocturnal amphibians, native to and unique to Pavonis Four, they were highly photophobic. In life-style they resembled Earth’s extinct beavers. Like beavers, they were communal and largely aquatic, and they built lodges. The main reason they were credited with possible intelligence is because of the complex structure of those lodges. And to make them, they employed mud and the trunks of the only treelike structures of Pavonis Four. Those grow only close to the dryland turf hummocks. It was therefore almost inevitable that the Bercia would appear at night by the hummock where the Carmel camp stood.”

He turned to Elena. “Did anyone ever tell you about the Bercia before you set out to camp? Who they were, what they looked like?”

“No.”

“Or you?” he asked, switching his attention to Geni Carmel.

She shook her head, then added, “No,” in an almost inaudible voice.

“So I would like to add the physical description of the Bercia to this record. All human experience with these beings suggests that they were gentle and totally herbivorous. However, to chew through the xylem of the tree trunks, the Bercia were equipped with heavy jaws and big, strong teeth.” He nodded to Elena Carmel. “Please continue. Describe the rest of your night on Pavonis Four.”

“I’m not sure when we went to sleep, or how long we slept.” Elena Carmel glanced at her sister. “I only woke up when I heard Geni cry out. She told me—”

“I want to hear it directly from Geni.” Graves pointed his finger at the other sister. “I know this is painful, but tell us what you saw.”

Geni Carmel looked terrified. Graves leaned forward and took her hands in his. He waited.

“Pavonis Four has one big moon,” Geni said at last. “I don’t sleep as soundly as Elena, and the full moonlight woke me up. At first I didn’t look around me — I just lay in my sleeping bag and stared up at the moon. I remember that it had a dark pattern on it, like a curved cross on top of a pyramid. Then something big moved in front of the moon. I thought it must be a cloud or something, and I didn’t realize how close it was until I heard it breathing. It leaning over me. I saw a flat, dark head, and a mouth full of pointed teeth. And I screamed for Elena.”

“Before we continue,” Graves said, “I would like to make another easily verified addition to this record. The planet Shasta, homeworld of Elena and Geni Carmel, has no dangerous carnivores. But at one time it did. The largest and most dangerous of those animals was a four-legged invertebrate known as a Skrayal. Although anatomically it in no way resembles a Bercia, it possessed the same superficial appearance and was roughly the same size and weight. Elena Carmel, what did you think when you realized that a Bercia was leaning over your sister, with a ring of them surrounding both your beds?”

“I thought — I thought that they were Skrayal. Just at first.” She hesitated, then words came in a rush. “Of course, when I got a good look at them and thought about it, I knew they couldn’t be, and anyway we had never seen Skrayal — they were gone before we were born. But all our stories and pictures were filled with them, and when I first woke up I didn’t even know where I was — all I saw were big animals, and the teeth of the one next to Geni.”

“What did you do?”

“I screamed, and picked up the light, and turned it on all the way.”

“Did you know that the Bercia were strongly photophobic and would go into terminal shock at high illumination levels?”

“I had no idea.”

“Did you know that the Bercia were possibly intelligent?”

“I told you, we’d never even heard of the Bercia. We found all that out later, after we checked the planetary data base on the Summer Dreamboat.”

“And so you had no way of knowing that those Bercia were the only surviving mature members of the species? And that the infant forms could not survive without adult care?”

“We didn’t know any of that. We learned it after we returned to Capra City and heard that we were being looked for so we could be arrested.”

“Councilor,” Perry interrupted. He was looking again at his watch. “We’ve been gone three hours. We have to get back.”

“Very well. We can pause here.” Graves picked up the recording instrument and turned to Elena and Geni Carmel. “There will have to be an inquiry and trial back on Shasta, in controlled conditions, and also a hearing on Miranda. But I can assure you, what you have told me is already enough to establish innocence of intent. You killed by accident, not knowing that you were killing, when you were terrified and half-asleep. There is still one mystery to me — why you fled. But that can wait for explanation.” He stood up. “Now I must take you both into my custody. From this moment, you are under arrest. And we must leave this place.”

The twins flashed split-second glances at each other.

“We won’t go,” they said in breathless unison.

“You must. You are in danger. We are all in danger.”

“We’ll stay here and take our chances,” Elena said.

Graves frowned at them. “You don’t understand. Commander Perry can give you details, but I’ll put it simply: you may feel safe enough just now, but there is no way you can survive Summertide if you stay here on Quake.”