Nenda stretched upward too. He and Rebka were eye to eye, but still half a head shorter than anyone else on Sentinel Gate. He could feel the tension. If they had been a couple of dogs, the skin would be pulled back from their fangs and the hair along their backs would be bristling. Someday, the two of them would have a real go at each other. Rebka was as keen to try it as he was, Louis knew it. But it couldn’t happen today.

Nenda took a deep breath before he spoke. “I heard you’re heading out. Leaving Sentinel Gate.”

“What of it? I’m a free agent.”

“If you’re following Darya Lang, I want to propose a deal. Let us go with you. We have information that she’d like to have, and we want to know what she’s thinking.”

“We?”

“Me and Atvar H’sial.”

“I ought to have guessed that. Two crooks together, and both of you still trying to get Kallik and J’merlia back. Give it up, Nenda.” Rebka stepped closer. “They’re not your slaves anymore.”

The fight couldn’t be today.

It was the worst possible time.

But perhaps it would be today, anyway.

“You’re not a good liar, Rebka.” Nenda felt his nostrils flaring. “Yesterday you said you didn’t know where any of them are.”

“And I don’t. Can’t you get that into your tiny pea-brain? I don’t know where Darya Lang is, or Kallik, or J’merlia. Is that clear enough?” Rebka scowled, but there was more frustration than anger on his face. “Why the devil haven’t they called me?”

“Darya?”

“No. She hates my guts. She wouldn’t call me if I begged her to.”

“Good. I mean, that’s bad, ’cause I have to find her.”

“I was talking about Kallik and J’merlia.”

“Did you tell ’em to call you?”

“No. I told them to find Darya and go with her, but I didn’t tell them to call.”

“Then you’re even dumber than I thought. Whether you believe it or not, they still act like slaves. If you don’t tell ’em, they won’t do it. Wait a minute.” Nenda glared pop-eyed. The other part of what Rebka had said was finally sinking in. “You told them to go? You ordered my slave, and Atvar H’sial’s slave and interpreter, to go after Darya Lang?”

The fists and teeth were showing. Knees to the groin were just seconds away. Both men had moved to an open space, dropping from a taller-than-you posture into a defensive crouch. But before the first punch could be thrown, a loud sneeze came from the middle of the lab.

It was followed by a groan, a clearing of the throat, and a great belch. E.C. Tally was wriggling in his chair, tugging at the restraining tapes and peering squint-eyed around him in bafflement.

“What happened to the dinner table? And the people?”

Rebka hurried to his side. “Are you all right?”

“Of course I’m all right. But where am I?”

“In the engineering lab. I had to cold-start you. What’s the last thing you remember?”

“I was sitting at the dinner table, listening to Quintus Bloom and Darya Lang. And Professor Lang began to comment on the logical implications of Bloom’s assertion that the Builders are time travelers, humans from the future.” Tally’s eyes began to roll upward in his head. “Which implies—”

“You’re going to screw him up all over again!” Nenda jumped forward and shook the embodied computer, cutting off his speech in mid-sentence.

“God, you’re right.” Rebka held up his hand. “E.C., stop it there. I want you to steer clear of every thought to do with time travel until we hear from Miranda about a software fix for you.”

“But if the Builders are from the future—”

“Stop that! Think about something else. Anything else. Think about — what, for God’s sake? Come on, Nenda, help me. E.C., talk about space travel. Tell Nenda what you and I said we wanted to do, after we had been to Sentinel Gate.”

“You mean our plan to visit Paradox? Certainly. We will seek entry using some of my special capabilities, although as you all know, entry and successful return have never previously been accomplished. The artifact known as Paradox implies that the Builders—”

“Don’t talk about the Builders! Talk about Darya Lang. E.C., you were with Darya at dinner. Do you have any idea where she might have gone? Nenda thinks I know, but I don’t.”

“I can speculate.” E.C. Tally turned to face Louis Nenda. “I have considered the question of a next logical investigation, in great detail. Darya Lang is almost certainly exploring one of the artifacts, but which one? Before reaching Sentinel Gate I computed and stored for each artifact the probability of a fruitful new exploration. The results can be summarized as follows, in order of decreasing probability: Paradox, 0.0061; Torvil Anfract, 0.0045; Manticore, 0.0037; Reinhardt, 0.0035; Elephant, 0.0030; Flambeau, 0.0027; Cocoon, 0.0026; Lens, 0.0024; Umbilical, 0.0023; Magyar, 0.0022; Cusp, 0.0019…”

Nenda glared at Hans Rebka as E.C. Tally droned on. “Can’t you stop him? He has twelve hundred to go.”

“Why bother? It’s keeping him out of trouble.” Rebka glared right back. “Still want to start something?”

“Love to. But right now it’s a luxury I can’t afford.” Nenda took four steps backward, out of distance for easy action. “I need to find Darya Lang, and you can’t tell me where she is. So I’ll have to work it out for myself. And wasting time fussin’ with you won’t help me. I’m going.”

At the door to the lab he turned for a final scowl. “Have fun on Paradox, you and the dumb dinglebrain. Who knows, maybe I’ll see you both there. But I hope not.”

Rebka returned the snarl. “Go to hell.”

“Fambezux, 0.0015,” intoned E.C. Tally.

“And the same to you,” growled Louis Nenda.

Chapter Ten

Less than one year ago, Darya Lang had been a quiet and dedicated research scientist at the Artifact Institute. She had never in her life left the solar system containing Sentinel and Sentinel Gate. The production of successive editions of the Lang Catalog was the high spot of her existence.

Then came the trip to the Dobelle system. That had started her whole strange odyssey, to Quake, to Glister, to Serenity, on to the Torvil Anfract and Genizee, and at last back home.

All that, in less than one year. Now it was hard for Darya, seeing herself as a hardened and sophisticated traveler through the farthest reaches of the spiral arm, to believe that the quiet research worker had ever existed.

But sometimes she had direct proof that her new experience was very recent — and very limited.

Darya studied the Bose Network and plotted out a series of transitions to take their ship, the Myosotis, from Sentinel to Labyrinth by way of Jerome’s World. It took many hours of careful work, but she was rather proud of the result. As she was transferring the file to another data base from which the sequence could be executed, Kallik happened to see what she was doing.

“With respect.” The little Hymenopt bobbed her dark head. “Is this by any chance your first experience using the Bose Network?”

“I’ve used it before, but this is my first opportunity to plan my own sequence of transitions.”

Kallik was studying the file closely. Darya waited, expecting words of appreciation. Instead Kallik hissed, whistled, and said, “Excuse me. But is it permitted that I examine the energy budget associated with one or two of these nodes?”

“Of course.”

Kallik made a copy of the file and retreated to her own terminal, one more suited for a being with eight polydactyl limbs. After a few minutes she transferred another file to Darya’s terminal. It came without a word of comment, but Darya saw at once that it was an alternative path through the Bose Network. She listed the transit time. It was less than half of hers.

She displayed the energy budget. It was less than a quarter of hers.