“Okay,” she said. “I was talking about their ships. About going home. Are you going to tell them the planet’s round, but it’s too big for sails? That they wouldn’t have made a successful voyage anyhow?”

Whit’s features softened. He canted his head and waited for Digger’s answer.

“No,” Dig said. “If the situation has calmed down, I’ll just tell them it’s over, and let them decide what they want to do.”

She let him see she didn’t approve.

“It’s not up to us to tell them what they’re capable of, Julie,” he continued. “How do we know they can’t make it around the globe?”

“Well, it’s not going to happen now, anyway,” she said. “Whatever you tell them.”

That was true. If they were able to construct a fresh set of ships, they’d go home. At least, they would if they had any sense.

Outside, something broke and fell heavily to the ground. A tree.

Whit took a long sip from his coffee cup. “Are we going to be able to fly this thing when the storm’s over?” he asked.

“I’ll let you know,” she said.

DIGGER SAT IN the dark, trying to sleep, trying to think about something else. Well after midnight, he heard a distant explosion. It blended with the continuous thunder, and the lander shook. Lightning filled the sky.

They talked for hours while the storm raged. About how none of them had ever been through anything like this, about the Goompahs on the other side of the harbor and the Goompahs on the Intigo, about books they’d read and places they’d been, about how it couldn’t last much longer, about how glad they were to have the AV3. Whit said it reminded him a little of a rainy evening he’d spent in a cabin when he was a Boy Scout.

Eventually it dissipated. The night grew quiet, the winds subsided, and there was only the steady beat of the rain.

Julie came to attention. “Listen,” she said.

He heard a burst of radio interference and then Kellie’s voice: “—breaking up—when you can—clouds—”

It was her standard professional tone. Level, unemotional. “—storm—”

Dawn was about two hours away. That meant it was a bit after midnight on the Intigo. The cloud was directly over the cities.

“—total—”

“We were lucky,” Digger said.

“How do you mean?” asked Whit.

“The lightning strike. If we’d used Lykonda to warn the ships to go to deeper water, they might have survived the waves, but they wouldn’t have gotten through the storm.”

Whit passed his cup forward for a refill. “No luck involved. You and Julie made the right decision.”

THERE WAS NO dawn. The sky stayed dark. Sometimes the wind and rain slacked off completely, and the night became still, but both inevitably came back with a rush.

He sat with his eyes closed, dozing, but still aware of his surroundings. Julie had put her seat into its recline position and had finally drifted off. Whit was busily tapping on his notebook. Eventually, he too slept.

Digger listened to the weather and the sea. If the storm was bad here, in this out-of-the-way place, he wondered what it would be like to be in the crosshairs. Not a stone upon a stone, he suspected.

THE INTENSITY OF the storm decreased after sunrise, but weather conditions remained too severe to attempt a flight. So they sat it out through the daylight hours and into another night.

At dawn on the second day, the winds finally abated, the rain slowed and stopped, and the sun came up.

“I think we’re over the hump,” Julie said.

They were too washed out to congratulate one another. Julie went outside to inspect and repair the lander, while Digger and Whit slogged over to see how the Goompahs had managed. They were scattered across the ridge, squatting exhausted and frightened in the mud. Some were injured. A few had descended to the lower levels and were fishing. Others were scavenging for fruit or small animals.

He would have liked to tell them it was all right to abandon their refuge, but the ground was so muddy he couldn’t approach without making large footprints. In the end he cornered his old friend Telio and stood behind a fallen tree. “Telio,” he said, “it is over.” He’d planned to say no more, but decided on the spot that Julie was right. “Rebuild your ships and return home.”

The Goompah looked for the source of the voice. “Who are you?” he asked, frightened.

Might as well play it through. “I am sent by Lykonda,” he said.

Telio fell to his knees and Digger was stuck, unable to move without giving himself away. He waited, and finally Telio asked in a low voice whether he was still there and, getting no answer, muttered his thanks and returned to his comrades.

“And God bless,” Digger added, uncharacteristically.

The three ships lay shattered and covered with mud. Two were on their sides in shallow water; one had been jammed into the trees. They were so badly wrecked that he wondered whether the Goompahs could tell them apart.

Trees were down everywhere, some from the waves, some blackened by lightning.

Later, when he told Whit what he’d done, the older man frowned. “They’ll go back with the idea their gods don’t want them to leave the isthmus.”

“Maybe,” said Digger. “But they’ll have a much better chance to go back. Right now, it’s all I care about.”

At the lander, Julie told them she’d been in touch with the Jenkins. “The channel’s down again,” she said, “but it should only be temporary. Roka and Kulnar are pretty well destroyed. T’Mingletep took a major hit. But Kellie says the rest of the Intigo looks pretty good.

“Marge said there was a substantial storm surge, as well. Seven, eight meters of water across much of the isthmus.”

“How about the Goompahs?”

“They can’t tell for sure. It looks as if a lot of them should be okay. The ones who were smart enough to do what the goddess told them.” She smiled, nodded at Digger, and broke out a bottle. Drinks all around. “Gentlemen.” She raised her glass. “To the defenders of the weak.” It was a French cordial. Where had she been hiding it?

THE BEACH WAS covered with dead fish and shells and debris. The smell was terrible, but Telio was grateful that he was still alive. And ecstatic that the celestial powers knew him by name. And cared about him.

The captains had formed a small party, and they were inspecting the three hulks. There’d already been talk that they would be taken apart and the wood used to make new vessels. Some of the crew had brought in fresh water. They had plenty of fish, and they’d discovered a fruit very like the kulpas. And some of the local game had proven to be quite savory.

He was going to be busy taking care of the injured over the next few days. That was a task that would be difficult because his medicines had been lost with the ship. There were a few strains and some broken bones to tend, and one case of a sweating illness that would probably respond to cold compresses and rest.

But it was over, whatever it had been, and most of them were still alive. T’Klot was still visible in the sky, both night and day, but not as a thunderhead. Rather it was now simply shreds of cloud.

Under ordinary circumstances, with their ships wrecked and the mission in ruins, he suspected they’d all have given in to despair. But he had heard the voice in the wind, and his comrades wanted to believe him. They knew now what they had not known before, that the gods were with them. The road home would not be easy, but Telio had no doubt he would see it again.

Avery Whitlock’s Notebooks

Tonight, perhaps for the first time, I can see the true value of faith. It strikes me as a priceless gift. Those of us who have traded it for a mechanical universe may have gotten closer to the actual state of things, but we have paid a substantial price. It makes me wonder about the value of truth.

— December 17

Lookout.

Friday, December 19.

THE RETURN TO the Intigo was painful. The cities were filled with mud and debris. Buildings were smashed, towers knocked over, fields flooded. The eastern cities, where the waves had hit, had been virtually swept away.

And there were corpses.

“No way you can get through something like this without losing people,” said Whit. “The consolation is that there are survivors.”

Yes. But somehow Digger had thought they would do better. He could see the Korbs beginning to file back down from the ridges and mountain slopes.

THEY GOT COMMUNICATIONS back with the Jenkins. Kellie and Marge had also been sobered by the carnage, but they were nevertheless putting the best face on things. “We saved the bulk of them,” Marge told them. “I think we did pretty well.”

In the midafternoon sky, the last pieces of the omega were drifting sunward. Whit gazed after it. “When can they expect another one?” he asked.

“If the pattern holds,” said Digger, “about eight thousand years.”

“Long enough,” he said. “Good-bye, farewell, amen.”

He wrote something in his notebook, frowned at it, shook his head, rewrote it, and entered it with a flourish. Then he sat back and looked outside at the flooded land below.

Digger found himself thinking about Jack. He’d have been pleased they’d done as well as they had. In fact, he suspected Jack would have been surprised that Digger had come up with a workable plan.

“Problem?” asked Julie, glancing over at him.

“No,” he said. “Just thinking about the ride home.”

THE JENKINS WAS on its way back to Lookout. Kellie reported that a fleet of ships, loaded with supplies, would begin arriving in a few days.

Julie took them to Mt. Alpha, where they traded in the AV3 for one of the smaller landers.

They switched on the lightbender and, at Whit’s request, made for the temple at Brackel.

The city itself wasn’t as severely damaged as they’d expected. A lot of buildings were down and areas flooded, but a substantial number of structures, occupying the wide arc of hills that circled the inner city, had escaped the worst of the water damage.

The temple had also come through reasonably well. A few Korbs were there, wandering through the grounds, looking dazed and battered. The walkways were covered with fallen trees and limbs and an ocean of sludge. A section of roof had been blown off, the interior was flooded, and several statues had been broken. But Lykonda still stood proud, her torch raised. A circle of Korbs stood respectfully around her, and someone had planted a small tree at her base.

ON HER HILLTOP outside Hopgop, Macao pulled an animal skin around her shoulders and tried to smile bravely for the children. Pasak, her cousin, had returned with an armload of cabaros. Ordinarily, cabaros weren’t considered very tasty. But there wasn’t enough fish to go around, and everything else was pretty much depleted. It looked as if it was going to get pretty hungry in the neighborhood over the next few days.