Valeddom
4: vutu

By the time we had covered some hundreds of miles and endured weeks of marching, the landscape was more barren than ever – bleaker and sparser than I had noted anywhere since my coming to Valeddom, with hardly a leaf of vegetation, and none of the nutritional berry-bushes to be seen. The rocks were of a lunar grey, gritty and dusty, rather than the smooth chocolatey brown of the more southern plains. The former flatness had given way to one low hill after another, while on our left a range of mountains gradually drew near as we plodded northwards. The mountains reminded me of those which I had been close to when I first awoke on Valeddom, though I realized we must now be far north of that point, and in even less hospitable country.
    Columns of steam rising to westward, against an extra brightness in the sky, confirmed that we were edging towards Dayside – the eternal blazing furnace of the sunward face of Mercury. Common sense – Earthly common sense – assured me that we were shielded by the mountains, but to be anywhere near the Dayside frontier gave me random shudders whenever the thought of it sneaked in to my Mercurian brain, whispering the fears of millions of generations which had known the sun as a savage killer, its rays scorching all life.
    My spirit sank and my strength ran low until I managed to settle upon obstinacy as my defence against despair. Dull optimism. Absurd, the way I repeated to myself, when we escape, we’ll have to make sure of our supplies. “Should be easy,” I muttered stupidly. We would not need all that much in the way of food and water. Thanks to the superior efficiency of the Mercurian metabolism, we’d require only about a tenth of what we would have needed on Earth. But we would need that. On this journey we were fed and watered, sparely, from containers thrown down or (when Navon was, I suppose, in a slightly better mood) lowered to us on slings by the riders of the squarls. When we escape, I repeated to myself, we will have to make sure we take enough of these bottles and concentrates with us.
    That was my way of taking escape for granted – refusing to question or doubt that it was only a matter of time before some brilliant scheme turned up.

                                                   *****

I began to notice streaks on the ground.
    It wasn’t so obvious when you were standing on one, for they were wide and vague. But the ones further off were easy to make out. They were visible as straight lines of brighter rock, running almost parallel but promising to converge on some point which, I reckoned, must lie beyond the next grey hill.
    I asked Bryce what he thought they were.
    He muttered, “Ejecta lines.”
    “What?” I asked, hoping he meant something artificial, something to do with a city.
    “Splashes from a crater impact. A purely natural phenomenon.”
    “Oh,” I said. My face fell. I so wanted some signal that this dreary slog was nearing its end! Even the enemy stronghold would be a welcome sight, or so I thought then.
    We were trudging uphill some minutes later when my cast-down eyes noted a different, more exact kind of stripy disturbance in the dust. No doubt about it this time – it was a track made by a vehicle.
    We topped the rise. The squarls halted and therefore so did we. Down we gazed onto a great smashed region of broken rocks and puddles of frozen lava, in the midst of which lay a crater some two miles wide.
    From where we stood we could see the upper part of a building, of some highly reflective green-grey metal, jutting up beyond the near wall of the crater.
    I hadn’t spoken with my Mercurian family for a long time. In the monotonous stupor of the trek I had even forgotten that one of them – my sister’s man, Tmaeu – was by origin a Vutuan.
    Now as I stood wondering what we were all waiting for, I heard a muttering from Tmaeu:
    “There you see it. The Palace of the Toach. As you might expect, it’s sticking up taller than anything else.”
    I feasted my eyes on the visible top of the palace. At last, at long last, we had got somewhere. Civilization of a sort – any sort – hurrah.
    To me the structure’s shape, for some reason, appeared rather revolting. If it had been transparent it would have looked like an enormous tuft of soap bubbles; complex, interesting, perhaps even beautiful in its way, but not exactly restful to the eye. But we can hope, I thought, that the rest of Vutu, not visible from here, turns out different from the palace.
    Why weren’t our captors moving? Their vehicles’ tentacular legs surrounded us like the bars of a cage. We were waiting for something.
Movement on the outside crater wall! An up-sliding door: a tunnel mouth, opening. I froze with a this-is-it certainty.
    Bryce reacted quite otherwise.
    He began to talk fast and quite loudly, in Valeddomian, using technical terms which showed that his grasp of the language now exceeded mine. “An impact crater,” he lectured. “Notice those rays of brighter rock streaking outwards, getting fainter with distance – they are ejecta. And those other ripples that overlie some of them, they’re subsequent lava flows, indicating that the shock of the impact may have triggered volcanism....”
    It came to me, what he was up to. In the hope that the squarls were listening, he was showing off – for the best of motives. For now that we had reached Vutu our fate might well depend on how highly our Earth minds were respected.
    While he spouted geology, and while I waited for something to come out of the newly-opened tunnel, my eyes picked out a track which led from it and away to our left, towards the mountains. Westward, away from Vutu, I traced that track up the mountain pass to where it ended at a distant, gigantic, shield-shaped wall. Such a structure, apparently alone in the wilderness, could not help but seem sinister, even monstrous.
    It looked like – and I guessed it actually was – a dam. Not a river dam, of course. There wasn’t any flowing water here, and anyway this thing hadn’t been placed part-way up a valley, as you’d expect a river dam to be. Instead, it stood at the high point of a deep pass. But it was surely a dam of some sort, hundreds of feet high, blocking the pass, holding back something. Its position and its sturdiness reminded me of the defence built by the natives of Skull Island in King Kong, but the threat beyond this particular barrier must be in a different class from any giant gorilla.
    A nudge from Bryce. My gaze swept back to what lay in front of me, to the main panorama. I was in time to see that a gleaming snout of white metal had poked out of the tunnel in Vutu’s crater-wall.
    It was the front of a vehicle. I watched as it lumbered into the open.
Built like an elongated army tank, with half-shielded tracks on cleats, it advanced ponderously. The whole picture leaped into proper scale when I noticed the vehicle’s double row of portholes and realized it was two storeys high.
    A buzzing above my head made me look up and I saw lights flash. Our guardians were making sure that we were seen.
    The tank halted, and from its stern a mast pushed up. The tip of the mast flashed an answering light.
    The squarls responded with more flashes.
    Then a hatch opened in the tank’s roof and I saw little silver figures which were people climb out and down the exterior ladders that were fixed to the hull. I counted the crew members – four, five, six.... eight, ten.... They reached the ground and fanned out in two lines to receive us, while in their hands they brandished what looked like long-barrelled pistols which my mind whispered were energy weapons – while we captives, ridiculously, clutched our spears. How stupid of us to have lugged spears for hundreds of miles.
    Behind me, I heard a growl of disgust from Fnekt, and then a clatter. The rest of us, following his example, threw down our primitive weapons.
    Through the thin air we faintly heard what sounded like a cheer. Were those men laughing at us? I wasn’t sure because something else was happening close by. A shape was descending, right in front of us – one of the squarls was lowering its rider.
    Navon, the chief of our three abductors, was placed upright on the ground, facing us, and I got a proper close look at him for the first time.
His upper torso was wrapped in a broad silvery chest-band, the front of which glowed like the face of a digital watch. On it shimmered a “1048” about six inches high (expressed in Valeddomian numerals, of course).
He covered us with his energy-gun while the other two squarls lowered his colleagues to the ground behind us. I looked over my shoulder and noted that these two also had numbers on their chests (I can still remember, they were “994” and “578”). Navon then went round us to join them. His stride was as firm as though he hadn’t been cooped inside a squarl-hood for goodness knows how many hundreds of hours.
    From behind us he spoke a single word: kannesh. “Forward!”
It’s funny how you end up, in some situations, walking of your own accord towards your fate, when the feeling comes over you from all directions, that there just isn’t anything else to do. Even without compulsion we would have had to seek food in the city. And even without that practical need, I think we would have sought shelter in Vutu rather than continue to wander in this desolate region of Yonnimay. So, obediently, we picked our way downwards across the cracked, debris-littered slope towards the waiting tank crew.
Yet as we did so some hunch made me look round. Our three guardians were spreading out a little, as though they were squaring off against the tank crew, in a manner which put me in mind of Wild West gun-fighters taking up position for their duels, but of course this was ridiculous – the squarl-riders and the tank crew were all on the same side, all wearing the same uniform of numbered chest-bands and bright blue cloaks. They weren’t about to fight each other, surely? No, whatever the tension that was building up (and I could sense it, like the charge in the air before a thunderstorm), it couldn’t be hostility.
    When we were close enough to read the actual numbers which the tank crew wore on their chests, the “storm” broke.
    I had to blink as those numbers in front of me flashed brilliantly for a half-second. And at the same time, light from the opposite direction – light which must have been projected from the guardians behind me – prompted me to swing about and I saw that Navon was no longer “1048”, he was now “1539”. His two henchmen had acquired bigger numbers likewise – they were now “1305” and “889”.
    Yet for some reason the increase hadn’t happened to the men in front of us. The exchange of blasts had left the numbers on the tank-crew’s chests unchanged.
    At bewildering moments like this I still had the bad habit of looking at my ex-teacher as though I expected him to provide an explanation. This time I really wished I hadn’t looked. Bryce’s agonized face wasn’t pleasant to behold. He was most likely going half nuts trying to work it all out, whereas I knew better; I refused even to begin....
    When we got to within about five yards of the tank, we stopped without being told. It was obvious that the next move was up to the tank commander.
    He identified himself by swaggering forward: a thick-set, grinning man with “1105” across his chest, his eyes flicking as if following an inner movie as he strode up to Navon and gave him a palm-to-chest salute, saying: “Keep away from Nought!”
    “Keep away from Nought!” Navon replied, as heartily as if he were saying “Happy Birthday”.
    The tank commander then turned to me. Or so I thought, though his tilted stare made it hard to be sure whom he was addressing. In the garbled Vutuan speech he sang out: “Windfall for us, presence of you, regular proving in the Blazing Land.”
    Tmaeu sidled up to me.
    “I’d better translate,” he said. “You and Semor are appointed as mascots. They reckon you may bring them luck. On their expedition. Just now leaving for Dayside.”
    “Mascots?” said Bryce indignantly. “What is the meaning of this?”
    “It means you’re going to be taken for a ride.”
    Bryce looked towards the west, up the valley towards the great dam. He spluttered, “This is stupid!” He protested to “1105”, his voice rising, “How can we possibly be useful to you out there? We’ve only just got here, we’re exhausted, we know nothing of your expeditions.... After all the weary distance your people have brought us, surely you can at least take us into your city....”
    He was in fear, and so was I; my guts were churning as though I were being invited by devils to take part in a tour of hell. But though I was as desperate as Bryce, I could tell that a different approach was called for.
I spoke out, forcing myself to use the Valeddomian language at a more advanced level than I ever had before. Not that I had any real hope – I just had to try something, anything, to get out of having to go for that ride.
“We came at the right time – yes – but suppose you don’t seize us as mascots? Suppose you go without us? Suppose you voluntarily pass up the chance to take a couple of Earth-minds on your expedition? What then? I say, that to turn down the offer of luck is to show even greater bravery. And fortune favours the bold, so take the risk: throw away this opportunity!”
Never in my life had I felt so daft as when I looked at the frozen expressions around me after that odd speech. Awful seconds ticked by. What if my twaddle, inspired suddenly by my hudar faculty, had made things worse? Suppose it had undermined the scientific impression Bryce had been trying to give? But I had to brazen it out. I was naturally bound to feel like an idiot, considering how little opportunity I’d had so far to fathom the Vutuan mentality.
    1105’s arm shot up as if he were a referee about to blow the whistle.
“Yebbeorr,” he shouted.
    “Yebbeorr,” wailed the other tankmen.
    They all began to trot back towards their vehicle. They swarmed up the ladders and disappeared. A few more shouts of “Yebbeorr”, ringing with exultation, resounded as I gaped.
    Floating in my dreamy amazement, I vaguely felt the pat on the shoulder as Bryce congratulated me. I had won my point! They were going to do what I suggested! This, for me, was almost as scary as the alternative would have been. It was an unbalancing thing, it was a door of unexpected opportunity opening when I leaned against it, leading me to an un-guessable future of peril and power.
    As the tank moved off, we were left standing with our three original guardians, who now motioned us forward towards the tunnel, and we turned our steps that way. Having escaped the trip to Dayside, we must now face the entry into Vutu.
    And all the time the ritual phrase, keep away from Nought, pricked my imagination like a needle.

                                                   *****

The tunnel wasn’t lit, but enough daylight penetrated close to the entrance to reveal two pairs of rails running down its length, one pair on each side. On the near side, the left as we went in, an open metal container, like a skip on wheels, rested on the rails. Navon and his two henchmen gestured for us to climb into this contraption.
    Navon then pushed a lever and we all began to move towards the spot of daylight at the other end of the tunnel.
    The container came to a stop just before the rails ended. We got down, took a few steps and emerged inside Vutu crater – into a silent, dingy forest of giant tubby mushrooms.
    I blinked and stood gawping. The “mushrooms” were cylindrical houses topped by hemispheres. They were about the same size as ordinary houses in my world, though their strange bulging shapes, and their lack of windows, made them seem to loom larger. But the sense of being inside an immense field, rather than a city, came also from the silence, the lack of bustle. I saw only a few people walking along the ways between the houses and in the main avenue which ran straight from where we stood towards the centre.
I could see about a mile down that avenue as far as the palace – the foamy-looking mass heaped on the crater’s central rise.
    I turned to see how my companions were reacting to the view. From their expressions I guessed they felt as subdued as I did. The exception was Tmaeu, of course, for he was a Vutuan. He had seen it all before.
    I happened to notice that Navon was still standing in the tunnel; he seemed to be making some adjustment to the wheeled container on which we had just ridden. From him, my eye was drawn upwards to something bright above the tunnel entrance. It was a plaque. It displayed a flashing sign: lemon-yellow figures blinking “903”, “903”, “903”. Again a number! But, this time, not attached to a person.
    Then as Navon finished what he was doing and came forward to join us, and he passed under the flashing plaque and entered the city, the number changed from “903” to “904”.
    Bryce had seen it too.
    “Clear, eh?” I said – in English – and looked meaningfully at him.
    But the next thing I heard was a curt order spoken in Valeddomian; it was Navon speaking his favourite word.  “Forward.”
    We all began our walk down the bare-rock avenue towards the palace.
Bryce walked beside me. I tried again to make use of the opportunity to exchange a few confidential words in our own language. “You saw it,” I went on, “that plaque – it’s a population counter. So that’s good news, Sir – there are only 904 people in Vutu! So getting out of here may be no harder than escaping from a village....”
    He wasn’t answering and I became impatient. All right, maybe my logic wasn’t that good. Maybe it was just as hard to escape from a village-sized population as from a bustling city. Maybe in some ways it might be harder. If you’re on the run you’re more conspicuous among hundreds than among thousands. Nevertheless my teacher might have had the kindness to say something....
    Finally some words came from him – not the ones I wanted.
    “You did it,” Bryce said, in a tone that made it plain he hadn’t been thinking at all about what I had just said; perhaps he hadn’t even heard it; he wasn’t thinking about anything except my speech to the tank commander. “I don’t know how you did it,” he went on, “but you’ve latched onto a way of dealing with them. You’re in tune with their psychology. We’re in your hands now.”
    Look, I felt like telling him off, I really don’t need this.
    Of course it was nice to be praised, nice to know I had done something clever and right, or rather it would have been nice but for one thing – they were going to expect me to do it again! Despite the fact that I had absolutely no idea how I had done it the first time! If this was what it was like to be blessed with hudar, I didn’t think my nerves would stand much more of it. Mr Bryce, if you don’t say the sort of thing I want you to say, I may blow my top. The others, the family, were even less use than he. As soon as I spoke they turned their admiring and helpless faces to me as though I alone could be counted on to arrange for a successful escape with provisions and transport laid on, to get us all safe to Ixli.
    I was never one for using bad language in English, but Mercurian might be a different matter. KMEFFULSH, said I, but not out loud. I wasn’t yet sure of the meanings of Mercurian cuss-words. In such a case it’s wiser to throw a secret tantrum inside one’s own head.
    The mushroom houses, the unpaved ground, the greyness everywhere, made this whole place look dark in spite of the plentiful light pouring down from the sky. Not quite ugly, Vutu was dingy. The scarcity of folk added to the bare grimness of the scene. And I kept getting the sense that I was missing something, failing to notice an important point about this off-putting city. Hudar faculty at work again? I guessed it was. In which case, hudar was doing a fine job of disturbing my mind by hints without being good enough to explain what the hints were about. KMEFFULSH to hudar. If it was just out to tease me, I would ignore it.
    That’s precisely what I did when the incident occurred, which I shall now describe. We reached a point where the avenue ran across the side of a square, and as the scene widened I saw, to our left, two groups, one of five people coming down a side-street, the other of two people going along the main street, each group hidden from the other by the corner between them, until the point came when they suddenly saw each other and saw that they were converging. Immediately, blue cloaks swirled as they skittered to position themselves, face on. Flash! flash! – the chest-bands blazed. I had no doubt that some of the numbers displayed on those bands changed in that instant. In the cellar of my mind a coiled truth stirred and threatened to wake and bring the mystery of Vutu forth into the full light of day. But though I think I almost grasped the answer then, I drew back, allowing it to turn over and relax back into slumber, and I wasn’t sorry to let it lie.
    We were now within a hundred yards of the palace towering before us. It was like nothing so much as a gigantic pile of solidified soap suds painted grey.
    Navon pointed his energy gun into the air and fired a sizzling white bolt into the sky, whereupon a sentry came running, spoke briefly with Navon, ran back and disappeared beyond an arched doorway which slid open to admit him and slid shut behind him, and when we reached that door, accompanied by Navon, his two henchmen and two further guards, we crossed the threshold. So without any further ceremony we found ourselves inside the Palace of the Toach.
    We were in a maze of giant frozen spherical spaces lit by a pearly glow. Flooring sliced across the middle of the spaces as though to arrest the jostling chaos. Amid these intensely alien surroundings, hudar was whispering:
    The search for understanding is a trap. You must reject it. Reject knowledge.
    I was ready to agree. Knowledge would not aid us, it would only distract us from our efforts to escape.
    We reached a hemispheric throne room or audience chamber, perhaps thirty yards across. On a round platform in the centre rested a hooded chair, and in the chair sat a man, who, like everybody else, wore a chest-band and a blue cloak, but, unlike anybody else, wore also a belted robe of creamy white.
    No one stood close to the Toach. His courtiers – so I termed them – lounged or chatted in groups round the wall.
    Before we had covered half the distance to the throne, our guide, Navon, motioned us to stop, and he then called out to the ruler:
    “Keep away from Nought, Toach Mnuvax Veffih! I bring you the Ixlian Awakened, his Ixlian family, and the Awakened from Jempeldex.”
    In reply, the voice of Mnuvax boomed resoundingly through the hall:
    “Keep away from Nought, Navon. Approach and report.”
    We had to watch while Navon walked on alone to confer with his master. They bowed their heads together.
    The Toach looked to be about sixty (in Earth years), hale and strong, with a big chin and powerful jaw. Once or twice when he raised his head and looked in our direction I noticed the scatty glitter common to Vutuan eyes. On his chest-band I caught a glimpse of a four-digit number.
    Bryce made me jump by muttering suddenly, “If he’s the boss, why isn’t he number 1?”
    I winced and in the lowest of murmurs I replied: “It’s not like that, Sir. The numbers change.... they’re not for identification....”
    Then the Toach looked up again and called to us, speaking an English word:
    “Welcome!” And he laughed. So very funny Bryce and I must have looked, hearing English from the ruler of Vutu. You know how it is in a dream; just a little nudge, just one too many, can edge you into nightmare. Certainly at that moment things seemed to me to be on the verge of a plunge into something irrevocably bad.
    Bryce, who had not been a lot of use recently, was good just then. He muttered with great presence of mind: “Don’t jump to conclusions, Hugh. Don’t worry that he’s laughing. People who laugh when things aren’t funny, even on Earth, sometimes do it for harmless reasons – ”
    Mnuvax Veffih had clicked his fingers. Six guards emerged from behind his throne. They strode towards us, carrying broad white bands of material.
    The ruler then spoke to us again, and this time (except for one word) he spoke in Valeddomian: “What, you say, no more English? Forgive me, the rest is too rusty. It is a long time since any of the Awakened came here. Raise your arms.”
    We thought it best to obey, though it was not pleasant to stand in surrender posture while those guards bore down on us. Swiftly the white Vutuan-style bands were fitted round our upper torsos. It was done with no buttoning or zipping, just an instant seamless merging when the ends came together; light, loose, comfortable and, perhaps, impossible to remove. We looked at each other. All six of us wore the same flashing number –
    1000.
    “You see,” I remarked to Bryce. “Not much use as an ID.”
    Mnuvax boomed, “Approach!”
    We walked hesitantly towards the Vutuan ruler. The guard had disappeared. Well, we now wore chest-bands and the guard had gone – did that mean we had become Vutuans?
    “Here,” said the Toach in a gentler voice. He had picked up a sheaf of what looked vaguely like photo frames, and now he handed out the “frames” to us, and as he did so, leaning towards us, taming us with a show of trust, I saw that the “frames” were maps of the city.
    We were being made to feel at home. And there seemed to be another point, too, which suddenly made me more cheerful –
    Mnuvax’s words hadn’t been garbled in the common Vutuan fashion. In fact his speech was so clear that I had been lulled into taking its comprehensibility for granted. Now that I thought about it, this seemed to bode well. If, unlike Navon and the tank commander, the Toach could speak Valeddomian in a way that made sense to non-Vutuans like me, surely he wasn’t the only one; he must belong to a class of educated Vutuans who can communicate properly to outsiders. This in turn suggested that Vutu might turn out to be in some sense a normal, endurable city, a possible home.
    “At your convenience,” the Toach went on graciously, “make your way to the addresses shown. Settle into your quarters. You too, Tmaeu – we bear you no ill will. You fled from us as a boy; now we start you again as a man, on 1000, same as your companions. All of you: keep away from Nought.”
    Amazingly, the audience was over. After the staging of it all, the approach to the throne, the Toach’s almost rubbing his hands with glee as he remarked that it had been long since he’d captured any Awakened Earth-minds – why, after all this, weren’t we being interrogated, tested, examined?
    The answer might be that the real exam would start when we walked out the palace door.

                                                   *****

We stood in the street, if you can call the space between lines of giant metal mushrooms a street.
    No one seemed to be watching us.
    Tmaeu lifted his framed street-plan and began to examine it, whereupon the others crowded round him, eager for guidance in how to decipher the thing. I was glad to see them so keen to consult him; better him than me.
Peering over Tmaeu’s shoulder, Fnekt scowled. “Why haven’t they lodged us together? It looks as though our rooms are scattered all over Vutu.”
    Tmaeu sighed, “Let’s not be that distrustful. Need we be surprised if the only free spaces available at the moment are in different buildings? Unless you’d be content to crowd into one of the derelict ones. Plenty of those.”
    “Still, we ought to stick together.”
    “Don’t you think I know that? When they’ve been given time to make swaps and rearrangements, then they may manage to lodge us all in the same building....”
    Opavedwa said, “Come on, let’s find out what they’ve given us. I’m dying for some rest on a real bed.”
    In one respect I still seemed to be the centre of attention, insofar as my family decided that they would find my lodgings first, and settle me in, before locating any of the others.
    We soon arrived at the right “mushroom”. It had four doors. Tmaeu, with a glance at the plan, marched up to one of them. I meanwhile thought idly: the word “quarters” fits nicely here – my apartment a quarter-mushroom. The door swung open when Tmaeu pushed it. Then as we crowded forward, he waved the palm of his right hand in front of a wall-plate, a glow appeared on the ceiling, and by this light we saw....
    Bed, sofa, chairs, table, bookshelves, lamp.
    Had I expected such comforts as these, in styles not tremendously different from what I’d known on Earth? What had I expected? How many ways can you furnish a room? Ludicrously, I was reminded of the time I had gone with my parents to see my older half-brother installed in his rooms at college. Now I was the one being installed. Just one of those cute comparisons which don’t shed any light on anything.
    The place was small, no more than a bedroom/study/lounge. No kitchen, no bathroom, no dining area. But never mind the frills - having the room was what was important. For the first time since I had found myself on this planet, I had an indoors place to call my own.
    And – why not give it a go? The idea rushed upon me as I sat upon the bed. Despite some sinister aspects of this city, so far nothing bad had actually happened to me in it, so why not give life here a fair trial? Life as a Vutuan – why not? Forget the mood-swinging uncertainties, the terrors, the hearsay. Vutu had given me a home. Its folk were probably nuts by our standards, but that was no bad deal so long as they were harmlessly nuts.
    I kept these thoughts to myself as we wandered around, visiting each other’s lodgings. Opavedwa lay down and had her rest, for half an hour, while the rest of us sat and chatted, getting used to the hope that we were going to get quite reasonable treatment from the authorities. After her half hour, Opavedwa wanted to come with the rest of us to explore the city.
    So together we saw the sights of Vutu.
    We passed some blocky buildings which were state kitchens, canteens, baths; such facilities seemed to be communal in Vutu, but this did not worry me much – I wouldn’t be needing them all that often anyway, since Mercurian skin repels dirt, and Mercurian metabolism is so efficient that it only requires about one tenth as much food as an Earthman eats.
    We visited a hangar where two colossal armoured vehicles rested, just like the tank which we’d seen departing on its expedition – the one which had almost taken Bryce and me “for a ride”. A vacant space awaited the return of that third vehicle.
    On the far side of the city, we found an enormous low dome that enclosed maybe three or four acres. We were allowed into a viewing gallery. Through portholes we peeped into the main enclosure. We saw a glowing orchard being nibbled at by some leaf-grazing animals rather like mini giraffes. Bryce, being the geography teacher, was fascinated to see how the city got its food, but he wasn’t sure why this area was all enclosed and under artificial light – or was it “piped” natural light? My attention wandered as he fell into conversation with the Vutuan caretaker of the building – a conversation in which Tmaeu had to act as interpreter. I had become more tired than I knew. I found myself yearning to go back to my room and to flop on the bed and sag into sleep, and I didn’t care just then if none of the secrets of the universe got worked out, ever.
    So I separated from the others, saying I wanted an “early night”, or rather, since day and night mean nothing in the Twilight Belt, an “early tireding”. Feeling quite safe, I walked back to my allotted room.
    As I lay down on the bed, for once I was glad to be alone.
    Bryce was a good friend, but having seen him poking around and asking sensible practical questions about those orchards, I simply knew he wasn’t on the right track. And as for the others – Tmaeu was going to have to keep his head down, and the others weren’t Vutuans and knew no more than Bryce did. Neither did I, of course, but then I had hudar.
    Perhaps it was trying to tell me something, only the clouds of sleep were drifting closer and I was too tired. “Tomorrow”, perhaps, I would listen.

                                                   *****

Because I awoke in a room, I thought of other normal things, including having a wash.
    Not that I really needed it, even though, as I had done on the march, I had slept in my clothes. Not only does the Mercurian body lack the hygiene problems Earthlings have, but also the fabrics they use for clothing are wonderfully dirt-resistant, repelling anything oily or dusty. Even so, Earth habits re-asserted themselves and made me wish for a bath.
    I thought of the Vutuan communal baths. And then I thought of the chest-band I wore. Would I be able to take it off? I struggled with it, realizing that if I couldn’t remove the thing, it wouldn’t be easy to change the shirt underneath it that I had been wearing for what would have been many Earth weeks. Not that it really mattered yet, but still I found myself glancing around for a mirror.... there, to the right of the door; I went over to it –
    Oh no, oh no.
    My number was no longer 1000. It had gone down while I was asleep. Flashing on my chest-band was the number 980.
    I heard a loud knock on the door.
    I was in a mad city, I was sliding towards Nought – whatever that meant – and now a knock on the door. Think – decide –
    No use; I must open.
    They were two men and one woman. One of the men looked youngish; the others middle-aged. The woman, handsome in a fortyish way, smiled pleasantly and stepped forward, the band above her bosom flashing “1594”.
“Keep away from Nought, Ren Nydr,” she greeted me and went on in proper, grammatical Valeddomian: “I am Hyth Siedr and this is my crew, pilot Nio Blaid and trainee Semm Dword. All hoping that an Earth-mind will bring us luck on our trip.”
    As was typical of her people, she was looking through me as she spoke, like a politician reading from an auto-prompt. Neither was I looking at her, much; instead I gaped at the great tank that stood in the middle of the street.
    Hyth Siedr went on, “Laridd Merrer and his crew, who set out last wake period in Crawler 02, have not returned.”
    “Er.... ah,” I said, playing for time. “So now you’re here with Crawler 03....”
    “Precisely. Whenever a crew has been lost in Dayside, we have always sent another.”
    “You want me to go....” But instead of protesting, or resisting, or trying a clever argument or two so as to get out of it like I had done last time, I came to a snap decision.
    I returned Hyth Siedr’s greeting:
    “Keep away from Nought.”

                                                   *****

    Following the others, I clambered up the vehicle’s side, onto its roof and then down through a hatch. I entered the tank’s cabin “amidships”. From there I walked into the forward control cabin, where I was shown to a seat. By this time the tank had already started forward.
    It wasn’t too different from being inside an ordinary Earth car, except that the interior was much wider. The two seats in front of me were both double. Nio Blaid sat on the right, at one set of illuminated controls. He drove, while Hyth Siedr and Semm Dword sat on the left, where the control panel was dark.
    I registered all this while continually returning to the dazing thought that I had joined the expedition of my own free will. I hoped I wasn’t mad; I preferred to think that some burst of insight had inspired me. Be that as it may, I was well and truly in for it. Silently I cursed the city, and the Crawler and its crew, and the whole culture I was trapped in, a culture which I was beginning to understand just enough to allow me to hope that there might be something to be gained from this trip if I didn’t crack, if I got back with my life and sanity.... for then I would get further from Nought.
    The tank lumbered up to where the door in the crater wall slid aside. Because I now rode at the altitude of the top deck of a double-decker bus, I was almost at eye level with the population-counter flashing its “904” above the tunnel door, and I pictured it going down to “900” as soon as we were past.
    We were just about to enter the tunnel, when Hyth Siedr ordered Nio Blaid to stop the vehicle.
    Somebody was running like mad to catch up with us.
    “Let him in.”
    The ceiling hatch re-opened. Puffing and panting, Bryce climbed into the tank and plumped down on the seat beside me, giving me an exasperated look. Outside, dimness engulfed us as we began our passage through the crater wall.
    Bryce called out to the Vutuans, “What exactly is the purpose of this expedition?”
    Hyth Siedr replied, coolly, “You will learn only from experience.”
    “Bah.” Bryce turned to me and said, in a tight-lipped manner, “I’d just rushed to your place to warn you.”
    “Warn me?” I prompted. I wished he hadn’t come; I didn’t want the responsibility of looking after him.
    “Warn you that you were going to get asked! Just as I was asked, a few minutes previously! You couldn’t by any chance explain, could you, why you’ve actually agreed this time to go along?”
    “Yes, Sir, I can explain.” I pointed to his chest, where the number showed, like mine, a decrease from 1000 to 980. “I took this step so as to keep away from Nought.”
    “Meaning?”
    “‘Nought’ must be something final, wouldn’t you say?”
    “Huhhh,” he puffed. It was obvious that he wanted to give me a telling-off but wasn’t sufficiently sure of his ground. “I hate the way you trust to hunches. But I suppose you’ll say it’s your hudar, whatever that is.”
    “Actually,” I replied – though I knew it was no use telling him – “my plan is simply to live through this and get back alive. If I do, I’ll be in their good books. Which may help us all to escape from this nuthouse, Sir! You don’t need hudar to see that.”
    He responded with a half-smile.
    “You’re up to something,” he said.
    I shook my head, “I’m trying to keep things simple.”
    The near-darkness outside suddenly lifted, following our exit from the tunnel.

                                                   *****

Outside Vutu crater, the tank swerved to the right. We were turning to follow the path my eyes had traced when I first beheld this scene – the path that ascended the westward valley towards the great “dam” blocking the pass through the mountains.
    As we drew closer to the huge barrier I saw, low down in that structure, the inevitable door.  It was obvious what was coming.  The path we were on ran right up to the door.  My Mercurian instincts recoiled.  Fear of the planet’s Dayside is ingrained in the people of Valeddom.
    I was the more afraid insofar as I was an Ixlian, not a Vutuan. The Vutuans are the least afraid of the burning lands.  They live closest to them, after all; they have some familiarity...
    Still, I had my plan to cling to, my pure and simple plan, which was to endure whatever was ahead without complaint but also with the minimum of involvement. That (I kept repeating to myself) was the way to survive.  Live through it as unobtrusively as possible!
    The door in the barrier slid open, as I knew it must, and we advanced into another tunnel.  This one sloped downwards; it was far huger than the one through the wall of Vutu crater and must take us underneath the pass through the westward chain of mountains.
    Our headlights didn’t do much to counteract the darkness, they just made us feel lost and shrunken as our vehicle crept along inside this age-old work of colossal engineering.  I imagined us being like an ant crawling through a pipe, as we continued through the body of the “dam” for perhaps half a mile. Finally our headlights shone on a closed end.
    Hyth Siedr tapped out a signal; an opening began to appear. I braced myself, inwardly flinching in advance.... but nothing was revealed except another blank wall, which looked about fifty yards further on, and then another door.
    The tank inched forward through the first opening.  The crew all turned to look through the rear window.  I, following their example, saw the door behind us slide shut, enclosing us in the space between the two doors.
    In effect, we had come to rest inside a metal box, its smooth, featureless inner walls bleakly visible in our lights. Hyth immediately chanted the words:
“Atcho choatan premb.”
    “Choatan premb,” her crew sang out in response.
    It seemed as if our headlights dimmed, but I understood that this was not so; it was our windows which were changing, darkening. The closed door ahead became barely visible in the murk. Atcho choatan premb meant “filters on!” in an archaic version of the Valeddomian tongue, used here for solemnity.

                                                     *****

Hyth broadcast another remote control signal, and the outer door in front of us opened.
    My head was full of the terrifying descriptions in Nourse’s Brightside Crossing and the first part of Smith’s The Immortals of Mercury; I was braced to endure the sight of pools of molten lead and brittle zinc shelves (Nourse) or nightmares of steam (Smith), though I told myself that the truth might be worse than either – and then the tank moved forward and I was out in Dayside for real.
    We were lurching down the further side of the pass, on a steep, thirty-degree slope. Because of our downward tilt, we couldn’t yet see the forward horizon, and thus we were so far spared the sight of the sun. I couldn’t imagine what would happen when that orb came in direct sight, for already daylight was blazing at us through the window-filters, toned down so as to be just bearable.
    Never had I seen a land that looked so hard. Some geysers of steam were visible behind us at first, but we soon passed beyond sight of them, and then there was just the rock, randomly pitted and cracked for as far as we could see. And since seeing was coloured by knowing, I actually “saw” the invisible temperature; I couldn’t help it – every crack or split in the rock offered proof of the baking heat. As we descended past cliff-faces, every gouge or pock in their imperfect smoothness was proof that stuff with lower melting point must have leached or boiled away.
    Remembering what happened in Nourse’s story, I looked around for signs of treacherous terrain. On the slope we were descending there did not seem to be any dangerous obstacles but I could make out some chasms a mile or so beyond the point where the ground levelled off. I told myself not to worry about those. They were too obvious. Ought to be easy to avoid. Watch elsewhere….
    Presently we reached the base of the slope. As the vehicle righted itself the view from the front window swung up – here we go, I thought – leveling off –
    The view rose to the forward horizon, to bring us face to face with the half-disc that must rest there, the inescapable sun, the sun that shone 93 million miles away from Earth, but which blazed at an average distance of merely 36 million miles from this innermost planet.
    In wonder I stared as a black half-disc floated into my field of view, hovered, shifted as I shifted in my seat, moved as I turned my head.... That pitch-black thing was the modified, filtered sun. Designed to save the sight of those who entered Dayside, extremely specialized filters must be the Vutuans’ dodge to protect their expeditions; some super-science had to be involved, and I couldn’t resist teasing Bryce: “Well, Sir, I wonder how they manage that!”
    “It can’t be uniform,” he muttered; “must be based on some substance that repels stronger radiation more than weak – turns the strength of the radiation against itself – ju-jitsu filter, you might say….”
    “Good effort, Sir,” I said, and in fact I did admire how quickly he went for the scientific excuses, but I knew his approach was doomed. Nevertheless I made a practical effort to watch, as keenly as he did, the movements and actions of the Vutuan crew.
    Nio Blaid in the driver’s seat had one end of the steering bar in each hand. To his left the younger-looking Semm Dword perused a large map. Meanwhile our leader, Hyth Siedr, scanned the view outside.
    Was this a rescue mission? Was she hoping to spot a still-inhabited Crawler 02, perhaps half-hidden among the passing crags or lying tilted partway down one of the rilles and gullies?
    I couldn’t believe it. No doubt it was important to find out what had happened to the previous expedition. But if that other tank was wrecked, surely no one could have survived. Even if it were merely disabled, there would be no way to transfer any living crew from their machine to ours. Unless – could the whole thing be towed back? I very much doubted it; I felt in my bones that there were no second chances out here.
    Bryce interrupted my thoughts. “That middle screen,” he whispered, nodding at the dark square midway on the control bank, or dashboard, or whatever you want to call it.
    “Yeah?”
    “What do you think it’s for?”
    I hadn’t previously given it more than a passing glance. It took up a fair amount of space but seemingly it wasn’t being used for anything. Bryce went on musing aloud:
    “Radar screen? Can’t see the use of that. Infra-red detector? Maybe, if we had to enter a cavern system, but not in this heat!”
    “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you, Sir?”
    “I suppose I am making the most of it now I’m here.” Then he grinned. “All right, I admit it: I am having the time of my life. Just imagine: this whole version of Mercury isn’t even supposed to exist, according to all scientific opinion I’ve ever heard of, and yet here I am exploring it! What a scoop for a Geography teacher! Mind you, I would have appreciated some more plausible facts. Even the little details seem wrong. Look at that control panel; hardly used! Why aren’t more of the lights flashing?”
    “Could it be,” I said seriously, humouring his desire for things to make sense, “that the other lights are something to do with the lower levels of the tank? We’re just occupying the top storey. And since those lights are off....”
    He seized upon this point. “Means there’s no one down below! This is a smaller expedition than ‘yesterday’s’! We five are the only ones on board.... I like that idea. It may mean we get back sooner.”
    “On the other hand, don’t let’s get our hopes up,” I said. “Fewer people on board means more space for supplies. We could be out for ‘weeks’.”
    “Weeks,” he echoed. “Oh no.  Further and further out into....”
    Into this Dayside inferno. We fell silent at the thought. We had struck out from the mountain chain at a right angle and therefore we must be headed almost due west. The irrational fear grew upon me that Hyth Siedr might actually intend to do a Brightside Crossing or some insane venture of that sort. The already frightening heat would be bound to increase as we went further west and the Sun rose higher….
    We became desperate to know the plan of the expedition, but neither of us yet dared to badger the Vutuans for details. If we sounded too worried too soon, our prestige as Earth-minds would be at risk, and also we were just plain scared of what they might tell us.
    Besides, my plan (I reminded myself) was simply to endure, win points and return.

                                                 *****

To our right, a stretch of jagged, pitted terrain in which, due to some volcanic process, the rocks shimmered amid a vaporous halo, showed us glimpses of lava pools glowing and bubbling as we rolled past. Beyond this fire-spot, Nio Blaid tilted the steering bar and we swerved more to the north.
    Bryce and I exchanged hopeful glances. The course-change suggested a particular destination, perhaps not too far off. Bryce at last politely addressed Hyth Siedr: “Can you explain to us where we’re going?”
    She turned to him, smiled, took the map from Semm Dword and handed it over. “That bay in the north-west chain. A place called Cholvg.”
    We felt humbly grateful; our nerves craved that map. Bryce spread it out on our knees and we studied it.
    It was a colourful mish-mash, like a geology map I’d seen on a schoolroom wall. I didn’t find that kind of thing easy to use and was happy to leave it to Bryce to do the puzzling. He remarked, “Partly printed, with alterations hand-drawn. Terrain must be changing too fast for the publishers to keep up. Now, where are we?”
    Translating the scale into English units he arrived at the conclusion that we were about fifteen miles out into Dayside, headed to meet an out-flung westward spur of the main North-South mountain range. The map showed a break in this range, a kind of lava-filled bay. “Like the Sinus Iridum on the Moon, though this one is smaller.” On the map in dark bold Valeddomian script it was marked Cholvg.
    Poor Bryce! He was so pleased with his success in interpreting that map.
    The long curve of our route had brought us round to a bearing slightly east of north by the time we had reached the last few miles of our approach to Cholvg. I leaned forward, trying to get as good a view as possible out of the front window. Ahead, the lava bay could already be glimpsed, its entrance perhaps a mile across, with the mountains on either side like half-closed pincers trying to shut it in. The scene would have been more clear-cut if it hadn’t been for the increasingly frequent twists of vapour arching upwards from vents of boiling mineral scattered about the approach area. The tank was having to steer round these vents more and more often, and I hoped that Nio Blaid knew what he was doing. He seemed calm enough, he must have been this way before, but such a semi-molten landscape must change constantly.
    Hyth made me jump a bit when she turned her head from the window, reached forward and began to rummage in a storage trough forward of the control panel. It contained a heap of gadgets the size of mobile phones. Hyth picked out one of these for herself and then began handing others, one at a time, to Semm Dword, who just held the things in his hand for a moment before putting them down, not even looking at them, just staring at the square blank screen which Bryce had speculated about some minutes ago. The longer this went on the more edgy I became at the missed significance of it all.
    And then at last Semm was handed one of the little objects which he seemed to like more than the others. He kept it, apparently sure that it was just the one for him.
    Now that they both had got the gadgets they wanted, Semm and Hyth gazed ever more often at the square blank screen.
    It all seemed particularly crazy to me, because in staring at that nothingness they were paying less and less attention to the amazing view outside.
    As the tank continued to crawl towards the entrance to Cholvg, I began to spot a flickering in the shadowy bay. Reddish-white flashes streaked low. Ground-lightning, perhaps? The impression I got was of an arena seething with a kind of soup of electrical and magnetic forces which kept dashing and breaking against its sides. And that was just what I saw through the front window alone; through the side windows, with even greater astonishment, I became aware that we were travelling past many artificial relics scattered about the broken plain – stumps of pylons, toppled sections of cylinders, and some blotched cubes the size of houses lying tilted and half submerged in solidified lava. One of these, I saw, had some Valeddomian numerals written on its side, plus part of a word.
    All this time the Vutuans were glancing back and forth from window to featureless screen, looking as though they were showing greater interest in the screen’s blank darkness than in the blazing reality around us.
    Bryce, desperate as usual for things to make sense, so that he was even more uneasy about it all than I was, had had enough.
    He spoke out: “Hyth Siedr, I need guidance, please.”
    “Yes, Semor?”
    “Since I can’t see anything on that dark screen, and since it’s obvious that you can, could you kindly explain what’s going on.”
    Hyth turned a gracious, beaming face to him. “Just a moment.” She reached down into the gadget trough again. “This peth here,” she waved a blue one of the little thingummies at him, “is for those who prefer to think of the forces here as lifeless.... and this other one,” she showed him a green one, “is for those who find it most useful to think the opposite.”
    “Say that again,” said Bryce through gritted teeth.
    Hyth glanced around to check whether she had a minute to spare; then she kindly repeated her comments.
    “Any more questions?” she finished, still offering the peth to him, holding it out invitingly.
    It was really quite something to watch Bryce’s expression. The turmoil that must be going on in his primly scientific mind! It was bad enough that he was having to accept that a gadget could be tuned to individual thoughts (though at least this explained why non-users saw nothing but blankness). Far worse was the attitude that “truth is whatever you like”.
    Still, now that he’d been told, he had to give it a try.
    He grabbed the second peth – the one which denied that the forces were alive – as I knew he would.
    His eyes promptly went wide, and I guessed that the screen was no longer blank to him. He was being shown some special Bryce-friendly interpretation of what was going on.
    Hyth Siedr next made a motion to offer a peth to me, but I drew back. I wanted no part of what was happening. And “no part” included no understanding. Repeat, NO UNDERSTANDING.  I was determined to stick to that decision, as the tank crawled forward into the bay of Cholvg and I began to feel tremors coming up from the ground.

                                                *****

I’m sure that, even at the best of times, the stress of being out in Dayside must do damage to the mind. My negative attitude, my refusal to be drawn in by explanations, was (I still think) probably the best move in the circumstances, but even so, it was rash to hope that I could escape unscathed. In fact, as if it were my fault for slipping the leash of reason, I heard just then, as we entered that realm of electrical storms, the atmospheric wailings… and as we moved forward the passing swish of a tadpole-shaped lightning-structure flicked around us and tore off away again through the streaky air. Then another, then more, came and went, rebounding from side to side of the three-mile amphitheatre that was Cholvg.
    We advanced further, during minutes which I passed in a daze.
    “I think that’s it!” I heard Hyth Siedr cry.
    She was pointing at something on the ground, behind us and to our left, and Nio Blaid turned the tank right round to head through the swimming lights towards the shape Hyth had seen.
    When it was clearly identifiable Hyth gave the order to halt.
    Crawler 02 lay on its back, partly smashed against a mansion-sized rock that rose like an island out of the lava floor. Some tremendous force must have tumbled the doomed vehicle over and over: we could see scorings in the lava along the path it had been thrown. None of us mentioned the men inside. All one could do was hope they had been killed instantly in the shock of the blow that had flung their tank backwards. Better shattered than roasted.
    Hyth issued instructions which I barely heard over the increasing din of the storm. Our tank slewed rapidly round again.  Now it seemed we were going out into the middle of the bay. An isolated slope stood out in front of us: a natural ramp, made out of a tilted rock shaped like a mini-scarp.  We began to ascend this.
    The top, when we reached it, turned out to be the best vantage available for miles around. Our altitude wasn’t huge, maybe a hundred feet or so, but we were now above much of the lightning, and we could see all around us across the bay and to the mountains on three sides.
    Our leader was in a hurry: she hit a button and made another (smaller) dark section of the control board light up. A straightforward, normal-looking TV type screen came to life. It showed, under magnification, a part of the mountains.
    She read out co-ordinates to Semm Dword, telling him where to aim the tank’s guns. I hadn’t known it had guns.  Nor could I make out whom or what we were about to fire at.  In fact, when she gave the order to fire I at first doubted the meaning of her word for “gun”, as what zoomed out of the front end of our vehicle was a beautiful blob of pink light.  It arched towards its destination; on the TV screen we saw it come down, gentle as a feather, close to the target area. Hyth told Semm to adjust the aim slightly, said “fire!” again, and this time, no mere pretty tracer but a gout of orange flame spurted from the bows of Crawler 03 and lobbed a solid object towards the mountain wall a mile and a half away.  Not a breath was heard in the cabin until the projectile had arched its way to where caused the target to blossom into flame.
    When the smoke cleared the TV showed us how the ridge had been altered by the explosion. Hyth examined the magnified scene while the others sat in silence. Then she began to give instructions for the next aim – but she didn’t get to finish her sentence.
    From somewhere, force reacted to force. The windows blanked in a dazzle as a flash burned around us.  The floor under us reared to hit us.  It seemed the end of everything.
    We were thrown about like rags dolls in a spin dryer while our vehicle reared and tottered and almost pirouetted on the lava plain. An invisible hand had picked us up to hurl us back down the ramp, and though Crawler 03 didn’t actually quite tumble over as Crawler 02 had done, I believe we survived by the purest luck. After we had hit the ground squarely and scraped to a halt, and I shook my bruised self and realized I was alive with no bones broken, but that none of the others were moving, I sensed what price we had paid.

                                                  *****

What I most needed, before anything else, was for things to slow down. If only I had a few moments in which to relax....
    Time, however, was what I didn’t have to spare.
    The storms wailing around us might or might not possess some kind of electric life. But certainly we had been attacked by something. We had to get out of here before we were walloped again by whatever it was that didn’t like us, and this meant, since the rest of the tank’s crew were out cold, that I would have to drive the thing myself. If the motor would start.
    But first, for a few minutes, I clambered about the cabin, doing my best to arrange the inert bodies of my companions into more comfortable positions. They were still breathing, but their faces had a frozen look as though they had gazed upon Medusa. That flash around us when the tank was struck had not just come in through the windows; it had also come through the peth-screen. Something had resented being spied upon, and had, I guessed, replied with an unendurable image. I alone had escaped it, because, due to my refusal to participate, that customized vision was blank to me.
    Whether my continued functioning would do any of us any good depended on whether the tank’s motor would start. I had put off the moment of truth, until I had seen to my companions. No excuse remained for further delay.
    I had so little hope, that I was already thinking about how I could face the horror of my position after pressing the starter button and hearing nothing. The controls were so simple, it was a matter of discovering within seconds whether (a) the motor had stopped because it was designed to cut out when the vehicle suffered enough of a jolt, or (b) it had stopped because it, itself, was smashed.
    I don’t like to remember the shape my thoughts took, up to when I sat myself in the pilot’s seat, pressed that button, and heard the sweetest sound I ever heard in my whole life – the grumble of a starting motor.
    The Crawler inched forward. That’s what I needed to know: that it could move. But I definitely did not wish to move a single yard deeper into the Bay of Cholvg. So I had to turn.
    If I used the common way of steering – which, so I had noted from watching Nio Blaid, was to swivel the bar on its central shaft, like steering a bike – I might make a full turn in maybe fifty yards, but that involved a risk I wasn’t prepared to take; I wished to make it immediately clear to the powers around here that I was leaving the area. That required a sharper turn.
    In addition to its swivel motion around the shaft, each end of the steering bar could rotate around its own axis, as if with a screwing or unscrewing motion. This was the speed control. If it was used on both sides equally and simultaneously, it resulted in straightforward acceleration or deceleration. But I had also observed Nio Blaid sometimes giving opposite twists to left and right, making the right treads go forward and the left treads go backward, or vice versa. He used this way of steering when he needed to achieve a close manoeuvre through a cluttered, pitted area. I used it now to slew the tank in as tight circle as it could manage, almost pivoting on the spot, though I could hear and feel the strain on the treads: I judged the risk had to be taken. The fact that you are reading this means that I got away with it. We turned until we were facing out of the bay and I could urge the vehicle forward at last.
    I concentrated on the driving to the exclusion of all other worries. With every minute that passed, it seemed more reasonable to hope that whatever had hit us would now leave us alone since we were obviously in retreat. So the life-story of Ren Nydr, alias Hugh Dent, and his companions might continue for another chapter at least. All I had to do was find my way back through fifteen to twenty miles of Mercurian Dayside hell to the correct spot on the mountain wall, and then work out how to reproduce the remote control signal which Hyth Siedr had used to open the door through which we had come.
    What got me through the next two terrifying hours, was the sheer relief I had felt when the motor had started. I had honestly expected the death sentence which its silence would have pronounced. Having got past that crisis, I was like Dostoyevsky after he’d been left alive by the firing squad. I found it hard to pay the proper dues of fear to other perils. Still, it was a grim business, that drive. Weaving my way round crevices and molten vents, while perpetually on the look-out for unstable terrain, I wondered at the daring of us humans, the crazy foolhardiness of frail structures of flesh and blood pitting themselves against the furnace outside our vehicle’s hull. And as a result I felt a greater kinship and solidarity with the Vutuans, a new sympathy for the life they had to lead, a life so close to this burning land. They must be dependent on it for some reason I did not yet know – a dependence which impelled them to undertake these suicidal expeditions.
Finally, with help from the map and from landmarks which I recognized, and with (I’m sure) a large helping of luck, I did find the slope which I could begin to ascend with confidence that it would lead up to the door in the mountain.
    At my first sight of the door, however, I stopped the tank.
    So close to the exit from Dayside, I had become ultra cautious. The slightest sign of any wrongness was enough to halt me.
    The tank was facing up-slope towards the western face of the mighty “dam”. And what an appropriate term “dam” was. This stupendous engineering work had indeed been built to hold back one of the forces of nature: not the spate of a river but the violence of the sun’s glare which would otherwise have poured through an unfortunately low break in the mountains. In other words it was an artificial heightening of a mountain pass which would otherwise have been too low to prevent light from Dayside from spilling directly into Vutu crater and roasting its inhabitants. And perhaps, like Earthly dams, it harnessed the power which it restrained. Perhaps solar energy was tapped and used by the Vutuans. In fact it would be strange if this were not the case. People had inhabited Yonnimay for millions of years; it was hardly likely that they would have failed to exploit such an obvious source of power.
    But perhaps the attempt aroused opposition.
    What I saw, or suspected I saw, playing against the great wall and around the faint outline of the door, and along the ledge which ran past just below the door, was a rippling effect, accompanied by dots of light winking on and off, and a suggestion of sound at the limit of hearing. Borderline sensations. But enough to suggest that “they” were barring my way back. “They” had let me out of Cholvg but only to head me off here. “They” were playing with me. Ideas accumulated in my head like junk mail piling on the mat – mental junk mail which I dared not leave unopened.
    I looked down at the cabin floor where the peths had been scattered about. My former resolution, to stay uninvolved, had become unsustainable. It was time to participate in the mysteries of Vutuan gadgetry.
    I began to rummage about for the green peth: the one which interpreted the electrical phenomena of Cholvg as in some sense alive.
    There you are, I said to myself, grasping the thing. I straightened up to look at the system screen and I saw it come alive, for me, for the first time. And it coaxed me into its trend of opinion as I gaped at the image of dinosaur-length strokes of green fire splayed on the ledge. Salamanders, whispered the memory of legend. Sketchily beautiful like the prehistoric Uffington White Horse on the English chalk downs, so that I could see the cliff face through their transparent interiors, their reptilian outlines seemed to fumble jerkily as they climbed and jumped over one another.
    Were these the beings who had attacked us in Cholvg? I knew nothing, and perhaps even the Vutuans no longer knew very much. In fact the Vutuans could be falling seriously behind the times, no longer tuned in to the latest developments in Dayside, which might be why they hadn’t been doing so well recently, losing one tank and then almost losing another.
    Perhaps the salamanders had nothing to do with the hostile Cholvg forces and might merely be equivalent to animal life. Even if they were more than that, they might not be waiting for me: they might have been here all the time, for I wouldn’t have noticed them on the way out. On the other hand suppose I succeeded in opening the tunnel door only to find that I had thereby allowed enemy forces to enter Yonnimay? That would be like letting King Kong through the gate on Skull Island. So maybe I ought to shoot at them, shoot them out of the way and make a dash for it. If I learned to operate the tank’s guns. Which I maybe could, given time. I might have that much time, if the salamanders weren’t like the Cholvg powers. But in that case maybe I didn’t need to fire at them anyway. Yet they might still be too dangerous to drive through. In which case, maybe I had to shoot.... but then on the other hand, gunfire might be no use; or in firing at them I might damage the door so it wouldn’t open and I’d be stuck out here forever....
    Too big a pile of junk mail.
    I binned it all: I let go of the peth and the screen went blank and the salamanders were no longer visible to me.
    I looked out of the window instead, seeing just the faintest play of light to hint at what might be moving around on the ledge below the door.
I studied the controls for the gun.
    It took me longer to work them out than it had to work out the tank’s steering, but, out of necessity, I managed it. After millions of years of research and development, I suppose the Vutuans had learned to make instructions and control-boards idiot-proof. Or maybe I had beginner’s luck.
I most carefully set the intensity to “minimum”. Then, aiming as high as I could, I fired a blast at the dam’s face, not at anywhere near the door, but hundreds of yards above and to the left.
    As soon as I pressed the stud I cringed, appalled at what I had done. The streak of orange fire that had spurted from the muzzle correctly followed its intended trajectory and the impact was picked up on the target monitor. I saw it strike the dam face a glancing blow, just as I had calculated, just as I had hoped; I felt a tremor and a local crack or two appeared in the surface when the smoke had cleared – but no chunks fell, no damage extended. Was I actually going to get away with this? I grabbed the peth again and saw the salamanders for the last time, saw them leaping away to the right, so that I was left with a clear run to the tunnel door.
    Losing no time, I sent the signal that made that door slide open, and then I drove forward and out of Dayside and into the tunnel of the “dam”.

                                                  *****

Some time later I was out of the other side and driving down the path towards Vutu crater. Being back in the Twilight Belt after my adventure in Dayside, I felt such relief as would sound ridiculous if I were to describe it – as if I had regained a normal world.
    The Vutuan government must have had some means of detecting my approach. Well before I reached the crater wall, its tunnel door slid open and ten or twelve armed men emerged, raising their guns in salute. I stopped the tank; one of them climbed in. This officer took in the situation at a glance, felt the pulses of the unconscious crew members and seemed satisfied that I had done all I could for them. I offered to give up the driving seat to him but he shook his head and gestured to me to drive on. His men, he explained, had taken up position on rungs of the vehicle’s external ladders. It was traditional to escort a returning Dayside expedition in this way.
    When we came through the crater wall and into Vutu itself, I had to stop the tank again, this time to avoid ploughing into a crowd of several hundred men and women. Most of the population of the city must have been there, and they looked hungry for news. The officer who was with me told me with a smile that it was time to greet the people, so I went up the stair to the roof hatch, hoping that someone had already broken the news about Crawler 02’s demise. They must know, I thought. They must have guessed, at least. What did they expect us to be able to do? Carry out a rescue out in Dayside?
    As I climbed through the hatch my chest started to tingle, the band around it buzzing and the sensation intensifying when I stood up in the open air in view of the hundreds of expectant faces. Then came a flash which lit those faces and made their eyes blink, and a pressure as if the intense light which had come from me were a hand that simultaneously smote me on the chest, so that I only just managed to keep my balance. In the same moment I heard a roar from the crowd. I peered down and – having to read it backwards – I made out the new number on my front.
    It blinked 5568 – 5568 – 5568 –
    The crowd meanwhile had erupted. It was as if I had saved the city. I stayed on the tank roof for a while, acknowledging the frantic waving and the shouts of “Yebbeor!” I spotted my family on the fringes; they stood supporting each other, pale and relieved. A couple of women meanwhile came forward, carrying a case between them, went past me into the tank and shortly afterwards came out again followed by the revived crew members and Mr Bryce. The cheering redoubled and there were more flashes – lesser ones, not quite so dazzling; the numbers on the chests of the crew increased to figures such as 1253, 1089, 1318, and in Bryce’s case, 1126.
    “Ren Nydr, the Toach will see you now.” It was the officer’s voice.
    Following him, I climbed down to the ground and the crowd made way. Close up, I felt the radiation of their good will. The glow was genuine, there was no catch, except for one thing. The usual thing. Nobody looked me in the eye. They were cheering because Vutu was a kind of orchestra, the situation was the conductor and they the chorus; as always, no matter how many Vutuans I was with, it really wasn’t too different from being alone.
    I was being led, not down the avenue towards the Palace, but along the outermost “ring road” that ran parallel to the crater wall. We seemed to be heading for one of the blocky public buildings. Perhaps an administrative centre. Before we got there, though, an abrupt, stuttering hiss, like radio interference, grated and coughed from the chest-band of everyone, including myself. Our number-lights all dimmed.
    They didn’t quite go out. They continued to flash, readably, but faintly, and the numbers stayed the same. But some great change had come to us all. The effect of the dimming upon our morale was like the brush of the wing of the Angel of Death. Even I, a stranger to Vutu, could sense it that way.
    Imagine a sudden power-cut at night in the midst of a great Earth city. Literally, that’s not a good comparison, because Vutu was merely dingy, not dark. Beneath its bright white sky, it did not have street-lighting – did not really need it. But there are different kinds of darkness.
    A sigh went through the crowd, all jubilation gone. Faces looked resigned.
I was taken inside the admin building. In an office Mnuvax the Toach awaited me, seated beside a desk, and to one side sat the recently revived Hyth Siedr, wan but conscious; she nodded to me and smiled.
    The Toach said, in a businesslike voice, “I have just spoken with Hyth Siedr. It is clear, Ren Nydr, that your expedition was a disastrous failure.”
“Yes, sir.” I stood receptively, arms at my sides, my heart too full and heavy to argue with fate.
    “Crawler 02 was, of course, beyond help,” the ruler of Vutu continued; “however, 03’s main mission task was not to rescue 02 but to perform the task which 02 had left unfinished: that is to say, to relieve stresses on the fireduct by means of targeted explosions.... and it now appears that topographical changes have accumulated to the point where such maintenance efforts are doomed. Therefore, no matter what you did, you could not have succeeded. Vutu has lost its fireduct. Vutu has lost its power.”
    I said faintly, “I knew nothing of this.”
    “Of course. That is why I am telling you – so that you will understand that your mission failed. The measures we would need to take to restore the fireduct now, are so drastic that they would certainly incur penalties that would destroy us. We have seen this coming for a long time. With our power supply gone, Vutu must sink to a lower standard of life. Ren Nydr, it is thanks to your heroic retrieval that the disaster was not accompanied by any further loss of life or equipment. Neither I nor my people will ever forget what you did. But there is a further service, a last practical service which I must ask you to perform for us.”
    He stood up and beckoned me to follow him.
    Wordlessly I obeyed, almost too dazed to wonder why the ruler of Vutu was wasting time talking to me instead of consulting with the great ones of his city. By this time my mind was bobbing like a cork, more or less immune to shock.
    We emerged from the building, the Toach and I, and turned left to continue along the ring-road. The crowd surrounded us and kept up with us at a respectful distance. Mnuvax beckoned to officials as he walked – they stepped forward, received murmured instructions, and turned away to follow his orders. This happened several times as we proceeded through the greyness of Vutu.
    A pathetic sight met my eyes as we came to the neighbourhood of the great dome which housed the orchards. All its doors were standing open, and higher portions of the dome had also been opened like skylights in a roof. The mini-giraffe creatures were being shooed out. Four of them were standing around, forlorn. A couple of young ones the size of foals skittered about in the excitement of momentary freedom. The inner portholes showed no light.
    We continued past that building and eventually came right round to the opposite side of the city. By this time the crowd with us had thinned so that we were accompanied only by about a score of citizens. These included Bryce and my family, who were now brought forward to meet us.
    An official came up to us bringing an armful of strap-bags. Bandolier-fashion, we put these on.
    Mnuvax addressed us, “Earth-minds Ren Nydr and Semor Recrecd! And you, the Ixlian Nydr family! You will set an example.” (We stood stiff and straight as I dare say is the custom on countless worlds when authority picks on you to set an example.) “My people,” the Toach went on, “must now change their food supply. Henceforth our diet will depend upon the rultan berry. Tmaeu will identify it for you.” He paused. Well, that didn’t sound so bad – picking berries. But the Toach had smiled ironically as he mentioned Tmaeu’s name, and I snapped out:
    “Sir, what did you mean about us ‘setting an example’?”
    “The only place the rultan bush still grows is in the North. My people, however, have a great superstition against the North. You will no doubt hear about that, too, from Tmaeu.”
    I glanced at Tmaeu and he glanced at me, with a look that might have belonged to a novice poker-player. Mnuvax continued: “Ren, you have won enormous respect. Your presence in the vanguard of the pickers will give the rest of them courage to overcome their fears, which they must do if we are to eat.”

                                                  *****

“Look, here’s one,” said Tmaeu.
    Our little group had been combing the rocky hillside for hours. We were scattered, some hundred yards between each individual, except for Tmaeu roving amongst us as he gave help and advice to one picker after another.
Now he pointed out the hooked-thorn shape of a rultan bush. It was well camouflaged, the same bluish grey as the pitted rock surface to which it clung. From the tip of the bush sprouted the cluster of stems, cherry-sized globes at the ends, all the same blending grey. I plucked, put the berries in my bag. In two Mercurian years, so I was told, another crop would have grown on the same bush. And let Mr Bryce worry if ashen-coloured, isolated “fruit” made no Earthly biological sense.
    We had been at the job for several wake periods. Quite a low-key existence compared to what had gone before! Each period, we worked our way a bit further from the city. Mnuvax sent us out in radial lines with untouched areas between the lines, so that some berries close to Vutu remained un-picked and could be harvested later, in rotation, to ensure a continuous supply.
    Tmaeu left me in order to undertake his next bit of supervision; I continued my scrutiny of the ground. I tried my best to follow the faint geological signs which he had explained would maximise my chances of finding more of the bushes. I had become really focused, down to the humdrum now.
    While stepping carefully along a wrinkly part of the slope, I heard footsteps. I looked up and saw Bryce come into sudden view from behind one of the minor ridges; Bryce breaking regulations again, leaving his assigned area.  He did this every so often for a surreptitious chat.
    “Any further thoughts, Hugh?” he asked in English.
    “No,” I replied.
    He looked down at his chest, where the faintly flashing number now read 880.
    “I know one thing,” he remarked. “I don’t fancy staying around to find out what happens when I get down to Nought.”
    “Nor do I,” I said. Though our display-numbers rose a bit when we delivered our harvested quotas, this was not enough to offset the regular subtraction after each wake-sleep. The trend was inescapably downward.
    “Hmm! It’ll take you a while longer to get to Nought, Ren Nydr 5448.”
    “I didn’t ask for this high number. I’d share it if I could.”
    “I know. Sorry. The real difficulty is, getting Fnekt and Opavedwa to agree. I can see their point of view. Staying here, facing Nought, might merely be spooky, nothing more. But if we try to escape, we certainly risk our lives, including their daughter’s.”
    We had had some disagreements, the family and I. Because our lives had gained a routine that seemed safe for the moment, I found it hard to put into words which my Mercurian parents could understand, my conviction that it was worth the risk to get out of here. I thought as Bryce did; I was all for escaping as soon as possible.
    Bryce grumbled, “We could simply walk away. Despite all the ancient rumours and the superstition, there’s nothing out here, in this dreaded North, that one needs to defend against, else the officers would carry guns.”
    “Either that,” I offered, “or what’s out here is so deadly that a gun would be no use against it.”
    “That’s a cheerful thought, Hugh.”
    “A fed-up thought, more like.” (Why shouldn’t I grumble a bit too?) “I wish I were somewhere else.”
    “Where would you most like to be?”
    “Er.... how about on a coach trip to the science museum in Manchester!”
    We both chuckled at that.
    Something made me turn round then. I saw Tmaeu, no doubt crossing back from his latest move, passing us by on the other side of the nearest rocky wrinkle. He waved, and I saw a smile on his face. The smile seemed too broad and I couldn’t think of any reason for it; certainly he ought not to be amused by anything he overheard in a language that he didn’t know.
    Bryce had not noticed anything, but he caught the look on my face, and asked me: “What are you perturbed about?”
    I didn’t want to go into it, for the last thing I wished to do was sow suspicion amongst ourselves. Besides, I had nothing much to go on. “Never mind,” I said, smiling at a sudden memory; “it’s not intellectually satisfying.”
    “Hey, that’s my phrase.”
    “Little do you know, Sir, how widely it got used!”
    “Oh, it was, was it?”
    “For example,” I grinned, “playing conkers, if one of us had a conker that was cracked we’d throw it away saying, ‘this conker isn’t intellectually satisfying’.”
    “Cheeky monkeys!” Bryce laughed heartily. “Lucky for you I didn’t know at the time! Or rather, lucky for me – it was hard enough as it was, keeping a straight face with you lot. The way Fred Jackson used to make digs at Croyland and Pullen – the way he sent them up....”
    “Actually you didn’t stay neutral, really, Sir,” I pointed out. “The way you said, ‘one isn’t supposed to laugh’! Tantamount to laughing, I’d say.”
    “Ha – yes, so I did, so it was….”
    “And what about your ‘picture is worth a thousand blurbs’ thing?”
    This time he ended up wheezing. I know it’s not at all funny on paper; only the living memory of the way he said it, confusing “a picture is worth a thousand words” with a previous comment on captions or “blurbs”, for when he really got going his phrases sometimes tumbled over one another in galloping enthusiasm. It was in fact quite sad, the way we two relied increasingly on memory to dwell in, as life became more and more monotonous during this berry-picking. The wake-sleeps wore on, we went further north, and our Vutuan overseers watched us less. The northern hills were shaped like waves of a solidified sea, and the Vutuan overseers sometimes stood on the tops of the waves, looking down at us in the troughs when they could, or following us down when they had to. After a while we camped out, no longer returning to the city after each picking session. All we were left with was the drear beauty of a bleak landscape unsuitable for human life. As for plans for escape, we knew we were going to make the attempt sometime; we were on the watch for opportunities. But we had run out of ideas.
    Memories became the only consolation. For my Ixlian family, that meant conjuring up thoughts and pictures of their home. For me (and I think for Bryce too), it wasn’t so much home – too precious to imagine without heartbreak – but rather school, that was just sufficiently colourful to provide a conveniently light mental escape. I could think of school without being stirred to my depths. I might contemplate my beautiful classmate Justine Lazenby, and wonder how she would cope if she were on Valeddom. It wasn’t at all a bad idea to think about an inspiring person. In my current situation, any idea was welcome that might help me to stand tall, though of course it was mad to suppose that I would ever see her again.

                                                 *****

We were perhaps five miles north of Vutu when we felt the ground tremble.
Supervision was so lax, that no guardian officials were in sight at all. We had gathered together, Bryce and we Nydrs, to debate our next move. If we decided to make a break for it, Bryce argued, maybe this was the time. On the other hand, objected Fnekt, it was, as usual, impossible to tell how big a circle we would need to make round the city, to avoid detection and pursuit.
    A sudden faint roar, and the quaking of the rocky hill on which we stood, added a new factor to our calculations. It wasn’t such a violent quake as to throw us off our balance, and it soon died down.  However, we couldn’t know whether it was the precursor of something more serious. And even as it was, it was an alarming enough hint of distant power.
    “Is this what the Vutuans are afraid of?” Bryce wondered aloud. “Let’s ask Tmaeu – hey, where’s he gone?”
    I pointed to where our Vutuan relative had wandered. He was some fifty yards off and was standing alone, staring north.
    Fnekt said angrily, “Why haven’t they told us what they know? They may not know everything but they know more than we do. I’m not saying anything against Tmaeu – he left Vutu at an early age; he may not know much. But the others....”
    Bryce agreed, “It’s mean of them not to tell us.”
    “And why,” said Opavedwa, “have we been such fools as not to ask them?”
    “That’s the question, mother,” approved Haffnem. “It’s like, we have been put under some dopey spell. Eh, Ren? Do you agree?”
    “If you want to put it that way,” I said. “But don’t think of it as a plot against us. Perhaps I’d better tell you.... it’s rather important....”
    “Tell us what?” they all said.
    “The secret of Vutu.”
    A hush fell as the others looked at me sharply, perhaps ready to receive - because of my hudar reputation - what had at last become clear to me.
    “Vutuans,” I finally said, “are not, mostly, what we would call conscious. You could even say, that they’re not actually alive.”
    My little audience was hanging on my every word, prepared for the worst that I could say – they were ready to accept even the most costly answer as better than none.
    “Not alive,” I went on, “in the sense that we are.”
    “Oh – oh,” winced Haffnem, “what do you mean?”
    “Steady! To begin with, you must have noticed the way they never look you in the eye.”
    Fnekt muttered, “They’re a shifty lot, that’s for certain.”
    “I used to think so,” I said, “ – I used to think that was it. But no, they’re not ‘shifty’, not at all; the fact is, they’re just not interested in personal contact.”
    “Unsociable?” ventured Opavedwa.
    “It’s not that, either.  Actually they’re very sociable.  I expect they have a whole library of situations in their heads, and each one that comes along, click! is matched to its type, so they never fail at conversation.”
    “Is what you’re driving at,” said Bryce, “that they just run their city on instinct?”
    “Got it in one! Like the social insects on Earth with their hives and nests.”
    The horror began to register with all of them. Either they knew what I meant because ‘social insects’ exist on Valeddom too, or else they had heard of ours.
    “I may be exaggerating,” I went on after about some seconds of appalled silence. “Possibly they have their human moments.  But for the most part they run on automatic. All that matters to them, is matching attitudes to events. By the book, as it were.”
    “Why?” asked Haffnem. “Why should they have become like that?”
    “Who knows? It may have begun with the importance of putting on a brave show when things were hard. In which case, it ended with the brave show being all. For most of them, most of the time, anyway.”
    Fnekt shook his head. “We of Ixli have had our theories about the Vutuans. This horrible idea of yours – it fits.”
    Bryce murmured, “Gesture politics gone mad.... but let’s try and put it more scientifically than that. Their environment....”
    I headed him off. “There’s something else Fnekt wants to say.”
    Fnekt nodded grimly. “While Tmaeu is out of earshot.” He looked hard at his daughter. “Haff, can you look at this objectively? He is one of them.”
    “No,” she whispered. “He escaped them, remember? As a boy, he ran from them. He’s different! You’ve got to believe that!”
    “But was it all arranged? We must consider the possibility that he, too....”
    “Is on automatic?” flared Haff. “Is that what you were going to say? And yet you know him! The truth is, you’ve never liked him.”
    “You are quite wrong. The truth,” said Fnekt patiently, “is that I do like him. It is because of that bias in his favour that I have to be careful.”
    “Wait,” said Bryce. He spoke so suddenly that I looked round and saw that Tmaeu was strolling back towards us. But that wasn’t why Bryce had said “wait”. Rather, he was bursting to contribute a new insight. Dropping into enthusiastic-teacher mode, he released a flood of verbiage. “We all recognize,” he said, “that Ren has hit upon what is broadly speaking the answer to the mystery of Vutu, but he’s also admitted that there are exceptions. I reckon Mnuvax Veffih and Hyth Siedr are exceptions; I reckon that if we gathered the data we would find that the incidence of Vutuan consciousness obeys not a normal distribution but a power-law distribution, in which a few special cases render normal averages meaningless....”
    An English voice said, “Well done, Sir. Intellectually satisfying!”
    I whirled. Tmaeu had come into earshot.  It was as if a rug had been pulled from under me.  Not even the fact that his words were spoken in English jolted me as did their tone.  A tone that filled me with amazement because it was one I recognized.
    “Jacko!” I yelped. And then I went dumb.
    Petrified by my own certainty, now that the bolt of information had slammed into my head, I could almost forget Tmaeu’s Mercurian face and form; here, millions of miles from Earth, stood the rich, self-confident American lad I had known at school.
    Jackson/Tmaeu winced, “Yeah, but don’t give me earache.” He added, “I’ve got something to confess to you guys.” The last word of that sentence was spoken in English.
    “Yes,” I said frozenly, “I should think you do have some explaining to do.” Then I threw off the straitjacket of shock. A warm solemnity, a wave of companionship, must thaw the differences between exiles who meet on an alien world. I strode forward with outstretched hand.

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