First the Rothen awed us. Then we saw their "majesty" cut down by real power. What if it happens again? What kind of newcomer might overwhelm the fophur"A hovering mountain range? One that throws the whole Slope into night? He pictured successive waves of "ships," each vaster than before, matching first the moons, then all Jijo, and- why not?-the sun or even mighty Izmunuti!

Imagination is the most amazing thing. It lets a groundhugging savage fill his mind with fantastic unlikelihoods.

Churning bubbles nearly tore the rewq off his face as Ling sped up, kicking urgently. Lark hurried after . . . only to arrest himself moments later, staring.

Just ahead, Ling traced the golden barrier with one hand, just meters from a gaping opening. A hatchway, backlit by a radiant interior. Several figures stood in the portal-three humans and a Rothen lord, wearing his appealing symbiotic mask. The quartet surveyed their all-enclosing golden prison with instruments, wearing expressions of concern.

Yet, all four bipeds seemed frozen, embedded in crystal time.

Up close, the yellow coc.o.o.n resembled the preservation beads left by that alpine mule spider, the one whose mad collecting fetish nearly cost Dwer and Rety their lives, months back. But this trap was no well-shaped ovoid. It resembled a partly melted candle, with overlapping golden puddles slumped around its base. The Jophur had been generous in their gift of frozen temporality, pouring enough to coat the ship thoroughly.

Like at Dooden Mesa, Lark thought.

It seemed an ideal way to slay one's enemies without using destructive fire. Maybe the Jophur can't risk damaging Jijo's ecospbere. That would be a major crime before the great Inst.i.tutes, like gene raiding and illegal settlement.

On the other hand, the untraeki invaders hadn't been so scrupulous in scything the forest around their ship. So perhaps the golden trap had another purpose. To capture, rather than kill? Perhaps the g'Kek denizens of Dooden Mesa might yet be rescued from their shimmering tomb.

That had been Lark's initial thought, three days ago. In hurried experiments, more mule-spider relics were thawed out, using the new traeki solvents. Some of the preserved items had once been alive, birds and bush creepers that long ago fell into the spider's snare.

All emerged from their coc.o.o.ns quite dead.

Perhaps the Jophur have better revival methods, Lark thought at the time. Or else they don't mean to restore their victims, only to preserve them as timeless trophies.

Then, night before last, an idea came to Lark in the form of a dream.

The hivvern lays its eggs beneath deep snow, which melts in the spring, letting each egg sink in slushy mud, which then hardens all around. Yet the ground softens again, when rainy season comes. Then the bivvern larva emerges, swimming free.

When he wakened, the idea was there, entire.

A s.p.a.ceship has a sealed metal sh.e.l.l, like the hivvern egg. The Rothen ship may be trapped, but its crew were never touched.

Those within may yet live.

And now proof stood before him. The four in the hatchway were clearly aware of the golden barrier surrounding their ship, examining it with tools at hand.

Just one problem-they did not move. Nor was there any sign they knew? they were being observed from just a hoon's length away.

Treading water, Ling scrawled on her wax-covered note board and raised it for Lark to see.

TIME DIFFERENT INSIDE.

He fumbled with his own board, tethered to his waist.

TIME SLOWER?.

Her answer was confusing. PERHAPS.

OR ELSE QUANTIZED. FRAME-SHIFTED.

His perplexed look conveyed more than written words. Ling wiped the board and scratched again.

DO EXACTLY AS I DO.

He nodded, watching her carefully. Ling swished her arms and legs to turn away from the ship. Imitating her, Lark found himself looking across the poor wounded Glade. All the trees had been shattered by ravening beams, left to submerge under the rising lake. Turbid water made everything hazy, but Lark thought he saw? bones mixed among the splinters. Urrish ribs and hoonish spines, jumbled with grinning human skulls. Not the way bodies ought to be drossed. Not respectful of the dead, or Jijo.

Perhaps theJophur will let us seed a mule spider in this new lake, he mused. Something ought to be done to clean up the mess.

He was jarred by Ling's nudge. TURN BACK NOW, her wax board said. Lark copied her maneuver again . . . and stared in surprise for a second time.

They had moved!'

As before, statues stood in the hatchway. Only now their poses were all changed! One human pointed outward wearing an amazed look. Another seemed to peer straight at Lark, as if frozen in midrealization.

They did all this while we were turned away? Time's flow within the golden sh.e.l.l was stranger than he could begin to comprehend.

THIS MAY TAKE SOME DOING, Ling Wrote.

Lark met her eyes, noting they held tense, hopeful irony.

He nodded.

You could say that again.

I SPENT MOST OF THE RETURN TRIP WITH MY NOSE buried in my journal, reviewing all the things that I've seen and heard since Wuphon's Dream plunged below Terminus Rock. Pincer kindly chewed my pencil to a point for me. Then I lay down and wrote down the section before this one.

What began as a guess grew into reinforced conviction.

Concentration also diverted attention from nervous antic.i.p.ation and the pain in my slowly healing spine. My friends tried wheedling me, but I lapsed into hoonish stubbornness, refusing to confide in them. After all, the phuvnthus had gone to great lengths to hide their ident.i.ty.

The spinning voice said it was to protect us. Maybe that was just patronizing glaver dreck. Typical from grown-ups. But what if he told the truth? How can I risk my friends?

When the time comes, I'll confront the voice alone.

SHE DRIFTED IN A CLOUD OF MATHEMATICS. All around her floated arcs and conic sections, glowing, as though made of enduring fire. Meteors streaked past, coruscating along paths smoothly ordained by gravity.

Then more stately shapes joined the frolicking figures and she guessed they might be planets whose routes were elliptical, not parabolic. Each had its own reference frame, around which all other ma.s.ses seemed to move.

Rising, falling ...

Rising, falling ...

The dance spoke of a lost science she had studied once, in an obscure text from the Biblos Archive. Its name floated through her delirium-orbital mechanics-as if managing the ponderous gyres of suns and moons were no more complex than maintaining a windmill or waterwheel.

Dimly, Sara knew physical pain. But it came to her as if through a swaddling of musty clothes, like something unpleasant tucked in a bottom pantry drawer. The strong scent of traeki unguents filled her nostrils, dulling every agony except one . . . the uneasy knowledge-I've been harmed.

Sometimes she roused enough to hear speech . . . several lisping urrish voices . . . the gruff terseness of Kurt the Exploser ... and one whose stiff, pedantic brilliance she knew from happier days.

Purofsky. Sage of mysteries . . .

But what is he doing here?

. . . and where is here? *

At one point she managed to crack her eyelids in hopes of solving the riddle. But Sara quickly decided she must still be dreaming. For no place could exist like the one she witnessed through a blurry haze-a world of spinning gla.s.s. A universe of translucent saucers, disks and wheels, tilting and rolling against each other at odd angles, reflecting shafts of light in rhythmic bursts.

It was all too dizzying. She closed her eyes against the maelstrom, yet it continued in her mind, persisting in the form of abstractions.

A sinusoidal wave filled her mental foreground, but no longer the static shape she knew from inked figures in books. Instead, this one undulated like ripples on a pond, with time the apparent free variable.

Soon the first wave was joined by a second, with twice the frequency, then a third with the peaks and troughs compressed yet again. New cycles merged, one after another, combining in an endless series-a transform- whose sum built toward a new complex figure, an ent.i.ty with jagged peaks and valleys, like a mountain range.

Out of order . . . chaos . . .

Mountains brought to mind the last thing Sara had seen, before spilling off the volcano's narrow path, tumbling over sharp stones toward a river of fire.

Flashes from a distant peak . . . long-short, short-long, medium-short-short . . .

Coded speech, conveyed by a language of light, not unlike GalTwo . . .

Words of urgency, of stealth and battle . . .

Her mind's fevered random walk was broken now and then by soft contact on her brow-a warm cloth, or else a gentle touch. She recognized the long, slender shape of Prity's fingers, but there was another texture as well, a mans contact on her arm, her cheek, or just holding her hand.

When he sang to her, she knew it was the Stranger . . . Emerson ... by his odd accent and the way the lyrics flowed, smoothly from memory, as a liquid stream, without thought to any particular word or phrase. Yet the song was no oddly syncopated Earthling ballad, but a Jijoan folk ballad, familiar as a lullaby. Sara's mother sang it to her, whenever she was ill-as Sara used to murmur it to the man from s.p.a.ce, soon after he crashed on Jijo, barely clinging to life.

"One comes from an umbling sac, a song for you to keep, Two is for a pair of hands, to spin youhappy sleep, Three fat rings will huff and puff out clouds of happy steam, Four eyes wave and dance about, to watch over your dream, Five claws will carve your new hope box, all without a seam, Six will bring you flashing hooves to cross the prairie plain, Seven is for hidden thoughts, waiting in the deep, But eight comes from a giant stone, whose patterns gently creep."

Even half-conscious, she knew something important. He could not sing unless the words were stored deep within, beyond the scarred part of his brain. It meant she must have touched him, when their roles were reversed.

Not all the unguents in the world-nor the cool beauty of mathematics-could do as much for Sara. What finally called her back was knowing someone missed her, when she was gone.

wasx many days the important work that originally brought us here, even though it means leaving our comrades to make their own repairs in that eastern swamp, while our remaining corvette tours the Slope, photographing and recording evidence. It also gives us an opportunity to demonstrate the irresistible majesty of our power. We did this by destroying egregious structures that sooners should not use, if their goal truly is racial redemption.

IT IS NOTED THAT YOU WERE NOT MUCH HELP IN THIS WORK, MY RINGS. (Accept these reproaching jolts, as tokens of loving guidance.) Asx melted many memories, before capture and conversion, yet we/i did recall certain abominations. We gained credit, for instance, by helping target the Bibur River steamboats, and a refinery tower in Tarek Town, an edifice called the Palace of Stinks.

DON'T WORRY. In time, we of the Polkjhy will find all pathetic objects-of-sin prized by headstrong sooners. We shall help erase the flagrant hypocrisy of tool use among those who chose the Downward Path!

THERE WAS AN ENJOYABLE SENSE OF IMPORTANCE TO our task, was there not, My rings? There we stood, this stack of shabby-looking, retread toruses, deputized with a n.o.ble job-explaining to envoys of six races the new order of life on this world.

FIRST-they should not hope for great judges to come from those Inst.i.tutes who mediate among ten thousand starfaring races. Pa.s.sions run too high, throughout the Five Galaxies. Inst.i.tute forces have withdrawn, along with timid, so-called moderate clans, a dithering, ineffectual majority. Only great religious alliances show nerve nowadays, battling over which way the Galactic wheels shall turn during a time of changes.

WE ARE YOUR JUDGES, I told the amba.s.sadors. Out of kindness, we the Polkjhy crew have volunteered to serve as both posse and jury, chastening the seven races who invaded this world's fallow peace.

To demonstrate this benevolence, we have delayed by SECOND comes our unstoppable demand for justice. The High Sages showed surprising good sense by swiftly emitting a call, soon after our last meeting. A flicker of computer cognizance, leading our corvette to Dooden Mesa. But this token gesture will not suffice for long. We want every living member of the g'Kek race accounted for. That should not be too hard. Stranded on a roadless planet, they are singulariy immobile beings.

"Please do not destroy our wheeled brethren," the envoys entreat. "Let the g'Kek seek holy shelter down Redemption's Path. For is it not said that all debts and vendettas stop, once innocence is resumed?"

At first we see this as yet more lawyerly blather. But then, surprisingly, our senior Priest-Stack agrees! Moreover, that august pile makes an unusual, innovative suggestion- HERE IS THE QUESTION posed by the Priest-Stack: What kind of revenge on the g'Kek would transcend even extinction?

ANSWER: to see the g'Kek race become once again eligible for adoption, and for their new patrons to be Jophur In their second sequence of uplift, we might transform them as we see fit-into creatures their former selves would have disdained!

Vengeance is best when executed with imagination. This justifies bringing a priest along. Indeed, that stack variety has uses.

Of course this daring plan carries complications. It means refraining from informing the Five Galaxies about this sooner infestation. Instead, our Jophur clan must keep it secret, tending Jijo like our own private garden.

SO WE BECOME CRIMINALS, under Galactic law. But that hardly matters. For those laws will change, once our alliance a.s.sumes leadership during the next phase of history.

Especially if the Progenitors have indeed returned.

THIRD comes opportunity for profit. Perhaps the Rothen gene raiders were onto something. Jijo seems exceptionally rich for a fallow world. (The Buyur were good caretakers who left the planet filled with biopossibilities.) Might the Rothen have discovered a likely presentient race already? One ripe for uplift? Should we have bought off the gene raiders so we might have access to their data, instead of sealing them away in time?

REJECT THE NOTION. They are known blackmailers and double-crossers. We will bring in our own biologists to survey Jijo.

AND WHO KNOWS? Perhaps we might accelerate the sooner races along the path they seek! Glavers are already far progressed toward innocence. Hoons, urs, and qheuens have living star cousins who might object if we adopt too soon. But that may change as battle fires burn across the galaxies. As for human wolflings, at last word their homeworld was under siege, in desperate straits.

Perhaps those on Jijo are already the sole remnant of their kind.

THAT LEAVES OUR TRAEKI RELATIVES TO CONSIDER. The rebel stacks who came here sought to reject the gift of the Oailie-the specialized rings that give us purpose and destiny. It is wrenching to see traeki stumbling about like our pathetic ancestors. Such ungainly beings, so placid and unambitious! We should at once commence a program to create master rings in large quant.i.ties. Once converted, our cousins will be ideal instruments of dominance and control, able to knowledgeably run this planet for us without further cost to the clan.

ALL THESE CONCERNS SEEMED PARAMOUNT. Yet from the start, some members of the crew chafed at talk of vengeance, or profit, or redemption. Even the fate of local traeki seemed unimportant, compared with .the matter that brought the Polkjhy here in the first place.

Hints by the Rothen that they knew the whereabouts of the missing prey ship.

The prey ship carrying news of the Progenitors' return.

DROP ALL OTHER CONCERNS AT ONCE! these stacks insisted. Send the remaining corvette east! Do not wait for the first boat's crew to make repairs on their own. Fetch and interrogate the human-slaves-of-Rothen. Search deepwater places where the prey ship might be hiding. Delay no longer!

But our Captain-Leader and Priest-Stack agreed that a few more days would not matter. Our hold on this world is total. The prey cannot escape.

PALE DAYLIGHT PENETRATED THE LAKE TO WHERE A few drowned trees wafted their branches, as if to a gusting breeze. The rewq over his eyes helped him see, amplifying the dim glow, but Lark found the resulting shadows creepy, adding to a feeling that none of this could possibly be real.

Working underwater alongside Rann and Ling, he took part in an odd ritual, communicating with the trapped inhabitants of the preservation bubble. Since the process began, the hatchway of the imprisoned ship had filled with humans and Rothen, pressing eagerly against the gold barrier. Yet, from the outside no motion was seen. Those within were as still as statues, like wax effigies, depicting people with worried expressions.

Only when Lark and the other swimmers turned away, averting their gaze, did the "statues" change, shifting positions at incredible speed.

According to Ling's terse explanation, scribbled on her wax board, the captives lived in a QUANTUM SEPARATED WORLD. She added something about COGNIZANCE INTERFERENCE BY ORGANIC OBSERVERS and seemed to think that explained it. But Lark failed to see why not-looking should make any difference. No doubt Sara would understand better than her brother, the backwoods biologist. I used to tease her that the books she loved best were filled with useless abstractions. Concepts noJijoan would need again. Guess it just shows how little I knew.

To Lark the whole thing smacked of a particularly inconvenient kind of magic, as if the capricious G.o.ddess, Ifni, had invented the gold barrier to test the patience of mortals.

Fortunately, their micro-traeki rings provided the human swimmers with all the air they needed. When pressurized supplies ran out, the little toruses unfolded great feathery fans that waved through the lake water like lazy wings, sieving fresh oxygen for Lark and the others to breathe. Another impressive feature of the ever-adaptable ringed ones. Combined with the skink-skin wet suits and rewqs, it made the swimmers look like bizarre sea monsters to those inside the bubble. Finally, though, the prisoners set up an electronic message plaque that flashed words through the translucent barrier in shining Anglic letters.

WE MUST MAKE COMMON CAUSE, they sent.

So far, Lark's idea had been fruitful. Unlike at tragic Dooden Mesa, these prisoners had been sealed within an airtight hull that, kept the golden liquor from swamping their bodies and life-support machinery. Moreover, the chill lake carried away enough heat so their idle engines did not broil them. They were surrounded, enmeshed in strange time. But they were alive.

When Lark stared at one of the Rothen masters, he easily made out the creature's facade. Rewq-generated colors divided its charismatic features, so n.o.ble in human terms, into two parts, each with its own aura. Across the upper half lay a fleshy symbiont beast, shaped to provide the regal brow, high cheeks and trademark stately nose. A gray deadness told that some kind of synthetic lens insert lay over the Rothen's eyeb.a.l.l.s, and the fine white teeth were artificially capped.

It's an impressive disguise, he thought. Yet even without masks the Rothen were remarkably humanoid, a resemblance that no doubt originally spurred their cunning plan to win over some impressionable Earthlings back in the frantic, naive days soon after contact, turning those converts into a select tribe of loyal aides-the Daniks. If handled right, it would let the Rothen pull quite a few capers using human intermediaries to do the dirty work. And if Daniks were caught in the act, Earth would get the blame.