Optical amplifiers turned the stars into a sphere of dazzlement, bright ones become beacons, thousands upon thousands more leaping into visibility, the Milky Way a river of frozen fire, the Andromeda galaxy a glowing maelstrom. Only the pinpoint neutron star was dulled, lest it sear eyes that strayed in its direction. Ten kilometers distant, the boat Herald gleamed like a splinter off a sword.

Dayan and Brent gave the splendor no heed. Their attention was on the bulky nexus of a metal spiderweb, five kilometers wide, slowly spinning, its concavity always facing the pulsar. Spacesuited, they floated before the mass, touching a gripsole to the extended lattice whenever they needed to correct a recoil-drift, plying tools and meters with hands that power joints and tactile contractors made as deft as if bare. Nonetheless it was a demanding task. Each heard the breath of the other loud through radio earplugs, and recycling did not fan away all smell of sweat.

Finally Brent nodded. "Yep, what I suspected. Imbalance in the main data reducer. That program's gone abobble. Not much, but enough. No wonder the input you were getting stopped making sense."

"At first I thought we might have stumbled on some wild new phenomenon —" Dayan laughed. "No, this is better. We've more mysteries pouring in on us already than we can handle." Her mirth thinned out into the light-years around. "How soon can we have this unit working right? The gravity waves from the starquakes — what they have to tell about the interior —"

"We can replace the whole module right now. The robots keep spares of everything, don't they? The question is, will we get the same problem again soon? What mutated the program?"

"I've been thinking about that since you first suggested the possibility." Dayan started plucking her implements from the lattice where they clung and securing them to her harness. It was a near-automatic task; her gaze went afar, her voice meditative. "We did record a partial reflection of the southern pulsar beam off something — seemed to be a drifting molecular cloud, maybe a remnant of the eruption — and it may well have happened to strike the reducer here. That'd probably be plenty to scramble a few electronic configurations. A weird accident, sheer bad luck, but we have to expect weirdness. . . ."

His look dwelt on her. The spacesuit muffled the curves of the small body, but clear within the helmet stood large eyes, curved nose, full lips, fair skin; the amplification gave just a hint of colors, but he knew the bound hair was flame red and could fall loosely down over her shoulders.

"So the stupid robots couldn't figure out what the trouble was, and hollered for us," he said.

"They're only as good as their programs, Al, and the programs are only as good as our knowledge and foresight."

"Yeah. Well, let's get this fixed and head home for Envoy."

Every array that the expedition deployed had its machine attendants, to monitor and maintain. Brent snapped an order.

Waiting, there alongside the great web, among the stars, Dayan regarded him for a silent while. "I'm sorry if this has inconvenienced you, Al," she said.

"Huh?" She had not before seen him taken quite so off balance. "Inconvenience? Why, no, no. I thought you were impatient to get back. Me, I'm, uh, happy to do anything useful. That's what I came along for."

"And to shorten the time for yourself till we go home, not so? Nothing wrong with that. We all miss Earth."

"Well, but —" He cleared his throat. "Hanny, working like this, together with you, it's special. I'm almost sorry we'll soon be done. Anytime you want —"

A blackness crossed the Milky Way. "Here comes the repair robot." Dayan sounded more relieved than the event called for.

The shape — octopuslike, starfishlike, machine — approached on thin, invisible jets. The humans saw a flash of its optics. It passed within meters, seemed to wobble for a second or two, and moved on, shrinking into the heavens.

"What the fuck?" Brent shouted. "Come back, you bastard!"

"Something's wrong," Dayan said fast. "Its program's deranged, too. Same cause?" She grabbed a radar gun, aimed, squinted at the reading, put it aside and took an ionoscope. "It cut jets off as it came near. Safety doctrine. But then it didn't maneuver to dock. It just stayed on trajectory. It's falling free, bound for infinity."

"And it's got the module. I'll go after it." Brent took hold of the lattice and swung himself around.

"No!" Dayan said. "Not safe. Too much momentum there for your suit drive to handle."

"I'll match vectors, lock on, decelerate —"

"No, I say. You're not outfitted for any such operation."

"Damn it, Hanny, we don't have a proper replacement for that robot, and the module it's carrying  —  Don't you want this rig fixed?"

"Not if it risks a life."

Kilbirnie had been listening throughout. Her voice purred on the radio. "Dinna fash yersel's. I'll fetch yon runagate."

"What?" Dayan cried. "No, Jean, the parameters — too high, too uncertain — you could end with the boat stove in."

Kilbirnie's tone jubilated. "Aye, 'twould be nice to have one of those slippy-slidey Tahirian hookers, but I'll barge guid auld Herald around handily enough. Guaranteed."

"No! I forbid —"

"Hanny, aboard Envoy you're acting captain, but piloting my craft I am in command of her. You shall have your module back, to plug in by yourself, and your robot back to fix, and may Clerk Maxwell bless your science. Colin," they heard Kilbirnie say to the Tahirian who had most avidly accompanied them, "pay attention, now, for the day may come when you take this helm." Probably en caught her gist. They had become rather close.

A fire streak, faint even when amplified — the plasma drive was efficient — shot Herald across the star throngs. She drew nearer, swelled in sight, a barracuda hunting. Fire; rotate along three precise axes; fire; at the end, quantumlike delicacy of pounce and drift. A cargo hatch opened. The robot glided in as if borne on a springtime breeze. The hatch closed. "We've got our fish," Kilbirnie called.

"W-w-well done," Dayan perforce said.

"Och, 'twas nowt. I hope it showed what I can do. And now I ask for my reward, Hanny, that I may take Tim down onto the planet for his own work."

Autumn did not flame as in remembered lands on Earth. Colors went wan, sometimes gray, oftener dun or fallow. Some leaves held fast, some died and blew away on the wind. Yet skies pulsed with migratory wings, forests rustled with migratory feet, cries resounded, and in the country where Terralina lay the rapidly shortening days were mostly brilliant and the chill tingled in human blood.

Nansen and Yu strode to and fro across the meadow. He had received her in his cottage, which doubled as his office, but the hoped-for report she brought had immediately made them unable to sit still. Though they were not far from the settlement, it appeared small against its backdrop of woods, beneath scudding clouds whose shadows raced over the ground. Wind whistled, rumpled their hair, laved their cheeks like a glacial river.

"Yes," Yu said through the noise, "it is quite clear. Ajit has determined the meanings beyond any further doubt."

Nansen smiled down at her. "He didn't do that entirely by himself."

"Oh, I handled the physics, of course. But the interpretation of — of what goes beyond any physics we know — that was his. There is definitely life at the black hole. Intelligent life."

"How?"

"Emil and his friends still haven't been able to convey any explanation. We are not sure whether the Tahirians themselves have more than ... an educated guess. They don't think in the same fashion as us. They express their science in different ways. For example, do you remember the dimensions they use?"

"In what sense of 'dimensions'?"

"The basic quantities of their dynamics are not mass, length, and time, but energy, electric charge, and space-time interval."

"Oh, yes. That."

"It was one reason the texts they prepared for us were so incomprehensible, until Hanny deduced what the situation must be. And that example is almost trivial. If she were here, we'd make faster progress. I can only gnaw my way ahead."

He laughed. "I'd call you a very effective little rodent. You've found out enough about the field drive that you can build one for us —"

"No, no, please. I have explained that we can't retrofit Envoy or her boats. They are too integrated with their existing systems. I do think we can add a unit that will make us more comfortable under acceleration, but any real shipbuilding must await our return to Earth."

"Where they may already long have had such craft." Nansen glanced at her again. "Didn't I understand you to say you have also something new about the zero-zero drive?"

She nodded. "It is not the happiest discovery. The Tahirians found, long ago, that there is a random possibility of quantum gate malfunction. The Bose-Einstein condensate goes unstable and the energy from the substrate is not returned through it in full. The differential is slight, but apparently ample to cause destruction. They believe such accidents account for a number of disappearances in their starfaring days, ships that set forth and were never heard from again."

Nansen scowled. "Ay!"

"Oh, the probability is minute, and decreases with quantum gate capacity. Given our gamma of five thousand, the danger to us is negligible. Even lesser ships are far more at risk from the ordinary hazards of space."

"However, it may have helped discourage the Tahirians."

"I doubt that. Would we humans let it deter us? I think Ajit must be right in his opinion, the society went more and more conservative for a variety of reasons. Although —"

The wind shrilled. "Yes?" prompted Nansen after several seconds.

"I don't know." He heard the trouble in her voice. "Something else in the equations — what they imply — Emil says en doesn't know. It's obviously not common knowledge, at least not in this era. As if — as if it is so terrible that none of those who do know care to speak of it."

Nansen recalled the hint that Peter had refused to clarify. "Something not obvious to every theoretical physicist. Something we probably wouldn't take on faith. I think we can — you and Hanny can get help, however, in working it out yourselves."

"I have an impression the Tahirians learned it at the black hole, perhaps from the beings there."

"And fled from it?"

"We are not sure, Ajit and I."

He thrust uneasiness from him. "We can go and learn."

"Perhaps," she said with care. "I think we would also need Tahirian help in dealing with them, the Tahirian . . . feel... for quantum mechanics. Surely this . . . life ... is a quantum-level phenomenon."

"Oh, we'd have Tahirians happy to sign on. Emil, Esther, Fernando, Colin, Stefan, and more. We've infected them with dreams of a new age of discovery." Nansen smote fist in palm. "Dios mio, what a discovery yonder! It could change our whole perspectiva on — on everything. If science finds life is not purely material  —  Oh, Wenji!"

He stopped in the middle of the field. She did, too. He whirled about and embraced her. A shadow flew across them. It went past and the sunlight struck blindingly.

He let go and stepped back. "I beg your pardon and Ajit's," he said. "Once again I do."

She smiled. "What, shall the captain never show his feelings? Don't freeze into that armor of yours, Ricardo Nansen. Stay ready for your own time."

Seen by enhanced starlight, the planet on the ground was black, gray, white, here and there a steely blue shimmer. Cleland and Kilbirnie rode over a valley buried under two kilometers of ice, a landscape riven, pocked, often tilted up in great blocks. Afar reared a conical mountain. A few kilometers behind them, a murky escarpment cut off the opposite horizon. Atop it Herald sheened tiny against the unnaturally brilliant constellations. A shelter dome had been erected nearby. Aboard the boat, scanning through its optics, Colin followed the humans' progress  —  enviously?

The pair sat on a carrier robot. Gear secured to it hid most of the long body. A balloon bobbed overhead at the end of a three hundred-meter cable, bearing instruments to study the ghostly atmosphere, like a grotesque moon. The thud of the robot's six feet, conducted through its metal, was the only sound that came to the riders.

They had said little since they left camp. Cleland was occupied with his visual recorder, surveyor, gravitometer, and whatever else he could wield in the saddle, or simply with gazing around. Kilbirnie lacked his professional appreciation, but the country was interesting, unique, in its stark fashion. Besides, conversation had become a bit difficult. There was a certain new tension between them, unexpressed, not unfriendly; two people and one nonhuman alone on an entire world. . . .

Yet when at length Cleland spoke into his radio transmitter he sounded nearly cheerful. "Whoa, Dobbin." He touched controls. The robot stopped. Twisting his neck to see her, he said, "You can get off now and stretch your legs."

"Whoosh! Best word I've had since 'Breakfast's ready.' " Kilbirnie dismounted, trotted ten or twelve meters over the rough surface, and began to do limbering exercises as well as possible in a spacesuit. "Why here?"

Cleland had descended, too. "Several considerations. We don't want to go beyond sight of the boat or ready return to her. This is a promising spot to take what measurements we can, seismic, isotopic analysis, the works, and a core down to the rock."

"How can you tell?"

He smiled shyly at her through his helmet, across the ground between under the stars and the swaying false moon. "A hunch, based on experience. We may get some notion of where these volatiles came from. And, of course, what's going on in the solid body. Solid-liquid, I should say. To judge by what I've been able to observe and guesstimate so far, the molten component of the core is huge."

"Not so huge as my thirst for beer will be when we return to camp. Aye, let's get busy." Kilbirnie ceased her motions and started back to assist him.

The glacier rumbled, as if the sound going through it were a giant machine. A shock threw Cleland off his feet. He staggered up, to see the wave of ruin rush across the valley. Ice split, sundered, spun aloft in flinders, crashed down, and shattered into dust that glittered like tiny stars.

He saw it gape open at Kilbirnie's back. She lurched and went over the edge, out of his sight.

Quake! Shouldn't be! And just here, just now! "Jean!" he screamed. A grinding answered.

He stumbled over frozenness that still trembled, to the verge of the cleft. Six meters wide and fifty long, it plunged into sudden gloom. He dropped on all fours and stared over. Ten meters down, he gauged in a part of his mind not lost in nightmare, ten meters down to a bottom covered with broken chunks. In amplified light the sides shimmered an outrageously delicate blue. Kilbirnie was a blot of shadow and glints. "Jean!" he yelled again.

"Aye." he heard. The mass had screened off their radios.

"Are you hurt, darling?"

"Not badly. I didn't fall, I slid and rolled."

"I'm coming." He moved to crawl over the edge.

"No, you gowk!" Her shout knifed his eardrums. "Not both of us! Too steep. We canna climb back."

Another quake growled and shuddered. It was less violent than the first, but pieces of ice cracked off and rattled into the depths. "I'll call Colin —"

"No! En's only learned to lift the boat into space. Trying to land here, he'd crash her. Go get a line and come haul me out."

Numbed, he backed off. "Colin," he said idiotically, "hang on. Tell 'em when Envoy comes over the horizon. Wait for me."

The ground shook anew. More lumps broke free and fell. Riding the robot at full, reckless tilt, he'd take at least an hour to reach the scarp, climb it, and fetch a cable. And another hour to return. How much turmoil did the planet have left? It shouldn't have had any. A molten metallic ball should quickly have reached equilibrium and spent the next few billion years quietly cooling off. But — currents in it, differential congealing, unsettled crust? — he had come here hoping to do real science, hoping to find surprises.

He ran toward the robot. The glacier groaned underfoot. The balloon swung on high against darkness at the end of its tether.

"Yes!" For a second Cleland's vision blurred, tears of joy.

No time to waste, though. He started the winch. While it reeled in the line, he got out a small ion torch. It was intended for assembling parts of the geophysical observatory he had meant to establish here. Too bad. No, glorious. He thanked the God in Whom he did not believe.

Ten meters, make it twenty to be sure, don't stop to pull in any more. The torch flared, wire glowed white and parted; the balloon wobbled off, trailing a tail of the rest. The equipment it bore away  —  An offering for Jean's life, he thought. Superstition? Never mind, if it works. He uncoiled what he had retrieved, slashed it free of the winch, looped it around his shoulder, and headed back.

Again the valley shook, and again, and again. Lumps tumbled into the crevasse. A few struck Kilbirnie, glancing blows that sent her asprawl. She bounded up at once, for the wreckage on the bottom was shifting about as the temblors rolled, grabbing like jaws that could bite armor and bone in two. She danced for her life upon them, across them. She wolf-howled, half in defiance, half in glee. She was too busy for terror. But she could know that in this moment she was totally alive.

Cleland fought his way to the rim. He laid the cable down, made a loop at one end for a stirrup, secured it with a quick torch blast. "Do you see me?" he called. "I'm lowering a line to you from here. Can you find it?"

No response. The last quake ebbed away. He lay on his belly, helmet over the edge, and peered, frantic. A sob caught in his throat. She was there, crawling over the chaos in his direction. He payed out the cable, felt it slither along the ice walls and knock on the chunks below. She reached it and took hold. He backed a short distance off for safety's sake, rose, threw a bight over his waist, and began to haul, hand over hand. It went slowly, friction and weight allied against him. He gasped. Should he have brought the robot and its winch? He'd been in too big a hurry to stop and think, and it was too late now. His arms ached, pain cut into his hands through the gloves. Still he hauled.

Over the top!

He kept stance till she had crept well clear of the gap. Then he let go and rushed to her. Once he tripped and fell. She rose as he did. He saw that her radio antenna was gone, doubtless the whole set bashed out of commission. But she stood there, swaying a bit, grinned at him through her helmet, and opened her arms to give him a hug.

A rapid star lifted over the scarp. Cleland set for relay via Herald. "She's okay!" he cried to Envoy. "Do you hear? She's all right!"

The ride back to the boat was not entirely silent. They exchanged some words by touching helmets together. Mainly she assured him that no bones were broken. However, she wasn't unhurt. Though a spacesuit resisted impacts, shock was transmitted. Also, she'd been thrown clown and tossed about more than once. He rigged a harness to keep her in the saddle behind him. As they rocked along, he felt her slump forward against him, asleep.

The jolting climb up the cliff roused her. When they stopped at camp and he dismounted to help her off, he saw how she set her jaw against pain. Colin stood anxiously by in ens own suit, clasping a parleur. Kilbirnie took it from en and wrote a message. Cleland couldn't see what it was. The Tahirian seemed to protest. Kilbirnie made an emphatic gesture. Colin yielded — nonplussed? — and set to work unloading the robot. Kilbirnie tugged Cleland's arm and pointed at the shelter.

She leaned on him, limping, as they made their way to it. Here the ground was naked dark metal, some places jagged, some almost mirror-smooth, under the fantastic stars. Herald stood upright on her jacks, a shining watchtower. Beyond lay the dome of the shelter and the adjacent squat housing of its power unit — laboratory, workshop, and home for the three living creatures on the world. While they waited for the airlock to exchange atmospheres, he and she felt in their faces the infrared light that baked the skins of their spacesuits free of a cold their flesh had better not touch.

They passed through to the cramped, crowded interior. Its brightness turned viewports into circles of black. Three flimsy partitions marked off the sections where she slept, he slept, and they took care of personal hygiene. Colin's arrangements were out amidst the assorted apparatuses; privacy was irrelevant to en, here, and maybe not even a Tahirian concept.

The humans took off their helmets and breathed warm, sweet-scented air. "Ahh," Kilbirnie sighed. " 'Tis like coming in from the final exam for a pilot's commission to a friendly pub."

Despite the jest, her voice had been ragged. "How — how are you?" Cleland stammered.

"Bruised, battered, thirsty, and bluidy damn glad," she laughed. "Also overdressed, both of us."

"Yes. Let me help you —"

She accepted, though the outfits could be donned and doffed singlehandedly. Sweat plastered her skinsuit to the lean body. He stared at darker stains. "You're . . . wounded," he said. "Oh, Jean, Jean."

"Bumps and abrasions, no worse." The blue gaze speared him. "Before you start beating your breast over how this is your fault, Tim Cleland, remember what a supersonic boom I trailed in my rush to come along. I thank you for my life. Now shuck your gear so you can be useful."

While he scrambled free of his suit, she went to the cooler, snatched a beer, and drained it in three gulps. "Ah-h-h, la agua verdadera de la vida." She saw him wince. "But how are you, Tim? Are you hurt?"

"No. No, nothing worth mentioning." Except by hearing the Spanish from her.

"Good, oh, very good. Well, I do ache and twinge and creak. If we'd not have me disabled tomorrow — and we flinking well want to pick up our science again, don't we? — best treat it richt the noo. First a hot shower. Meanwhile, lay out the medicines, will you?"

Kilbirnie disappeared behind the bath partition. He heard water gush from overhead tap to recycler tank. Steam eddied forth. He racked their outfits and sought the medical cabinet. Topical analgesics, hemolyte, cell-repair promoter  —  He arranged them on the table off which they ate their meals, mechanically, his head spinning. Over and over he read the instructions, as if he didn't know them by heart as any spacefarer must, while the water pounded and steamed.

It stopped. A hot airstream brawled.

She emerged. The bruises were just beginning to show. Mostly, she glowed. Still damp, the brown hair clung to her head, and droplets glistened between her thighs. She laughed aloud. "Och, the look on ye! Be practical, man. I've contusions in places where I canna slather on the salves myself. You may as well do them all. Enjoy."

"You, you c-c-could have asked Colin," he said through the roar in his ears.

"Clumsy, explaining where and how with a parleur." She raised the tumbler of water he had filled and swallowed two of the internal medications.

"The — the general painkiller and, uh, sleeping pill. . ." he reminded her.

"Not yet. If at all. Numbness is so boring. Come, don't stand there like a geological specimen."

He put some ointment on his palm and stroked it between her shoulderblades. "Well, that's a start," she purred. "Harder, though. And now here." She arched her back beneath his hand. "Rr-r-r-r, excellent. You're a quick learner."

The injuries were actually rather few, on shins, elbows, knees, hips, arms. He was soon done. "Ah, thanks. It's like little hotpads." She took his hands in hers. "Now wipe the rest of the stuff off, so it doesn't get where it's not wanted." She rubbed his palms over her sides.

"Jean, Jean," he croaked. "I don't —"

"What I told Colin," she said, "was to be a good fellow and bunk in the boat this nightwatch. You might have felt embarrassed." She led his hands to her breasts. The nipples stood straight. Her arms went around his neck. "This brushing by death, it wakes up quite a wish for life."

"I — Jean, I... I'm filthy, I stink —"

"You smell of man. Come along, now."

Much later, when they had told the lighting to turn off and lay on the pallets they had dragged together, she murmured in his ear, "You do understand, don't you, Tim, dear? I'm fond of you, but this is only something that happened." His even breath replied; he did not stir in his sleep. "I suppose it should keep on happening while we go around this star," she sighed into the dark. "You are such a sweet lad."