He thought he would climb high enough to get a comprehensive view of the native thermal reserve and the land surrounding it. If anything stirred down there he should stand a good chance of seeing it in the bright moonlight. He found the track that Rua used on his evening walks and felt better for the stiff climb. Someone had suggested half-heartedly that they should at intervals call out to Questing but Dikon could not bring himself to do this. A vivid imagination stimulated by the conviction that Questing was most horribly dead made the idea of shouting his name quite appallingly stupid. However, he had promised to search so he climbed steadily until he reached a place where the reserve was spread out before him in theatrical relief. It had the curious and startling unreality of an infra-red photograph. ‘If it wasn’t so infernally alive,’ he thought, ‘it would be like a lunar landscape.’ He could see that the reserve was more extensive than he had imagined it to be. It was pocked all over with mud pots and steaming pools. Far out toward its eastern border he caught a glimpse of a delicate jet that spurted from its geyser and was gone. ‘It’s a lost world,’ Dikon thought. He reflected that a man lying in one of the inky shadows would be quite invisible and decided that he had had his climb for nothing. He looked at the slopes of the hill immediately beneath him. The short tufts of grass and brush were motionless. He wandered about a little and was going to turn back when he sensed, rather than saw, that beneath him and out to his left something had moved.

His heart and his nerves were jolted before his eyes had time to tell him that it was only Mr Septimus Falls, moving quietly along the white-flagged path across the reserve. As far as he could make out, Mr Falls was bent forward. Dikon remembered Simon’s theory and wondered if, after all, it was so preposterous. But Mr Falls was still well within the bounds that he himself had set, though he walked fairly rapidly towards the forbidden territory. Dikon realized with a sudden pang of interest that he was moving in a very singular manner, running when he was in the moonlight and dawdling in the shadows. The mound above Taupo-tapu was easily distinguishable; Mr Falls had almost reached the limit of his allotted patrol. ‘Now,’ Dikon said, ‘he must turn.’

At that moment a cloud passed before the face of the moon and Dikon was alone in the dark. The reserve, the path and Mr Falls had all been blotted out.