"The President's advocate and the Director of the Nexus will go down first," Ram Kikura said. "We follow, and then the Frants, and then the rest."

Oligand Toller, Hulane Ram Seija and their aides—two fish-shaped neomorphs and three homorphs—drifted toward the center of the vortex and were smoothly deposited on the pavement beneath the disk. Olmy urged his group down, and they tracted along the same path, feet touching ground a few meters from the President's party.

After months in Thistledown and the Way, Timbl's pull was something of a shock, like suddenly being saddled with heavy bricks. Patricia's knees sagged and her leg muscles protested. Heineman groaned and Carrolson's face looked strained.

Bus-sized, square, low-slung vehicles rolled up on large white wheels. As each person entered, Frants wrapped lift belts around them to lessen the effect of the heavier gravitation. Neomorphs, practically helpless without traction fields, were given special full-float belts that could be adjusted to fit their wide range of shapes.

"You should enjoy this," Ram Kikura told them as the bus rolled off the white pavement onto a broad, brick-colored road. "We're going to the beach."

The Frant world, she explained, served as a resort for humans and several other oxygen-breathing beings in the Way. Because the level of ultraviolet from the bright yellow-dwarf star was higher than humans were used to, an atmospheric shield had been erected over several thousand square kilometers. The resort lay in the shield's shadow.

"The ocean has few large carnivorous life forms—none that would want to eat humans, anyway—and the environment is clean. It's ideal. The vacation spot of choice for all who can afford to go—which is virtually any corporeal citizen."

The resort's long, low main building was in an ideal location, fronting a broad white quartz-sand beach on one side of a half-moon harbor. Each room had a patio and transparent doors with a choice of undisguised real scenery or various illusart displays. The furniture, in keeping with the Old Terrestrial motif of the resort, was real and unchangeable.

They ate lunch, their first meal on the Frant world, in a restaurant decorated in late-twentieth-century style, the food served by homorphs. Mechanical workers were not in evidence. After lunch, they walked to the resort buildings and Ram Kikura inspected their rooms carefully before letting them enter. They still wore their belts, though Lanier felt he was up to doing without. He would only remove his when Heineman did, however, and Heineman seemed content to leave it on.

Patricia looked around her room, then joined the others on Lanier's patio. Ram Kikura told them they could rest and swim for a few hours, and that she and Olmy would be nearby if they were needed. "They're taking a room for themselves upstairs," Carrolson said in a confidential tone after she had left.

"I think they're lovers."