Broh’s message explained that everything in the previous communication was the result of overwork and overworry and the pressures of a difficult command in which he did not yet feel comfortable. No monsters existed, no contact had been made with a spherical black alien craft, and he, Broh, had been dispatched to a rest facility for a vacation. He was feeling quite chipper, and she should not worry. Someday he would explain in more detail about the nightmares that could afflict one in Deep Space, and they would both have a fine long-range laugh over it.

Fal replayed the message a second time for Ryo. He absorbed it and immediately agreed that it explained sensibly everything that had gone before. It was not even necessary to repeat it at a slower speed because he’d arrived at a similiar conclusion about the first message on his own. It was good to have his theory confirmed.

Clearly Broh had dictated the message himself, for his own face was imprinted on the bottom of the communication. And to allay any possible lingering suspicion on Ryo’s part, Fal had confirmed the message’s authenticity via a brief, terribly expensive personal voice-picture conversation with Broh himself, on Hivehom, a copy of which conversation she played for Ryo.

The whole incident had been a fantasy that had been precipitated by a bad dream. No longer would it cloud their lives. Ryo was quite in agreement, even chiding her for having to show the recording to him. The first communication had not so much as tickled his thoughts since the meeting in the clan hall.

Now he had to rest, for tomorrow would be a difficult day in the jungle. There was tiresome clearing to supervise, and would she please stop troubling him with such trivialities?

But during sleeptime he lay conscious and awake, his thoughts churning like a tropical storm. Something had forced Brohwelporvot to compose and transmit the second communication. Something or someone had decided to cover matters with the one person, however indifferent, who’d been informed of things she ought not to know.

Half a season passed. The incident seemed completely forgotten. Life was easy and smooth with him and Fal. The discreet surveillance the hive council had set on Ryo was gradually withdrawn.

He received the expected promotion to the local Inmot council and in-field supervison of clearing and planting passed to another. The bexamin vines throve, increasing still further his stature within the Company and the hive.

So when word came through Company channels that Ryo was required in Company council in Ciccikalk he showed no surprise and certainly no excitement over what was just a boring business trip to the capital. He made no unusual preparations for the trip and was normal in voicing his dismay at having to travel so far from home and hive. Only he knew as he sped southward that he would not be returning to Paszex very soon.

His otherwise empty eight-person module traveled fast and silent. The first night an unexpected bump jolted him awake, but it was only the sound of another module linking to his own. A few passengers boarded at the next stop. They took no notice of him. His anonymity would be preserved until he failed to appear at the Company council meeting. Then communications would pass querulously between Ciccikalk and Paszex. With luck it would be some time before his disappearance was linked to a possible recurrence of his youthful mental aberrations.