Waela moved her tongue against her teeth. She felt that she had lost track of time. She had been out of her body in some new place, but now she knew her body better than ever before. Images. She recalled the earlier, more terrible moments off the south coast of The Egg when she had sprawled on a kelp leaf, fighting for her sanity. This recent experience in the gondola was not the same, but one partook of the other. In both, she felt the aftermath as a loosening of her identity and a mixing of linear memories, shaking bits of her past out of place.

Thomas unfastened his seat restraints, stood and peered out through the filtering plaz. He felt that something had reached into his psyche and drained away the energy. What are we doing here? How did we get here?

There was no sign of hylighters.

What are Avata?

The gondola had been deposited in a broad pocket of flat land surrounded by a rock rim. The place looked vaguely familiar. The outline of the west rim . . . He stared at it, caught up in a fugue state of attempted recollection.

“Where are we?” That was Waela.

His throat was too dry to respond. It took a moment of convulsive attempts to swallow before he could speak.

“I . . . think we’re somewhere near Oakes’ Redoubt. Those rocks—” He pointed.

“Where’s Kerro?”

“Not here.”

“He can’t be outside. The demons!”

She stood and stared all around over the obstructing panels of instruments, craning her neck to peer every direction. That fool poet! She looked up at the hatch. It was still open.

In that instant an LTA drifted over the rim of rocks to the west; the glare of Rega setting ringed it in a golden halo. The LTA was valved down to a landing beside the gondola, the hiss of its loud vents stirred up the dust. The gondola was a conventional landside type, armored against demons and studded with weapons. The side hatch opened a crack and a voice called from within: “You can make it if you run! No demons near.”

Hastily, Waela stood and slipped into her suit. It was like putting on familiar flesh. She felt her sense of identity firming.

I must not think about what has happened. I’m alive. We’re rescued.

But somewhere within her she thought she heard a voice crying names: “Kerro . . . Jim . . . Kerro . . . where are you?”

There was no answer, just Thomas insisting that she follow only after he had tested the outside. Damn fool! I’m faster than he is. But she went quietly up the ladder behind him, watched him slide down the smooth plaz curve of the gondola, then followed on his heels. The rescue hatch of the other gondola swung wide as they reached it, and they were jerked inside by two pairs of hands. They were in familiar red shadows with the Shipmen at defensive stations all around the interior.