“Yet, we are in Eden,” Panille said. He moved gracefully to his feet, swept an arm wide. “There is food. It is warm. It’s little more than a kilometer over the cliffs to the beach, not more than ten kilometers to the Redoubt—two different worlds, and you would make them the same.”

“No! You don’t understand what I . . .”

Thomas broke off as a shadow passed over them. He jerked his gaze upward as a trio of hylighters swept overhead carrying a long plasteel cutter and several wriggling human shapes. Behind them, cresting the crater’s crags, more hylighters appeared. The tentacles of all were burdened with people and equipment.

Panille touched a dangling tentacle as a hylighter circled over them and dumped the wind from its sail membrane. He spoke in a distant, musing voice: “Lewis has installed Lab One at the Redoubt. These people were driven out. They are terrified. We must take care of them.”

A feeling of elation swept through Thomas. “You ask about troops? Here they are! And the hylighters are bringing weapons! You said they wouldn’t help us attack, but . . .”

“Now I know that you once really were a Ceepee,” Panille said. “The keeper of the ritual and the robes—the trappings and the suits of woe.”

“I tell you there’s no other way! We have to take over the Redoubt and learn how to WorShip!”

Panille stared at him, eyes unfocused. “Don’t you know that humans made Ship? Therefore, humans made all that proceeds from Ship. Ship tells us nothing, demands nothing which is not from and of ourselves.”

Thomas no longer could contain his anger and frustration. “You ask me if I know that humans made Ship? I was one of those humans!”

It was an explosive revelation for Panille—Thomas, a piece of history resurrected! Ship’s hand in this was almost visible—past, present, future woven into a lovely pattern. This thing wanted only a poem to bring it into existence. Panille smiled at his own enlightenment, and spoke in a burst of energy: “Then you must know why you made Ship.”

Thomas heard it as a question.

“We had a Voidship, the Earthling, and we were commanded to turn it into a conscious being. We did it because it was succeed or die. At the moment of consciousness, Ship delivered us from one danger into another, demanding that we learn how to WorShip. It’s what we were supposed to do with our new lives, us and all of our descendants after us.”

Panille did not answer, but continued to stare at the arriving swarms of hylighters each with its cargo of people or equipment. The soft flutings of the hylighters and the terrified babble of the people being lowered to the ground began to fill the open area all around.