As Legata spoke, a dark shadow flowed over them. They looked up to see Ship passing between Rega and the plain—far lower than Ship had ever been before. The odd protrusions and wing shapes of the agraria were clearly visible. The shadow moved with an awesome slowness, an eternity in the passage. When the shadow touched him, Lewis began to laugh. All who heard him turned toward Lewis and most of them were in time to see him vanish. He became a white blur which dissolved and left nothing where he had stood.

“Why, Ship?” Panille spoke it aloud, startled by the disappearance.

They all heard the answer, a joyous clamor in their heads.

You needed a real devil, Jesus Lewis, the other half of Me. The real devil always goes with Me. Thomas remained his own devil—a special kind of demon, a goad. And now he knows. Humans, you have won your reprieve. You know how to worship.

In that instant, they all saw Ship’s intentions toward Thomas, the issue hanging on a fragile balance.

Thomas raised himself on one elbow, resisting Hali’s attempts to prevent it. “No, Ship,” he muttered. “Not back to hyb. I’m home.”

Legata intruded. “Let him go, Ship.”

If you can save him, he is yours.

Ship’s challenge rang through them.

Panille held fast to the awareness of Thomas and sent the call to Vata back in the medical shelter at the cliffs: Vata! Help us!

The old presence of Avata crept into his mind—attenuated but with nothing omitted. Vata was all of what had been . . . and more. Panille felt his daughter as the repository of those long eons when Avata had lived and learned, but welded now to everything human. She reached beyond the plain into the crew remaining aboard Ship, even into the dormant ones of hyb, giving them the new worship and weaving them into a single organism. They came together an awareness at a time . . . even Oakes. And when they were united, they moved threadlike into the flesh of Thomas, closing his wounds, repairing cells.

It was done and they left Thomas asleep on the litter.

Panille took a trembling breath and stared around him at the people on the plain. In the healing of Thomas, all of the wounded had been restored. There were bodies of the dead, but not a single maimed among the living. All stood silent under the shadow presence which slid across the plain.

Legata.

It was Ship again.

Still shaken by the experience of the sharing, she spoke aloud in a trembling voice. “Yes, Ship?”

You have taken My best friend, Legata. Oakes is Mine now, a fair exchange. Where I go, I will need him more than you.

She looked up at the Rega-haloed outline. “You’re leaving?”

I travel the Ox gate, Legata. The Ox gate—My childhood and My eternity.