But he managed to cling to the precarious nest of silence he’d made, and he concentrated as hard as he could. Unfamiliar webs of energy grew from his alertness. He could feel them. They went stretching out into the night, searching. Finally they pointed clearly to the southeast. But why? What did they mean? Seven only knew that he must follow them.

Their body fell down. Again, without knowing how he did it, Seven picked the body up and started it walking once more. All the while, he kept concentrating. What was it he knew and had forgotten?

The webs of light moved again. They converged on one particular cliff not too far away. And suddenly the rock became transparent to Seven. Within it he glimpsed light, distance, and activity. Seven grappled with the problem. He knew he had to get Rampa and Ma-ah over to that cliff.

He tried to signal her mentally. “Ma-ah, Ma-ah. This way.” Nothing. She kept trudging along, half-crying with frustration and cold. Seven’s own sense of futility was almost more than he could bear; he was afraid he’d fall back into the tumult of her body and emotions again. Fighting for control, he felt his separate consciousness slipping, and as he lost his hard-won isolation, he was Ma-ah.

“Oh, we’ve got to get to that cliff,” she thought frantically. She signaled Rampa. She’d been acting so strangely all day that Rampa nodded half out of sheer exhaustion, and half in surprise that she seemed so sure of herself. Ma-ah clenched her teeth in determination. At the same time, she wondered why the cliff was so important, and how she knew that they must reach it.

Both of them just slumped against the rock when they got there. Ma-ah cried with exasperation. Whatever she’d had in mind, the cliff was smooth, unbroken. Her disappointment smothered her. She was too tired to go on. Her thoughts grew hazy. And Seven found his own consciousness once more suspended somewhere within Ma-ah, but apart. He experimented cautiously, stood the body up, opened its eyes, and felt the cliff walls with its hands. For this, in his predicament anyhow, he needed the hands’ sensitivity.

But Ma-ah’s fingers found the spot that Seven was seeking, and the door that he’d somehow known was there opened. Seven pulled the body in. He couldn’t work Rampa’s body from the inside, and Rampa didn’t seem able to work it much himself. Worse, Seven knew that the door would close automatically in only a few seconds. And his own energy was fluctuating. One instant everything was brilliantly clear. The next, his awareness dimmed.

Seven cried out, “Rampa!” but the words came out of Ma-ah’s lips, in her voice. Rampa raised his head and half rose, dragging himself over to her. As soon as he was inside, the door closed.