“No,” Window said quickly.

Proteus stared at both of them. “You were hiding something back, then,” he said, accusingly. “I thought you were.”

“He has to be found, then. He has to go home,” Story said. “He doesn’t know what’s here yet, and he’s got to promise not to tell what he does know. Otherwise, they’ll just keep on looking.”

Confused, Proteus looked from one to the other. Story was speaking so quickly that it was hard to follow what she said. Proteus spoke as emphatically as he could: “I’m not going home. You can’t make me. If you do, then I’ll tell them that something strange is going on here, and they’ll come back to investigate anyway.”

They were paying little attention to him. Story just kept staring at Window. She said again, “Proteus has to be found.”

“Or never found,” Window said.

Story shook her head. “That would be even more difficult. He’s not able to make the choice.”

Proteus was furious. “Stop talking about me as if I’m not here,” he said angrily. “I have a right to know what’s going on.”

Story cried urgently, “Proteus, we’re just trying to save you from having to make a decision without knowing what’s involved. Till now you couldn’t really do us much harm—you hadn’t seen anything. At any time you could decide to go home, and we could just abandon you topside and no one would ever find us. But now … you’re going to have to stay with us for good—never see your home again—or leave at once with a suitable explanation.”

“Like what?” Proteus demanded.

“Well, we have the dig above, that they know about. You could say that you wandered in there…. No, then we’d get in trouble for not notifying the proper authorities—”

“Wait.” Window closed his eyes. He tried to lose the sense of urgency and desperation that had been closing in on him, and as he did, his inner vision cleared. There were three copters this time. How could one boy threaten an entire project, he wondered wearily, for now he saw that the searchers were far more persistent than they had been. Then he discovered the reason. “Your mother’s a member of the search party,” he said. “She has some kind of executive position, doesn’t she?”

“My mother? Are you sure?”

“Her name is Amanda. She has … brown hair, blue eyes and olive skin. She’s thirty-nine. She calls you Proto—”

“When she thought of me, she called me Proto,” Proteus said. “She didn’t pay that much attention to me usually.”

“Well, she’s thinking about you now,” Window said soberly.