“You mean nobody knows about this thing yet?”

“Just the coastwatchers for this stretch, and they’re on my payroll.”

“You run a pretty tight operation here,” McKie said. “Aren’t you afraid of getting too efficient?”

“I do my best,” Furuneo said. He tapped the driver’s shoulder.

The groundcar pulled to a stop at a turnaround which looked down onto a reach of rocky islands and a low lava shelf where the Caleban Beachball had come to rest. “You know, I keep wondering if we really know what those Beachballs are.”

“They’re homes,” McKie grunted.

“So everybody says.”

Furuneo got out. A cold wind set his hip aching. “We walk from here,” he said.

There were times during the climb down the narrow path to the lava shelf when McKie felt thankful he had been fitted with a gravity web beneath his skin. If he fell, it would limit his rate of descent to a non-injurious speed. But there was nothing it could do about any beating he might receive in the surf at the base of the palisades, and if offered no protection at all against the chill wind and the driving spray.

He wished he’d worn a heatsuit.

“It’s colder than I expected,” Furuneo said, limping out onto the lava shelf. He waved to the aircars. One dipped its wings, maintaining its place in a slow, circling track above the Beachball.

Furuneo struck out across the shelf and McKie followed, jumped across a tidal pool, blinked and bent his head against a gust of windborne spray. The pounding of the surf on the rocks was loud here. They had to raise their voices to make themselves understood.

“You see?” Furuneo shouted. “Looks like it’s been banged around a bit.”

“Those things are supposed to be indestructible,” McKie said.

The Beachball was some six meters in diameter. It sat solidly on the shelf, about half a meter of its bottom surface hidden by a depression in the rock, as though it had melted out a resting place.

McKie led the way up to the lee of the Ball, passing Furuneo in the last few meters. He stood there, hands in pockets, shivering. The round surface of the Ball failed to cut off the cold wind.

“It’s bigger than I expected,” he said as Furuneo stopped beside him.

“First one you’ve ever seen close up?”

“Yeah.”

McKie passed his gaze across the thing. Knobs and indentations marked the opaque metallic surface. It seemed to him the surface variations carried some pattern. Sensors, perhaps? Controls of some kind? Directly in front of him there was what appeared to be a crackled mark, perhaps from a collision. It lay just below the surface, presenting no roughness to McKie’s exploring hand.

“What if they’re wrong about these things?” Furuneo asked.

“Mmmm?”

“What if they aren’t Caleban homes?”

“Don’t know. Do you recall the drill?”

“You find a ‘nippled extrusion’ and you knock on it. We tried that. There’s one just around to your left.”