They felt entitled to a rest and, once safely away from the river, they took it. Everyone fretted about losing time, but there was simply no help for it. Nightingale felt emotionally exhausted and would have liked to sleep, but as the only member of the group who hadn't been injured, he was assigned the watch.

They rested for four hours. Then Hutch roused them and got them on the road again.

The forest was filled with insects and blossoms and barbed bushes and creeper vines. Insects buzzed flowers, transferring pollen in the time-honored manner they'd found in every other biosphere. It was evidence once again that nature always took the simplest way. The external appearance of many of the creatures was different, but only in detail. Animals that resembled monkeys and wolves put in brief appearances. They were remarkably similar to kindred creatures elsewhere. The monkeys had long ears and hairless faces and looked very much like tiny humans. The wolves were bigger than their distant cousins, and were equipped with tusks. There was even an equine creature that came very close to qualifying as a unicorn.

The differences weren't limited to appearance. They watched a group of wolves give wide berth to a long-necked pseudo-giraffe which was munching contentedly on a tree limb and paying them no attention. Was the animal's meat toxic? Did the creature possess a long-range sting? Or perhaps skunk scent? They didn't know and there was neither time nor (except for Nightingale) inclination to linger long enough to find out.

Two more potential threats emerged. One was a python-sized serpent with green-and-gray coloring. It watched them with its black marble eyes. But it was not hungry, or it sensed that the oversized monkeys would not prove an easy quarry.

The other was a duplicate of the feline they'd seen from the tower. This one walked casually out of the shrubbery and strolled up to them as if they were old friends. It must have expected them to run. When they didn't, it hesitated momentarily, then showed them a jaw full of incisors. That was enough, and they cut it down with little trouble or regret.

Plants everywhere react to light, and a patient observer can watch them turning their petals toward the sun in its journey across the sky. There were occasional shadings here, structures, odd organs, that led Nightingale to suspect that this forest had eyes. That it was possibly aware, in some vegetative manner, of their passage. And that it followed them with a kind of divine equanimity.

In another few centuries, give or take, Maleiva and its attendant worlds would be out of the cloud and conditions would return to normal. Or they would if the land was still going to be here. The woods felt timeless.

He wondered if the forest, in some indefinable way, knew what was coming.

And whether, if it did, it cared?

"Hey, Hutch." Chiang's voice. "Look at this."

Chiang and Kellie had gone out to gather firewood. Hutch was seated on a log, rotating her shoulder. She got up and disappeared into the woods. MacAllister, who was security, stayed nearby, but his eyes strayed toward Nightingale, and there was a weariness in them, suggesting he had little patience left for anyone's enthusiasm. They could find a brontosaurus out there, and he wasn't going to care. The only thing that mattered to him was getting home. Everything else was irrelevant.

"It's a wall," said Kellie. Nightingale could see their lights moving out in the darkness.

MacAllister looked at the time, as if it had any relation to the current progress of days and nights. It was almost twelve o'clock back in orbit, but whether noon or midnight, Nightingale had no idea. Nor probably had MacAllister.

Nightingale was desperately weary. He sat with his eyes closed, letting the voices wash over him. A wall just did not seem all that significant.

There was nothing more for several minutes, although he could hear them moving around. Finally, unable to restrain his curiosity, he asked what they'd found.

"Just a wall," said Chiang. "Shoulder-high."

"A building?"

"A wall."

There was a brief commotion in the trees. Animals fighting over something.

"Lot of heavy growth around it," said Kellie. "It's been here a long time."

Nightingale thought about getting to his feet. "Is it stone?"

"More like bricks."

"Anybody see the end of it?"

"Over here. It turns a corner."

"There's a gate. With an arch."

For several minutes they clumped around in the underbrush with no sound other than an occasional grunt. Then Chiang spoke again, excited: "I think there's a building back there."

They had not seen any kind of structure since leaving the tower. Nightingale gave up and reached for his staff. MacAllister saw that he was having difficulty and started over to help. "It's okay, Gregory," he said. "I can manage."

MacAllister stopped midway. "My friends call me Mac."

"I didn't know you had any friends." He collected a lamp and turned it on.

Mac looked at him with a half smile, but there was no sign of anger.

"What kind of arch?" Nightingale asked Kellie.

"Curved. Over a pair of iron gates. Small ones. Pretty much rusted away. But there are some symbols carved into it. Into the arch."

Nightingale, leaning on his staff, started for the woods. "Do they look like the ones back at the tower?"

"Could be," said Hutch. "Hard to tell."

Metal squealed. Somebody had opened the gate. "Why don't we see what's inside?" said Chiang.

It hurt to walk. MacAllister sighed loudly. "You ought to just take it easy. They find anything important, they'll let us know."

"They already found something important, Gregory. Maybe this thing was a country estate of some sort. Who knows what's inside?"

"Why do you care? It's not your field."

"I'd like very much to know who the original inhabitants were. Wouldn't you?"

"You want an honest answer?"

"I can guess."

"I'm sure you can. I know who the original inhabitants were. They were very likely little hawk-faced guys with blowguns. They murdered one another in wars, and, judging from that tower back there, they were right out of our Middle Ages. Hutch would like to know what gods they worshiped and what their alphabet looked like. I say, who gives a damn? They were just another pack of savages."

Nightingale arrived at the wall, and it was indeed brickwork. It was low, plain, worn, buried in shrubbery and vines. He wondered what kind of hands had constructed it.

He advanced until he'd reached the gates. They were made of iron, originally painted black, he thought, although now they were heavily corroded and it was hard to be sure. Nevertheless, one of them still moved on its hinges.

They were designed for ornamentation rather than security. Individual bars were molded in the shape of leaves and branches. The artwork seemed mundane, something Nightingale's grandmother might have appreciated. Still, it was decorative, and he supposed that told them something more about the inhabitants.

He heard MacAllister coming up behind him. He sounded like an elephant in deep grass. The light from his lamp fell across the arch.

It was curved brickwork. The symbols that Kellie had mentioned were engraved on a flat piece of stone mounted on the front. Nightingale thought it was probably the name of the estate. "Abandon hope," he said.

"Keep out," offered MacAllister.

The ground was completely overgrown. If there'd ever been a trail or pathway, nothing was left of it now.

They passed through the gate and saw the others inspecting a small intact building, not much larger, Nightingale thought, than a children's playhouse. It was wheel-shaped, constructed entirely of gray stone, with a roof that angled down from a raised center.

He could see a doorway and a window. Both were thick with vegetation.