"Did he explain what he was making?" I asked Oar.

"Foolish things," she answered. "He claimed he could make a machine to talk to people far away… and a version of our food maker machine, only small enough to carry."

Practical thinking on Jelca's part: a radio and a nutrient synthesizer. That gave him a way to contact other marooned Explorers, and the means to feed himself while he traveled to wherever the others were. After a moment, I corrected myself — the means to feed himself and Ullis, plus Oar's sister if she was traveling with them. It would take a big Synthesizer to produce enough food for three people… but if Oar's sister was as strong as Oar, she might have no trouble carrying heavy equipment for hours on end.

Carefully I prowled the room, examining everything Jelca had made during his time here. I recognized several nutrient synthesizers, the kind that take leaves and other organic material as input, then produce compact food cubes: not fine cuisine, but enough to keep you alive. There seemed to be a progression of prototypes, from one that must have weighed a hundred kilos down to something much less bulky. Jelca had obviously worked to produce the smallest equipment possible so he and Ullis could travel light. Naturally, they'd taken the most compact version with them; but sizing up the best one they'd left behind, I thought I could stand hauling it five or six hours a day, if I built a good carrying frame.

Thank you, I whispered to the air. Jelca had left me the means to follow him.

The Picture Box

"This box makes pictures," Oar said behind my back.

She pointed to a crystal screen embedded in the wall… or more accurately, embedded in what was left of the wall. Jelca had ripped away much of the material around the screen so he could get in behind it — into a mass of fiberoptic cable and circuits feeding the screen. By the looks of it, this was a native Melaquinian television; and Jelca had either tried to repair it or plunder it for parts.

"The screen showed pictures?" I asked.

"Yes. Pictures of ugly Explorers."

"Jelca and Ullis?"

"No, different Explorers."

"Different…" I forced myself not to lunge for the TV. If other Explorers could broadcast television signals, they must have developed a substantial technological base — either that or they had drawn upon existing Melaquin resources. Now that I thought about it, normal TV/radio waves could never reach here under the lake. The dome must have a concealed antenna or cable feed reaching up to the outside world. Perhaps the planet supported hundreds of hidden villages like this one, connected by a shielded cable network: a network that would allow communication from one village to another, but whose transmissions would not be detectable from space.

And my fellow Explorers had tapped into that system.

"Oar," I said, "I'd like to turn on the machine."

"You may not see anything," she answered. "The pictures only come for a short while, then go away. And they are always the same stupid Explorers saying the same stupid things."

It must be a looped signal saying, "Hello new arrivals, here's where everyone else is." With clumsy fingers, I clicked the TV's switch. The screen lit with a display of static. For some reason, I had convinced myself it would show a picture immediately; but ten minutes passed (Oar tapping her toe impatiently) before a picture snapped into view.

"Greetings," said a man on the screen. "I am a sentient citizen of the League of Peoples and I beg…"

I was too shocked to pay attention to the words. The man on the screen was Chee.

Ears

The Chee on the screen looked younger — not so many lines on his face and only a few gray streaks in his black hair. He wore the hair down to his shoulders; but it couldn't hide the huge misshapen ears sticking out from his head like purple-veined plates.

Those ears looked like botched engineering: some ill-conceived project to achieve God knows what. Even though it was illegal, there were always fools who tinkered with their offspring's genes, failing to understand that a change in enzyme A might affect how the body used proteins B, C, and D. Most of the time, such alterations killed the child in utero; but occasionally, the fetus lived to full term, emerging from the womb with deformities like the man on the screen.

A man with the ears of a cartoon caricature. Or an Explorer.

Yes. Those ears would make him a prime candidate for the Academy… if he could still hear. If the malformed ears handicapped his hearing, Technocracy medicine would leap to the rescue: reconstructive surgery, prosthetic replacements, targeted virus therapy — whatever it took. But if the ears were merely grotesque, and the child was intelligent, healthy, psychologically pliable… on to the Academy.

Chee. An Explorer.

Was it really him? Could it just be a close relative, a brother, or even a clone? All were possibilities; but I could feel in my gut this was the real Chee.

Chee had known more about Exploring than any normal Vacuum admiral. When suiting up, for example, he had known to empty his bladder during Limbo.

An Explorer. An Explorer who somehow became an admiral.

How long ago had this recording been made? The signal could have looped for decades if it ran off a reliable power source. If Chee had been one of the first marooned here, some forty years ago… yes, I could believe it. The Explorer on the screen was a veteran, probably taking YouthBoost every few months. Forty years would bring him almost exactly to the Chee who had died a few hours ago.

Forty years.

Plus ear surgery.

And some way to escape from Melaquin.

Chee's Speech

With an effort, I forced myself to concentrate on his words, not his appearance. (Chee's voice — it was definitely Chee's voice.)

"…fully expect that more of us will get shanghaied here over time. If you are in that position, I invite you to join my partner and me in the enclave we've found. It's an underground city, fully automated and self-repairing… centuries old. The people are humanoid but glassily transparent; all seem dormant, though we cannot guess the cause. We have had no success in rousing them to consciousness for more than a minute at a time.

"We've had better luck with the technical facilities here: this broadcasting station, for example. If we've analyzed its structure correctly, our transmissions should be going out over a high-capacity network, perhaps reaching all around the world. We have also discovered very old machines capable of space flight… or at least they were capable of flight centuries ago. If we can restore one of these ships to working condition, we might use it to get off the planet. We have yet to find a ship with FTL capacity, but we don't need to get as far as another star system — we just have to escape the restricted airspace around Melaquin, then send a mayday.

"Therefore, fellow ECMs, I invite you to help us with this project. We may not be space-tech engineers, but we're smart and resourceful. In time, we can rebuild a ship and get out of here — if we work together."

Chee suddenly grimaced straight to the camera. "Shit, that sounded pompous, didn't it? But you know what I mean. We can get our asses out of here if we don't fuck up. Some of you must have landed way to hell the other side of the ocean and you'll never make it here under your own steam; but look around, see what you can scrounge up. This civilization had sophisticated goodies before it went to sleep. Maybe you can find a starship of your own… if not, maybe a boat or a plane that'll bring you to us, even if you're thousands of klicks away.