Rebka closed the car door. “I like to have plenty of time. Let’s go.”

“All right.” She smiled at him. “But you’ve seen more of Quake than I have. What do you think will happen here at Summertide?”

Rebka took a deep breath. She was trying to be nice to him, but worse than that, she assumed that he was tense and needed to be calmed down. And the trouble was, she was right. He was too tense. He could not explain it — except that he had been badly fooled once on Quake, by assuming that something was safe when it was not. He did not want to do it again. And every nerve in his body urged him to get away from Quake soon.

“Darya, I’d love to compare notes about Summertide.” He was not annoyed that she had trapped him, he told himself; he was impressed. “But I’d rather do it when we’re on the Umbilical, and well on our way to Midway Station. You may think I’m a coward, but this place scares me. So if you’ll just move over, and let me get at those controls…”

The Summer Dreamboat was well hidden.

The Pentacline Depression formed the most highly visible feature on the surface of Quake. One hundred and fifty kilometers across, packed with a riot of vivid and strongly growing vegetation, it could be seen from half a million kilometers away in space as a starfish splash of lurid green on Quake’s dusty gray surface. The Pentacline was also the lowest point on the planet. Its five valleys, radiating up and out like stretching arms from the central low, had to rise over eight hundred meters to reach the level of the surrounding plain.

The little starship had landed close to the middle of the Pentacline’s north-pointing arm, at a point where dense vegetation was broken by a small flat island of black basalt. But the ship had flown in to the bare outcrop on an angled descent and skated to its very edge. It was shielded from overhead inspection by vigorous new growth. Scarcely bigger than an aircar, the Summer Dreamboat was tucked neatly away under a canopy of five-meter leaf cover. It was empty, with all its life-support systems turned off. Only residual radiation from the Bose Drive betrayed its presence.

Max Perry stood inside the abandoned ship and stared around him with amazement. His head nearly touched the roof, and the whole living space was no more than three meters across. One step took him from the main hatch to the tiny galley; another, and he was at the control console.

He inspected the panel’s simple displays, with their couple of dozen brightly colored switches and indicators, and shook his head. “This is a damned toy. I didn’t know you could even get into the Bose Network with something this small.”

“You are not supposed to.” Graves had himself under firm control. He did not look quite sane, but the twitching of his fingers was less, and his bony face no longer boiled in a turmoil of emotion. “This was built as a small tourist vessel, for in-system hops. The designers didn’t expect a Bose Drive to be added, and certainly no one ever thought it might be used for so many Bose Transitions. But that’s Shasta for you — the children rule the planet. The Carmel twins talked their parents into it.” He turned to J’merlia. “Would you kindly tell Kallik to stop that, before she does something dangerous?”

The little Hymenopt was over by the ship’s drive. She had removed the cover and was peering inside. She turned at Graves’s words.

“It is not dangerous,” J’merlia interpreted, listening to the series of clicks and whistles. “With great respect, Kallik says that it is the opposite of dangerous. She is aware that someone as ignorant as she can know little about anything so difficult as the Bose Drive, but she is quite sure that this one’s power unit is exhausted. It cannot be used again. It is debatable that this ship could even make it from here to low orbit. She already suspected this, from the weak signal that her master’s ship received in its survey of the surface.”

“Which explains why the twins never left Quake.” Perry had turned on the display and was examining the computer log. “It makes sense of their peculiar itinerary, too. This shows a continued Bose Network sequence that brings them to Dobelle and then takes them right into Zardalu territory in two more transitions; but they couldn’t do that without a new Bose power source. They could have picked one up at Midway Station, but naturally they didn’t know it. So the only other place they could have gone in this system would have been Opal, and we’d have tracked their arrival there at once.”

“Which is unfortunately not the case here. So how will we find them?” Graves walked across to the door and peered out, snapping his finger joints. “I deserve censure, you know. I assumed that once we found the ship they came in, the hard task was over. It never occurred to me that they might be foolhardy enough to leave the ship and roam the planet’s surface.”

“I can help with that. But even if you find them, how will you handle the twins themselves?”

“Leave that to me. It is the area of my experience. We are creatures of conditioning, Commander. We assume that what we know is easy, and we find mysterious whatever we do not.” Graves waved a skinny, black-clad arm out toward the Pentacline. “All that to me is mysterious. They are hidden somewhere out there. But why would they leave this ship, and relative safety, to go to that?”

What could be seen from the ship was a green mass of vines, lush and intertwined. They trembled continuously to ground tremors, giving an illusion of self-awareness and nervous movement.

“They went there because they thought it was safe, and so they wouldn’t be found. But I can find them.” Perry glanced at his watch. “We have to be quick. It’s already hours since we left the beacon. J’merlia.” He turned to the apprehensive Lo’tfian. “We promised we’d have you back where we came from in four hours. And we will. Come on, Councilor. I know where they’ll be — alive or dead.”

Outside the ship the atmosphere of the depression felt thicker and more oppressive, ten degrees hotter than the plain. Black basalt quivered underfoot, hot and pulsing like the scaly hide of a vast beast. Perry walked along the edge of the rock, carefully examining it.

Graves followed, mopping at his perspiring brow. “If you are hoping to see footprints I hate to be discouraging, but—”

“No. Water prints.” Perry knelt down. “Runoff patterns. Quake has a lot of small lakes and ponds. The native animals manage fine, but they make do with water that you or I couldn’t drink. And once the Carmel twins left their ship, they’d need a supply of fresh water.”

“They might have had a purifier.”

“They would have, and they’d need it — fresh water on Quake is a relative term. You and I couldn’t drink it, nor could Geni and Elena Carmel.” Perry ran his hand over a smooth indented wedge in the rock. “If they’re alive, they’ll be within reach of water. And it doesn’t matter where they headed first, if they started out from this rock — and they must have, because the Summer Dreamboat is here — they’ll finish up along one of the runoff lines. Here’s one of them, a good strong one. There’s another over there, just about as well defined. But this rock slab is tilted and we’re on the lower side. We’ll try this one first.”

He lowered himself carefully over the edge. Graves followed, wincing as his hand met the basalt. The bare rock was beyond blood heat, almost hot enough to blister. Perry was moving away fast, scrambling along on his backside down a thirty-degree slope that plunged through a trailing curtain of purple-veined creepers.

“Wait for me!” Graves raised one arm to protect his eyes. Saw-edged leaves cut into the back of his hand and left their scratch marks along the top of his unprotected skull. Then he was through, under the tree-floor of vegetation that marked the first level of the Pentacline.