Or perhaps the quarry just doesn't know where to go next, he mused. That was possible, wasn't it? Perhaps even probable. Grampian had been surprised by the quarry's moves of late. Apparently the quarry had found something important in the Great Archive-why else the voyage to that tiny crystal sphere, deep in the Flow? And why else the trip to this undistinguished sphere, this valueless world in the vicinity of which the quarry now remained?

Still, any line of inquiry could play out at any time- Grampian knew that all too well from personal experience. Perhaps that had happened to the quarry.

Well, it wouldn't matter soon enough. Grampian's ship was closing the gap rapidly. It would arrive in another few days, unless the quarry decided to move on.

And, if Grampian's plan worked as he expected it to, the quarry wouldn't be able to move on. Grampian felt the muscles of his assumed face-quite different from his own muscles-twist thick lips into a smile. If all was happening according to schedule, his agent aboard the quarry's ship should already be seeing to that. He nodded slowly. He'd chosen well with that agent, an intelligent operative, and highly innovative.

Grampian sat back in his chair, staring out of the red-tinged, ovoid porthole set in the bulkhead of the captain's day room. Yes, he thought, a few more days, and then we'll see what we shall see.

*****

Teldin emerged from his cabin into the saloon. His head felt stuffed full of cotton batten, and his eyes felt as though somebody had thoughtfully taken them out and sanded them for him while he'd slept.

Slept, he thought bitterly. If you could call what I did "sleep." He'd tossed and turned for hours, replaying scenes over and over again on the stage of his mind. His betrayal by Rianna Wyvernsbane, the line of reasoning that supported his suspicion of Julia… Even an unhealthy volume of sagecoarse hadn't stilled the churning thoughts and allowed him to relax.

And now he was paying the price for his "medication." Lights seemed too bright, even the small lanterns in the saloon, and sounds too intense. Even the sound of someone making two bells had sounded like the tolling of doom. And smells-anything seemed capable of making his stomach writhe. He needed food, he decided, something bland but solid, to settle his stomach.

Unfortunately, he saw, a settled stomach wasn't what he'd find in the saloon. There was only one of the. crew members there-the beholder, Beth-Abz. It was hovering beside one of the mess tables, telekinetically manipulating some food into its gaping maw. While Teldin had long ago come to consider the eye tyrant a friend, he still had difficulty watching Beth-Abz eat, particularly now, he thought. The creature's meal, a joint of meat big enough to feed a family of four, totally raw and still dripping blood, hung in the air before it.

The Cloakmaster's stomach knotted, threatening to empty itself at any moment. With a grunted greeting, he hurried aft, through the door, and out onto the cargo deck.

He breathed deeply, drawing the cool, clear air into his lungs. Thankfully, he felt his nausea subside and the cobwebs in his head start to dissolve. Damn fortunate thing Beth-Abz didn't have to eat often, he told himself with a wry smile. Even with maybe one meal like that a week, the beholder was a serious drain on the ship's provisions. Fortunate, too, that the Boundless had come equipped with a "freezebox," a magical device of arcane manufacture that kept food fresh for protracted lengths of time. Beholders were carnivorous, after all, and Beth-Abz had proven unable to stomach cooked food. If they hadn't been able to keep raw meat fresh in the freezebox, they'd have had to let the young eye tyrant off the ship long ago. Even with a good supply of food, Teldin mused, Beth-Abz probably found the proximity of the rest of the crew a real stimulus to his hunger-much the same as if the Cloakmaster were living and working in a well-stocked larder…

He shook his head. What am I doing? he asked himself. Inventing more troubles for myself? As if I don't have enough….

He looked out over the port rail. Garrash was a distant, ruddy disk about as large as an apple held at arm's length, its fire ring still clearly visible. After his frustrating conversation with Zat, Teldin had ordered the ship to stand off from the planet. Not from any fear of the great metal creatures; they seemed-well, not harmless, but not inclined to do any harm. More than a dozen of the metallic beings had congregated in the vicinity of the squid ship, seemingly fascinated by the fact that there existed one of the "tiny, scurrying things" that could actually communicate with them. The great, mirrored triangles had taken to cruising close to the Boundless for a better view… and scaring the wits out of Teldin's crew in the process. Even though he knew the beasts meant no harm, the Cloakmaster could understand his crew's reactions. Seeing another one of the things-one hundred feet long, one hundred and fifty wide-drifting in space a spear cast off the beam was enough to frighten him.

For that reason, he'd pulled the ship back to this distance. Zat and its fellows had seemed not inclined to travel so far just to satisfy their curiosity, and had returned to their normal life, which had let the crewmen return to theirs.

"Captain Teldin Moore." A voice that could have come from a clogged sewer sounded behind the Cloakmaster. He turned.

Beth-Abz had followed him out onto the deck. The beholder had swallowed its meal, but drips of blood around its thin lips still were enough to start Teldin's stomach churning again.

"Well met, Beth-Abz," the Cloakmaster said, backing off a step to stay out of range of the creature's slaughterhouse breath.

"Captain,…" the creature started, then its deep-pitched voice trailed off. There was something about the way its ten eyestalks moved that made Teldin think it was uncomfortable. What's this about? he wondered, with a chill of foreboding.

"Captain," it started again, moving closer and lowering the volume of its voice. A miasma of blood and other nauseating odors washed over Teldin, but he forced himself to stand his ground. "Captain, I have heard two of the crew talking about damage to the ship."

"The ship's damaged?" Teldin demanded.

The beholder's eyestalks weaved a complex pattern. "I am not communicating well," it said quietly. "I find my thoughts are somehow sluggish. What I mean is that they were speaking of causing damage to the ship."

Sabotage! "Who?" Teldin saw a couple of the crewman on deck glance over as they heard his barked question. He forced himself to pitch his voice lower, and repeated, "Who? Who was it?"

Beth-Abz was silent for a moment. Teldin cursed silently in frustration. He knew that the eye tyrant had a frustrating inability to easily remember human and demihuman names -probably because they didn't communicate the same information about clan and nation as did beholder names. "It was the small one," Beth-Abz said slowly, "the small one on the bridge."

Did that mean Julia?

"And another, a larger one."

"Describe them to me," Teldin ordered.

"The smaller one…" Suddenly the beholder fell silent. One of its eyestalks had suddenly convulsed, driving directly upward from the top of the creature's body. The other nine pivoted around to stare at the wayward eye. "The smaller one… ° it started over.

The eyestalk convulsed again, another joining it in its spastic motion. The creature's loose-lipped mouth opened slightly, and a gobbet of yellow-white saliva dribbled down its lower surface to drip on the deck.

"What's the matter?" Teldin asked, suddenly alarmed.

"I feel pain," Beth-Abz said, its voice taking on a strange, bubbling tone. "Sharp pain. I feel…"