Eugenia Insigna greeted her daughter's statement with a half-laugh of disbelief. How does one go about doubting a young daughter's sanity as an alternative to doubting one's own hearing capacity?

‘What did you say, Marlene? What do you mean I'm going to Erythro?’

‘I asked Commissioner Pitt, and he said he would arrange it.’

Insigna looked blank. ‘But why?’

Betraying a bit of irritation, Marlene answered, ‘Because you say you want to make delicate astronomical measurements and you can't do it delicately enough from Rotor. You can do it from Erythro. But I see I'm not answering your real question.’

‘You're right. What I meant was why should Commissioner Pitt have said he would arrange it? I've asked several times before this, and he has always refused. He's unwilling to let anyone go to Erythro - except for some specialists.’

‘I just put it to him in a different way, Mother.’ Marlene hesitated a moment. ‘I told him that I knew he was anxious to get rid of you and this was his chance.’

Insigna drew in her breath so sharply that she choked slightly and had to cough. Then, eyes watering, she said, ‘How could you say that?’

‘Because it's true, Mother. I wouldn't have said it if it weren't true. I've heard him speak to you, and I've heard you speak about him, and it's just so clear that I know you see it, too. He's annoyed with you, and wishes you'd stop bothering him about - about whatever you bother him about. You know that.’

Insigna pressed her lips together and said, ‘You know, darling, I'm going to have to take you into my confidence from now on. It really embarrasses me to have you worm these things out.’

‘I know, Mother.’ Marlene's eyes dropped. ‘I'm sorry.’

‘But I still don't understand. You didn't have to explain to him that he's annoyed with me. He must know he is. Why, then, didn't he send me to Erythro when I asked him to do so in the past?’

‘Because he hates having anything to do with Erythro, and just getting rid of you wasn't enough to overcome his dislike of the world. Only this time it's not just you going. It's you and I. Both of us.’

Insigna leaned forward, placing her hands flat on the table between them. ‘No, Molly - Marlene. Erythro is not the place for you. I won't be there for ever. I'll take my measurements and come back and you'll stay right here and wait for me.’

‘I'm afraid not, Mother. It's clear that he's only willing to let you go because that's the only way he can get rid of me . That's why he agreed to send you when I asked that we both go, and wouldn't agree when you asked that just you go. Do you see?’

Insigna frowned. ‘No, I don't. I really don't. What do you have to do with it?’

‘When we were talking, and I explained that I knew he would like to get rid of both of us, his face froze - you know, so he could wipe out all expression. He knew I could understand expressions and little things like that, and he didn't me want to guess what he was feeling, I suppose. But that's also a giveaway, you see, and tells me a lot. Besides, you can't suppress everything. Your eyes flicker, and I guess you don't even know it.’

‘So you knew he wanted to get rid of you, too.’

‘Worse than that. He's scared of me.’

‘Why should he be scared of you?’

‘I suppose because he hates having me know what he doesn't want me to know.’ She added with a dour sigh, ‘Lots of people get upset with me for that.’

Insigna nodded. ‘I can understand that. You make people feel naked - mentally naked, I mean, like a cold wind is blowing across their minds.’

Her eyes focused on her daughter. ‘Sometimes I feel that way myself. Looking back, I think you've disturbed me since you were a small child. I told myself often enough that you were simply unusually intelli-’

‘I think I am,’ said Marlene quickly.

‘That, too, yes, but it was clearly something more than that, though I didn't see it very clearly. Tell me - do you mind talking about this?’

‘Not to you, Mother,’ said Marlene, but there was a note of caution in her voice.

‘Well then, when you were younger and found out that you could do this and other children couldn't - and even other grown-ups couldn't - why didn't you come and tell me about it?’

‘I tried once, actually, but you were impatient. I mean, you didn't say anything, but I could tell you were busy and couldn't be bothered with childish nonsense.’

Insigna's eyes widened. ‘Did I say it was childish nonsense?’

‘You didn't say it, but the way you looked at me and the way you were holding your hands said it.’

‘You should have insisted on telling me.’

‘I was just a little kid. And you were unhappy most of the time - about Commissioner Pitt, and about Father.’

‘Never mind about that. Is there anything else you can tell me now?’

There's only one thing,' said Marlene. ‘When Commissioner Pitt said we could go, there was something about the way he said it that made me think he left out something - that there was something he didn't say.’

‘And what was it, Marlene?’

‘That's just it, Mother. I can't read minds, so I don't know. I can only go by outside things and that leaves things hazy, sometimes. Still-’

‘Yes?’

‘I have the feeling that whatever it was he didn't say was rather unpleasant - maybe even evil.’

Getting ready for Erythro took Insigna quite a while, of course. There were matters on Rotor that could not be left at midpoint. There had to be arrangements in the astronomy department, instructions to others, appointment of her chief associate to the position of Chief Astronomer pro-tem, and some final consultations with Pitt, who was oddly non-communicative on the matter.

Insigna finally put it to him during her last report before leaving.

‘I'm going to Erythro tomorrow, you know,’ she said.

‘Pardon me?’ He looked up from the final report she had handed him, and which he had been staring at, though she was convinced he wasn't reading it. (Was she picking up some of Marlene's tricks and not knowing how to handle it? She mustn't begin to believe that she was penetrating below the surface when, in fact, she was not.)

She said patiently, ‘I'm going to Erythro tomorrow, you know.’

‘Is it tomorrow? Well, you'll be coming back eventually, so this is not goodbye. Take care of yourself. Look upon it as a vacation.’

‘I intend to be working on Nemesis' motion through space.’

‘That? Well-’ He made a gesture with both hands as though pushing something unimportant away. ‘As you wish. A change of surroundings is a vacation even if you continue working.’

‘I want to thank you for allowing this, Janus.’

‘Your daughter asked me to. Did you know she asked me to?’

‘I know. She told me the same day. I told her she had no right to bother you. You were very tolerant of her.’

Pitt grunted. ‘She's a very unusual girl. I didn't mind obliging her. It's only temporary. Finish your calculations and return.’

She thought: That's twice he mentioned my return. What would Marlene make out of that if she were here? Something evil, as she says? But what?

She said evenly, ‘We'll come back.’

He said, ‘With the news, I hope, that Nemesis will prove harmless - five thousand years from now.’

‘That's for the facts to decide,’ she said grimly, then left.

It was strange, Eugenia Insigna thought. She was over two light-years from the spot in space where she was born and yet she had only been on a spaceship twice and then for the shortest possible journeys - from Rotor to Earth and then back to Rotor again.

She still had no great urge to travel in space. It was Marlene who was the driving force behind this trip. It was she who, independently, had seen Pitt and persuaded him to succumb to her strange form of blackmail. And it was she who was truly excited, with this odd compulsion of hers to visit Erythro. Insigna could not understand that compulsion and viewed it as another part of her daughter's unique mental and emotional complexity. Still, whenever Insigna quailed at the thought of leaving safe, small, comfortable Rotor for the vast empty world of Erythro, so strange and menacing, and fully six hundred and fifty thousand kilometers away (nearly twice as far away as Rotor had been from Earth), it was Marlene's excitement that reinvigorated her.

The ship that would take them to Erythro was neither graceful nor beautiful. It was serviceable. It was one of a small fleet of rockets that acted as ferries, blasting up from the stodgy gravitational pull of Erythro, or coming down without daring to give in to it by even a trifle, and, either way, working one's way through the cushiony, windy unpredictability of an untamed atmosphere.

Insigna didn't think the trip would be pleasurable. Through most of it they would be weightless and two solid days of weightlessness would, no doubt, be tedious.

Marlene's voice broke into her reverie. ‘Come on, Mother, they're waiting for us. The baggage is all checked and everything.’

Insigna moved forward. Her last uneasy thought as she passed through the airlock was - predictably - But why was Janus Pitt so willing to let us go?

Siever Genarr ruled a world as large as Earth. Or, to be more accurate perhaps, he ruled, directly, a domed region that covered nearly three square kilometers and was slowly growing. The rest of the world, however, nearly five hundred million square kilometers of land and sea, was unoccupied by human beings. It was also occupied by no other living things above the microscopic scale. So if a world is considered as being ruled by the multicellular life-forms that occupied it, the hundreds who lived and worked in the domed region were the rulers, and Siever Genarr ruled over them.

Genarr was not a large man, but his strong features gave him an impressive look. When he was young, this had made him look older than his age - but that had evened itself out now that he was nearly fifty. His nose was long and his eyes somewhat pouchy. His hair was in the first stages of grizzle. His voice, however, was a musical and resonant baritone. (He had once thought of the stage as a career, but his appearance doomed him to occasional character roles, and his talents as an administrator took precedence.)