“And now we need Dulcimer, more than ever,” Louis Nenda added, breaking Rebka’s trance. Nenda, too, had been sitting quietly through Darya’s presentation, but during the approach trajectory he had twisted and writhed in his seat as though matching its contortions.

“Why?” Darya felt hurt. “I just showed you the way to go into the Anfract.”

“Not for any vessel I ever heard of.” Nenda shook his dark head. “There’s not a ship in the arm could follow that path an’ stay in one piece. Not even this monster. We gotta find an easier way in. That means we need Dulcimer. We gotta have him.”

“Quite right,” said a croaking voice at the entrance to the control chamber. “Everybody needs Dulcimer.”

They all turned. The Chism Polypheme was there, sagging on his coiled tail against the chamber wall. The dark green of his skin had faded and lightened to the shade of an unripe apple. While all had been intent on Darya’s presentation, no one had noticed his entry or knew how long he had been slumped there.

Atvar H’sial had predicted that the Chism Polypheme would return to gloat. She had been wrong. He had returned, but from the look of him he was far from gloating. While they watched, Dulcimer’s tail wobbled from under him and he slid lower down the wall. Louis Nenda swore and hurried to his side. The scanning eye on its short eyestalk had withdrawn completely into the Polypheme’s head, but the master eye above it remained wide open, vague and blissful as it peered up at the stocky Karelian human. Nenda bent and placed his hand on Dulcimer’s upper body.

He cursed. “I knew it. Look at the green on him. He’s sizzlin’. Without a radiation source! How the blazes could he get so hot, without even leavin’ the Erebus?”

“Not hot,” Dulcimer murmured. “Little bit warm, that’s all. No problem.” He lay face down on the floor and seemed to sag into its curved surface.

“A power kernel!” Nenda said. “It has to be. I didn’t know there were any on this ship.”

“At least four,” E.C. Tally informed them.

“But shielded, surely, every one of ’em.” Nenda stared suspiciously at the embodied computer. “Aren’t they?”

“Yes. But when the Chism Polypheme first came on board the Erebus—” Tally paused at Nenda’s expression. He was programmed to answer questions — but he was also programmed to protect himself from physical damage.

“Go on.” Nenda was glowering. “Amaze me.”

“He asked me to show him any kernels that might be on board. Naturally, I did so. And then he wondered aloud if there might be any way that a shield could be lowered in just one place, to permit a radiation beam to be emitted from the kernel interior to a selected site outside it. It was not a standard request, but I contain information on such a procedure in my files. So naturally, I—”

“Naturally, you.” Nenda swore again and prodded Dulcimer with his foot. “Naturally, you showed him just how to cook himself. What junk did they put in that head of yours, Tally, after they pushed the On button? Look at him now, grilled on both sides. If you don’t know enough to keep a Polypheme away from hard radiation… I’ve never seen the skin color so light. He’s really smoking.”

“Nice and toasty,” Dulcimer corrected from floor level. “Just nice and toasty.”

“How long before he’ll be back to normal?” Darya asked. She had moved to stand closer to the Polypheme. He did not seem to see her.

“Hell, I dunno. Three days, four days — depends how big a radiation slug he took. A whopper, from the looks of it.”

“But we need him right now. He has to steer us to the Anfract.” She had run off a copy of the computed coordinates of Genizee, and she waved it in Nenda’s face. “It’s so frustrating, when we finally know where we have to go to find the Zardalu…”

“Zardalu!” said the slurred and croaking voice. The bulging high-resolution eye went rolling from side to side, following the movement of the sheet that Darya was holding. Dulcimer seemed to see her for the first time. His head lifted a little, to move the thick-lipped mouth farther away from the floor. “Zardalu, bardalu. If you want me to fly you to the location listed on what you’re holding there…”

“We do — or we would, if you were in any shape to do it. But you are—”

“A trifle warm, s’all.” The Polypheme made a huge effort and managed to stand upright on his coiled tail, long enough for his top arm to reach out and snatch the coordinate sheet from Darya’s hand. He slumped back, lifted the page to within two inches of his master eye, and stared at it vacantly. “Aha! Thirty-third lobe, Questen-Dwell branch. Know a really good way to get there. Do it in my sleep.”

Darya stepped back as he collapsed again on the floor in front of her. In his sleep? It seemed about the only way that Dulcimer could do it. But from somewhere the Polypheme was finding new reserves of coordination and energy. He wriggled his powerful tail and began to inch single-minded toward the main control chair.

“Wait a minute.” Darya hurried to stand behind him as he pulled himself up into the seat. “You’re not proposing to fly the Erebus now.”

“Certainly am.” The five arms were flying over the keyboards seemingly at random, pressing and flipping and pulling. “Have us inside the Anfract in half a minute.”

“But you’re hot — you admit it yourself.”

“Little bit hot.” The head turned to stare at Darya. The great slate-gray eye held hers for a second, then turned upward to fix its gaze solidly and vacantly on the featureless ceiling. The five hands moved in a blur across the board. “Just a little bit. When you’re hot, you’re hot. Little bit, little bit, little bit.”

“Somebody stop that lunatic!” Julian Graves cried. “Look at him! He’s not fit to fly a kite.”

“Better if I’m hot, you see,” Dulcimer said, throwing a final set of switches before Rebka and Nenda could get to him. “ ’Cause this’s a real bad trip we’re taking, ’n I wouldn’t dare do it if I was cold.” The Erebus was moving, jerking into motion. “Littlebitlittlebitlittlebitlittle.” Dulcimer went into a fit of the giggles, as the ship began a desperate all-over shaking.

“Whooo-oo-ee. Here we go! All ab-b-oard, shipmates, and you all b-b-better hold on real t-t-t-t-t-t—”

When Darya Lang was a three-year-old child growing up on the garden world of Sentinel Gate, a robin made its nest on the outside ledge of her bedroom window. Darya told no one about it, but she looked each day at the three blue eggs, admiring their color, wishing she could touch their smooth shells, not quite realizing what they were…

…until the magical morning when, while she was watching, the eggs hatched, all three of them. She sat frozen as the uniform blue ellipsoids, silent and featureless, gradually cracked open to reveal their fantastic contents. Three downy chicks struggled out, fluffy feathers drying and tiny beaks gaping. At last Darya could move. She ran downstairs, bubbling over with the need to tell someone about the miracle she had just witnessed.

Her house-uncle Matra had pointed out to her the importance of what she had experienced: one could not judge something from its external appearance alone. That was as true for people as it was for things.

And it also applied, apparently, to the Torvil Anfract.

The references spoke of thirty-seven lobes. From outside, the eye and instruments confirmed them. But as the Erebus entered the Anfract and Darya’s first panic subsided, she began to recognize a more complex interior, the filigree of detail superimposed on the gross externals.

Dulcimer knew it already, or he had sensed it with some pilot’s instinct denied to Darya. They had penetrated the Anfract along a spiraling path, down the center of a dark, starless tube of empty space. But then, when to Darya’s eyes the path ahead lay most easy and open to them, the Polypheme slowed the ship to a cautious crawl.