"Sure." One of Sonnebrandt's shoes had a scuff mark near the toe, Hunt had noticed earlier. It we there, faithfully reproduced on his virtual shoe. Amazing, Hunt thought to himself.

"I hope it's not a very common thing," Sonnebrandt joked as they exited the cubicle. "I mean, stuck in this starship crossing the Solar System in hours. It's not very reassuring to realize that things can go wrong."

"Oh, I think you can trust the Thuriens, Josef," Hunt replied mysteriously. Then, vocalizing aloud so as to include Sonnebrandt, "VISAR, care to be the tour guide?"

"How about Control and Command Deck, Communications Center, on-board power pickup from the h-space grid, and propulsion control?" VISAR suggested. Since Hunt had initiated a public conversation, Sonnebrandt heard the response, too.

"Does that sound good?" Hunt asked Sonnebrandt.

"They won't mind? Tourists coming in and gawking in places like that?"

"I can see you're not used to being around Thuriens yet."

"Well, I'd say that is about to be corrected in the not very distant future." Sonnebrandt turned his head to glance at Hunt as they walked. "Is there anything I should know about Thuriens?-in dealing with them, I mean. Anything they get upset about? Things that offend them?"

"You won't offend them, Josef. They don't have the competitive grounding that makes humans get defensive from feeling inferior or inadequate. It just isn't in their nature. For the same reason, it's no use trying to win your point by being aggressive or making an argument out of it. They won't respond. What we think is firmness and take pride in, they'd be more likely to see as being pointlessly obstinate and mildly ridiculous. If you realize you're wrong, just say so like they do. If you're right, don't crow about it. See my point? There isn't any gaming for one-upmanship points going on. Their minds don't work that way."

"Hm… You make them sound very patient. Is that something that comes from being such an old civilization?"

"They make you feel like children at times," Hunt agreed. As an afterthought, he added, "Maybe you should talk to Chien."

They came to a cross-corridor and turned in the direction of the Thurien part of the ship. Danchekker, Chien, Mildred, and the two Thuriens were around the corner, studying a live mural display of scenes from various Thurien planets. For a moment, Hunt could only stand and stare at them, perplexed. This didn't make sense.

Hunt and Sonnebrandt were surrogates-virtual creations that existed in their own minds, projected into a VISAR-supplied environment, which in this case happened to be the interior of the ship as captured by the senors that Thuriens embedded in everything they built. And it was true that VISAR could include as part of that environment the images of people who happened to actually be there-or edit them out; it depended on what the user that the experience was being delivered to wanted. But in such a composite situation, the "background" figures-like Danchekker and the others, who were physically there, where the imagery was coming from-couldn't interact with surrogates-like Hunt and Sonnebrandt-who were not. But Danchekker was interacting-by gaping speechlessly, showing all the signs of being as surprised at their meeting as Hunt was. The only explanation that came to Hunt in his befuddlement was that Sonnebrandt had been right, and Hunt was the one who had been fooled. For some reason, unprecedented in Hunt's experience, Thurien technology had failed to function… Or was VISAR the one, maybe, who was playing a joke? Hunt had come across some of its weird ideas of humor before.

"Dr. Hunt. You've caught up with us," Chien said. "We didn't get very far, I'm afraid. Your colleague, Professor Danchekker, was going to show us the Thurien virtual travel system. But it seems to be down at the moment. I hope it's not a general indicator of Thurien engineering."

"That's extraordinary!" Sonnebrandt exclaimed. "We did the same. And I said exactly what you just said." Chien laughed. The two Thuriens, who were still with the other group, remained detached in a curious kind of way.

But Danchekker wasn't laughing. He looked at Hunt with an expression of somebody confronting the impossible and not knowing how to frame a question to express it. It seemed he was having the same problem, which would mean that he thought the same that Hunt did-or had until a moment ago. But that could only be because he had tried to pull the same trick on his companions, too.

"Okay, VISAR, a good one," Hunt fired at it.

"What do you mean, Vic?"

"The joke's over. Come on, level up. What's going on?"

Mildred, however, was acting differently from the others. She stood, staring uncertainly at Hunt for several seconds, and then moved a step nearer, bringing her face close. For a moment he thought she was about to kiss him on the cheek. She stepped back, her eyes twinkling mischievously. "Christian told me you used to be a smoker until not very long ago. Is that right?"

"Well… yes." He shook his head. "What does that have to do with-"

"Ah! Gotcha, VISAR," Mildred said softly. "You're getting lazy."

"What did I do?"

Mildred smiled at Hunt as she replied. "You used your old stored profile to create Dr. Hunt. It included a hint of the aroma that smokers typically have. It's there now. But it shouldn't be. It wasn't earlier, or when we came up in the shuttle." She explained to the others who were listening, but who still hadn't figured it out, "The system is working just fine. We are inside it right now, as I speak-all of us! I'm amazed. Congratulations, Christian. You really had us fooled." Danchekker was looking too astonished to reply. Behind him, the two Thuriens were grinning.

"Okay, you win," VISAR conceded. "So shall we continue with the tour?"

"But of course," Chien said. At the same time, she sent Mildred an approving nod.

It occurred to Hunt that this would be one way of making sure that the crew in the Command Deck and elsewhere wouldn't have to be bothered by gaggles of tourists coming through. Sonnebrandt moved close as they started moving again. "She's sharp," he murmured. "It may be as well that she's coming along."

Hunt had to agree. He was still getting over the surprise himself. It was the first time ever that he had known VISAR to be caught out on something.

From records pieced together in the course of investigating Charlie and the other Lunarian remains uncovered on the Moon, it had been established that the Lunarians knew of the lost race of giant-size bipeds that had inhabited Minerva long before their own time. Lunarian mythology told that this race still existed at a star known as the Giants' Star, which could be identified on the charts. At the time of these discoveries, the scientists of Earth had no way of knowing if the legend was true. But they kept the star's name, and it had persisted since.

Giants' Star, or Gistar, was located approximately twenty light-years from the Solar System in the constellation of Taurus. It was Sun-like in size and composition but somewhat younger, and supported a system of five outer gas giants and five inner terrestrial-type planets, all of them attended by various gaggles of moons, that came uncannily close to duplicating the pattern back home. This was hardly surprising, since ancient Ganymean leaders had searched long and diligently to find a new home for their race that would present as few hazards in the way of unknowns and surprises as possible.

Thurien was the fifth planet out from its star, as Minerva had been, a little smaller than Earth, and cooler, which suited the Ganymean range of adaptation. However, the composition and dynamics of the atmosphere provided a more equalized pattern of heat distribution than Earth's, resulting in polar regions that were smaller than a simple comparison of distances would have indicated, and equatorial summers that were seldom hotter than the equivalent of marginal subtropical to Mediterranean. The surface was roughly seventy percent water, with four major continental land masses distributed, unlike those of Earth, fairly equally across both hemispheres, but with a greater variation in height between the deepest ocean chasms and highest mountain peaks.