“What are you doing?” Lubkin said. The men around Nigel’s roller chair fell silent.

“Transmitting,” Nigel said.

He tapped in the crucial part: recognition code. He had memorized his telltale code months before, in Hufman’s office, and now he instructed his board to relay the Snark’s reply to him. The board would transmit directly to the telltale, so that Nigel could hear the reply before it was replayed in the Main Bay for the Committee.

“Here it goes,” Nigel said. He pressed a button and the board transmitted a recognition signal; his telltale beeped in sympathy in his ear.

He ordered Venus Monitor to begin signaling the Snark.

The ship was coasting smoothly when the strong signal found it.

It was a clever code, beginning with a plot of the ship’s own trajectory through this planetary system. So the beings of the third planet had followed all along, waiting. To reveal this now was a clear sign of nonhostile intentions; they could have kept their capabilities secret.

The craft quickly located the source of the pulse, circling this shrouded planet. Was this world occupied, too? It recalled an ancient amphibian race that evolved on a world not too dissimilar, whose inability to see the stars through the blanket of clouds had retarded them forever. And it thought of other worlds, encased in baking layers of gases, where the veined rock itself attained intelligence, laced together by conducting metals and white-hot crystals.

The machines studied the radio pulse for a fraction of a second. There was much here to understand. Elaborate chains of deduction and inference led to a single conclusion: the third planet was the key. Caution was no longer justified.

The computers would have to revive the slumbering intelligence which could deal with these problems. They would become submerged in that vast mind. There was a bittersweet quality to the success of their mission; their identity would cease. The overmind would seek whatever channel it needed to understand this new species, and these more simple computers would be swept up in its currents.

The revival began.

The craft readied itself to answer.

The ferrite cube emptied itself. Nigel heard a blur of stuttered tenor squeals.

“Hey! What’re you—”

Lubkin had noticed the switch in cubes. Some indexing error? Lubkin reached over Nigel’s shoulder toward the board controls.

Nigel lunged upward. He caught Lubkin’s arm and twisted it away from the board.

Someone shouted. Nigel swung out of his chair and pulled on Lubkin’s arm, slamming him into another man. Lubkin’s coat sleeve ripped open.

His telltale beeped. The Snark was answering. Nigel froze. The pattern was clear, even though speeded up: the Snark was sending back Nigel’s original message.

Nigel wobbled. In the enameled light the faces of Evers and Lubkin swam toward him. He concentrated on the burbling in his head. There; the Snark had finished retransmitting Nigel’s signal. Nigel felt a surge of joy. He had broken through. They could reply with—

Someone seized his arm, butted into his ribs. He opened his mouth to say something, to calm them. Voices were babbling.

His telltale squealed. Shrieked.

Sound exploded in his mind. The world writhed and spun.

He felt something dark and massive move through him. There was a bulging surge, filling— The torrent swallowed his identity.

Nigel gasped. Clawed the air. Fell, unconscious.

Lubkin was talking to him. Meanwhile fireflies of blue-white banked and swooped and stung his eyes. They were distracting. Nigel watched the cloud of singing fireflies flitting between him and the matted ceiling. Lubkin’s voice droned. He breathed deeply and the fireflies evaporated, then returned. Lubkin’s words became more sharp. A weight settled in his gut.

They understood Nigel’s state of mind, Lubkin said. About his wife and all. That explained a lot. Evers wasn’t even very angry about Nigel’s maneuver with J-27. It was a better idea, the committee admitted, once they’d had a chance to study it. What the hell, they could understand…

Nigel grinned dizzily, ironically.

The fireflies sang. Danced.

Evers was pretty pissed at Nigel’s suckering them, Lubkin said, forehead wrinkling. But now J-27 had responded. That made things better. Evers was willing to ignore Nigel’s deception. Considering, that is, Alexandria.

“What?” Nigel sat upright in the hospital bed.

“Well, I—”

“What did you say about Alexandria?”

Nigel saw that he was stripped to the waist. Lubkin licked his lips in an uncertain, edgy way. His eyes slid away from Nigel’s.

“Dr. Hufman wants to see you as soon as I’m through. We brought you here from JPL, after we got that call, asking where you were. I mean, we understood then.”

“Understood what?”

Lubkin shrugged uneasily, eyes averted. “Well, I didn’t want to be the one …”

“What in hell are you saying?”

“I didn’t know she was that close, Nigel. None of us did.”

“Cl… close?”

“That’s what the call was about. She died.”

A nurse found him a stiff blue robe. Dr. Hufman met him in the corridor where he was saying goodbye to Lubkin and shook hands solemnly, silent. Nigel looked at Hufman but he could not read any expression.

Hufman beckoned to him. They moved down the hallway. Somewhere a summoning bell chimed. The sleek walls reflected back to Nigel the face of a haggard man, a day’s growth of beard sprouting, upper face fixed in a rigid scowl. The two men walked.

“She… she died right after I left?” Nigel asked in a croaking whisper.

“Yes.”

“I—I’m sorry I left. You tried to call me…”

“Yes.”

Nigel looked at the other man. Hufman’s face was compressed, eyes unnaturally large, his features pinched as if under pressure.

“You… you’re taking me to view her?”

“Yes.” Hufman reached a gray metal door and opened it.

His eyes fixed on Nigel. “She died, Mr. Walmsley. Uncontrollable hemorrhage. The operating room was busy. There were other patients. We put her aside for the orderlies to carry away. A half hour passed.”

Nigel nodded dumbly.

“Then she began to move, Mr. Walmsley. She rose from the dead.”

Alexandria sat alone. She was in an elaborate diagnostic wheelchair; it bristled with electronics. Her white hospital smock was bunched above her knees and probes touched her at ankles, calves, forearms, neck, temples. She smiled wanly.

“I knew. You would return. Nigel.”

“I…I was…”

“I know,” she said mildly. “You. Spoke. To Shirley. You became. Frightened. By what was. Happening.” She spoke slowly, the words individually formed and separated by a perceptible pause. She had to work for each syllable.

“The New Sons …” Nigel began and then did not know how to continue.

“You need not. Have. Become. Excited. Nigel. He had told. Me. That you sensed it. Too. Briefly.”

“He? Who…”

“Him. What you felt. Before you. Rejected the Immanence.”

Nigel was aware of Hufman closing the door behind them, standing where he could hear but not interrupt. Alexandria seemed delicately balanced, fragile, suspended by some inner certainty. Encased.

“You felt Him. Nigel. My love. Perhaps. You did not. Recognize. Him. To you. For a long while. He was the Snark.”

Nigel was silent for a long, stunned moment. “The telltale,” he said out of the corner of his mouth, toward Hufman.

“Yes. Yes,” Alexandria said in a flat voice. “That is. How He entered me. But I. Recognized Him. For His true nature.”

She closed her eyes and her chest rose in shallow, rapid breaths. Nigel glanced at Hufman. His legs were numb and he felt pinned to this spot, unable to advance toward Alexandria or retreat. Her wheelchair readouts blinked and shifted.

“Can someone—something—do that?” he said in a quick whisper. “Transmit over that telltale circuit?”