He had bought a large map representing the sea, Without the least vestige of land:

And the crew were much pleased when they found it to be

A map they could all understand.

Nigel smiled, thinking of ExComm. He glanced up at the granite politician, now the spattered colleague of pigeons.

For, although common Snarks do no manner of harm, Yet I feel it my duty to say

Beware if your Snark be a Boojum! For then You will softly and suddenly vanish away.

Nigel enjoyed the crisp turning of pages, the contorted line drawings of wrinkled dwarves fretting over their hunt. Sitting here in this dry American park, he felt suddenly very mild and English.

For the Snark’s a peculiar creature, that won’t Be caught in a commonplace way.

Do all that you know, and try all that you don’t: Not a chance must be wasted to-day.

The top floor at JPL was now executive country, entirely given over to the management of the Snark problem. Several corridors branched into warrens of cramped offices. Nigel lost his way and, opening a conference room door by mistake, disturbed an earnest circle of men. They looked up and recognition of him crossed their faces, but they said nothing. The blackboard behind them was covered with indecipherable symbols. Nigel nodded, smiled and went away.

Ah, and here it was: Evers & Company. The anonymous tiled corridors changed to Mirrormaze. As he passed, the walls rippled with liquid light, responding to his body heat. A lacy pink cocoon followed him down the hallway until the walls flared out to form a reception center, dotted with bodyfit furniture. Nigel recognized the scheme and looked for the unobtrusive signature. There it was, inlaid in gold, tucked in a corner: WmR. He did Total Environments for those wealthy enough, or powerful enough, to commission him.

So Evers now had that kind of prestige. Interesting. With Snark still an official secret—and a remarkably tight one—Evers still had used it as a lever to get more attention from the government. Interesting.

“Dr. Walmsley?” a receptionist said to him.

“Mr. Walmsley.”

“Oh. Well. Mr. Evers will see you in just a moment.” Nigel stopped watching the iridescent walls and studied her. “Fine.” He turned to watch an inset 3D, ignoring the well-dressed young man who lounged in a nearby flexchair. The man flicked a casual appraising glance at Nigel and then relaxed again behind heavy-lidded eyes, thumbs hooked into his belt just above his fashionably padded crotch. Nigel guessed that he was Evers’s bodyguard, one selected more for show than protection.

Nigel thumbed the 3D control. In brown: immense, prickly pile of garbage. On the far hillside, a glowing white dot of the fusion flame. In the foreground, a commentator, stylishly bare to the waist, told of three workers—hash-slingers, she called them—who’d gotten caught in the belts that fed the recycling burner. There was no trace of them, of course, and the accident had to be reconstructed from their work schedules and approximate positions in the Wastepark. The fusion flame had ripped them down into their component atoms, and then the mass spectrometers had plucked the valuable phosphorus and calcium and iron from the everlasting plasma and formed bricks. The hydrogen and carbon and oxygen became fuel and water, final useful burial for one man and two women who—one officially presumed—were a bit slow that particular day, or a bit stupid. But the focus of the news story was that they quite obviously weren’t innocent victims. They’d hired on only weeks before. They’d been seen dangerously near the mouth of the fusion chambers, where radiation and plasma blowback were constant threats. So: a scavenger gang, rummaging the waste of decades past for durable antiques or precious metals. Wastepark workers didn’t have tote-home rights, but who checked that close to the fusion torches? How many others have sneaked into these landfill areas? the commentor asked somberly. She swiveled to face the 3D snout, seemingly oblivious of the jeweled ornaments that swung from her artificially swollen nipples. Dangling gems winked blue and red at the 3D. Systematically raking up and mining these hills, I think we uncover more than raw materials for the fusors. We find more than the opulent trash of the middle twencen. No—she paused, face clouding—we find ourselves. Our greed. Our longing for the decadent past. How many have died unknown in the automatic belts and claws? Been jammed and sucked slimmy-jimmy into the eternal flames? The camera panned across the jumbled hills.

Nigel shook his head and clicked it off.

“Mr. Walmsley?”

He went through the burnished oak door held open by the receptionist and shook hands with Evers.

“I promised I’d get back to you,” Evers said. “Sit down.” He smiled warmly and moved to a comfortable chair away from the walnut desk.

“I bucked it upstairs,” Evers said.

“To meet the Snark.”

“Yes.”

“Not merely be on the tracking team—to actually make the mission.”

“Right.”

“And?”

“Well, there were a lot of questions.”

Nigel laughed, a barking sound. “There always are.” “Some people wondered if you were still in the top flight-training category.”

“I go back to Houston and Ames regularly. I put in a lot of time on the simulators.”

“True. How about exercise?”

“Hiking. Squash. Racquetball.”

“Racquetball? How’s that played?”

“A blend of handball and squash. Short, stubby racquet. Played in a room, shots off the ceiling are legal, and you have to return the ball to the forward wall after each bounce.”

“I see. Fast?”

“Reasonably.”

“As fast as squash?”

“No. The ball bounces a lot.”

“You don’t like me, do you, Nigel?”

Nigel sat silent. He kept his face stony and shifted his feet on the thick carpet.

“Can’t say I’ve thought about it.”

“Come on.” Evers leaned forward, elbows on his chair’s arms, hands knitted together.

“Well, I can’t really—”

“I’m trying to level with you.”

“I see.”

“No, you don’t see.”

Nigel sat back, crossed his legs.

“You come to me and want the Snark rendezvous mission. Right? I think about it. I read your file.”

“You buck it upstairs,” Nigel said evenly. “Damned right. It’s an important decision.”

“One you can make.”

“Not by myself.”

“You’re in charge of this operation. You’re the next rung up from NASA itself, so—”

“So nothing. I have to take the advice of the experts below me or else there’s no reason to have experts in the first place.”

“Well, then—take it.”

“You wouldn’t like it if I did.”

Nigel grimaced. “The canonical punchup, eh?” “Let’s say the returns are mixed.”

“Nice phrase.”

“Damn it!” Evers slapped his chair arm. “You are not going to sit here and Gary Cooper your way through this thing.”

“I don’t know what you mean, but if you’re asking me to be responsible, then ask me a bloody question.”

“Nigel …” Evers looked at his hands. “Nigel. NASA remembers Icarus. They remember your private little communication gambit with the Snark—and so do I.”

“I don’t think that last bears on matters. I was under stress. My—”

“You’ll be under stress out there, meeting the Snark.” “A different thing entirely.”

“Maybe. That’s it—maybe. You’re unreliable, Nigel. You don’t follow orders.”

“I’m not a machine, no.”

“There you go. That fucking British reserve, those distancing remarks. But I know you’re not really like that, Nigel. Your personality profile from the psychtechs isn’t that way.”

“And they should know, of course.”

“Okay, they’re not perfect. But there has to be something to explain why a hell of a lot of people in NASA like you, Nigel. Why they’ll go out on a limb and recommend you for the Snark rendezvous.”