Glanville smiled, with an effort ignoring the sarcasm in his wife’s voice. Whatever the qualities of skill, shrewdness and even courage, of a kind, that had brought them here, she still regarded him as something of an obscure joke. At times he wondered whether it would have been better to have left her behind. Alone here, on this lost world, he would have had no one to remind him of his sagging, middle-aged figure, his little indecisions and fantasies. He would have been able to sit back in front of the long sunsets and enjoy the strange poetry of the Sea of Dreams.

However, once he had disposed of Captain Thornwald she might at last take him seriously. ‘Don’t worry, there’ll be no mortal combat — we’ll let the time-winds blow over him.’

Undeterred, Judith said: ‘You’ll let one of your spectral ships run him down? But perhaps he won’t see them.’

Glanville gazed out at the dark grottoes of the sand-reef that fringed the northern shore of the lake two miles away. Despite its uniformity the lake-systems covered the entire planet — the flat perspectives of the landscape fascinated him. ‘It doesn’t matter whether he sees them or not. By the way, the Pequod this evening… it’s a pity you missed Ahab. They were all there, exactly as Melville described them in Moby Dick.’

His wife stood up, as if aware that he might begin one of his rhapsodies again. She brushed away the white sand that lay like lace across the blue brocade of her gown. ‘I hope you’re right. Perhaps you’ll see the Flying Dutchman next.’

Distracted by his thoughts, Glanville watched her tall figure move away across the gradient of the beach, following the tide-line formed by the sand blown off the lake’s surface. The Flying Dutchman? A curious remark. By coming to this remote planet they themselves would lose seven years of their lives by time-dilation if they ever chose to return home, by coincidence the period that elapsed while the condemned Dutchman roved the seas… Every seven years he would come ashore, free to stay there only if he found the love of a faithful woman.

Was he himself the Dutchman? Perhaps, in a remote sense. Or Thornwald? He and Judith had met during the preliminary inquiries and, incredible though it seemed, there might have been something between them — it was difficult to believe that Thornwald would have pursued them this far, sacrificing all hopes of seniority and promotion, over a minor emigration infringement. The bacterial scattering might be serious on some planets, but they had restricted themselves to arid worlds on an empty edge of the universe.

Glanville looked out at the wreck of the excursion module. For a moment there was a glimmer of royals and topgallants, as if the entire CuttySark was about to disgorge itself from the sand. This strange phenomenon, a consequence of the time-sickness brought on by the vast distances of interstellar space, had revealed itself more and more during their long flight. The farther they penetrated into deep space, the greater the nostalgia of the human mind and its eagerness to transform any man-made objects, such as the spaceships in which they travelled, into their archaic forebears. Judith, for some reason, had been immune, but Glanville had seen a succession of extraordinary visions, fragments of the myths and dreams of the Earth’s past, reborn out of the dead lakes and fossil seas of the alien worlds.

Judith, of course, not only lacked all imagination but felt no sense of guilt — Glanville’s crime, the memory of which he had almost completely repressed, was no responsibility of hers, man and wife though they might be. Besides, the failures of which she silently accused him every day were those of character, more serious in her eyes than embezzlement, grand larceny or even murder. It was precisely this that made possible his plan to deal once and for all with Captain Thornwald.

Three weeks later, when Thornwald arrived, Glanville had recovered completely from the accident. From the top of the sand-reef overhanging the western edge of the lake he watched the police captain’s capsule land two hundred yards from the pavilion. Judith stood under the awning on the veranda, one hand raised to ward off the dust kicked up by the retro-jets. She had never questioned Glanville’s strategy for dealing with Thornwald, but now and then he had noticed her glancing upwards at the beacon of the control ship, as if calculating the number of days it would take Thornwald to catch up with them. Glanville was surprised by her patience. Once, a week before Thornwald arrived, he almost challenged her to say whether she really believed he would be able to outwit the police captain. By a curious irony, he realized that she probably did but if so, why did she still despise him?

As the starboard hatch of the capsule fell back, Glanville stood up on the edge of the reef and began to wave with both arms. He made his way down the side of the reef, then jumped the last five feet to the lake floor and ran across to the capsule. ‘Thornwald! Captain, it’s good to see you!’

Framed within the steel collar of his suit, the policeman’s tired face looked up at Glanville through the open hatch. He stood up with an effort and accepted Glanville’s hand, then climbed down on to the ground. Careful not to turn his back on Glanville, he unzipped his suit and glanced quickly at the pavilion and the wreck of the excursion module.

Glanville strolled to and fro around him. Thornwald’s cautious manner, the hand near the weapon in his holster, for some reason amused him. ‘Captain, you made a superb landing, beautiful marksmanship — getting here at all, for that matter. You saw the beacon, I suppose, but even so…’ When Thornwald was about to speak, Glanville rattled on: ‘No, of course I didn’t leave it on deliberately — damn it, we actually crashed! Can you imagine it, after coming all this way — very nearly broke our necks. Luckily, Judith was all right, not a scratch on her. She’ll be glad to see you, Captain.’

Thornwald nodded slowly, his eyes following Glanville’s pudgy, sweating figure as it roved about the capsule. A tall, stooped man with a tough, pessimistic face and all the wariness of a long-serving policeman, he seemed somehow unsettled by Glanville’s manic gaiety.

Glanville pointed to the pavilion. ‘Come on, we’ll have lunch, you must be tired out.’ He gestured at the sand-lake and the blank sky. ‘Nothing much here, I know, but it’s restful. After a few days—’

‘Glanville!’ Thornwald stopped. Face set, he put a hand out as if to touch Glanville’s shoulder. ‘You realize why I’m here?’

‘Of course, Captain.’ Glanville gave him an easy smile. ‘For heaven’s sake, stop looking so serious. I’m not going to escape. There’s nowhere to go.’

‘As long as you realize that.’ Thornwald plodded forward through the top surface of fine sand, his feet placed carefully as if testing the validity of this planet with its euphoric tenant. ‘You can have something to eat, then we’ll get ready to go back.’

‘If you like, Captain. Still, there’s no desperate hurry. Seven years here and back, what difference will a few hours or even days make? All those whipper-snappers you left behind you in the department will be chief commissioners now; I wouldn’t be in too much of a hurry. Besides, the emigration laws may even have been changed..

Thornwald nodded dourly. Glanville was about to introduce him to Judith, standing quietly on the veranda twenty feet from him, but suddenly Thornwald stopped and glanced across the lake, as if searching for an invisible marksman hidden among the reefs.

‘All right?’ Glanville asked. Changing the pitch and tempo of his voice, he remarked quietly: ‘I call it the Sea of Dreams. We’re a long way from home, Captain, remember that. There are strange visions here at sunset. Keep your back turned on them.’ He waved at Judith, who was watching them approach with pursed lips. ‘Captain Thornwald, my dear. Rescue at last.’