“There shouldbe more people here,” Lynn said, as they moved toward another, much shallower downslope. “More would be on their way from Base One as we speak if it weren’t for the fact that the groups in favor of a temporary or permanent withdrawal are becoming more paranoid by the day. With Milyukov on one side, insisting that they can’t be taken off the world again, and the frontiersmen on the other, insisting that we have to make a go of the colony and that everybody ought to stop whining and pull their weight, the situation at Base One is gradually turning into total farce. You know they’re planning some kind of election, I suppose? With everything that needs to be donedown here, at least half of the people at Base One are devoting the bulk of their time and effort to organizing a bloody conferenceto determine their official position. Unbelievable! Almost as unbelievable as the idea that if they take a vote on it, the minority will immediately fall into line with the majority!”

“I’ve only heard rumors,” Matthew said, putting a hand on the wall beside the path to balance himself more securely. “No one was delegated to brief us on that sort of stuff, even though Milyukov seems to think that Bernal might have been murdered to deny him a voice in the big debate. Was he even planning to attend?”

“I doubt it. The only plan he seemed to be interested in during the days leading up to his death was the river journey. The engraved wall’s just over there.”

Matthew picked out the relevant patch of wall easily enough. He’d been hoping that the photograph he’d looked at on Hopehadn’t done it justice, but the original was no clearer. The reality seemed, in a way, even more primitive than the image—but someone had obviously gone to considerable trouble to carve out the line drawing, given that any chisels they had available must have had brittle blades.

“Where’s the pyramid?” Matthew asked, suddenly.

“Good question,” Lynn replied. “We decided that it probably isn’t a structure at all. We think it’s a symbol. Maybe a kind of frame, maybe an arrow pointing up to the sky. It’s just a couple of lines—we only see it as a pyramid because we’re culturally preconditioned.”

“Maybe,” said Matthew, grudgingly. “It’s a pity Bernal didn’t get his cameras. If he’d been able to take them downriver with him, he’d have been able to put his two cents’ worth into the debate at Base One from a unique platform. Unless, of course, Milyukov decided to do likewise, in which case there’d have been a big on-screen argument. Bernal always loved a big showdown.”

“It’s not just some cheap TV event, Matthew,” she told him, with a measure of asperity, as she led him away from the mural, this time heading back the way they had come. “It’s real, and it might determine the fate of the colony.”

“Not unless it’s properly stage-managed, it won’t,” Matthew said. “There’ll be a lot of nonsense talked, and maybe a show of hands, and it will accomplish exactly nothing. The fact that there’s a power struggle going on aboard Hopemight have convinced too many of us that there’s more than one possible outcome to this sorry mess, but there isn’t. Whatever happens up there, those of us who are down here are stuck here for the foreseeable future, and probably forever. If this is a death trap, we’ll die in it.”

“Try telling that to Tang. On second thought, don’t. You’ll stand a better chance of getting that berth if you don’t upset him. Ike and I want you to have it, but that might not be enough.”

“So I’d gathered,” Matthew said. “Lynn, who the hell could have killed Bernal—and why?”

“As I told your friend Solari, I don’t know. If he thinks it was me, he’s barking up the wrong tree.”

“Why should he think it was you?”

“Because I’m the nearest thing to a scorned woman he can find. Cherchez la femme—isn’t that the detective’s motto?”

“Oh,” Matthew said, momentarily unable to think of anything else to say. It wasn’t a line of argument he wanted to pursue. He thought about Tang Dinh Quan instead, and the two daughters Tang had in SusAn. For Tang, he knew, any argument about the future of the colony had to cut further and deeper than “We’re stuck with it for the foreseeable future, so we might as well get on with it.” When the time came for him to talk to Tang he had to have something better than that to say to him. Tang’s daughters, like Alice and Michelle Fleury, still had all their options open.

The worst scenario that Matthew could readily imagine was that Alice and Michelle might be whisked away in the tender care of Konstantin Milyukov’s Revolutionary Tribunal while their father was marooned, whether the world on which he was marooned was capable of sustaining human life in the longer term or not—but how could that possibly happen, he asked himself, given Rand Blackstone’s calculations?

Matthew had relaxed considerably now that they were retracing their steps, but that was a mistake. He was still tired, and he had grown used to putting his hand out sideways to rebalance himself and provide a little extra support. While descending from the mound he had been placing it on bare stone, but now they were walking along a narrow path the walls to either side were covered in vegetation. Because he found the feel of the alien “stems” and “leaves” slightly disconcerting, he had developed a subliminal preference for reaching throughthe purple curtain to touch the stone behind it—but it was an unwariness that he quickly came to regret.

It was only out of the corner of his eye that he saw the flicker of movement as a clutch of tentacles began writhing like Medusa’s hair, but the glimpse was enough to flood him with terror.

He snatched his hand away with the utmost urgency—and immediately understood how minutely his autonomic nervous system had been tuned to Earthly conditions. It felt as if his arm had been seized by some alien power and thrown aside. There was no real reason for him to stumble, but the sense of dislocation that suddenly swept over him made it all-but-impossible for him to maintain his stance. He lurched to one side, crashing into the wall opposite the one from which he had removed his hand. He had tripped over his own foot.

While he was cursing volubly Lynn was quick to snatch a long-bladed knife from her belt. She used the blade to part the purple foliage and expose the creature more fully.

Although he was still fighting for balance, Matthew immediately realized how small the monster was by comparison with the one that Rand Blackstone had brought back to the bubble after Maryanne Hyder had been stung. The creature’s body was no bigger than his hand, and was shaped not unlike a hand laid flat, save for the tentacles bedded where the first joint of the middle finger would have been had it actually been a hand. The tentacles themselves were much thinner than a finger; they seemed surprisingly pale—almost translucent—and rather delicate. The flat-worm-like body was a deeper purple than Blackstone’s specimen, and the eyespots were much less prominent.

“It’s okay,” Lynn said. “Even if it had stung you it wouldn’t have been any worse than a bee sting, unless you had a massive allergic reaction.”

“What’s the bloody thing doing lurking in there?” Matthew growled, to cover his embarrassment. “What’s the point of having photosynthetic pigments in your skin if you’re going to skulk in the shadows while the sun’s at zenith?”

“Another good question,” Lynn conceded. “Not hiding from predators, that’s for sure. They don’t seem to have any enemies hereabouts but us.” She let the foliage fall back to its original position and dropped her hand, taking care not to let any part of her surface-suit get into range of the sting-cells. She made no move to capture or kill the creature. “I’m not sure whether their numbers are actually increasing or whether we’re just getting better at spotting them,” she mused.