I led her to the door.

“I will be back at nightfall.” She turned and walked through the camp toward the forest. People watched her. I returned to the dining room.

The oracle said, “I would like to sleep.”

“Okay,” said Derek.

They left. The blond man made a stack of plates and glasses. “They are going to have to learn to pick up after themselves.”

“They aren’t likely to be using the dining room much,” I said.

“Maybe not.” He went into the kitchen.

I looked at Marina who said, “I have to go feed an ugly-nasty.”

“What?”

“I am collecting specimens, and I haven’t started giving them Latin names. This has been an amazing day. See you later.”

She left. I sat a while longer, alone, thinking, they are alive. Then I went outside.

The wind blew south and east, carrying the clouds away. By midafternoon the sky was clear. I located the biology dome. It was pale yellow and full of cages. Most of the cages were occupied. Birds whistled. Bipeds made piping noises. The ugly-nasty grunted and snuffled.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I figure it’s a prince, under some kind of a curse,” Marina said. “Look at those warts! Look at those bristles!”

The creature paced, claws clicking. It was designed for digging and had a long narrow snout. Not like an anteater. This creature had a lot of teeth.

“I can see what’s ugly about it.”

“But what is nasty? It throws up when it gets nervous. I think it’s a defense mechanism. It surely put me off.”

“What is it?”

“That is an interesting question.” Marina seated herself on a corner of a table. Next to her was a cage full of little lizards, striped yellow and bright pink. The lizards scurried up the sides of the cage and hung from the top. “There, there, honeys. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

The lizards stopped moving. They hung upside-down, frozen. I had the sense they thought they were invisible.

“Remember that cave you found just before you reached the river valley?”

I looked at her surprised. “Yes.”

She grinned. “I’ve seen the reports. There were paintings on the walls. People and bipeds and some mighty big lizards, but no—I’m not certain what to call them—pseudo-mammals. Or mammaloids. No furry critters.

“We think there is a chance that the two continents here have been separated for a long time and have developed really different ecologies.

“There are birds on the big continent. They could have flown there. And a lot of animals that remind us of mammals. But no bipeds.

“This continent is full of birds and bipeds and animals that remind us of lizards. But there are not a lot of animals with fur. Most are small or, if not small, they are domesticated.”

“They came with the people,” I said. “And the people came from the big continent.”

“Right. That’s what we think. But we are working from almost no data.

“We think the paintings that you saw were done after the first people arrived, but before they’d had much of an effect on the local fauna. Maybe the first people came before the domestication of animals. Or maybe they had boats too small to carry much of anything. As I said, we have almost no data.

“Which brings me to the ugly-nasty.” She waved at it.

It snuffled, then yawned, showing rows of pointed teeth. A black tongue curled. What did it eat?

“Raw meat and leaves,” Marina said. “It is an omnivore.”

“Can you read minds?”

“I can make obvious deductions.” She waved again. “It’s too big to have hidden on a boat—or raft—or whatever the people used to get here. And I can’t think of any reason why anyone’d want to bring a thing like that on an ocean voyage. And it isn’t all that similar to the mammaloids I’ve seen.”

I made the gesture of inquiry.

“You’d better speak English.”

“It isn’t?”

“No. For one thing, it doesn’t have tits. I can find no evidence that it lactates. The animals on the big continent do. For another thing, it has vestigial scales. They’re hidden in among the warts and bristles.”

“Really?” I took another look at the animal. It was hard to figure out what it looked like. A sloth? Not really. A spiny anteater? No. How about a hairy lizard? Maybe. Or how about a cross between a badger and a toad?

Nothing fit. It was its own kind of creature.

“Do you think it lays eggs?”

“Maybe. I won’t know till I cut it open.”

I decided not to think about that. “Where do you think it comes from?”

“I have no idea. Maybe it evolved here. Maybe it came from one of the islands. Maybe it’s from the big continent. It might have changed after it got here, found an empty ecological niche, and grown to fill it.

“It has been pure hell on the ship. We’ve had too many questions and too little information. We’ve been sitting up there and weaving crazy theories, like a bunch of spiders who’ve been given a hallucinogen.” Marina stood up. “Well, that’s over. I’m going out to check my traps.” She grinned. “It’s just amazing. I have no idea what I’m going to find.”

I stayed behind and watched the animals. They all had the faintly miserable look of creatures in cages. Maybe I was reading in. I wouldn’t like to be where they were. Maybe they didn’t mind.

The ugly-nasty looked at me, then paced some more. Was it getting nervous? I decided to leave.

There were two boats at the dock now, and people were unloading boxes. I went to help.

We finished about the time the sun went down. The river bluffs cast long shadows over the camp. The lake still gleamed, reflecting the blue-green sky. The people I’d been helping thanked me. I went back to my dome and found Derek in the hall outside my room. He was dressed in a pair of white denim pants. The pants were soaked. He had nothing else on. “I’ve just introduced the oracle to hot and cold running water. I’d better get back there. He might drown. Go to the supply dome. Get medium shorts and a shirt. There is no way he can wear that rag any longer.”

“Okay.” I turned and went back the way I had come.

By the time I returned, the oracle was out of the bathroom. He wandered in the hall, wearing a floral-print towel. One of our dome mates—an Asian woman—watched him. She looked bemused.

“Where is Derek?” I asked.

“In the water room. Have you brought me something to wear?”

“Yes. Come on in here.” I led the way to my room. The woman shook her head and went about her business.

I helped him put on the shorts. They were Earth blue with a lot of pockets. The shirt was cotton and short-sleeved: a pullover, yellow with the name of the expedition in bright red Chinese characters. He needed help with that, too.

When the struggle was over, I stepped back and looked. His fly was closed. His fur was only a little disheveled.

Derek came in.

“How do I look?” asked the oracle. “Am I impressive? Is this the way a man is supposed to dress among your people?”

“Yes,” said Derek.

“Look behind you,” I said.

He turned and faced a mirror. “Aiya! It is big! Even my mother the shamaness did not have a whatever as big as this one.” He peered at his reflection, frowning, then baring his teeth. He picked a fleck of something out from between his upper incisors. “I hope Nia comes back soon. I am hungry. It’s hard work taking a bath the way you people do it.”

“You can say that again,” Derek said.

“No,” said the oracle. “Once is enough. I want to go out now. Your houses are too little. I feel as if the walls are pressing in on me.” He pressed his hands together in illustration.

“You take him,” Derek said. “I want to change my clothes and take a nap.”

“Okay.”

The camp lights had come on. They shone over doors and from the tops of metal poles. A hillclimber bumped past over the rutted ground. Someone called to me. I smiled and waved, not recognizing the voice.

We ended on the dock. There were lights on it: little yellow ones that illuminated our feet and the surface of the dock. I wasn’t entirely certain what it was made of. Cermet? Fiberglass? Something gray and rough. It rocked under our weight. The segments rose and fell every time a wave came in.