THEY RETURNED WITH the cable and the litter and passed down some pain killers which Hutch administered. Tor tied the cable to the ring in one of the doors, and they hauled first Nick and then Hutch up to the top level. Then they got him into the litter. He was still pale but seemed to have gotten his wind back.

“I thought I was dead,” he told them. “I mean, you fall all that way, you don’t expect to walk around anymore.”

George told him to lie still. He and Tor lifted him, and they started back toward the exit. They’d reached the ladder when Hutch signaled them to put out their lights and set him down.

“What is it?” whispered George.

“Something’s coming,” she said.

He turned around but saw nothing.

She pointed. “Other way.” Forward.

And he saw that the darkness ahead was lessening. A light was approaching from somewhere. A side corridor. There was another intersection up there.

“We could make a run for it,” said George.

Hutch’s hand touched his shoulder. “You wanted to say hello, George. This is your chance.”

A glow appeared on the floor about fifty meters ahead. George watched a round yellow lamp glide into the intersection. It was mounted on front of a vehicle. He pushed back and tried to melt into the wall.

“Nobody move,” said Hutch.

He was able to make out a single wheel and something that undulated above the light. A tentacle, he thought, and his blood froze.

“What’s happening?” asked Nick. Hutch was kneeling beside him, keeping him still.

The vehicle stopped in the middle of the passageway, and the lamp turned slowly in their direction, blinding him.

He thought he saw a squid on a bike.

Hutch produced the cutter.

George stared into the light. The thing turned slowly and advanced in their direction.

The moment, at long last, had come.

Gathering his courage, George stepped forward. Hutch’s voice rang in his ears, telling him to take it slowly. No sudden moves.

He shielded his eyes with one hand and raised the other. “Hello,” he said, pointlessely. Unless the thing was listening to his frequency, it could not hear him. Nevertheless he pressed on: “We were passing by when we saw your ship.”

The vehicle was a three-wheeler, one in front, two behind, with a pair of tentacles mounted where the handlebars would be. The headlight also seemed to be on a tentacle. The vehicle moved to within a couple of paces, and stopped, facing them.

George held his ground.

One of the tentacles touched him. He thought it looked polished, smooth, but segmented. The appendage looped smoothly around one arm. George wanted to jerk away from it, but he resisted the impulse. He heard Nick say something. Nick was sitting up, watching.

The tentacle was tipped by a small rectangular connector with three flexible digits.

“We’re friends,” he said, feeling dumb. Was anybody recording this for posterity?

Someone behind him, obviously thinking the same thing, laughed. In that moment, the tension evaporated.

“We’ve tried not to do any damage.”

The tentacle released him and went through a graceful series of swirls and loops.

“Nick fell into the hole back there. But fortunately he wasn’t hurt.” You should mark them.

Both appendages withdrew into the handlebar. Then the light swung away and the device started up again and trundled past. He noticed a stack of black boxes piled on a platform in the rear. A kind of saddle was mounted midsection. In case someone wanted to ride?

It continued to the intersection and turned right.

“SO WHAT DO we do now?” Alyx looked at George, and George looked at the image of the chindi, still gliding serenely above the roiling clouds.

They were in mission control. “We go back and try again,” said George.

Tor and Nick looked at each other. Nick was on a crutch. His leg was bound so he couldn’t move it. “He’s right,” said Tor. “We’re doing pretty well. We have a good idea what the chindi is about, and they don’t seem to be hostile.”

“They don’t even seem to be interested,” said Hutch.

“If it’s a scientific survey vessel,” said Nick, “how could that be?”

Nobody knew. “Hutch said earlier that it might be automated,” said Tor. “Maybe it is. Maybe there’s really nobody over there.”

George was chewing on a piece of pineapple. “That’s hard to believe.”

“If this is some sort of ongoing, long-range mission,” said Hutch, “which is what it’s beginning to look like, running it with an AI and an army of robots might be the only way to go.”

“The problem with going back over there,” she added, “is that we still can’t predict when it might take off. If it does, and we’ve got people on board, we could lose them.”

“That’s a risk I think we’re willing to take at this point,” said Nick.

George shook his head. “Not you, Nick.”

“What do you mean, Not me? I can get around.”

“I don’t think any of you ought to go back,” said Hutch. “You’re just asking for trouble.” But she could see they were determined to go. It looked as if the major danger was past. No people-eaters to worry about. “But George is right.” She looked at Nick. “If the chindi starts to move, we’ll have to clear everyone off in a hurry. There’ll be less chance of survival if you’re there.”

Nick stared back at her. But he knew she was right. And it was hard for him to get angry with Hutch. So he just sat back and looked unhappy.

George was obviously trying to weigh the risk. “This would be a lot easier if we had an idea how much longer they might be here. Hutch, are you sure there’s no way to guess?”

“Not without knowing how big their tanks are. Or how long they’ve been at it already.”

“Look,” said Tor, “suppose it did take off with some of us on it, what course of action have we? You said earlier we’d be able to follow it, right?”

“I said maybe.”

“Okay. So there’s a chance. How confident are you?”

“Depends on the technology. If they do things differently from the way we do, it could be a problem.”

“But if it uses Hazeltine technology, and it jumped, you could follow it to its target, and take us off there. If worse came to worst.”

“Maybe. We’d probably have no trouble finding the destination. But if it’s a long jump, you could run out of air before you got there. If it’s a short jump, we still have to find you within the confines of an entire solar system. It’s by no means a lock.”

“The air tanks,” Alyx reminded them, “only have a six-hour supply. That’s almost no margin at all.”

“I know,” said George. “But we can substantially improve that margin.”

“I’ve been thinking about that, too,” said Tor. “The whole business of having to run outside every few hours for a fresh pair of tanks would slow us down in any case.”

“And,” Alyx said to George, “your suggestion is…”

George raised both arms, a cleric revealing the divine truth. “Tor’s pocket dome.”

“My thought exactly.” Tor was beaming. “We set it up over there and use it as a base. It gives us the opportunity to penetrate deeper into the ship. And we can move it from place to place as we go.”

Hutch made a rumbling sound in her throat. “Tor, the dome has its limits.”

“What limits? It recycles the air. It can go forever. As long as we don’t put too many people inside.”

“It needs power cells.”

“Once every few days. I have two cells. They’ll give us six days each. When one goes down, I’ll send it over for recharge.”

“Well,” said Alyx, “you could put a transmitter on the hull. That way, if it took off, you’d be able to find it in the target system.”

“That’s what we’ll do,” said Tor.

“Wait.” Hutch was sitting in front of a glass of lime juice and a lunch that she hadn’t yet touched. “You’re assuming whatever jump it makes will be to a system close by. But suppose it heads for the Cybele Nebula. We’d need eighteen days to find you. At a minimum. Anything like that happens, and you’re dead.”