“Marvelous. And you think I’m keen to charge off to the Swirl, after hearing all that? One of us is crazy.”

“You’ve had experience in other stellar systems. We would give you the toughest ship and the best crew that you could ask for. And it’s obvious that this time the other Stellar Group members will do everything they can to help.”

“Everything, except let us defend ourselves if some crazy alien comes screaming in to kill us. Then I guess we just lie down and roll over. Ambassador, it isn’t just no. It’s no way . Unless certain other conditions are met.”

“There’s more.” MacDougal gestured to the other glass. “Here. Drink that. You’re going to need it.”

“Why? What else didn’t you bother to tell me before the Star Chamber meeting?”

“Not a thing. I told you everything I knew then. But now that the meeting is over, I’ll tell you one other thing.” Dougal MacDougal leaned closer to Chan. “I’m an Ambassador. With only the two of us here, I’m willing to say I’m just an Ambassador. Lots of robes and uniforms and ceremonies, but I’m not one of the real power brokers in the solar system. Now, the Stellar Group is offering to end the quarantine . To open up the universe. Do you have any idea how much that means to groups like Unimine, or Foodlines, or Infotech?”

“I can guess.”

“I don’t think you can. The Stellar Group can’t stand violence, but some of the corporate boys seem to thrive on it. You tell them you won’t cooperate to end the quarantine. You tell them you want to go back to Earth. You’ll go back to Earth all right — without a Link, and without a rocket. You’ll do a solo reentry with or without a space suit and return home as a puff of dust.”

Chan reached out and picked up the glass from the table. He drank long and deep, then said, “Now you’re giving me the sort of logic I understand. I agree to go, or they skin me alive.”

“If they’re feeling in a kind mood. You’re going, then?”

“I still need to think about it.”

“Then you’re not as smart as I thought you were.”

“Or I’m smarter. There’s something else. You sat in the meeting. Let me tell you something you didn’t notice.”

“I watched everything.”

“But you didn’t catch this, or you’d have said something about it already. You tell me the other Stellar Group members will do everything they can to help. But I’m not sure of that. They sent two expeditions to the Geyser Swirl, right?”

“That’s what they told us.”

“And I feel sure they were telling the truth. But why? Why two expeditions?”

“Obviously, because the first one didn’t come back.”

“That’s obvious to you, and obvious to me. But you know the Pipe-Rillas and the Tinkers and the Angels. They’re not risk takers. It must have been hard work persuading one team of theirs to head into unknown territory like the Geyser Swirl. And then they persuaded a second one to go?”

“Apparently they did. They do not lie.”

“Think about that second ship. The Stellar Group members are born cowards. They wouldn’t go for the love of exploration, or for scientific curiosity.” Chan shook his head. “For that, they’d send unmanned probes. I don’t have proof of this, but I’ll tell you what I think. I think that the Stellar Group believes something enormously valuable may be hidden in the Geyser Swirl. So valuable, they were willing to send one expedition, and then another when that one didn’t come back. Think of it, a whole new Link — think where it might take you, think what you might find there.” Chan raised his glass and emptied it in one long swallow. “How keen are they to learn what happened in the Geyser Swirl? I don’t know. But we’ll get some idea — when we hear their response to my own conditions before I’ll say yes.”

The Terran exploration ship Mood Indigo was not the dead, derelict hulk described by Dougal MacDougal. It carried a crew of three: owner and captain Friday Indigo, chief engineer and astrogator Bony Rombelle, and general factotum Liddy Morse.

They were certainly alive; but what they were, more than anything, was confused. They had entered a Link near the Vulcan Nexus, so close to Sol that the sun’s flaming surface filled more than thirty degrees of the sky. Their destination was set as the Geyser Swirl. They expected to emerge in open space, at a location about as close to a star, planet or dust cloud as their departure Link was close to Sol. What should not happen — what the Link system should not permit to happen — was an arrival at a place where something was already there. The Link navigator would detect the presence of matter, and abort the transfer.

So much for theory.

Bony Rombelle stared out of the port at an expanse of cloudy green that faded off into the distance without discernible features. According to his instruments, the ship was in a weak gravity field and gently descending.

“Rombelle!” That was Friday Indigo’s harsh voice, crackling through from the cabin. “I show us clear of the Link exit. Report our location and status.”

Obviously, the captain was focused on the controls and not looking outside.

“All internal ship readings are normal, sir.” Bony peered again through the port, looking downward. “However, sir, we appear to be under water.”

“What! Liddy, keep an eye on things in here.” Friday Indigo popped out of the interior cabin. He was mousy-looking and short, something he tried to hide with exotic, expensive clothes and elevator heels. He stared at the port with bulging eyes, beneath eyebrows that ran straight across with no break. “My God. How did we get here?”

“I have no idea. But we’re descending, and I can’t see the bottom.” Bony glanced at his dials. “No problem so far, the hull can stand four or five atmospheres. We’re not a submarine, though. If we sink too deep …”

“We’ll be flattened. How about the drive?”

It sounded logical, but it made Bony shudder. His supposed training in science and engineering was mostly his own invention, but he knew he was smart and he did have a feel for what you could and could not do. Flying a spaceship underwater was definitely in the latter category.

“Not the fusion drive, sir, that’s right out. I could probably fix the auxiliary ion thrusters to work in water — if it is water — but not without going outside to make a few changes.”

“Then go outside. I assume you can?”

“Go outside, yes. And the suits will work there, no problem. It’s coming back in that’s the hard part. The airlock would be full of water, and we’d need to raise the air pressure high enough to force the water out.” Bony thought about it. “I believe we can do that, given time. But we don’t have time. If we keep going down at the rate we are, we have only a few more minutes before the hull collapses.”

Friday glared accusingly at Bony, as though the whole problem was the fault of his engineer. “Then hold tight. I’m going to start the drive, and the hell with it.”

He headed for the control cabin, leaving Bony with a familiar sensation. Out of the frying pan, into the — what? Bony had signed on with Friday and the Mood Indigo near the solar hotspot known as the Vulcan Nexus. He had done that to escape a difficult situation back in the solar system. Now he was facing a worse one.

He stared warily at the cloudy green beyond the port. What happened if you tried to light a fusion torch under water? Bony’s knowledge of nuclear physics was sketchy, but surely there was a good chance that you would initiate a fusion reaction within the water itself, annihilating everything in one giant explosion. Was it water out there? That seemed logical, but the Geyser Swirl was a very strange place and they didn’t have proof. Given a few minutes, Bony could take a sample from outside, make a few tests, and prove that it was water. But he did not have a few minutes.