Dull gray walls. A jumble of nets and unconnected support lines on the floor, right by his side. He was sitting on a length of flexible netting, springy enough to be a bed. The cable he had come down ran off to the right, to a descending ramp that became part of a brightly lit tunnel.

Off on that right side — he stopped, stared, and stared again. On that right side, close to the entry to the downward ramp, was E. C. Tally.

And crouched next to him, eight legs splayed, was J’merlia.

Birdie scrambled to his feet. The Lo’tfian was supposed to be hundreds of thousands of kilometers away, on Dreyfus-27. What was he doing here?

Birdie jerked at the line he was holding, to send a signal back to Graves that it was safe to descend, and hurried across to the other two.

“You were right about messages, E.C.,” he said. “I assume you tried to send something through your suit communicator, but we didn’t hear a thing.”

“Nor I from you. The surface is presumably impervious to electromagnetic signals, though it permits material objects to pass through with no difficulty.” E. C. Tally gestured to J’merlia. “It is not necessary for you to introduce the two of us, Commissioner Kelly. We have already done that. Although J’merlia and I never met before, I recognized the Lo’tfian form from stored records.”

“That’s as may be. But what’s he doing here? Why aren’t you over on Dreyfus, J’merlia, the way Captain Rebka’s messages said you would be?”

“I beg forgiveness for that act. I came to Glister to seek the masters, Atvar H’sial and Louis Nenda, and also the Hymenopt Kallik. But when I was on the surface, I was forced to seek refuge in the interior from the attack of Phages. The ship that I had arrived in, the Summer Dreamboat, took off from the surface and left me helpless.”

“Sorry, J’merlia, that was our doing — we needed it to come down in. But you were a bit ambitious, wouldn’t you say, looking for Nenda and H’sial and Kallik? Seeing as how we’ve all no idea where any one of them is. You’d have been better off staying on Dreyfus, out of harm’s way. Phages are bad news.”

“With apologies, Commissioner Kelly. The Phages are, as you say, amazingly aggressive. It was unwise of me to come here. But there is good news also. I know where the masters are! And the Hymenopt Kallik. They are all three together, in a chamber closer to the center of Glister.”

“I can’t believe it.” Birdie turned to E. C. Tally. “Is J’merlia telling the truth?”

“I have no direct evidence that supports his statement. But if you will accept indirect evidence, according to the central data banks the species that lead the spiral arm in deliberate falsehood are humans and Cecropians. Everyone else, including J’merlia and all Lo’tfians, is far behind.”

“With respect, Commissioner Kelly, you may verify that I speak the truth. All you need to do is act as I did — follow the cable. It led me all the way from the surface, to were the masters and Kallik can be found.”

“Which would certainly be direct evidence.” E. C. Tally gestured to Birdie. “Go ahead, Commissioner, with J’merlia. When Councilor Graves joins me we will come after you. The cable provides an unambiguous trail for us to pursue.”

Birdie found himself following the thin figure of J’merlia down an angled and jointed tunnel, whose sudden changes of direction made his head spin. The tunnel branched occasionally, and parts were so dimly lit that the walls could not be seen, but J’merlia followed the thin line wherever it led. Birdie trailed along behind, his hand touching the Lo’tfian’s back. Their emergence into a giant domed chamber came as a shock.

The downward-curving floor formed a shallow circular bowl, marked off in concentric rings of pure color. Under the brilliant overhead light their reflection hurt the eyes. From the meeting place of each pair of rings rose insubstantial hemispheres, arching up over the middle of the chamber. The line that J’merlia had been following led toward that center, straight as a spoke on a wheel. Halfway in it stopped. Kallik was lying on the floor there, a compact dark bundle on the boundary between a purple and a red ring. In two front paws she held the spool for the line, and the other end had been wrapped securely around her body.

And beyond Kallik’s unconscious form…

The innermost ring was blue, purest blue, a monochromatic 0.47-micrometer blue. At its center stood a raised dais of the same color, with a dozen glassy seats upon it. In two of those seats lolled the unmistakable forms of Louis Nenda and Atvar H’sial.

Birdie started forward. He was restrained by J’merlia’s grip on his sleeve.

“With respect, Commissioner, it may be unwise to proceed farther.”

“Why? They don’t look dead, just unconscious. But they could be in bad shape. We have to get ’em out and take care of them, soon as we can.”

“Assuredly. My first reaction was the same as yours, that I must proceed at once and rescue the masters. But then I thought to myself, the Hymenopt Kallik surely operated with the same imperative. She saw the masters, she went forward toward them — and she did not reach them. When I realized that, I also realized that the worst way for me to serve the masters would be to become unconscious, as they are. I returned for safety to the second outer chamber. I had formulated no safe plan of action when the human, E. Crimson Tally, appeared.”

“He’s not a human. Tally’s an embodied computer.” Birdie did not go into details. He was too busy thinking about the other things that J’merlia had said.

“Why didn’t you just grab hold of the line and pull Kallik out?” he went on. “She doesn’t weigh much.”

“I was unable to do so, Commissioner. Try it, if you wish.”

Birdie seized the end of the line and heaved, as hard as he could. Kallik did not move a millimeter, and the line inside the pattern of rings did not even leave the floor. It was held there, fused to the surface or secured by some form of field. Birdie was still tugging and swearing when E. C. Tally and Julius Graves arrived.

There were five minutes of questions, suggestions, and counter-suggestions. At the end of it no one had bettered J’merlia’s first proposal: that it was safe to do now what he had been reluctant to do before. He would enter the hemispheres and attempt to retrieve Kallik. If he failed, for any reason, the others would be on hand to help him. He would wear a line around him, so that if he became unconscious he could be pulled out.

“Which we know doesn’t work for Kallik,” Birdie said.

But he had no better ideas. They all watched in silence as J’merlia walked forward steadily, passing through the yellow and green rings and half of the purple one. At that point he hesitated. The thin head began to turn, and the pale yellow eyes on their short eyestalks moved dreamily from side to side.

“J’merlia!” Julius Graves shouted at him — loudly. The Lo’tfian stared around in a vague and puzzled way. He folded his thin hind legs and began to sit down.

“That’s enough!” Graves was already pulling on the line. “Get him out, quick — while he can still stand.”

J’merlia came reeling back from inside the pattern of rings. At the edge of the green annulus he jerked up to his full height and peered around him, but he allowed the others to haul him all the way out. On the edge of the yellow ring he sank down to his belly.

“What happened?” Tally asked. “You were progressing well, and then you halted.”

“I don’t remember.” J’merlia crouched down on all his limbs and turned his eyestalks to stare back into the circle. “I was going in. Steadily, without difficulty. And then all at once I was going out, facing the other direction and being pulled clear.”

“A Lotus field.” Graves was nodding his head soberly. “Once Darya Lang pointed out that Glister is a Builder creation, we might have expected it. There are Lotus fields on many artifacts. The most famous one surrounds and protects Paradox. But J’merlia is lucky — he was exposed to only peripheral-field strength. Only the most recent of his memories were erased.”