Tally had already turned and was heading back toward the middle of the vaulted chamber. Cable was pulling through J’merlia’s too-tight grip. He began to pay it out again just as Louis Nenda grunted and his lips twitched.

“Where the hell am I?” The eyes opened and glared around. The squat figure began trying to sit up.

“That’s a good sign,” Graves said. “He can speak, so at least he hasn’t been wiped totally clean.” He turned to Nenda. “You’re inside a planetoid near Gargantua. Do you remember coming here?”

Nenda shook his dark head and struggled to his feet. “Not a glimmer.” His speech was labored and swollen-tongued.

“So what’s the last thing you do remember?”

Nenda ignored the question. He was too busy staring at the others. “How about that. Fancy you showing up. Julius Graves. And Birdie Kelly. And J’merlia. And all alive.”

“All alive, and no thanks to you.” Graves leaned close. “Come on, Nenda, this is important. What’s the last thing you recall, before you went unconscious?”

Nenda rubbed his hand over his unshaven jaw. “Last thing I remember?” He gave Graves a cautious look. “Mmm. Last thing I remember, Atvar H’sial an’ me were lifting off Quake in the Have-It-All. Summertide was nearly there. I guess it came, and I guess it went.”

“You don’t remember firing on another ship?”

“Firing? Me?” Nenda cleared his throat. “No way. I didn’t fire on anything.”

“Remember it or not, you’ll have to answer for that when we get back to Opal. You’ve already been formally charged with lethal assault.”

“Won’t be the first time someone’s accused an innocent man.” Nenda was recovering fast, the black eyes blinking furiously. “What happened to At? She was with me on the ship.”

“Atvar H’sial?” Graves turned toward the middle of the great chamber. He nodded. “In there. Good. I see they’re on the way out now.”

J’merlia was squeaking with excitement. While Graves and Nenda were talking, E. C. Tally had returned to the dais, pulled Atvar H’sial clear, and was staggering back toward them. He was doubled over with the weight of the great Cecropian body. Nenda followed Graves’s gesture, taking in the bandaged, tottering form, the cable leading from its head to where they stood, the recumbent figure of Kallik four paces behind, and the backdrop of the great, vaulted chamber.

“Hey, what’s going on here? What’d you do to At?”

“We did nothing, and we’re not sure what’s going on. All we know is that you and Atvar H’sial were unconscious in the middle of the chamber, and we have been trying to rescue you.”

“And Kallik? What did you do to my Hymenopt?”

“She became unconscious, trying to get you out.”

J’merlia was jumping up and down with excitement as Tally emerged from the outermost ring. As the Lo’tfian helped to lower Atvar H’sial to the floor, Tally staggered a couple of paces farther and sat down suddenly. The blue eyes closed, and his hands went up to touch his bandaged head.

“This body is regrettably close to its physical limit.” He spoke in a whisper. “I must rest for a few moments. However, we can be pleased with our progress. I am confident that the difficult part is all over. Kallik weighs little. I will take a brief pause to recuperate, and then I will carry her out of the chamber. She is ready to be moved.”

“Hell, I can get her.” Nenda was pushing forward. “You sit down, take it easy. She’s mine, and she’s my responsibility.”

“No.” Graves caught his arm. “Go in there and you’ll be in the same condition as she is in — as you were in. The chamber contains a Lotus field. That is why it was necessary to disembody E. C. Tally before he entered.” He pointed at the rough-surfaced sphere that Kelly was handing to J’merlia. “His brain remained here.”

Nenda took another and more thoughtful look at the crouched body and the cable running from its bandaged head. “Good enough,” he said after a few moments. “I’d better look after At, though — she’ll be coming round in a minute, from the look of her, and she might get violent. Don’t worry, I know how to handle her.”

The Cecropian’s black wing cases had opened to reveal four delicate vestigial wings marked by red and white elongated eyespots. The end of the proboscis was moving out from its home in the pleated chin, and the yellow trumpetlike horns on the head were lifting.

At the same time, the brain-empty body of E. C. Tally was struggling to its feet. His eyes opened slowly. “I must go now and recover Kallik.”

“It’s too soon.” Graves moved to Tally’s side.

“No. It must be soon. The interface is beginning to be affected by seepage of cerebrospinal fluid. The performance of the neural connect is diminishing, and I am receiving worsening sensory inputs. I will go to Kallik while I am still able to see her. Otherwise, we must begin all over again.”

Tally did not wait for approval. The body gave a stuttering step forward, then leaned to one side. It began a crablike shuffle down the slope, heading for the unconscious Hymenopt. Tally’s body had taken ten steps and had almost reached Kallik when Atvar H’sial gave a shrill, earsplitting scream, rose fully upright, and leapt toward Julius Graves.

In the next second Birdie Kelly saw everything and could do nothing.

The Cecropian ran into Graves first and sent him sprawling. Then the councilor and the Cecropian together collided with Birdie. One of her legs knocked him flying and sent the reel of cable spinning away to the periphery of the room. At the same time the brain of E. C. Tally, too securely held by the Lo’tfian, jerked free of the cable and rolled away with J’merlia inside the yellow ring and toward the chamber’s center. As the neural connect was broken, Tally’s body, moving toward Kallik, crumpled and fell to the floor. Another of Atvar H’sial’s legs came sweeping across Birdie and knocked him flat on his back.

He lay staring up at the ceiling. He could not move. All that he could see was a part of the chamber’s domed ceiling, Julius Graves’s equally domed bald head, and part of one of Atvar H’sial’s wing cases. A big weight was sitting on his chest. He was half-stunned from the bruising impact of the back of his head on the floor, his nose was bleeding, and half his teeth felt as though they had been jarred loose.

If E. C. Tally had not assured them that the difficult part was all over, Birdie would never have guessed it.

At the last moment the swirling void below turned blood-red. Darya felt herself stretched from head to toe, while forces of compression rippled their way along her body. Just as they became intolerable she flashed into the heart of the red glare. Before she could record any new sensation she was through, falling in open space.

Hans was at her side, still holding her arm. Straight ahead, rushing toward them, was the bloated sphere of Gargantua.

It filled half the sky. There was no way they could avoid collision with the planet. In one heartbeat it doubled in apparent size, and from the way that the gas-giant’s appearance was changing Darya could determine their exact impact point. They were accelerating into the unwinking Eye of Gargantua. The Eye had become a huge spiraling swirl of orange and umber, with a point at its center as black and lifeless as intergalactic space.

What was that dark pupil? Darya could not guess, but she knew that she would never find out. They would not get that far. They would burn up in one flash of light, human meteors consumed by the outer atmosphere of the planet. As they came closer Darya saw that they were heading right into the empty pupil of the Eye, following the center line of another dark vortex that narrowed all the way in.

As Hans vanished from her side, Darya entered the tunnel of the vortex. Within it she could feel nothing — no air, no light, no forces. On all sides were the cloudy orange swirls of the Eye, but she heard and felt no touch of atmosphere.