Darya accepted a lump of cool yellow fruit. Eat. She ate. She found it slightly astringent, with a granular texture that encouraged hard chewing. No aftereffects. Rebka was right about that, too. They surely would not have been brought all this way only to be poisoned or left to starve. Except — what right did they have to make any assumptions about alien thought processes, when everything that had happened since they arrived at Gargantua had been a total mystery?

She accepted three more pieces of unfamiliar food. Still her stomach was making no objections, but she wished that what they were eating could be warmed. She felt chilled. Shivering, she set her suit at a higher level of opacity. She was ready to ask for more fruit when she noticed that Rebka was sitting up straighter on his seat and staring around him. She followed his look and saw nothing.

“What is it?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. Only…” He was focusing his attention on the far side of the room. “Feel it? It’s not my imagination. A draft — and getting stronger.”

A cold draft. Darya realized that she had been feeling it for a while, without knowing what it was. There were chilly breezes blowing past them, ruffling his hair and tugging gently at her suit.

“What’s causing it?” But Darya knew the answer, even as Hans was shaking his head in bewilderment. She could see a swirling pattern forming on the far side of the room. A rotating cylinder of air had darkened there, streaked horizontally like muddy water on glass. It formed a vortex column that ran from floor to ceiling. She stood up and grabbed Rebka’s arm.

“Hans. We have to get out of here and back to the other chamber — it’s getting stronger.”

The circulation pattern created by the vortex was becoming powerful enough to generate a minor gale, driving around the whole inside of the room. Who could say how fierce it would get? If it continued to strengthen, she and Hans would be swept off their feet.

He was nodding, not trying to speak over the scream of wind. Holding on to each other, they fought their way back to the shelter of the doorway. Rebka turned in the entrance.

“Wait for a second before we go through.” He had to shout in her ear to be heard. “It’s still getting stronger. But it’s closing — look.”

The spinning cylinder of air was drawing in on itself. From a width of five meters, it tightened as they watched to become no wider than a man’s outstretched arms. Its heart became an oily, soft-edged black, so dark and dense that the wall of the chamber could not be seen through it. The scream of wind in the room grew to a new intensity, hurting Darya’s ears.

She backed farther into the doorway. The force of the wind was terrifying. The vortex loomed darker, more and more dangerous. She reached out to pull Rebka back — he was leaning into the room, even while gusts tore at his hair and buffeted his body. Her fingers grabbed the back of his suit. The wail of rushing air rose higher and higher.

She tugged. Rebka fell off balance backward. She bumped into the closed door.

In that same instant, everything stopped. The wind dropped, the sounds faded.

There was a moment of total silence in the chamber; and then, in that uncanny stillness, there came a soft pop no louder than a cork being removed from a bottle. The vortex changed in color to a blood-red, and began to fade.

Another moment, and the silence was broken more substantially. Out of the thinning heart of the spinning column staggered a form. A human form.

It was Louis Nenda. He was greenish yellow in complexion, stripped to the waist, and cursing loudly and horribly.

The little black satchel that he always carried with him flapped against his bare chest. Two steps behind him, creeping along miserably with all six limbs to the ground, came the giant blind figure of Atvar H’sial.

Back on Quake they had been enemies. Nenda and Atvar H’sial had tried to kill Darya Lang and Hans Rebka, and Rebka, at least, would have been happy to return the compliment.

Thirty thousand light-years made quite a difference. They greeted each other like long-lost brothers and sisters.

“But where in hell are we?” Nenda asked when his nausea had eased enough to allow any form of speech beyond swearing.

“A long way from home,” Rebka said.

“Ratballs, I know that. But where?”

As they exchanged information — what little of it they had — Darya learned that her own journey here had been a pleasure trip compared with what had happened to the two new arrivals.

“Stop an’ go,” Nenda said. “Go an’ stop, all the way.” He belched loudly. “Jerkin’ around, turned ass-over-teacup, right way up one minute and wrong way up the next. Went on forever. I’d’ve puked fifty times, if I’d had anything in my guts.” He was silent for a few moments. “At says it was just as bad for her. And yet you come so easy. There must be more than one way to get here. We traveled steerage class and got the rough one.”

“But the fast one, too,” Rebka said. “By the look of it, you and Atvar H’sial left Glister days after us. We thought we were only on the way for a few minutes, but it could have been a lot more — we don’t know how long we were stuck in nowhere, between transitions.”

“Well, I thought we were on the way for weeks.” Nenda belched again. “Gar. That’s better. Thirty thousand light-years, you said? Long way from home. Let that be a lesson to you, At. Greed don’t pay.”

“Can she understand you?” Darya had been staring at the pitted and nodulated area of Nenda’s bare chest, watching it quiver and pulse as Nenda spoke.

“Sure. At least, whenever I use the augment she can. I speak the words at the same time, usually, because that way it’s easier to know what I want to say. But At picks it all up. Watch. You hear me, At?”

The blind white head nodded.

“See. You ought to have an augment put in, too, so you can chat with At an’ the other Cecropians.” He stared at Darya’s chest. “Mind you, I’d hate to see them nice boobs messed up.”

Any sympathy that Darya might have had for the Karelian human evaporated. “If I were you, Louis Nenda, I’d save my breath to plead with the judge. You have formal charges waiting for you, as soon as we get back to the spiral arm. Councilor Graves already filed them.”

“Charges for what? I didn’t do a thing.”

“Your ship fired at us.” Rebka said. “You tried to destroy the Summer Dreamboat after Summertide.”

“I did?” Nenda’s face was blandly innocent. “You sure it was me, Captain, and not three other guys? I never even heard of no Summer Dreamboat. I don’t remember firing at anything. Doesn’t sound like the sort of thing I’d do at all. Do you think we fired at a ship, At?” He paused. The Cecropian did not move. “No way. See, she agrees with me.”

“She’s as guilty as you are!”

“You mean as innocent.”

Rebka’s face had lost its usual pallor. “Damn you, I don’t think I’ll even wait until we get back home. I can file charges on you right here, just as well as Graves can.” He took a step closer to Nenda.

The other man did not move. “So you’re feeling mad. Big deal. Go on, try to arrest me — and tell me where you’ll lock me up. Maybe you’ll shut me away with your girlfriend here. I’d like that. So would she.” He grinned admiringly at Darya. “How about it, sweetie? You’ll have more fun with me than you’ve ever had with him.”

“If you’re trying to change the subject, it won’t work.” Rebka moved until he and Nenda were eyeball to eyeball. “Do you really want to see if I can arrest you? Try a few more cracks like that.”

Nenda turned to Darya and gave her a wink. “See how mad he gets, when anybody else tries for a piece?”

He had been watching Rebka out of the corner of his eye, and he batted away the hand that grabbed for his wrist. Then the two men were standing with arms braced, glaring at each other.