The shuttle docked gently, and a section of wall slid back to reveal a circular grey tunnel. A friendly mechanical voice invited them to follow it. Dom led the way, warily.

The sound he heard hit him like a club. He ran forward, unbelieving.

It was the sea.

His Furness CReegE + 690° rolled down to the beach on bright caterpillar tracks. He was big, much bigger than the low-degree Creapii that lived on Widdershins. His egg-shaped suit was golden. A fawn pranced by his side, and a small blue singing bird was perched on his tentacle. His Furness stopped at the surf line and waited patiently.

Dom felt his toes touch the sand and waded through the waves. Some of the strangeness of the Creap was gone now. He knew that he was looking at a creature who was the leader of the most advanced sub-species of a race ten times as old as men. Was the featureless ovoid looking at him? What did it see?

An armoured tentacle handed him a towel. It was rough and smelled of lemons.

'A pleasant swim?' The light tenor voice materialized without visible means of support.

'Thank you, yes,' said Dom. He opened his hand, and showed the Creap a small purple shell.

'Trivia monarcha sinistrale,' said the Creap. 'The Widdershine ink cowrie. Beautiful in its simplicity. How did you find my ocean?'

Dom looked back at the waves. The surf was faked. The horizon was a masterpiece of illusion, and was a hundred metres from the shore. An artificial sun set in a splendour that was real. An evening star hung in the crimson glow.

'Convincing,' he said.

The Creap laughed pleasantly, and led him slowly up the beach.

There was more land than sea in the sanctuary. Again, the Creapii had only erred on the side of generosity. On one side a plain of golden grass rippled all the way to distant mountains, crystal clear. Gods might live on those towering peaks. On the other side the forest began. A respectable stream gushed from an outcrop and meandered between root-buttressed banks; a dragonfly, one of the large Terra Novaean aeschans, skimmed over the water. Short turf grew between the trees, studded with gentians. Rabbits had left signs of their passing. There was a stand of fragrant fennel, and a vine twisted itself among the nearest trees. In the far distance was a volcano.

'Shall I speak to you of back projection, hidden devices, artificial irrigation?' asked His Furness innocently. Do m sniffed the air. It smelled of rain.

'I won't quite believe you,' he said. 'If I dug in the soil here, what would I find?'

'Topsoil, a fossil or two, carefully selected.'

'And?'

'Oh, rock. Limestone to a depth of three metres.'

'And then?'

'Alas for illusion: in this order, the machine level, a metre of monomolecular copper, a mere film of oxidized iron, a suspicion of a matrix field. Shall I go deeper?'

'That's deep enough, your Furness.'

'Shall we continue our walk, then? I must feed the carp.'

Later, when the golden fish had flocked to the ringing of a little brass bell, he said: 'Must there be a reason? Then let it be that I study humanity. Earth humanity in particular. Although in saying that, I am aware of a misapprehension. Let it be said, instead, that in applying myself to the study of Totality I endeavour to do so from the human viewpoint, do you understand? It is a truism that the environment moulds the mind, and so...' he waved a tentacle to include the sea, the forest, the distant mountains. 'Of course, it would be easier to move on to a human world, but not so convenient.'

Dom reminded himself, forcibly, that beneath his feet burned a natural furnace. But the Creapii also studied the Chain Stars, from real close up, and His Furness had hinted that there were a number of other experiments taking place on the raft.

'The Jokers?' said the Creap. 'Certainly I will help if I can. You are our first non-Creap visitors. Do you know of any prophecies in your culture concerning a green man with the sea in a bottle?'

'No,' said Dom, suddenly alarmed. 'Are there any?'

'Not that I know of. It sounds the very meat and drink of prophecy, however.

'You must realize that we are in no position to offer much advice, we need several tens of thousands of years of study. Have you any specific questions?'

'The Creapii were not the Jokers.'

'True. But that was a statement.'

'Very well. You are the oldest race, as a race. You can't count Chatogaster or the Bank, they're individual organisms. So it should follow that you are the most like the Jokers. Mentally, I mean. No, not even that. I mean in outlook.'

The Creap laughed. 'And what is our outlook?'

'You study other lifeforms. Man the Hunter, Creap the Information-Gatherer. May I be personal?'

'Please do,' said the great golden egg, and Dom blushed.

'Well, I've met Creapii before. Do you know what has always struck me as odd about them? And about you, your Furness. You're so human.

'Hrsh-Hgn is my friend, but he is a phnobe. He gives himself away all the time, and he's lived on Widdershins, among Earth-stock humanity, for most of his life. Little things - ways of looking at life, like when we both look at the same thing and I know he's seeing it from an entirely different racial viewpoint. But all the Creapii I have met don't give that impression.'

'We live on hot worlds. We are sexless, octopoid. Human?' said CReegE + 690°

'Chel! Humanity is a state of mind, not body. But that is a point. I wondered, why do they seem so like me, when they must be so alien? I think it's because all the Creapii I've met have consciously tried to adopt the human viewpoint. They're Humans first, Creapii second. '

Dom faced the egg, except that it had no face. At length the disembodied voice said: 'There is a great deal in what you say.'

'I think you do this to gain a greater understanding of the universe,' said Dom. 'Men see a different universe to phnobes. I'm sorry, I keep picking the wrong words. They experience a different universe. Is that right?'

'That is very sapient. Before we dine with the others, would you like to see something?'

They found him an eggsuit, fitted out for visitors with a simple control panel. It was like riding in a small, vertical tank. In Dom's case it was to keep the heat out, rather than in. Then he ventured into the main section of the raft.

He couldn't remember very much afterwards. Individual experiences blended into a montage of heat, large, slithering galaxy-shaped monsters, the thunder of the sun and a strange flickering in the air. He did remember being led to an observation platform, set in the middle of a matrix-coil, and being invited to look up.

The circular star on which the raft was moored was just passing under the arch of its twin. On a cooler world the experience would have been enough to inspire a dozen religions.

A shining arch, only marginally brighter than the sky around it, moved across the solar sky.

He didn't know if the other Creapii were aware that the clumsily-driven suit held a young man rather than a drunken Creap, if Creaps drank. Probably they didn't. After an hour of it he felt drunk.

It lasted for several minutes after he was back in the sanctuary. CReegE did not have to point out the lesson. By something like osmosis he had been given just a feeling of Creapiness. The Creap had been trying to tell him that he was right. The world of the Creapii was a Totality away from the world of men. So the Creaps tried to think - to feel - like men. Only thus could the whole nature of the universe be comprehended, they said.

With a new understanding Dom realized that the official view of the Creapii was wrong. They were said to be the race born to science. Creapii were the cool-heads of the universe, the ultimate analysers, a race of intelligent robots, had robots been what the first robotic pioneers considered them to be. It just wasn't true. What was it one of the pre-Sadhim sects had striven for? Ultimate reality? That was it. The Creapii were the mystics of the universe.