"Drop your weapons," Sagan said, finally. Jared dropped his knife and unslung his Empee; the others did likewise. The Obin also had them remove their packs and belts, leaving only their unitards. A couple of the Obin who had been in the original group pursuing them came over and picked up the weapons and equipment and hauled them back to the airship. When one walked in front of Harvey, Jared could feel him tense up; Jared suspected Harvey was trying very hard not to kick it.

Their weapons and equipment removed, Jared and the others were made to stand apart from each other while the two Obin bearing equipment waved said equipment over each of them, searching, Jared suspected, for hidden weapons. The two Obin scanned the other three and then came to Jared, only to cut their examination short. One of them offered up a fluty comment to the head Obin in its native language. The head Obin came over to Jared, two armed Obin trailing it.

"You come with us," it said.

Jared glanced over at Sagan, looking for clues on how she wanted him to play this and getting nothing. "Where am I going?" Jared asked.

The head Obin turned and trilled something. One of the Obin behind him raised his weapon and shot Steve Seaborg in the leg. Seaborg went down screaming.

The head Obin swiveled its attention back to Jared. "You come with us," it said again.

"Jesus fuck, Dirac!" Seaborg said. "Go with the fucking Obin!" Jared stepped out of line and allowed himself to be escorted to the aircraft.

Sagan watched Jared step out of line and briefly considered lunging and snapping his neck, depriving the Obin and Boutin of their prize and assuring that Dirac wouldn't have the opportunity to do anything stupid. The moment passed, and besides, it would have been a long shot anyway. And then they would all almost certainly be dead. As it was now they were still alive.

The head Obin turned its attention to Sagan, whom it recognized as the squad's leader. "You will stay," it said, and gamboled off before Sagan could say anything. She stepped forward to address the retreating Obin, but as she did three Obin came forward, brandishing weapons. Sagan put her hands up and backed away, but the Obin continued forward, motioning to Sagan that she and the rest of the squad needed to move.

She turned to Seaborg, who was still on the ground. "How's your leg?" she asked.

"The unitard caught most of it," he said, referring to the uniform's ability to stiffen and absorb some of the impact of a projectile. "It's not too bad. I'll live."

"Can you walk?" Sagan asked.

"As long as I'm not required to like it," Seaborg said.

"Come on, then," Sagan said, and held out her hand to help Seaborg up. "Harvey, get Wigner." Daniel Harvey walked over to the dead soldier and picked him up in a fireman's carry.

They were being herded into a depression slightly off-center from the middle of the meadow; the small spray of trees within it suggested the bedrock below had eroded away. As they arrived at the depression, Sagan heard the whine of an airship departing and a second whine of one arriving. The arriving craft, larger than the other two had been, landed near the depression, and from its guts rolled a series of identical machines.

"What the hell are those?" Harvey asked, setting down Wigner's body. Sagan didn't answer; she watched as the machines positioned themselves around the perimeter of the bowl, eight in all. The Obin who had come with the machines scrambled to the top of the machines and retracted the metal coverings, revealing large, multibarrel flechette guns. When all the covers had been retracted, one of the Obin activated the flechette guns; they powered up ominously, and began to track objects.

"It's a fence," Sagan said. "They've locked us in here." Sagan took an experimental step toward one of the guns; it swung toward her and tracked her movement. She took another step forward and it emitted a painful, high-pitched squeal, which Sagan assumed was designed to serve as a proximity warning. Sagan imagined that another step toward the gun would result in her foot being shot off at the very least, but she did not bother to test the proposition. She backed away from the gun; it turned off its siren but did not stop tracking her until she had retreated several steps.

"They had those here just waiting for us," Harvey said. "Very nice. What do you think are the odds?"

Sagan stared back up at the guns. "The odds are bad," Sagan said.

"What do you mean?" Harvey said.

"These are from the science station," Sagan said, motioning to the guns. "They have to be. There's no other sort of installation anywhere close to here. These aren't the sort of things a science station would just have lying around. They've used them here before to hold people in."

"Yeah, okay," Seaborg said. "But who? And why?"

"We've had six Special Forces ships disappear," Sagan said, omitting the one the Obin attacked and destroyed. "Those crews went somewhere. Maybe they were brought here."

"That still doesn't answer why," Seaborg said.

Sagan shrugged. She hadn't figured out that part yet.

The air was filled with the sound of the airships lifting off. The noise of their engines attenuated away, leaving nothing but the ambient sounds of nature behind.

"Great," Harvey said. He chucked a stone at one of the guns; it tracked the rock but didn't fire on it. "We're out here with no food, water or shelter. What you think the odds are that the Obin are never coming back for us?"

Sagan thought those odds were very good indeed.

"So you're me," Charles Boutin said to Jared. "Funny. I thought I'd be taller."

Jared said nothing. On arrival at the science station he had been confined to a creche, tightly secured, and wheeled through the high, bare hallways until he arrived at what he assumed was a laboratory, filled with unfamiliar machines. Jared was left there for what seemed like hours before Boutin entered and strolled right up to the creche, examining Jared physically as if he were a large and really interesting bug. Jared hoped Boutin would come up far enough to receive a head butt. He did not.

"That was a joke," Boutin said to Jared.

"I know," Jared said. "It just wasn't funny."

"Well," Boutin said. "I'm out of practice. You may have noticed the Obin are not the sort to crack wise."

"I noticed," Jared said. During the entire trip to the science station, the Obin were utterly silent. The only words the head Obin had said to Jared were "get out" when they arrived and "get in" when they opened the portable creche.

"You can blame the Consu for that," Boutin said. "When they made the Obin, I guess they forgot to drop in a humor module. Among the many other things they apparently forgot."

Despite himself—or because of whose memories and personality he held in his head—Jared's attention focused. "Then it's true?" he asked. "The Consu uplifted the Obin."

"If you want to call it that," Boutin said. "Although the word uplift by its nature implies good intentions on the part of the up-lifter, which is not in evidence here. From what I can get from the Obin, the Consu one day wondered what would happen if you made some species smart. So they came to Obinur, found an omnivore in a minor ecological niche, and gave it intelligence. You know, just to see what would happen next."

"What happened next?" Jared said.

"A long and cascading series of unintended consequences, my friend," Boutin said. "That end, for now, with you and me here in this lab. It's a direct line from there to here."

"I don't understand," Jared said.

"Of course you don't," Boutin said. "You don't have all the data. I didn't have all the data before I came here, so even if you know everything I know, you wouldn't know that. How much of what I know do you know?"