A terrified Joe swam through the darkness, followed and swallowed by a larger something, just a shadowy glass fish shape, a samlon shape, swallowed in turn by something else, larger and more voracious. A grendel swallowed them both. It looked at her with blazing diamond eyes, challenging her. It fluxed like something out of an M.C. Escher painting, and was swallowed in turn by a mere samlon, but the legs of the grendel burst through its body, its teeth pierced through, so that as she watched, as she screamed, the samlon became—

"Breathe!"

"Push!"

The fragile hallucination vanished, wavered like steam above a hot spring and was gone, and there was only the reality of breathing. She held and pushed with the strong lower abdominal muscles.

There was a shared exclamation of relief in the room, and suddenly the stretching relaxed, the burning cooled. The pain was over. An unbelievably powerful wave of physical relief swept through her.

A sensation, cool, moist, rough terry cloth against her face.

A sound: a baby... her baby, crying.

Her vision was still blurry, but she saw Marnie cleanse a squiggling red-skinned thing that wailed like a siren, and Mary Ann's heart melted.

She closed her eyes again, and a moment later Jerry pressed a warm bundle into her arms. Its face was still daubed with blood and fluid, its eyes shut tightly against the strange and terrible world it had suddenly been thrust into. Its hands, just the size of walnuts, were fisted tightly.

And Marnie whispered, "It's a girl."

She tried to speak, to say. Thank you for my daughter, or anything at all. Nothing emerged but tears.

Just north of the Colony the Miskatonic had been dammed. The new lake rippled blue in the hazy light of Tau Ceti. A half mile across the lake the water spilled over a dam. When engineering completed the new construction, power would flow from a hydroelectric plant.

The dam. The solar cells. The fusion plant. Together they would make the colonists the wealthiest human beings in the history of mankind. They would have energy, and land, and the lessons of three hundred years of industrial Earth to guide them. A few more years, and wealth untold...

"I love it," Cadmann said, looking out over their artificial lake. "Hendrick has created a miracle. It's the only lake on the island fit to swim in."

Sylvia nodded. She shielded her eyes as she peered down the asphalt shoreline.

Two vehicles came toward them at high speed. On the straight flat road they moved faster than the designers had expected, or wanted. Mary Ann and Terry were racing motorized wheelchairs. Mary Ann was a meter ahead. Avalon's newest mother didn't need the chair, but it was fun to be babied.

Cadmann seemed more at peace with the Colony since Jessica's birth. His hair was a little grayer than it had been a year ago, but he stood taller, leaner, an animate extension of this hard and beautiful land. He gazed out over the lake, to where the iron peaks of the northern mountains rose up and tickled the clouds.

"Our work is never going to be finished," he said confidently. "Think of what we found lurking in our little corner of this planet."

"Terry's worked out plans for an expedition to the mainland."

"We should go as soon as we finish some of the other work. There's a lot to catch up on."

Her eyes searched the sky, "God, I feel so tied to this planet now. I wouldn't want to leave. I really wouldn't."

There was a shout from the edge of the lake. Mary Ann had pulled ahead of Terry.

"It's all right, isn't it?" Cadmann asked. "About us. About them."

"Absolutely."

"I look at Mary Ann. I think about Jessie, a bit of me that will go on after I'm gone. Everything just seems a lot righter. And she gave me that gift."

"I'm glad that we're friends."

"We couldn't be anything else, Sylvia."

She jumped: a shock wave as loud and sudden as a clap of thunder reverberated across the plain.

Mary Ann shrieked and pointed up into the sky. Cadmann whipped his binoculars up. "There she is. Don't you just love rocket ships? Bring her down, Stu!"

Sylvia spotted a thread of vapor trail as the Minerva began its descent. Now its shape could be seen: bastard birth of airplane and insurance building, the blunt bucket of a craft that had brought them down a precious few at a time, and delivered them to Avalon without an injury or mishap.

It hit the lake and skimmed across it like a drop of water on a white-hot plate. It had almost reached shore before its wings touched the glistening blue surface. Then clouds of steam rose up with a roar like a muted waterfall. It maneuvered the rest of the way in short bursts.

"This is your package, isn't it, Sylvie?"

"The very. Nat Geo gave me an early Christmas this year."

The Minerva thumped into the dock, rotated and locked in. After a moment the hatch opened, and Hendrick Sills climbed out. "Bumpy ride this time. We may have a storm coming in."

"Well, let's get the mail in."

Mary Ann and Terry pulled up to the dock.

"I win!!"

"She cheated."

Cadmann glared at them fiercely. "All right. What have you two been talking about?"

"Oh, about the same stuff as you and Sylvia."

"Then our relationship is doomed." Cadmann jumped up on the landing platform and helped Hendrick down. Stu emerged after. He carried a sealed metal box.

"We've got the goods here," Stu announced. "But hardier and more patient souls than I are going to have to download and sort them out."

"You don't look happy," Cadmann said.

"Maybe I'm not," Stu said.

"With good reason." Carolyn McAndrews came out of the hatch, followed by her sister Phyllis. Carolyn's face was tight with rage. "They proxmired the e-Eridani expedition."

"What?" Cadmann demanded.

"They canceled the e-Eridani ship," Phyllis said gently. "And all the others. There aren't any more interstellar flights."

"All true," Stu said. "Maybe our pictures weren't pretty enough—"

"That news is ten years old!" Mary Ann said. "Nothing we sent to Earth could have got there in time to make any difference!"

Carolyn glared angrily at Mary Ann. "We know." Her eyes softened. "He was joking, Mary Ann. Not a very good joke."

"We're all there is," Terry said. He looked down at his wheelchair. "Pretty heavy responsibility. I guess I'm glad we didn't know before we'd killed off the grendels. When too much depends on me, I always get stage fright."

Sylvia kept a greedy eye on the computer disk. "We're still here. And you're carrying a year's worth of news, and a complete encyclopedia update. With all of the data lost in the attack, this is what I've been looking for, and to hell with the proxmires."

"What is it? Just what are you looking for?"

"I don't know," she confessed. "I can feel things, patterns, trying to make connections in my head. Computers are good at that. We'll see what happens."

"Yeah. Well, you've got your mail." Hendrick lifted a box and carried it down to the pier's end.

Mary Ann stood up from her wheelchair. "Sylvia—do you need help? I mean, answering your questions. I get nightmares. I think I know what you're talking about. Something wants to come through. The samlon and the Joes and the grendels and—" She waved her hand. "They go together. It makes my head hurt."

"Sure." Sylvia smiled. "You're on the network. Whenever Jessica can spare you, get on. The conference name is GRENDEL—heck, that one's full of stuff. I'll start a new one. HEOROT."

Hendrick came back for another box. He was preternaturally silent.

Cadmann caught his elbow and pitched his voice low. "Something else?"

"No."

"Come on." Cadmann eased him back from the others.

"You're the last man I'd... okay. I'm tired of this, Cadmann." His voice had been low-pitched, but it rose now and other voices stopped.