A Wreath of Stars

Chapter Eight

“Gil, I don’t see why you refuse to accept this thing,” Boyce Ambrose said impatiently.

He threw the sheaf of photographs down on the table. “When we were driving out here—only hours after having met you—I suggested you were telepathic. That sort of thing is an established and respectable scientific phenomenon these days. Why won’t you admit it?”

“Why do you want me to admit it?” Snook spoke in a sleepy voice, nursing his drink.

“I mean the fact that you understood the Avernian diagram, when I thought it was astronomical, shows that you have a telepathic faculty.”

“You still haven’t said why you’re so keen for me to claim this power,” Snook persisted.

“Because…”

“Go on, Boyce.”

“I would do it,” Ambrose said, a hint of bitterness in his voice. “I would do it if I had been chosen.”

Snook swirled the gin in his glass, creating a miniature vortex. “That’s because you’ve got the scientific spirit, Boyce. You’re one of those people who would fly a kite in a thunder-storm, regardless of the danger, but I’m not going to let any blue monster shove its head inside mine.”

“The Avernians are people.” Prudence eyed Snook with disdain.

Snook shrugged. “All right—I’m not going to let any blue people shove their heads inside mine.”

“The idea doesn’t bother me.” •

“That remark just cries out for an obscene reply, but I’m too tired.” Snook settled further down in the armchair and closed his eyes, but he had time to see Prudence tighten her lips in anger. I owed you that one, he thought, pleased at having scored a point, yet appalled at his own childishness.

“Too drunk, you mean.”

Without opening his eyes, Snook raised his glass in Prudence’s direction and took another drink. He found he could still see the translucent blue face advancing on his own, and a hard knot formed in his stomach.

“I think,” Ambrose said anxiously, “it might be a good idea if we all got some rest. We’ve been up all night and we’re bound to be tired.”

“I’ve got to get back to the plant,” Culver said. He turned to Des Quig, who was still examining the pictures he had taken. “How about you, Des? Want a ride back?”

“I’m not going back,” Quig replied, absently stroking his sandy moustache. “This is too much fun.”

“How about your job?” Ambrose asked. “I appreciate your help here, but…”

“They can shove my job. Do you know what they’ve got me doing? Designing radios, that’s what I’m doing.” He had been drinking neat gin, while exhausted and hungry, and his voice was beginning to slur. “That would be bad enough, but I design them a good radio and they hand it over to the commercial people. You know what happens then? The commercial people start .taking bits out of it…and they keep doing that till the radio stops working…then they put the last bit back in again—and that’s the radio they put into production. It makes me sick. No, I’m not going back there. I’m damned if I’ll…”

Recognising a cry from the heart, Snook opened his eyes and saw Quig lay his head on his arms and promptly fall asleep.

“I’ll go then,” Culver said. “See you tonight.” He left Snook’s living room and George Murphy went at the same time, saluting tiredly with his bandaged hand.

Snook got to his feet, waving the two men goodbye, and turned to Ambrose. “What do you want to do?”

Ambrose hesitated. “I’ve had about four hours’ sleep in the last three days. I hate to impose, but the thought of driving back to Kisumu…”

“You’re welcome to stay here,” Snook said. “I’ve got two bedrooms, with one bed in each. Des seems very comfortable at the table, so if I sleep on the couch in here, you and Prudence can have a bedroom each.”

Prudence stood up also. “I wouldn’t dream of keeping you out of your own bed. I’ll go in with Boyce—I’m sure I won’t come to much harm.”

Ambrose grinned and rubbed his eyes. “The tragedy is that, the way I fell now, you probably won’t come to any harm.” He put an arm around Prudence’s shoulders and they walked into the bedroom which was directly across the corridor from the living room. Prudence reappeared in the opening as she closed the door and, in the narrowing aperture, her eyes steadied on Snook’s for the briefest instant. He tried to smile, but his lips refused to conform.

Snook went into the other bedroom. The early morning sun was blazing in from the east, so he closed the blind, creating a parchment-coloured dimness. He lay down on the bed without undressing, but the tiredness which had been so insistent a few minutes earlier seemed to have fled his system, and it was a long time before he was able to escape from his loneliness into sleep.

Snook was awakened in the late afternoon by the sound of a loud, unfamiliar voice filtering through from his living room. He got up, ran his fingers through his hair and went to see who the visitor was. He found Gene Helig, the Press Association representative, standing in the centre of the room and talking to Ambrose, Prudence and Quig. Helig, who was a lean, greying Englishman with drooping eyelids, gave Snook a critical glance.

“You look bloody awful, Gil,” he said heartily. “I’ve never seen you look so bad.”

“Thanks.” Snook sought a parry to Helig’s remarks but the pounding in his head made it difficult to think. “I’m going to make some coffee.”

Des Quig sprang to his feet. “I’ve already done it, Gil. Sit down here and I’ll fetch you a cup.”

Snook nodded gratefully. “Four cups, please. I always have four cups.” He dropped into the chair Quig had vacated and looked around the room. Ambrose was regarding him with concerned eyes; Prudence appeared not to have noticed his arrival. Though wearing the same clothes as on the previous day, she was as cream-smooth and immaculate as ever. Snook wondered if, at any time during their hours in bed, Ambrose had succeeded in disturbing that practised serenity.

“You’ve set the cat among the pigeons this time,” Helig boomed. “Do you know a couple of Freeborn’s men have been following me around since I filed that story of yours?”

“Please, Gene.” Snook pressed his temples. “If you’ll speak in normal conversational tones I’ll hear you all right.”

Helig switched to a penetrating whisper. “That convinced me there was something important in it. I wasn’t too sure, you know, and I’m afraid it showed through in the way I wrote the piece.”

“Thanks, anyway.”

“That’s all right.” Helig switched to his usual stentorian voice. “It’s all different now, of course, what with your ghosts having popped up in Brazil and Sumatra as well.”

“What?” Snook glanced at Ambrose for confirmation.

Ambrose nodded. “I said this would happen. It was perhaps a little sooner than I expected, but it doesn’t do to regard the Earth’s equator as a perfect circle. The whole planet is deformed slightly by tidal forces and, of course, the Earth wobbles in its orbit as it swings around the Earth-Moon barycentre. I don’t know how closely Avernus follows that movement, and there could be all kinds of libration effects which…” Ambrose stopped speaking as Prudence leaned across to him and pressed a hand to his mouth. The little public intimacy caused Snook to look quickly in another direction, racked with jealousy.

“Sorry,” Ambrose concluded. “I tend to get carried away.”

“There’s a hell of a lot of world interest now,” Helig said. “I heard Doctor Ambrose’s name mentioned a couple of times this morning on the main satellite networks.”

Prudence laughed delightedly, and gave Ambrose a playful push. “Fame at last!”

Snook, still intensely aware of Prudence and everything in her ambit, saw an unreadable expression flicker across Ambrose’s face, perhaps a mixture of wistfulness and triumph. It was gone on the instant, to be replaced by Ambrose’s customary look of humorous alertness, but Snook felt he had gained an insight into the other man’s character. The playboy scientist, it seemed, was hungry for fame. Or respect. The respect of his professional peers.

“Does that mean a lot more people will be coming here?” Quig said, arriving with Snook’s coffee.

“I doubt it.” Helig spoke with the bored concern of a colonial who has watched the antics of the natives for too many years. “The President’s office has cancelled all new visas for an indefinite period because of this spot of bother with Kenya. Besides, all the scientist johnnies have other places to go now. A hell of a sight easier to pop down to Brazil from the States than to come here, eh? Less chance of getting a panga up your backside, too.” Helig gave a thunderous laugh which reverberated in the cup from which Snook was drinking. Snook closed his eyes, concentrated on the aromatic taste of sanity, and wished Helig would leave.

“How are you getting on here, anyway?” Helig continued, planted solidly in the centre of the room. “If these ghosts really are inhabitants of another world, do you think we’ll ever find a way to talk to them?”

Ambrose spoke cautiously. “We were hoping we might have had a lead in that direction, but naturally it’s a tricky problem.”

Snook looked over the rim of his cup and his eyes met those of Ambrose and Prudence.

Helig peered at the settings of his wrist recorder. “Come on. Doctor—confession is good for the soul.”

“It’s too soon,” Snook said, reaching a decision he was unable to explain to himself. “Come back tomorrow or the day after, and we might have a good story for you.”

When Helig had gone, Ambrose followed Snook out to the kitchen where he was brewing more coffee.

“Did you mean what I thought you meant?” Ambrose said quietly.

“I guess so.” Snook busied himself with the rinsing out of cups in the sink.

“I’m grateful.” Ambrose picked up a cloth and began drying cups in an inexpert manner. “Look, I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but scientific workers get paid like any other workers. Now, I know you had reasons of your own for getting involved in this thing, but I’d be happy to get “it on to a proper business footing if you…”

“There’s one thing you could do for me,” Snook interrupted.

“Name it.”

“Somewhere in Malaq there’s a Canadian passport belonging to me—and I’d like to have it back.”

“I think I can arrange that.”

“It could cost you quite a bit in what they call commission.”

“Don’t worry about it. We’ll get you out of Barandi somehow.” Ambrose, having dried two cups, apparently felt he had contributed enough in that direction and set his cloth aside. “Actually, tomorrow morning’s experiment will be nothing like the last one.”

“Why’s that?”

“I’ve been looking at the plans and the vertical section through the mine—and where tomorrow’s top dead centre occurs there hasn’t been any excavation. We’ll have to intercept the Avernian coming through exactly the same spot as last time. He’ll be ascending fairly quickly at that stage but, if you feel like it, there’ll be another chance when he’s on the way down again.”

Snook began drying the remaining cups. “We’re assuming he’ll be there, waiting for us…”

“It’s the smallest assumption we’ve made yet. That character was fast—no human could have responded so quickly and in such a positive manner. It’s my guess that we’re dealing with a race which is superior to our own in many ways.”

“That wouldn’t surprise me, but do you really believe I’ll get some kind of telepathic message when our brains are occupying the same space?”

Ambrose raised his shoulders. “There’s just no way to predict what will happen, Gil. The most probable result, according to our science—orthodox science, that is—is that nothing at all will happen. After all, your brain has occupied the same space as Avernian rock and you didn’t get a headache.”

“You chose an unfortunate example.” Snook pressed two fingertips delicately against a throbbing vein in his temple, as if taking his pulse.

“Why do you drink so much?”

“It helps me to sleep.”

“You’d be better with a woman,” Ambrose said. “Same result, but the side-effects are all good.”

Snook drove a painful vision from his mind, a vision of Prudence cradled in his left arm, her face turned to his. “We were talking about the telepathy experiment—you think nothing will happen?”

“I didn’t say that. The trouble is we know so little about the subject. I mean, telepathy between human beings wasn’t proved until a few years ago when they finally got round to throwing out those stupid card-guessing routines. A lot of people would say the brain structure, thought processes and language structure of an extra-terrestrial race are bound to be so incompatible with ours that no communication at all could take place, telepathically or any other way.”

“But the Avemians aren’t extra-terrestrial—they’re just the opposite.” Snook wrought with unfamiliar concepts. “If they’ve existed a few hundred kilometres under our feet for millions of years, and if telepathy really exists, the link might be already established. There might be something like resonance…you know, sympathetic resonance…the Avemians might be responsible for…”

“Common elements in religions? Plutonic mythologies? The universal idea that hell is under the ground?” Ambrose shook his head. “You’re going way beyond the scope of the investigation, Gill, and I wouldn’t recommend it. Don’t forget that, even though the Avemians do exist inside the Earth, in many respects they’re further away from us than Sirius. The most distant star you can see in the sky is at least part of our own universe.”

“But you still think the experiment is worth trying?”

Ambrose nodded. “It’s got one thing going for it that I can’t ignore.”

“What’s that?” Snook paused in his chores to concentrate on Ambrose’s answer.

“The Avernian himself seemed to think it would work.”

When the party set out for the mine in pre-dawn blackness. Snook noticed that Prudence had remained behind in his bungalow, and it intrigued him that neither she nor Ambrose had made reference to this fact. They had driven into Kisumu in the afternoon for a meal and a change of clothing at their hotel, and had returned looking like newly-weds. Since then there had been lots of time for discussion of the various arrangements, and yet Prudence’s non-participation had not been mentioned, in Snook’s presence anyway. It could have been a commonsense decision to avoid possible trouble with the soldiers at the gate, but Snook suspected she had no wish to take part in an event where he was to be the central figure, especially as she had been openly scornful of his running away the previous time. Snook knew he was being reduced to childishness again, but he was perversely pleased at what was happening because it showed she had singled him out, that there was a continuing personal reaction—even if a negative one.

The four men—Snook, Ambrose, Quig and Culver—were met at the enclosure gate by George Murphy, who was already talking to the guards. Murphy came forward to meet the group.

“I don’t want any more days like yesterday,” he said. “I’m just about wrecked.”

“You look okay to me.” Snook had never seen Murphy look more assured and indomitable, and he drew comfort from the big man’s presence. “What’s been happening to you?”

“Been sitting in on arguments. Cartier keeps telling the workface crews that the ghosts don’t exist because they can’t see them any more, and that they weren’t ghosts anyway. The miners keep telling him they know a ghost when they see one, and even when they can’t see them they can feel them. I think Colonel Freeborn is turning up the pressure on Cartier.”

Snook fell into step close beside Murphy as they were passing through the gate and spoke to him quietly. “I think he’s turning up the pressure on everybody. You know, this thing isn’t working out the way we hoped it would.”

“I know that, Gil. But thanks for doing what you’re doing.”

“Isn’t there any way you could convince the miners that the Avernians can’t do them any harm?”

Murphy remained silent for a moment. “You’re convinced, but…”

“But I ran. Point taken, George.”

As they reached the dimness beyond the gatehouse Snook saw two fully-manned jeeps parked in the same place as before. He put on his Amplites, creating for himself a bluish radiance in which he was able to identify the same haughty young lieutenant he had already encountered. The lieutenant’s eyes were hidden by his Amplites, standard issue for soldiers on night duties, but his sculpted ebony face gave an impression of fierce watchfulness. It was a look which caused the old stirrings far back in Snook’s mind.

“The lieutenant over there,” he said. “Is he related to the Colonel?”

Murphy slipped his own magniluct glasses on. “Nephew. That’s Curt Freeborn. Stay out of his way. If possible, never even speak to him.”

“Oh, Christ,” Snook sighed, “not another one.”

At the same moment the jeeps’ engines roared into life and the spotlight beams lanced through the group of walkers, streaming them with long shadows. The two vehicles rolled forward and began slowly circling the group, sometimes coming so close that one or more of the men had to give way. With the exception of the young lieutenant, the soldiers in the jeeps grinned hugely throughout the manoeuvres. None of them made any sound.

“Those are open vehicles,” Murphy said. “You and I could easily yank the drivers out.”

“You and I could easily get shot. It isn’t worth it, George.” Snook kept walking steadily towards the mine head and eventually the jeeps pulled back to their former positions. The group reached the sodium-lit hoist shed and Ambrose set his radiation generator down with a thud.

“First thing in the morning,” he said indignantly, “I’m going to report that harassment to the authorities. I’m running out of patience with those bastards.”

“Let’s get underground,” Snook said, exchanging glances with Murphy, “to the devil”we don’t know.”

“And I told you that’s the wrong sort of thinking.” Ambrose picked up his black box and led the way to the hoist.

The cavern-like tunnel of Level Three did not unnerve Snook as much as he had expected, mainly because he felt himself part of a group which was acting in concert. Ambrose stalked about purposefully, examining luminous crayon marks he had made on the rock floor, setting up his machine, and flicking his fingers over a pocket computer. Culver occupied himself with the pulse code modulator, and Quig with cameras and magniluct filters, while Murphy pottered about clearing small pieces of debris away from the scene of expected action. Snook began to feel unnecessary, helpless.

“About ten minutes to go,” Ambrose said to Snook, looking up from his computer. “Now remember. Gill, you’re not being pressurised in any way. This is actually just an auxiliary experiment—I’m pinning my faith on the pulse code modulator—so just take it as far as you feel you are able. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Right. Keep on the look-out for some sort of roof structure coming up into yiew. From what you told us, you missed that yesterday, and it will give a good advance warning.” Ambrose raised his voice, beginning to sound happy again. “If you have time, make sketches on the pads I gave you. The design of a roof will also tell us things about the Avernians themselves—say, whether they have rain or not—so everybody keep their eyes open for details.”

Leaning against the tunnel wall and watching the final preparations, Snook took out his cigarettes only to have Ambrose give a warning shake of his head. He put the pack away resignedly, wishing he was in another part of the world, doing something else. For instance, lying in a peaceful room, in parchment-coloured shade, with Prudence Devonald’s head cradled in his arm, the left arm—as decreed in the Song of Solomon, Chapters Two and Eight, so that his right hand would be free to touch…

A luminous blue line began to appear on the rock floor of the tunnel. Within seconds it had risen to become a triangular ridge and Snook, chilled to the core, moved to his designated place. The floor was strangely transparent.

He was so intent on the materialisation that he scarcely noticed George Murphy at his side. Murphy’s large dry hand sought his and slid into it a tiny whitish object which felt as though it was made of polished ivory.

“Take this,” Murphy whispered. “It might help.”

Snook was baffled, mind-numbed. “What is it? An amulet?”

“I’m not a bloody savage.” Murphy’s voice was amiably aggrieved. “It’s chewing-gum!”

He retreated to the sidelines as a faintly glowing roof structure gradually emerged from the solid rock, looking surprisingly Earth-like in its arrangement of rafters and ties.

Snook put the gum into his mouth and was grateful for its commonplace minty warmth as he found himself sinking into a vaguely seen square room where three Avernians waited for him, slit mouths curving and contorting. Two of the translucent beings carried oblong machines, and suddenly there were noises—sad, mewling, alien noises—coming from the direction of the corresponding machine held by Culver. A human voice sounded too, but Snook was unable to identify the speaker, nor to comprehend the words, because the third Avernian was coming towards him with its arms outstretched.

I can’t take this, Snook thought in pure panic. It’s too much.

The taste of the chicle grew strong in his mouth, a reminder that he was not alone in his ordeal, and—as the floor levels merged—he obediently stepped towards the Avernian.

The insubstantial face drew near his own, the mist-pools of the eyes growing larger. Snook inclined his head forward, yielding himself. There was a merging.

Snook grunted with surprise as his identity was…lost.

Deep peace of the running wave.

I am Felleth. My function in society is that of Responder—which means that I give advice to others, tell them what to do or what should be done next. No, your concept of the oracle is incorrect, my function reversed. An oracle would give forewarning of events, and leave its audience to devise their own -perhaps incorrect—responses. As the concept of prediction is invalid when one goes beyond the causality of the growing seed reaching maturation or the falling stone reaching the ground, it is necessary only to appreciate the significance of what has already occur ed and to give infallible advice on how to react…

Oracle. Logic arrow pointing to related concept. The stars foretell. True as the stars above. Astra. Dis-astra.

Disaster!

Wait, wait, wait! 1 am in pain.

The stars in their courses. Planets? Plural ? Cyclic? What is ayear?

No! Your concept of time is incorrect. Time is a straight thread, tightly drawn between the Past Infinity and the Future Infinity, light and dark strands—night and day—appearing to alternate, but each is continuous. Continuous, but twisted….

Wait! The pain increases.

Sun, the provider of day. Planets, ellipses, axial spin. No cloud-roof. Clear skies, many suns. Logic arrow pointing to related concept. Particles, anti-particles. Correct—our relationship almost precisely defined—but there is something else. Anti-particle planet, seen beyond the cloud-roof. In the year 1993…

Confusion concepts. It is not possible to measure time in any way other than minus-now orplus-now. And yet…

One thousand days ago the weight of our oceans decreased. The waters rose into the sky, until they touched the cloud-roof. Then they swept away the People. And the houses of the People…

You say I should have known. That I should have been able to predict.

You say.…

NO!

The minty warmth on Snook’s tongue became real again. He found himself kneeling on hard rock, in the midst of anxious faces, his body being steadied by several hands. His Amplites were gone and somebody had switched on a portable light, bringing the tool-marked contours of the tunnel walls into sharp relief and at the same time making them seem stagey and unreal.

“Are you all right, Gil?” Murphy’s voice was noncommittal, an indication that he was really concerned.

Snook nodded and got to his feet. “How long was I out?” “You weren’t out,” Ambrose said, sternly professorial. “You fell down on your knees. That was when George switched on the light—against my instructions, I might add—and brought the experiment to a premature end by almost blinding us.” He turned to Murphy. “You know, George, the instructions with magniluct glasses clearly warn you against switching on a bright light where people are wearing them.”

Murphy was unrepentant. “I thought Gil was hurt.” “How could he have been hurt?” Ambrose became businesslike once more. “Oh, well—there’s no point in holding a post mortem. We can only hope the few seconds of recordings we did get are worth…”

“Just a minute,” Snook put in, floundering, still trying to orient himself in what should have been the familiar universe.

“How about Felleth? Did you see how he reacted?”

“Who’s Felleth?”

“The Avernian. Felleth. Didn’t you…?”

“What are you talking about?” Ambrose’s fingers clawed into Snook’s shoulders. “What are you saying?”

“I’m trying to find out how long the Avernian’s head was…you know…inside mine.”

“Hardly any time at all,” Culver said, knuckling his eyes. “I thought I saw him jumping back from you, then George nearly burned my retinas out with his…”

“Quiet!” Ambrose’s voice was almost frantic. “Did it work, Gil? Did you get an impression of the Avernian’s name?”

“An impression?” Snook smiled tiredly. “More than that. I was part of his life for a while. That’s why I wanted to know how long the contact had been—it seemed like minutes. Perhaps hours.”

“What can you remember?”

“It isn’t a good place, Boyce. Something went wrong. It’s funny, but before we came down here this time I got a kind of idea…”

“Gil, I’m going to give you a debriefing right now and get it on tape while it’s still fresh in your memory. Do you feel up to it? Are there any ill effects?”

“I’m a bit shagged out, but it’s all right.”

“Good.” Ambrose held his wrist recorder close to Snook’s mouth. “You’ve already said his name was Felleth—did you get a name for their planet?”

“No. They don’t seem to have given it a name. It’s the only world they know about, so maybe it doesn’t need a name. Anyway, the contact wasn’t like that—we didn’t have a conversation.” Snook began to feel doubts about his ability to give a proper description of the experience, and at the same time something of its enormousness began to dawn on him. An inhabitant of another universe, a ghost, had touched his mind. Lives had mingled…

“All right—try going back to the beginning. What is the first thing you remember?”

Snook closed his eyes and said, “Deep peace of the running wave.”

“Was that a greeting?”

“I think so—but it seemed more important to him. Their world seems to be mostly water. The wind could take a wave right…Oh, I don’t know.”

“Okay. Skip the greeting—what came next?”

“Felleth calls himself a Responder. That’s something like a leader, but he doesn’t think of himself as leading. Then there was a kind of argument about oracles and predictions, with him doing all the arguing. He said prediction was impossible.”

“An argument? I thought you said you didn’t have a conversation.”

“We didn’t—but he must have had access to my ideas.”

“This is important, Gil,” Ambrose said briskly. “Do you think he got as much information from you as you got from him?”

“I can’t say. It must have been a two-way process, but how could I tell who got the most?”

“Did you get any sense of being pressurised into talking?”

“No. In fact, he seemed to be hurting. There was something about pain.”

“Okay. Keep going, Gil.”

“He was shocked to learn about stars. They don’t seem to have any astronomy. There’s a permanent cloud cover -Felleth has it mixed up in his mind with the idea of a roof. He didn’t know the relationship between planets and suns.”

“Are you certain? Surely they could have devised an astronomy.”

“How?” Snook felt oddly defensive.

“It wouldn’t be too easy, I know, but there are lots of clues. The cycles of day and night, seasons…”

“They don’t think that way. Felleth didn’t know that his world rotates. He thanks of night and day as being like black and white marks on a straight thread. They don’t have seasons. They don’t have years. For them, time…everything else…is linear. They don’t have dates or calendars, as we know them. They count time forwards and backwards from the present.”

“The system would be too cumbersome,” Ambrose stated. “You need fixed points of reference.”

“How the hell would you know?” Snook, still shaken, was unable to curb his annoyance at the other man’s presumption. “How would you know what way they think? Do you even know how other human beings think?”

“I’m sorry, Gil, but don’t get side-tracked—what else can you remember?” Ambrose was unperturbed.

“Well, about the only thing that didn’t surprise him was the explanation of the two universes I picked up from you. He said, “Particles. Anti-particles. Correct. Our relationship almost precisely defined”.”

“This is interesting—nuclear physics, but no astronomy. And he qualified the thing a little? He said it was almost precisely defined?”

“Yes. Then there was something about time. And Thornton’s Planet came into it…” Snook’s voice faltered.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’ve just remembered…this is where he seemed to get really worked up…he said that something had happened a thousand days ago. I remember the figure because of the way it came through. I get the feeling he didn’t mean exactly a thousand days—it was like the way we talk about something happening a year ago when we mean eleven or twelve or thirteen months.”

“What happened, Gil? Did he mention tides?”

“You knew!” Through his confusion, Snook was yet again aware of having to revise his opinions about Ambrose.

“Tell me what was said.” Ambrose had become gentle and persuasive, yet demanding.

“One thousand days ago the weight of our oceans decreased. The waters rose into the sky, until they touched the cloud-roof. Then they swept away the People. And the houses of the People.”

“This confirms all of my claims,” Ambrose said peacefully. “I’ll be known. From now on, I’ll be known.”

“Who’s talking about you?” Snook was baffled and angry as strange fears began to stir within him. “What happened on Avernus?”

“It’s quite straightforward. Thornton’s Planet is of like material to Avernus, and therefore was able to drag it out of its orbit. The tidal effects would have been severe, of course, and we’ve already learned that Avernus is a watery world…”

Snook pressed his hands to his temples. “Most of them were drowned.”

“Naturally.”

“But they’re real people! You don’t seem to care.”

“It isn’t that I don’t care, Gil,” Ambrose said in a neutral voice. “It’s just that there’s nothing we can do about it. There’s nothing anybody can do to help them.”

Something in the way Ambrose spoke intensified the turmoil in Snook’s mind. He lurched forward and grabbed the material of Ambrose’s jacket. “There’s more, isn’t there?”

“You’re under a strain, Gil.” Ambrose did not move or try-to break Snook’s grip. “Perhaps this isn’t a good time to discuss it.”

“I want to discuss it. Now.”

“All right—we hadn’t completed the debriefing anyway. What happened after the Avernian learned about Thornton’s Planet?”

“I don’t…There was something about predictions, I think. The last thing I remember is Felleth screaming, ‘No’. Screaming isn’t the right word—there wasn’t any sound—but he seemed to be in pain.”

“This is fascinating,” Ambrose said. “The adaptability and speed of your friend Felleth’s brain is…well, there’s no other word for it…super-human. And there’s the efficiency of his telepathic communication. We’ve opened whole new fields of study.”

“Why did Felleth scream?”

Ambrose gently disengaged himself from Snook’s grip. “I’m trying to tell you, Gil. I’m only guessing, but it’s a question of how much he was able to pull out of your mind. You’re not interested in astronomy, are you?”

“No.”

“But you remember something of what you heard or read about Thornton’s Planet being captured by our sun? And about the orbit it took up?”

“I don’t know.” Snook tried to calm his mind. “There was something about a precessing orbit…and about the planet coming back. In ninety-eight years, wasn’t it?”

“Go on. It’s important for us to find out if you really do know, at a conscious level, what’s going to happen.”

Snook thought for a momenta the neural connections were made, and a great sadness descended over him. “The next time Thornton’s Planet comes,” he said in a dull voice, “they reckon it will pass through the Earth.”

“That’s correct, Gil. You did have the knowledge.”

“But Avernus should be separated from the Earth by that time.”

“By a short distance, and that’s only if it keeps on separating at its present rate. In any case, it won’t make any difference -the miss distance will be so small that the catastrophe will be just as complete as if there was a head-on collission.” Ambrose glanced around the silent, watchful group. “The Earth won’t be affected, of course.”

“Do you think Felleth got all that?” Snook was unable to escape from the lethal fugue which was resounding inside his head. “Do you think that was why he screamed?”

“I’d say that’s what happened,” Ambrose said, his gaze steady on Snook’s face. “You told the Avernian that his world, and everybody on it, will be destroyed in less than a century from now.”