9

“We’ll try the portals in turn,” Max said, “clockwise from this one.” Emil was about to object. “Well, what’s wrong with that?”

“It’s systematic, but it doesn’t help our odds,” Emil said.

Lucinda sighed. “Splitting up might help our odds, Emil, but we might never find each other again. One of us might find the right way immediately, and not be able to tell the other two, ever.”

“I know that,” Emil replied.

“Then what’s your objection?”

Emil was silent.

“There should be a better way than trying one after another,” Max said, putting a hand on Emil’s shoulder, “but there isn’t.”

Emil frowned. “It’s not fair.”

“Why should it be?” Lucinda demanded.

“I think what he means,” Max said, “is that if this is something we’re meant to do, like a game, then it should make sense.”

Emil glanced at him. “Right. Whatever’s doing this isn’t making it easy for us.”

Max nodded. “We can’t help that, and we’re too far in to back out now, so let’s go.” Lucinda moved toward Emil, then glanced at Max and turned away, as if she didn’t want him to see her concern for her brother. “This one,” Max said.

He faced the black opening, glanced back at them and went in, following the right-hand S-curve. Something complex happened in these passages, cutting short the light-years between star systems. It seemed that he should feel more than he did. A quick walk through a tunnel, a tingling of the skin, and a sense of the dark flowing around him just didn’t seem to be enough to mark the vast distances that were being bridged. It had taken human beings decades to go from Earth to the nearest star and back, yet he was moving to far more distant points in minutes.

How could any human being ever hope to understand such an advanced technology? Was that why he and his companions had been lured into the system, to get lost and have to find their way back? Was it part of the game to make them wonder if they had been lured out or had gone out of curiosity? The fact that aliens actually existed startled him. To imagine them was one thing, but to face them was something else. Suddenly he wanted to meet an alien, to confront the beings who had taken him and his companions from their home.

“What’s wrong?” Emil asked in a shaking voice. “Why’d you stop?”

“I was thinking.” Max moved forward again. The exit appeared as a faint outline up ahead. He came to it and stepped out into what seemed to be another rocky tunnel.

“Well, this isn’t it,” Lucinda said at his right.

“Let’s see what’s out here,” Max said, moving ahead.

Pale daylight filtered into the tunnel. Max and Lucinda came to the mouth and looked out. At their left, a rising yellow sun burned through mists over a dark blue ocean. The horizon startled Max; he was not used to seeing horizons. The ocean was calm, its gentle waves rolling in lazily.

Lucinda grabbed his arm before he could step out. “We almost got killed last time,” she said, holding on, but the wonder of the landscape drew him.

“Seems safe enough. Aren’t you curious? Emil?”

“Sure.”

“Maybe we should go back and try the next portal,” Lucinda said, still holding his arm. “Emil is hurt.”

“I’m all right,” Emil answered behind them. “Let’s take a look.”

She was silent, but let go of Max’s arm. “You can wait here,” he said.

“I’ll come,” she replied.

Max stepped out on the rock-strewn ground and led the way to the gray sands of the beach, under an open sky again far away from the habitat’s protected space. Here, as in the flooding gorge, the sky went up forever, and could contain anything. The thin cover of atmosphere was not made to protect him. Planetary atmospheres shielded living things that had adapted to their conditions. Max wondered what levels of solar radiation were getting through and if the air was really fit to breathe.

“It’s like some of the images of Earth,” he said, finding it hard to believe that there could be any danger here.

“Even Earth would be better than being lost,” Lucinda muttered. “I know we were supposed to be looking forward to going back, but I wasn’t.”

Surprised, Max stopped and looked at her. “But you seemed so sure of yourself,” he said. “About everything,” he added.

She stared down at her feet “I have to be that way. My mother—well, everyone knows how competent our Navigator is. No child of Linda ten Eyck could ever be less. It helped me to act the way people expected me to. I didn’t really have to compete. But what’ll I be on Earth? There are millions of kids there—we’ll just get lost in the crowd.”

He had not expected this from her. He wanted to say something that would reassure her, then wondered what it would take to reassure him. At last he said, “We’ll be the ones who found this alien transport system. That ought to count for something.”

She smiled, then looked anxiously after Emil, who had wandered down to the water. “If we get home,” she said, taking Max’s hand. As they walked toward Emil, the younger boy turned around and frowned, looking puzzled by their handholding.

The waves seemed to whisper more loudly as the yellow sun rose higher, warming their faces, and Max wondered again if they were getting too much radiation. The damp, salty air smelled of vegetation and rotting fish.

“Look!” Lucinda shouted.

To the left of the yellow sun, a bright point was rising. Max realized that it was a second sun, a blue dwarf climbing the sky after its companion. “Another double star!” he said in wonder.

“Double stars are common,” Emil said. “There may even be a third star here.”

“I’d like to see that,” Max said excitedly.

Emil was watching his sister carefully, as if expecting an explanation for her friendlier treatment of Max.

“I wonder what life there is in this ocean,” she said.

Max sat down on the sand and hugged his knees. Emil and Lucinda sat down next to him.

The ocean made him feel peaceful, and he imagined schools of exotic fish rushing through the deeps, whales navigating like great ships through vast underwater canyons, giant crabs walking across submerged plains. He glanced at Lucinda questioningly.

“Did you really think,” she said, “that you were the only one who was worried about returning to Earth?”

“I guess I did.” He felt embarrassed.

“Maybe if you’d talked to more of the others, you’d have known you weren’t alone.”

“Emil, do you feel the same?” Max asked.

The boy shrugged and looked away. “I guess it’ll be interesting.” He raised a bushy eyebrow. “If we get back.”

Lucinda said, “You told me you were afraid.”

Emil glared at her. “You don’t have to say it in front of him.”

“I was afraid, too,” Max said. “Maybe I still am.”

Emil looked at him dubiously. “You’re just trying to make me feel better. You’re friends with her now, so you have to be nice to me. If we weren’t in this mess together, you wouldn’t think you had to get along.”

“But I want to be your friend anyway, if you’ll let me.”

“I don’t get it. You never really liked either of us.”

Max took a deep breath. “So I was wrong about you both,” he said, surprised at how easy it was to say that now.

“Look at that!” Lucinda shouted.

Something long slid out of the waves onto the beach, moving like a giant black snake, except that it was segmented into joints. It stood up for half its length and swayed back and forth as if searching for something.

Emil stood up, trembling.

“It’s seen us,” Lucinda said.

“Come on!” Max cried, pulling Lucinda to her feet.

The snake lowered itself and slithered across the sand as they backed away toward the rocky area above the beach, then rose up again and examined them with eyes that were clusters of lenses on each side of its head.

“Why should it want us?” Lucinda asked, gasping for breath as they turned and scrambled across sharp rocks and slippery seaweed.

“Food!” Emil blurted. “Maybe we’re the same size as things it lives on.”

Max glanced back. The snake threw up sand and weeds as it slid between the rocks. They reached the outcropping, and Max saw for the first time that there were two openings.

“Which one?” Emil cried, tripped, and hit his head on a rock.

“Left, the larger one!” Max shouted. Lucinda helped him with Emil. “Inside!” They dragged him between them.

“I’m okay,” Emil said, pulling free.

They ran through the cave tunnel. Max imagined being swallowed by the long black body and digested for weeks; he had once read that snakes did it that way. He was sweating as they sprinted the last few meters and rushed through the black passage. It seemed to take forever to come out. Max felt that he was swimming in a black, oily substance. It slowed him down, but finally he burst out into the yellow station.

“It’ll come after us,” Emil said, squinting in the bright light. Max noticed the bruise on his forehead. Lucinda took a closer look.

“Does it hurt?” she asked, panting.

“Not much.” Emil winced, gulping air.

“Doesn’t look bad.”

“Leave me alone!” he cried.

She turned to Max. “Maybe it went into the other cave, and wasn’t after us at all.”

Max shook his head. “It was after us,” he said as his breath came easier. “Let’s go. If it comes out here, it won’t know which one we took.”

He faced the next square and went in, with Emil and Lucinda right behind him.