Iris

freighter that would hurl them on the first leg of their year-long journey to Neptune. There wereten now, Temujin Krzakwa having joined them at Gamma, in full flight from the wolves of the Lunar tyranny. They waited, while engineering processors counted down.

Brendan Sealock sat in the common room of the ship's CM, staring out through a deopaqued wall at the blue orb of Earth seen from geosynchronous orbit. The Moon was also in view, a smaller, duller orb in the same phase, much farther away. What am I doing here? he wondered. I'm leaving almost everything that means anything to me! It was far worse than the day he'd left New York to go live with Ariane. The magnetism was almost unbearable now. Am I crazy? It was too late to turn back. He would have to spend more than a year with these people, en route to Triton. I must be!

The engineers reached their zero point. Camelopardalis fired up its engines and lit up the sky with a fiery glow. The Earth began to shrink in response and Sealock felt madness setting in.

It was over, not because the memories, the stories, had come to an end but because the damaged programming of Centrum had exhausted its capabilities.

Sealock felt himself floating, borne on the bosom of a great warm ocean. He heard the whispering of its waves, felt the warm currents of its thought rushing through his body. It rustled softly in the depths of his mind.

Come to me, it said, with an upwelling surge of loneliness. We are one. Sealock rolled gently in the comforting cradle of his past. He luxuriated in the happiness of a long-awaited homecoming.

He rolled to its rhythms. . . .

Come to me, it said. . . .

And he lost consciousness for the last time. . . .

They awoke, eight stunned individuals who had been filled with lifetimes, ages, in what was only a few fleeting moments. Ariane Methol opened her eyes and felt the tears drying on her cheeks. 'Good God,' she whispered. She turned to look at the others.

Temujin Krzakwa was slowly pulling the induction leads from his head. The enormity of it filled him. He could think of nothing meaningful to say, but, finally, 'I don't think we can get him back. It's got him....'

Achmet Aziz el-Tabari, Demogorgon, put his hand over his mouth and gave a dry cough, almost a sob. He said nothing.

Elizabeth Toussaint closed her eyes, overwhelmed by an experience that made Downlink Rapport, the thing she had so long feared and avoided, seem as nothing. 'Then we can't do anything for him?' Harmon Prynne pulled off his circlet, feeling a need for silence welling up within him. What sort of people were these? he wondered. For the first time he'd seen the real inner being of another person, an experience made all the more important for its having been the feared, hated, mystifying Sealock, and he was appalled. And yet . . . there was a real person there. How did the thing in Sealock differ from the thing in Prynne?

Vana Berenguer burst into quiet tears, emotionalized beyond all redemption. John Cornwell wiped the sweat from his brow and stared into an unfathomable distance. 'Those poor bastards,' he muttered. 'Those poor bastards!'

The Selenite looked at him quizzically. 'Who? What do you mean?' Cornwell had a growing look of unutterable horror. 'The Seedees!' He turned to gaze at Krzakwa.

'We have our gods always with us, mythical beings that we imagine rule our lives. We blame them for our failings and so they serve us. These poor bastards . . . Their gods were real!' He shut his eyes, trying to blot out his inner vision. 'What a horrible fate . . .'

The others were staring at him, bewildered, and suddenly Aksinia Ockels gasped, 'Son of a bitch. I know that shape. . . .' She had been a biologist by training and now she racked her memory. She cried,

'God damn! T—4r+! Of course!' She leaped to her feet, rebounding in the low gravity, and fled from the room.

Krzakwa felt stunned, unable to grasp what was going on. 'What the hell is happening to us?' It began again. And Brendan Sealock's almost dead body lay by the wall.

NINE

Cornwell and Krzakwa walked slowly across the heathered rise of the moor simulation, warm and safe amid the toys technology had created for them, and the clouds of the dark blue sky slid by unnoticed. They talked in a somewhat desultory fashion. John was saying, 'I'm not sure I understand what you mean.'

Tem found a hummock and sat, looking up, and for the first time really noticed the perfect harmony of this little