“Good,” I said, “because you must mark the instant for Navigator and for Ship. It has to be precisely exact.”
“I know.” She spoke bravely, but there was a quiver in her voice, only little, but it betrayed her slightly. I looked at Doctor and she was concerned but also smiled bravely to let me know Seeker would not lose consciousness.
We waited and waited but not, I now think, as long as it seemed we waited.
Seeker stood straight with her shoulders held back and her eyes glowing now with more color than ever I had seen in them. She brought her hands away from her sides and rested them slightly on the Gate posts.
Then she said,
Ship heard and activated the beacon and the welcoming Shiny Wall-Gate was in place, so we thought.
Vern was certain that he could never get to her in time. He sprinted as hard as he could, but though Echo was severely uncoordinated and could often not walk in a straight line, she had a long head start. She was singing and babbling her Shiny Wall song and maybe that slowed her. Yet when he caught her, only inches from the fall that would crush her, and wrestled her to the turf, he had to use all his strength to hold her down. She struggled and cried and slapped at him. She was scarlet-faced and weeping but still singing, when she could find breath, “Shy-nee, shiny, shiny. ” Moms began wailing too, uttering a cry so full of grief and horror, that it chilled Vern even in the heat of his exertions.
And now in the midst of these commotions, Queenie came bounding past. Vern hardly had time to turn his head and follow her flight as she raced by him and the caroling Echo and launched herself, as if arcing into a lake to fetch a stick, over the cliff edge into the abyss.
Finally he was able to turn Echo on her back. He knelt on her, pinning her shoulders with his knees. She looked up at him with an expression of puzzled sorrow. “Shy-nee,” she said.
Then it was visible to Vern. It stood, or hovered, exactly upon the cliff edge, a rectangle of blue-white shimmer, mottled and interlaced with glowing threads that pulsed silver and violet and orange- red. It looked as if it ought to emit sound — a small sonic clap upon its appearance or the snap and sizzle of electronic static — but it was eerily silent. Vern could feel that no heat emanated from this object that Echo called a wall.
He took his weight off his sister and stood her up and clasped her tightly. She was not pushing him away now or attempting to run. She was transfixed, hypnotized by the shiftings and sparklings of the threaded workings upon or within the seemingly flat surface. She even nestled a little in his embrace as she often did with Moms.
Moms came behind Vern and put her arms around her shoulder, so that the three of them stood holding tight in mutual embrace. Vern wanted to speak to Moms but could not.
The girl who stepped out of Echo’s Shiny Wall resembled Vern’s sister in many ways. She was thin and her skin was pale as porcelain and her hair was bright blond, although it was not raddled and stringy like Echo’s but done up in feathery swirls that appeared to float about her head. She was wearing a white robe that cupped the sunlight into little pools of color, subtle yellows and blues.
Then she spoke in a clear, treble voice, her syllables like chimes. “You will be pleased to come away. The shoggoths are near. There is small time before the gate must shut.”
Echo laughed delightedly. Vern could say nothing and it was Moms who asked, in a quavering but determined tone, “Who are you?”
“I am Seeker. Echo knows who I am. You can see how she is not fearing. You must come.
Vern heard. They must have been advancing upon them from the north ridge.
Moms said, “We don’t know how. We are exhausted and frightened and you are strange to us.”
“You must trust me,” the girl said. “Your queenie is already aboard.”
“Queenie?”
“
The shrilling was very near.
“We have no choice, Moms,” Vern said.
Her voice was vacant. “Maybe you were right, Vern, to say that nothing means anything anymore. I don’t want to see this world the way it is now. How could anything be worse than what is here? So I will go first.”
She walked to stand by the girl in the white robe. The girl motioned her forward and Moms did not turn to look at Echo and Vern but stepped into the sheet of silver fire that opened over the abyss.
“Now — so as to avoid those Old One things,” the girl said.
Almost upon the greensward, almost within sight. Echo was still frozen in fascination, so Vern scooped her up and carried her into the wall-sheet of energy and the girl in the colorful white robe followed, backing in and looking with horrified loathing at what was out there and then all that scene went away.
It was cold and sharp. It was like stepping through the waterfall that had protected their cave, except that it was not wet.
On the other side of the Shy-nee Wall was sleep.
Ship had changed the combination of gases so that our vessel atmosphere conformed more closely to the Terran. For us crew members, the heavier air was not unpleasant, but it was a little more difficult to breathe. We wanted our Remnant guests to be as comfortable as possible, for all must seem highly strange to them. We were in space, where the Old Ones ranged abroad. That would be threatening, we thought, maybe.
As soon as the necessities were done with, we all went to our deepsleep berths and Ship filtered in the proper narcotics and we plunged into underspace. This happened in the shortest of times. We did not know if we had been seen or, had we been, if we were traceable. We did not know if underspace were changed — or “wrecked,” as Navigator called it.
Ship was to awaken us after four periods. At that point, we would be one hundred watches’ flight from the Alliance Remnant Reclamation Consigning Base, a station located where a sun system formerly had revolved. The Old Ones had annihilated every planet and moon there and the dim little central star now hung alone. There were no outposts near this deserted space and it was a lonely place wherein to stand waiting and planning.
After the crew had been awakened, Echo and the queenie were brought to full consciousness and their needs attended to. They required more bodily attention than the young man and his mother. Seeker spent a long time period communicating with the animal — “dog,” it was classified — and the autistic female; they could all speak to each other in a rudimentary mental speech, and Echo, once she was assured that her mother and brother were alive and well, was happy. She no longer echoed, repeating the phrases and words and sounds of others. Now, with Seeker, she had her own voice.
Then Vern was wakened and he reported immediately that he felt wonderfully well. This was not surprising. Ship had massaged and exercised him and rid him of unhealthy microorganisms and prepared healthful, Terran- like food, which he ate with lavish enjoyment.
He asked a great many questions — as we had expected he would ask.
“You look so cool and white,” he said. “You seem delicate.”
“We were rescued from our home planet by the Radiance Alliance almost two of your years ago. We have been enclosed in the station and aboard ship since then. So we have not. planetary. physiques. But now, after we are restored to strength, we will be going to a world like the one you left, like ours that the Old Ones murdered. We will develop our physical nature on the new planet.”
“I like the clothes you gave me,” he said. “I never wore a robe before. It is comfortable and very pink. It is very pink.”
“I am glad you adore it,” I said.
“There are lots of things I do not understand,” he said. “I thought Echo would fall off the cliff and die. I thought Queenie had already fallen.”
I explained that the scene was arranged to deceive the foe. “Echo is an autistic and sees
