Marshy ushered them in. One large room, lined with shelves on which curious odds and ends were interspersed with old books, had as its dominating feature a great sweep of curved window, once plainly the main viewport of a spaceship's bridge. Its upper part gave a panoramic view of a maze of islands, channels and sloughs, with here and there in the distance open water rippling and sparkling in the sun. Its lower part extended below the water-line, giving a view like a great aquarium. Some of the life-forms they saw would have been recognizable to a terrestrial biologist as examples of parallel evolution. Some, a few, were introduced creatures from Earth. Some were familiar Wunderland creatures. Some were still utterly strange. There were comfortable viewing arrangements, even a kzin-sized indoor fooch as well as human couches in front of the great window. Vaemar wandered over to it as Swirl-Stripes and the human students appropriated the seating. Rosalind MacGowan came to the window beside him. Marshy dialed them refreshments.
"He told me you were coming," he said. "Asked me to keep an eye on you. Don't know if I can do much in that direction. And you appear capable of looking after yourselves. What do you know about the Great Ghost? Have you been here before?"
"Only round the edges," said Rosalind, "with Professor Rykermann, as Hon . . . as Vaemar will tell you."
"Most of us only know it round the edges," Marshy said. "Do you know what you're looking for?"
"Life in the center. New life," said Vaemar. "And anything else worth studying. New ecological relationships, for example. Urrr." His ears betrayed the equivalent of a human frown of concentration as he spoke.
"You are . . . abstractly curious?"
"Yes."
"Umm . . . I see." There was a flicker of a new expression in the man's bleak old face. "I was there just after the Liberation. Everything dead. The water still covered with floating carrion. It made me sick and I've seldom been back. But I suppose nature's tidied the place up in its own way now."
"That's what we want to measure," said Anne von Lufft, her face and voice full of eagerness. "The extent to which the center is being re-colonized."
"Can't you do it with satellites?"
"Not in enough detail," said Hugo Muller. "Some of the life-forms are small. And satellites are expensive. There's no substitute for being on the ground."
"That's the right answer," said Marshy. "Also, I suppose, there's not much thesis-fodder to be had from satellite readings."
"We're only third-years," said Toby Hill. "They're not big theses."
"But they might lead to big theses," said Marshy. "What do you want an old swamp-hermit to do for you?"
"Tell us about Grossgeister," said Swirl-Stripes.
"That would take eight minutes or eight lifetimes." He touched a button and a map was thrown up on one wall. "You know its center is an ancient meteor crater, like Circle Bay itself. Or in this case, more than one crater. The bigger islands are mainly remnants of ancient ring-walls. It's big. No one knows it all. You can't even map it by satellite because satellites can't tell all that's land and all that's shallow water, or see through overhanging forest. Peat burns under the surface in places and makes smoke and steam. A lot of the boundaries between land and water can't be defined, anyway. Many of the channels and marshlands and smaller islands change. In the wider waters the currents build up sand bars and tear them down.
"There are stretches like a great river of vegetation, miles wide and a couple of inches deep. It's fed by rivers and by the sea and by underground springs. Part of it's shallow, part of it's fresh, part of it's deep, part of it's salty from the sea. There are wide stretches of open water. Men who have lived in it longer than I have perished, without modern navigation aids or smart boats, only a short way from home, lost in channels and islands that all look exactly like each other. Nobody's ever known everything that lives—or lived—in it.
"Humans have always fossicked round the edge of Grossgeister, but in the three hundred years we've been on this planet, we've never tamed it. We've hunted in its margins and its creeks ever since the first explorations—but from the first day we've had a feeling it was also hunting us. Your kzin Sires"—he told Vaemar and Swirl-Stripes—"never took much interest apart from the military aspects—of course you like to hunt dry-footed."
"We can conquer water," said Swirl-Stripes.
"You know that the heart was cooked out of it. The kzinti used the heat-induction ray when a particularly troublesome gang of Wascal Wabbits took refuge there. Then, during the Liberation, a big kzin cruiser was shot down. It came down slowly, and there were survivors who went on fighting for a while. The hulk's still there, as far as I know. I suggest you leave it alone. I take it you've had basic ROTC training and know better than to
