X

Contretemps, Confused

It was brighter after passing the air lock. The lighting system of the city could not compete with daylight, but was better than moon and comet together. Earrin had intended to emerge from the water very carefully, but realized in time that this would be more likely to attract attention than a casual entrance. As it happened, his attempt at nonchalance was wasted, since no one was inside the cavern which held the air lock. This was hardly surprising in view of the hour, but Fyn still felt relieved.

That lasted for only a moment, until he suddenly realized that he had no real plan of action. The two main needs were obvious: he had come to find the captive native, and he would of course have to get his breathing cartridges recharged.

The latter would take care of itself if he could leave them exposed to city air for enough hours, but it would be better to get them into the full-pressure oxygen of a life-support bubble. How the captive could be found when Fyn had not the slightest knowledge of the city's layout, beyond occasional details mentioned by his wife, was far from obvious. Earrin began to suspect that he was not being very realistic, or even very sensible. Presumably the life support area would be at the top of the city, since it would need sunlight—Kahvi had, in fact, said as much. About all that could be done, therefore, was to take every opportunity he could find of going upward. He started along the first corridor which caught his eye, out of the dozen which opened into the cave.

Within fifteen minutes he was hopelessly lost. The tunnels were not straight, as Bones was to discover some hours later. However, he kept on. Presumably the higher he got, the smaller would be the city area; it was quite likely that life-support took up the whole top level. He was not using his own air—this would have bothered his conscience as a rule, but at the moment the city owed him—and there were plenty of hours available.

It was not entirely luck which kept him from being identified as an intruder for all those hours. He had come in at a seldom-used lock above the heavily populated levels; and even though most of the people lived and worked out of sight of the sun, the city was mainly active by day and asleep at night. There was nothing like a regular police or guard force. Like the Nomads, the citizens had to follow rather strict natural laws in order to survive, though the laws were not quite the same as those needed outdoors. The city-dwellers had their own standards of righteousness, and a few generations of enforcing these by firmly Nomadding offenders, combined with the fact that it was difficult for social parasites to get away with their life-style for very long in such a confined area, had made police activity superfluous. There were exceptions, of course; crime waves followed by spells of vigilante activity occurred more or less regularly, but Fyn had made his entrance at a relatively safe part of the cycle.

In better light, his outdoor coloration might have caught attention. However, the pseudolife plates which provided illumination were dim by electrical age standards even where they were regularly fed and watered. Elsewhere they sufficed to keep pedestrians from collision.

Fyn, therefore, had no trouble travelling, even though he had no idea where he was going horizontally. It took him more than an hour to find a stairway going up, though he had encountered two heading downward in that time. He judged, correctly, that this was support for his higher-the-smaller hypothesis. The stairway took him up some twenty meters, passing several levels, before it ended and he had to seek another. This didn't take so long to find, but gained him much less height. It did gain him, though he didn't realize it for some time, a follower; a slender, tentacled form which looked like a fish walking on its tail.

He never knew just how long it took him to find the air center, but the sun was high when he finally did. Golden daylight, visible at a distance along a new corridor, was in fact the final guide. By this time he was meeting people fairly often, but no one paid him much attention in the biolit tunnels. His act of nonchalance had been perfected by practice, and he no longer felt the urge to duck into a side tunnel whenever someone appeared ahead. His follower was doing this, so far in time to have avoided notice.

There was more system to these upper corridors; the Observer had worked it out, and succeeded in getting back on Earrin's trail each time it had been necessary to hide. Actually the being did not regard the concealment as really essential, but wanted to keep track of Fyn without compromising him.

With the increasing number of people around, Earrin was feeling less and less sure of himself as the minutes wore on. When the sunlight appeared ahead, his spirits revived a little; this had to be the air and food supply region, and he could recharge both air cartridges and stomach in a short time if he weren't recognized in the brighter light. How many attendants would there be on hand? How preoccupied would they be with their routine work? Could anyone come in, eat, and exchange or renew cartridges without any formality? Kahvi had never told him.

His tension mounted again as he approached the daylit end of the tunnel and a figure appeared there a few meters ahead of him. Fortunately this one, a woman who looked a good deal older than Kahvi, had just been in full sunlight and for the moment could see scarcely anything. She did detect Earrin's presence and nodded indifferently as she passed him, but that was all. That left the man five meters from daylight with no obstacles in sight.

He did not, however, reach full sunlight just then. A sudden shout of surprise in a female voice sounded from behind him and caused him to swing about sharply. A few meters away was the woman who had just passed him; about as far beyond her, another shape was disappearing into a side passageway. The Observer had run out of luck. Fyn, his eyesight already affected by the brightness he had been approaching, was not sure of details, but he saw enough to tell why the woman had shrieked.

His first impulse was to get out of sight himself, and he almost turned back toward the end of the tunnel.

However, the woman had already seen him; and if there were people in the plant room who had also heard her cry . . .

He came quickly down the tunnel to where the woman was standing. "What's the trouble?" he asked, in a voice whose anxiety was not entirely feigned.

"I saw something—one of the outside animals—duck into that side alley," she replied, in a voice much calmer than the cry of a moment earlier.

"How could that be possible?" asked Fyn. "How would one get in the city?"

"Don't be silly," was the less than tactful reply.

"They could get in through any air lock. The mayor insists we can't watch them all and claims it's dangerous to block any of them up. I say it is more dangerous to leave them open now that we don't need them all. But what are we to do about this animal?"

"Why do anything? What harm can he do?" asked Fyn in what he considered a calm and reasonable manner. The woman turned sharply and looked at him carefully for the first time.

"Where were you brought up?" she snapped. "They're not citizens, and have no right to the city's air.

Are you one of these liberal delinquents who claim there's more than enough oxygen?"

"But they don't use air. They don't breathe," Earrin pointed out.

"How would you know?" the woman peered more closely.

"I work outside." Earrin made the only possible answer, at the same time holding up his breathing mask.

"And how would that tell you anything about the animals, unless—" she paused, and appeared to forget her first anxiety for a moment. "Come back to the light with me." She took him by the arm and marched him rapidly toward the end of the tunnel. Earrin, unused to such a forceful personality except when masked by Kahvi's loving tact, and quite unable to employ violence against a person, went along .

He was still trying to decide whether he should face recognition as a Nomad or jerk away, join Bones—who must have been following him after all, it seemed—and face only suspicion w hen they reached daylight. He could only come up with what he considered reasonable words.

"How could they live outside if they had to breathe?" he asked. "I thought citizens, even if they stay indoors all the time, were supposed to know at least as much as Surplus kids."

"You can skip the insults," was the answer as she tugged him along even faster. "You can't tell me that there's anything that doesn't have to breathe somehow."

"But how do they—" Earrin gave up. This was a Hiller, and Hillers thought differently, as Bones sometimes seemed to. Bones, however, was usually rational if one took the time to work out in detail what he was saying; this seemed different, somehow.

Out in the sunlight the woman took one look at him.

"I thought so. Nomad. I suppose you brought that animal in with you."

"No, Teacher." Earrin was not being funny; old reflexes had been triggered. "It may have been following me, but I didn't know about it."

The woman—a rather thin individual of middle height, with her hair largely gray but neither skin nor hair showing any trace of the yellow which went with outdoor life—seemed to accept the statement.

Nomads, as was common knowledge, did not lie. "Have you seen it before?" she asked.

"I have seen one before, quite often," Fyn answered carefully. "I did not see this one clearly enough to be sure whether it is the same." He felt a slight twinge of conscience, but was able to convince himself that this was not deceit; this might not be Bones, though the other was supposed to be a prisoner. "Shall we try to catch him and find out?"

"You should get out of the city at once—you can't say you aren't breathing out air. Still, if you will promise not to try to get away from me, and to help me if we do catch up with that thing, all right."

"I promise." Fyn wanted, as badly as the Hiller woman did, to get a better look at the native. It seemed most probably that it was Bones, but the more Earrin thought, the more he felt that there had been something different about the fleetingly glimpsed figure.

"All right. Come on." The woman, again taking Fyn's word at face value, led the way back into the tunnel. They approached the cross passage where the native had disappeared and looked around the corner. Nothing but dimly lit stone and darker doorways could be seen. They went along this, checking inside each room as they passed it. For thirty or forty meters there was no conversation; then the woman spoke again.

"Why did you come into the city? Were you planning to steal something?"

"What does that mean?"

"Take something for your own without having made it or paid for it."

"No. I was looking for something, but not to take it."

"Not even air?" the woman sneered. Fyn was a little shocked at the question.

"How can you steal air?" he asked. "I know you regard it as city property, but surely you wouldn't keep it from anyone for that reason. Of course I would have recharged at your air center." His voice made no secret of his feeling about the matter.

"That is stealing. You have no right to do such a thing."

"I don't agree. In the first place, you don't keep air from anyone who needs it. In the second, some of your people made me go with them last night, and use air I would otherwise have replenished from my own source. I think I have a perfect right to a charge at your city's expense. Those people owe it to me."

"They brought you into the city?"

"No." Fyn's habitual truthfulness was in complete charge, though he had some doubt about telling the whole story to this Hiller. "They said they were going to, but I got away from them. They wanted me to do something I did not approve of. If I had gone home they could have caught me again easily, so I came here to recharge."

"And you just came in through the first air lock you found. No one stopped you?"

"No one was around. It was night. I've been trying to find my way around here all day." His interrogator looked at him shrewdly and, he thought, a little more sympathetically.

"You might have charged up with more than air, then," she remarked.

"Of course. Food goes with air, anyway. Or doesn't your food grow on—"

"Oh, yes. Well, maybe if you're helpful with this animal we can supply you with some of both."

"You owe me some already, if there are any new varieties. I haven't been paid for my cargo yet, and the payment was to be at least two new cultures for making air, food, or some structural material." Earrin explained the situation in detail, still omitting mention of Bones and the Fyn family's relations with the being. The woman seemed quite surprised.

"I hadn't heard of such arrangements being made with Nomads," she said. "I know that people sometimes trade with them, and I'd heard that some people were careless enough of the rules to let new varieties of plant survive. I'm very surprised that such materials were actually used. I don't see what anyone would want with copper or glass. I've seen a few tools made of the metal, and of course the roof of the air section has glass in it to let the sunlight in; but surely no one is going to build more air rooms."

"Glass can be used for tools, too," the man pointed out, drawing his knife and handing it to her. She examined it with interest and returned it.

Neither thought of any distinction between tool and weapon.

"Well, I haven't heard of any special want for either of them," the woman finally repeated.

"Come on, let's find this creature. Wait—maybe one of us should go back to the stairway. There's only one to this level. That will keep it from getting away. It could circle back and get there ahead of us if we don't; there aren't any dead ends in these tunnels. Again she had to clarify several of her terms to the Nomad.

"I'm not sure I could find the stairway," Earrin admitted. "if you think it should be watched, you'll have to show me the way, or get some more help. Do you think you can take care of the animal if you catch it by yourself?"

She was silent for a short time. "I don't know," she said at last. "Maybe we should stay together."

"I don't believe it would hurt you. I've seen the one I mentioned often enough without ever having trouble with it. Of course, that woman with the group that had me last night was saying terrible things about them—that they ate their own children, and that sort of thing. Is that what bothers you?"

"What woman? Was this the same group you were talking about? I never heard such a story in my life."

Again Fyn spent some time explaining, interrupting the search once more. For some reason, the woman now seemed even more upset than she had been at the first sight of the native. She was wearing a very perturbed expression when he had finished telling about the "Invaders" as described by his recent captors.

"I think I see some of what's going on," she said slowly. Tell me, did any of these people use—well—dirty language."

"Such as what?"

"I-I can't give you any examples. About—you know—the things which were done to ruin the world."

Fyn thought he saw what she meant.

"You mean things like expressions from the Science Myths." Even the word science caused the woman to cringe a little, but she managed to answer.

"Yes—that sort of thing."

"I wouldn't say so-not the words, anyway. They did say they were trying to capture the animals they called Invaders to find out how they could be killed. They dodged the words, but what they were planning was certainly—that word you just now didn't like. Calling it something else doesn't change it.

They didn't believe the usual story about the way the air changed—"

"It's not a story! That's what happened. People tried to use—that method—to grow more food. It was a way to get more nitrogen, that their food plants needed, into the ground. The nitrogen combined with the oxygen, and there was a lot more nitrogen even then, so—"

"I've heard the details. Many times. The point is that these people don't believe it; they think the Invaders did something to get the oxygen out of the air. They want to change it back, and think they'll have to get rid of the animals first."

"I know now." The woman's face was eloquent with disgust. "They were all pretty young, weren't they?"

"Yes. Middle teens, I'd say—just about grown up.

"That's it. Those delinquents over in Hemenway. But I didn't think they actually meant to use such methods. Most of us thought they were merely youngsters with the usual no-one-can-tell-me-what-to-do idea holding on a little late. I suppose—" her voice trailed off, and she was thinking again.

Fyn was almost as surprised as, Bones would have been at the implication that Hillers were not all one in mind and spirit, but he was better able than the Observer would have been to believe it. He knew that the basic anti-Science religion differed in dogmatic detail from city to city, but he had never encountered until now a group which flatly denied it. He resumed the search along the corridors silently, not wanting to continue the conversation until he had made more sense of the new information. The woman, whose name he did not yet know and who, he suddenly realized, had never bothered to ask for his, seemed to feel much the same. She checked the rooms on her side of the tunnel in complete silence for some minutes.

She had gotten several doorways ahead of him, the rooms on her side being all single while most of those on Fyn's were two- and three-chambered suites. He was just emerging from one of these into the main tunnel when he glimpsed two figures disappearing into doorways on the other side, both well ahead of him. The more distant one was slower moving, and he had no trouble recognizing his partner in the search; the other, seen more briefly but more closely, was equally easy to identify. He sprang silently toward the doorway through which it had vanished.

The creature had seen him, too, and made no attempt to hide further. It waited, just inside the door, out of sight of the woman if she should come back to the corridor.

It was not Bones; that was evident the moment Earrin entered the room. It was not even as tall as the man himself, though its shape was identical with that of the native. Why it was traveling in the tunnels of Great Blue Hill was a mystery. If it had escaped from its captors, who had apparently been in Hemenway if the woman knew what she was talking about, it should be outside by now—or perhaps it was as lost as Fyn himself. He would have liked to ask it, but could think of no way to do so. It might, of course, have learned to understand some spoken words during its captivity, but it probably had the same difficulty in distinguishing phonemes as Bones; and in any case it had no voice with which to answer questions.

Fyn was naturally startled when the tentacles began gesturing meaningfully at him.

"Earrin. I wasn't quite sure it was you at first, but followed you to make certain. Should I keep out of sight, or is it all right for this person you are with to see us together and communicating? And can you help me either to get outside, or to find food in here?"

"Bones! What on earth have they done to you? Never mind, you can explain later—yes, there should be food in the air center, and I can find that. It's not far from here. Come on."

Much of this was of course spoken aloud, and the woman heard the words from farther along the tunnel. She came back hastily.

"You caught it!" she exclaimed happily. Then her attitude changed abruptly. "Why—you were talking to it! How can you talk to an animal? Did you train it, the way people did when there were other animals in the world?" Then her expression changed from curiosity and amazement to anger.

"You have met it before—you did know it! You-lied-to-me! What kind of Nomad are you? At least we could always believe them!"

Fyn was even angrier. As the woman spoke, he too had jumped to an unbelievable conclusion, but it seemed to be the only one the data permitted. He snarled back, "You filthy hypocrites! So experiment is a dirty word, is it? Science is evil, and ruined the world, you say? And the people who use it are delinquents? Don't talk to me about lying. You Hillers have been experimenting on my friend! Come on, Bones, let's go. We'll get your food and my air if we have to knock some of these subhumans down flights of stairs. Then we'll get out of here!"

XI

Experiment, Educational

The spear hurt, and pulling it out hurt a good deal more. Bones expected another flight of the weapons as the process was tried, but the human beings watched with interest as the handling tentacles pulled the long shaft on through and dropped it on the floor. The flow of nearly colorless blood ceased quickly. The Observer body was by no means either immortal or invulnerable, but most of the organs which would be vital to a human being were decentralized. There was no single heart, but hundreds of far smaller pump muscles along the blood vessels; nerve cells used internal information storage instead of the human method of coding connections, and travelled freely though the body both in the circulatory system and among the cells of the other tissues. Even muscles were not connected groups of tissue-forming cells but protean structures which could change their shapes and regroup as needed. The Observer muscle could actually push.

Bones, therefore, was extremely uncomfortable, but not incapacitated. The fact that such major damage usually stimulated the long body to a budding reaction was a nuisance, but not a catastrophe; buds were sometimes even convenient, if they actually duplicated properly. Usually, of course, they didn't.

The fishlike form's failure to fall down startled the human witnesses, and a buzz of conversation broke out.

Bones could not, as usual, understand enough of the syllables to make any sense, and human facial expressions had never been very meaningful to the Observer. It was necessary to wait for overt actions before the thoughts of these people could be guessed. The one they had made so far was mystifying, but was at least a datum to remember.

Until they made another, it seemed reasonable to eat some more. This would be useful even if it did not stimulate the witnesses to some informative reaction. Bones removed the bubble from another planter and reached for the contents. The reaction, unfortunately, was too quick to allow a taste of the material; there was a single, sharp syllable barked by one of the tallest of the people, and six more spears were poised for throwing.

Bones did not have combat-type reflexes, but was a reasonably intelligent being. The basic idea of throwing things at beings whose actions were undesirable was new, but not essentially difficult Actual execution of it might take practice—Bones suspected that making the spear which had already been thrown return point first to its senders would be more difficult than it appeared; but some things could be thrown without knowing about their travel attitude.

The planter was heavy, but not too heavy. Two strong tentacles lashed out, and the box of dirt and plants went flying toward the spearsmen.

Two of them had time to launch their weapons, while the other four dropped theirs and ducked, in one case too slowly. More spears were raised.

Bones, who had had no trouble dodging the pair just thrown once it was obviously the thing to do, reached for and raised another planter.

The voice which had given orders before sounded again, this time in a monosyllable that Bones was able to understand.

"Stop!"

Bones stopped, not because of the word but because of its effect on the others. Spears were lowered, and their holders were looking at the speaker; even the Observer could tell that they were waiting for more instructions—that the one who had called out was for some reason the controlling mind of the group.

The speech went on, but lapsed into incomprehensibility as far as Bones was concerned. How much information was being conveyed, why the leader had stopped the violence—there was no way to tell. If only Earrin or Kahvi, or even little Danna, had been there. No use in wishing; it was less useful than inference, or even than guessing. Watching what the people did was all that could be done now.

The speaker finished. His listeners seemed relaxed, and divided their attention between him and the Observer; they showed no signs of further violence as far as the latter could judge.

Only two of the human beings were doing anything. These moved slowly and steadily toward a table not very far from Bones. Neither carried a weapon or anything else. Their slow, very controlled actions captured the Observer's attention more and more completely as the seconds passed.

Both the people were much smaller than usual, though not nearly as small as Danna—they were about the height of the other Observer unit which had been in the prison. Earrin or Kahvi would have guessed them as being thirteen or fourteen years old; Bones had no basis for judgment. Both were males, another fact unknowable and unimportant to the nonhuman.

They stopped two or three tables away from the tall watcher, and removed a light cover from a glass tank which covered most of the top of the furnishing. One of them dipped in with a fabric net which interested Bones greatly; it was the first woven material the Observer remembered seeing.

The pocket of the tool went into a layer of milky-looking, thin mud which filled the lowest third of the tank; it was withdrawn, held to drain for a moment, and brought toward Bones.

The latter wondered whether food were being offered, but as the net continued to drip the upper part of its contents cleared to a snowy white; and when it came close enough the nature of the substance was clear—too clear. It was a fluffy pile of the glass splinters which had made so effective a trap back at the fire site.

For the first time, Bones noticed that all the human beings were wearing sandals. Evidently satisfied that the material had been recognized, the small human being walked toward a nearby door and began to spread the stuff over the floor in its area. The other youngster had dipped up another load, and was doing the same at another door. It took no great deductive power to see what was happening, but there was nothing obvious the Observer could do about it.

The larger beings still held their spears. Within five minutes, every door in the room was unapproachable, as far as Bones or any bare-footed human being was concerned.

The Observer was interested, but not worried. This was certainly a better method of restraint than the bars, except for one factor. It was fascinating that the people seemed not to have considered that factor; unless and until they did, other matters could be studied.

The tank from which the glass had come, for example. There were several more like it, some containing layers of gray mud like the first, others with lumps of spongy tissue in various stages of solution. It was obvious enough that the glass spicules were being grown in some form of pseudolife, and the supporting tissue was merely dissolved away when mature. Earrin would be interested, though he would probably have no use for the material.

Now the human beings put their spears down, except for half a dozen who left the room with theirs.

Those who remained set frantically to work. Some collected the fragments of the planter Bones had thrown, others picked up, very carefully, the bits of tissue from the growths it had contained. The people who had been hit by the missile were among those who had left, some of them still limping. The tissue was carefully placed in soil in several trays which were brought in from another room. Some of these were set up on empty tables, others carried through one of the doors out of sight. The planters from which Bones had eaten were examined carefully, and their covers replaced. All this was fairly obvious in purpose; Bones had seen Earrin and Kahvi carry out similar routine hundreds of times in the past few years. The culture, whatever it was, in the planter which had been smashed was being salvaged; the others were being checked for possible infection. There were always nitro-life spores in the air, even in a well-sealed environment like a city.

Important plants such as air and food producers had to be kept protected, and divided as far as possible so that no single infection would destroy an entire resource. The trays Bones had uncovered would be watched with special care for some days.

During all this, the small individuals who had spread the glass simply stood and watched the nonhuman. Bones suspected that they were much younger than the rest, and had begun to wonder whether a communication effort might be worth while. Danna had apparently found it much easier than her parents to learn Bones' tentacle gestures while the code was being perfected; her signal vocabulary was not as great as her parents'—so far, but what she knew she had learned much faster.

Perhaps this was a quality which went with the more recently budded of the species. It seemed worth trying.

The youngsters were cooperative, watching the motions of Bones' tentacles and, after a while, seeming to get the basic idea and trying to imitate them with waving and posturing of their own arms and fingers. No real transfer of information was accomplished, however; the primary result was the total focussing of Bones' attention on the two beings. This, it turned out, was an error—though the results might have been the same even if the Observer had really been observing.

Even the pain of the spear wound had been forgotten for the moment, when suddenly two nooses settled over Bones' head and tightened below the eyes. They could not get lower than the upper handling tentacles, and these appendages reacted at once, whipping upward and trying to flip the loops of fiber away; but the human crews pulled hard from opposite directions until the ropes were cutting painfully into the tough, rubbery flesh. Bones could not, of course, have been strangled, and the major parts of the circulatory system of the fishlike body were too deeply located to be blocked this way; but the long form could and did feel pain. For the time the Observer was completely helpless.

The youngsters, apparently as startled as Bones, uttered cries of surprise and what the Fyns would have recognized as indignation; they had been getting interested in the embryonic conversation. There was a sharp argument between them and one of the older beings, which ended with the youngsters leaving the room sulkily.

They looked back as they went, watching as the tall form was dragged over to a door, the floor in the neighborhood swept carefully, and the prisoner moved through it. Bones did not see them again.

Once in the corridor outside, travel stopped briefly. The nooses were loosened a little, Bones'

eyeballs relaxed into their proper shape, and their vision began to come back. Another noose was applied near the other end of the fishlike form, at the narrowest part just above the flukes. Two more followed at the same place; then the upper ones were removed completely. Bones, analyzing the situation, could recognize that there was no immediate chance of escape. The three ropes were held by three men, standing in three different directions; any one of them could jerk the support from under the Observer with no trouble at all.

Untying one of the nooses, even if it could be managed, would be futile, and there certainly was no way to work on all of them at once. It appeared that the men this time felt it would be easier to let their captive provide his own transportation.

Of course, the Observer was in no great hurry to escape, though choosing and managing one's own actions was always preferable. Food needs had been supplied for the time being, and unless the same prison as before were on the schedule there should be new things to learn.

Since there was a fair chance that it would be the same prison, however, Bones gave thought to methods of escape as the party resumed its journey.

Ropes were slow to untie, but they could be cut quickly. Did any of these people have a knife? The light was poor for human vision, but not for the Observer's great eyeballs. Outdoor workers, like Nomads, always carried tools; but this might not be so usual inside the city.

Apparently it wasn't. Of the ten people in the party, eight were carrying nothing; indoor garments were scanty enough to leave no doubt about this. Of the two with cases or bags which might possibly contain knives, both were at the far ends of ropes attached to Bones, and seemed determined that the slack in those ropes be kept at an absolute minimum. Once, experimentally, the Observer made a sudden move as though to spring into an intersecting tunnel. The resulting horizontal position, achieved with no perceptible delay, was no surprise. The people provided no help in getting up, but did not interfere; carrying that weight was still no part of their plan if it could be helped. Bones did nothing more which might be construed as an effort to leave, but filed some data very carefully. One of the men had been noticeably slower than the other two in putting tension on his rope, though he had coordinated well with the others in controlling the direction of Bones' fall.

They did not, after all, go back to the original prison. To Bones' surprise the party finally came to an air lock. After donning outdoor equipment from open shelves which lined the walls near the pool, they took their captive outdoors. For the moment, this completely baffled Bones.

About three hundred meters east and slightly downhill from the air lock was a clearings real clearing, with the ground almost completely bare. Not even the usual nitro slime was present, except in a few patches. The people led Bones to the center of this area.

Then one of them approached, taking from her belt one of the bags which the Observer had hoped might contain a knife. As the youngsters had done, she brought it close to her captive and made it obvious that it contained more of the hellish bits of glass. Then, accompanied by another member of the group with the other bag, she began walking around the edge of the clearing scattering the stuff over the ground. They made several circuits, and when the bags were empty the soil in a ring fully three meters wide was, as far as Bones was concerned, untouchable. The sandalled people now walked out of the clearing. The three who were holding the ropes dropped the ends and started off with the rest, but a sharp voice uttered several syllables. They came back, detached the ropes from Bones, and took them away.

It was close to midday; many hours had passed since the two Observers had fled the cell. Bones wondered what had become of the other unit—not the other one; no Observer could think of another as a different entity. They were all parts of one Self.

There were plenty of other things to wonder about, too, and only inferences for answers—better than nothing, but not much better.

Certainly not to be compared with Knowledge. Bones was very much in the position of a human being of the Age of Pleasure, surrounded by attractive and complaisant members of the opposite sex, but restrained from all action. The Tantalus legend was also appropriate, though different appetites were involved.

The tentacular legs under the long body were capable of far more rapid running than would have seemed possible to their incredible slenderness, but jumping was another matter. Bones did consider this briefly, but decided that landing on the glass would be enough worse than walking on it to make the risk unacceptable. The ropes were gone—some people obviously thought more rapidly than others—and the slow-reacting person was gone too; the native regretfully filed what had seemed a promising plan.

By this time the whole situation was starting to make sense. These people were, simply and rationally, trying to find out more about Bones. It was a perfectly sensible thing—just what an Observer would have done. Cooperation was obviously in order. It was too bad the communication effort with the young ones had been interrupted, and it was hard to see why. Did the people have some quicker method than the sound code, after all, for getting information? If not, why were they so willing to delay? Tantalizing mystery again, and again with nothing but inference possible for a solution so far. Unsatisfactory. Best to assume that this was a test, presumably of Bones' ability to get out of this situation, and pass it as quickly as possible.

Digging is very difficult with tentacles, but not impossible. The soil covering the bedrock here was shallow, but might suffice. Bones began to scrape it together and carry it to the narrowest part of the glass barrier. The splinters were easy enough to see by daylight, though the native would not have noticed them without experience.

The original idea was to cover a pathway a meter or so wide across the danger strip, but it quickly became clear that there was not enough dirt for this. The Observer changed the plan to a better and quicker one, that of covering only a few small patches and being careful to step exactly on these while departing. It worked perfectly.

Six human beings were waiting just inside the glass. One of them carried a broom, with which she scattered the dirt from the protected areas. Another person had a bag of the splinters, and renewed the places which Bones and broom had made safe.

Without thinking, the Observer snatched the broom from its wielder, dashed across the clearing, and began to sweep a path to the outside. If the people had had to go around, this might have worked; but their feet were protected, and they could run across the glass without having to clear a way. Once more Bones was carried back, and the swept area restored to deadliness.

So far the contest had been conducted very politely, with neither side using violence. Bones was more than ever convinced that the whole thing was a test, and still felt cooperative if slightly impatient.

This attitude was modified on the second carry when one of the people, accidentally or otherwise, dropped the heavy end of his load onto the glass area. Once again the Observer felt agony much too great to be compatible with sympathy. For a moment the temptation to hurl the nearest human beings off their feet and onto the glass almost won out; but the realization that they were intelligent beings in some ways comparable to Observers, however different in detail, throttled the impulse.

The glass this time was at the upper end of a fin and adjacent body, and could be reached with handling tendrils, so Bones ignored the test for a while and concentrated on removing the stuff.

The injuries already sustained had, as expected, started the budding reaction, and nothing could be done about that; but there was no reason to suffer more pain than necessary.

By the time the glass was gone and the pain reduced to a dull ache, the sun was well down in the west. Bones had decided to make no more attempts by daylight, in spite of the risk that people might take their test subject indoors for the night. This might even be helpful, if the same individuals held the ropes. Even if they didn't, a chance of using the earlier plan might present itself; if this happened before they reached the air lock, the situation would be perfect. The moon would not rise for some hours after sunset, and the comet of course would be four hours later still.

So Bones let night fall without giving the experimenters the pleasure of another contest. For some time after dark it looked as though the experiment were to run through the night—quite reasonably, the Observer considered—but at last there came a sound of human conversation from the direction of the air lock. Bones got "afoot"—the great body did need rest at times—and waited tensely.

This silhouetted the tall form against the starlit sky, and there was more sound from the opposite direction. It was the quick intake of a human breath, followed by the exclamation, "Bones!" in a voice which even the native could recognize.

"Bones!" Kahvi repeated. "Come on, quickly! The Hillers are coming, and they plan to hurt you—to kill you if they can! Come this way!"

Bones, unfortunately, could do nothing of the sort. The glass was in the way. This was bad enough, though it seemed unlikely that the Hillers could actually kill the rather resilient Observer body; but there was something worse. The woman was approaching. With her unshod feet she would be as vulnerable to the glass as Bones—perhaps more so, considering the thin human skin. The Observer gestured frantically for her to keep back, but the detailed signals simply could not be made out in the darkness. She would be into the-splinters in a few seconds; and now it could be seen that little Danna was with her.