“Melted to nothing?” Da Silva demanded.
“Not at all,” said Wade. “Into a pool of what I suppose was protoplasm, but it seeped at once down into the soil.”
He nodded toward Reed. “The coarse gravel, as Mr. Reed noted.”
“I suppose the clothes melted with her?” Dewhurst said.
“No,” Wade answered equably, “they were there when I came back the next morning. As was my mattress. I didn’t stand on the order of my going, as you can imagine.”
“Cast offs,” Belgeddes said. “Saw them myself when I came back with him. Sort of trash you could pick from the town midden in Tarek Bay back then.”
“What I believe,” Wade said, “is that the beach walkers are—or were—”he nodded toward Reed again “—if Mr. Reed is correct in believing them extinct—”
Reed opened his mouth to protest at being misquoted, but he swallowed the words before speaking.
“At any rate, the beach walkers were a life form indigenous to Ain al-Mahdi that mimicked other species,” Wade continued. “When men colonized the planet, they mimicked men—or women, at any rate, for the same purposes.”
“Which we can guess, easily enough,” Belgeddes interjected. “Dinner, not to put too fine a point on it.”
“Food or reproduction,” Wade said. “Survival of the individual or survival of the species. The basic drives of all forms of life. But its mimicry broke down under intense red light.”
He looked at Reed and raised his eyebrow for confirmation. “You’ve heard that only a ruby laser can kill a beach walker, I suppose? Well, that’s not true. It’s the angstrom range, not simply destructive energy. And it’s not fetal, only—disconcerting to the creature.”
Dewhurst’s mind riffled the guidebook through whose images he’d browsed in his cabin’s bathroom. “There aren’t any large animals on Ain,” he said. “Except men. There never were.”
“Not in the seas, old boy?” Belgeddes responded. “That’s not what I recall. I seem to remember some of those arthrodires weighing tonnes, with jawplates spreading wide enough to swallow a catcher boat on a bad day.”
“Well, yes, I suppose. . . .” Dewhurst mumbled. “But a—a sea creature doesn’t just come up on land!”
Wade got to his feet and smiled at Dewhurst. “Fish don’t, that’s true,” he said in gentle mockery. “At least they usually didn’t on Earth.”
Belgeddes stood up also. “Time we got back to the cabin, Dickie,” he said. “We’ve still got some unpacking to do before we lift off.”
He gave the other men a finger-to-brow salute. “Be seeing you later, I’m sure, chaps.”
“One lies and the other swears to it,” Dewhurst said when Wade and his companion had left the bar.
“Yes . . . .” agreed Da Silva judiciously. “But I think that story was worth the price of a few drinks, do you not?”
“The funny thing is . . .” Reed said.
The others waited for him to pick up where his voice had trailed off.
“Yes?” Dewhurst prodded.
Reed shook himself and punched in a refill for his gin. “I’ve lived on Ain for fifteen years,” he said. “But you know, he had me believing that for a moment?”
* * *
Ran Colville had programmed the three walls of his office alcove to show a Terran country scene. A road of yellow gravel, crushed chalk from the Cretaceous Sea of North America, wound over a hill. The side ditches were bright with Black-eyed Susans and the rich blue of chicory flowers.
Ran didn’t talk about his background so that he wouldn’t have to lie. He didn’t mind easing others into their own false assumptions, however.
He’d attached his transceiver to the alcove terminal while he took a hypnotic crash course on Szgranian language and customs. Shards of light coalesced behind his eyes, then fanned outward into an external reality which was disconcertingly flatter than the roil of images still churning within his mind.
The terminal chirped again.
“Go ahead,” Ran muttered. The effort of speaking brought vertigo. He was supposed to be off duty . . . .
“Sir,” said a voice. In Ran’s present state, it took him a moment to recognize it as Babanguida’s. “There’s something funny going on. I passed six guys in Corridor Twelve with a float full of equipment—electronics. Not our people or the company’s either. They unlocked the hatch into officers’ country—”