Part 3 (1/2)

Nothing.

Paradox. The spotter oriented on any malfunction; it was a modified feedback, simple and certain. Yet there was a malfunction -- and the spotter had failed.

OX suffered disorientation. Paradox was nonsurvival. It was also annoying as h.e.l.l.

He disciplined himself, simplifying his circuits. No paradox. If the spotter hadn't caught it, there was no malfunction. But there was something. What?

OX concentrated. He refined his perceptions. Gradually he fathomed it. It was not his malfunction but an interruption from an external source. Thus the spotter had had no purchase.

Something was obscuring some of his elements. Not obliterating them but damping them down so that he was aware of the loss of energy -- peripherally. When he investigated, he s.h.i.+fted off those particular elements, and the effect abated. He could only perceive it through that damping, while his circuits were functioning. Ghostly, it avoided his direct attention, for it was an effect, not a thing.

Was it an ailment of the elements themselves? If so, his survival would be more limited than originally projected -- and he was already in a nonsurvival situation.

OX cast a net of spotters to determine the precise configuration of the damping. Soon he had it: There were actually three centers set close together. A stable, persistent blight. No immediate threat to survival.

Then one of the blight spots moved.

OX fibrillated. Distress! How could a blight move, retaining form? Stable or recurring form with movement was an attribute of sentience, of pattern. Blight was the lack of pattern.

Modification. Perhaps blight could slide somewhat, forced over by some unknown compulsion. Nonsentient. All blight spots would suffer the same effect.

Another spot moved -- the opposite way. Then both moved together -- and apart.

Disorientation.

Chapter 3.

TAMME.

Tamme emerged from the aperture, alert and wary. She had not told the three explorers that she was coming along and did not expect them to be pleased. But after the disaster on the dinosaur world, Paleo, the agents were taking few chances. These people were not to be trusted; left alone, they were too apt to concoct some other way to betray the interests of Earth.

The camp was deserted. Tamme saw at a glance that weapons and food had been removed: more than would normally have been used in the three hours since the first person had been sent through. They were up to something already!

But it was strange. Too many footprints led away. Veg, Cal, Aquilon -- and a barefoot person? Plus something on a caterpillar tread. And the two mantas.

Caterpillar? Hardly standard equipment. Where had they gotten it?

Answer: There was nowhere they could have gotten it. Tamme herself had put through all the supplies in advance, checking and rechecking a detailed roster. This was the first human penetration to this new world. Sensors had reported breathable air, plant life, amphibious animals, fish -- all far removed from this desert where the aperture actually debouched but certainly part of this alternate. Also advanced machines. That was what made immediate exploration imperative.

Machines did not evolve on their own. Something had to build them. Something more advanced than the machines themselves. Ergo, there was on this world something more than the sensors had indicated. Either an advanced human culture -- or an alien one. Either way, a potential threat to Earth.

But windows to new worlds were hard to come by. The first such breakthrough had come only a few months ago, and Mother Earth naturally had not wanted to risk valuable personnel by sending them through a oneway aperture. So volunteers had been used -- three s.p.a.ce explorers who had gotten in trouble with the authorities and had therefore been amenable to persuasion. Expendables.

An unusual trio, actually. Vachel Smith: a huge vegetarian nicknamed Veg. Deborah Hunt, called Aquilon: named after the cold north wind because, it seemed, she seldom smiled. And Calvin Potter, a small, physically weak man with a fascinatingly complex mind. The three had been lost on a planet called Nacre -- theoretically it glowed in s.p.a.ce like a pearl because of its perpetual cloud cover -- and had befriended the dominant life-form there: an animate fungus with extraordinary talents. The manta.

It had been a mistake to loose this group on the world beyond the aperture, and soon the authorities had recognized that. But by that time the trio, instead of peris.h.i.+ng as expected, had penetrated to the nearest continent and gotten involved with the local fauna -- they had a talent for that! -- which turned out to be reptilian. In fact, dinosaurian. Extraction had been awkward.

Three agents of the TA series had accomplished it, however: Taner (now deceased), Taler, and Tamme herself. But when they made ready to return to Earth with the prisoners, another complication had developed. Their portable return-aperture generator had opened not on Earth but on a third world.