As I would like to be gobbled up. But there's not much hope of that!

Bushka suppressed feelings of jealousy. He could see his reflection in the plaz. The Committee on Vital Forms had faced no trouble in accepting him as human. He obviously fell somewhere near the Merman-tip of the spectrum. Still, his heavyset body, his small stature, the large head with its stringy dark brown hair, thick brows, wide nose, wide mouth, square chin - none of this came near the standard Gallow represented.

Comparisons hurt. Bushka wondered what the tall, disdainful Merman was thinking. Why that quizzical expression aimed at me?

Gallow returned his attention to Ale, touching her bare shoulder, laughing at something she said.

A new flurry of activity could be seen at the LTA launch base, more lights within the tube that would guide the sonde on the start of its journey toward the surface.

The launch director at the control console said: "It'll be a few minutes yet."

Bushka sighed. This experience was not turning out the way he had expected ... the way he had dreamed.

He sneered at himself. Fantasy!

When he had been notified that he would be the Islander observer at this launch into the realm of Ship, elation had filled him. His first trip into the core of Merman civilization! At last! And the fantasy: Perhaps ... just possibly, I will find the way to join Merman society, to abandon poverty and the grubby existence topside.

Learning that Gallow would be his escort had fanned his hopes. GeLaar Gallow, director of the Merman Screen, one who could vote to accept an Islander into their society. But Gallow appeared to be avoiding him now. And there had never been any doubt of the man's disdain.

Only Ale had been warmly welcoming, but then she was a member of the Merman government, a diplomat and envoy to the Islanders. Bushka had been surprised to discover that she also was a medical doctor. Rumor had it that she had gone through the rigors of medical education as a gesture of rebellion against her family, with its long tradition of service in the diplomatic corps and elsewhere in the Merman government. The family obviously had won out. Ale was securely seated among the powerful - held, perhaps, greater power than any other member of her family. Both the Merman and Island worlds buzzed with the recent revelation that Ale was a major inheritor in the estates of the late Ryan and Elina Wang. And Ale had been named guardian of the Wangs' only daughter, Scudi. Nobody had yet put a number on the size of the Wang estate, but the senior director of Merman Mercantile had probably been the wealthiest man on Pandora. Elina Wang, surviving her husband by less than a year, had not lived long enough to make serious changes in the Wang holdings. So there was Kareen Ale, beautiful and powerful and with the right words for any occasion.

"Delighted to have you with us, Islander Bushka."

How warm and inviting she had sounded.

She was just being polite ... diplomatic.

Another burst of activity rippled through the workers at the console in Sonde Control. The screen showing the surface emitted a series of brilliant flickers and the view was replaced by the face of Simone Rocksack, the Chaplain/Psychiatrist. The background revealed that she spoke from her quarters at the center of Vashon far away on the surface.

"I greet you in the name of Ship."

A barely suppressed snort came from Gallow.

Bushka noted a shudder pass through the man's classic body at sight of the C/P. Bushka, accustomed to Islander variations, had never made note of Rocksack's appearance. Now, however, he saw her through Gallow's eyes. Rocksack's silvery hair flared in a wild mane from the top of her almost perfectly round head. Her albino eyes projected at the tips of small protuberances on her brows. Her mouth, barely visible under a flap of gray skin, was a small red slit abandoned without a chin. A sharp angle of flesh went directly back from beneath her mouth to her thick neck.

"Let us pray," the C/P said. "This prayer I offered just a few minutes ago in the presence of Vata. I repeat it now." She cleared her throat. "Ship, by whose omnipotence we were cast upon Pandora's endless waters, grant us forgiveness from Original Sin. Grant us ..."

Bushka tuned her out. He had heard this prayer, in one version or another, many times. Doubtless his companions had heard it, too. The Mermen observers fidgeted at their stations and looked bored.

Original Sin!

Bushka's historical studies had made him a questioner of tradition. Mermen, he had discovered, thought Original Sin referred to the killing of Pandora's sentient kelp. It was their penance that they must rediscover the kelp in their own genes and fill the sea once more with submerged jungles of gigantic stems and fronds. Not sentient, this time, however. Merely kelp ... and controlled by Mermen.

The fanatical WorShipers of Guemes Island, on the other hand, insisted that Original Sin came when humankind abandoned WorShip. Most Islanders, though, followed the C/P's lead: Original Sin was that line of bioengineering chosen by Jesus Lewis, the long-dead mastermind behind today's variations in the human norm. Lewis had created the Clones and "selected others re-formed to fit them for survival on Pandora."

Bushka shook his head as the C/P's voice droned on. Who is surviving best on Pandora? he asked himself. Mermen. Normal humans.

At least ten times as many Mermen as Islanders survived on Pandora. It was a simple function of available living space. Under the sea, cushioned from Pandora's vagaries, there was a far greater volume of living space than on Pandora's turbulent, dangerous surface.

"Into Ship's realm I commend you," the C/P said. "Let the blessing of Ship accompany this venture. Let Ship know that we mean no blasphemy by intruding ourselves into the heavens. Let this be a gesture that brings us closer to Ship."

The C/P's face vanished from the screen, replaced by a close-up of the launch tube's base. Telltales on the tube tipped left to a slow current.

At the console to Bushka's left, the launch director said: "Condition green."

From the prelaunch briefing, Bushka knew this meant they were ready to release the sonde. He glanced at another of the screens, a view transmitted down a communications cable from a gyro-stabilized platform on the surface. White froth whipped the tops of long swells up there. Bushka's practiced eye said it was a forty-klick wind, practically a calm on Pandora. The sonde would drift fast when it broached but it would climb fast, too, and the upper atmosphere, for a change, showed breaks in the clouds, with one of Pandora's two suns tipping the cloud edges a glowing silver.

The launch director leaned forward to study an instrument. "Forty seconds," he said.

Bushka moved forward, giving himself a better view of the instruments and the launch director. The man had been introduced as Dark Panille -"'Shadow' to my friends." No overt rejection there; just a touch of the specialist's resentment that observers could be brought into his working space without his permission. Bushka's Mute-sensitive senses had detected immediately that Panille carried kelp genes, but was fortunate by Pandoran standards because he was not hairless. Panille wore his long black hair in a single braid -"a family style," he had said in answer to Bushka's question.

Panille displayed a countenance distinctly Merman-normal. The kelp telltale lay chiefly in his dark skin with its unmistakable undertone of green. He had a narrow, rather sharp-featured face with high planes on both his cheeks and his nose. Panille's large brown eyes looked out with a deep sense of intelligence beneath straight brows. The mouth was set in a straight line to match the brows and his lower lip was fuller than the upper. A deep crease rolled from beneath his lips to the cleft of a narrow, well-defined chin. Panille's body was compact, with the smooth muscles common to Mermen who lived much in the sea.

The name Panille had aroused a historian's interest in Bushka. Panille's ancestry had been instrumental in human survival during the Clone Wars and after the departure of Ship. It was a famous name in the Histories.

"Launch!" Panille said.

Bushka glanced out the plaz beside him. The launch tube climbed beyond his vision through green water with a backdrop of sparsely planted kelp - thick red-brown trunks with glistening highlights at odd intervals. The highlights wavered and blinked as though in agitation. Bushka turned his attention to the screens, expecting something spectacular. The display on which the others focused showed only the slow upward drift of the LTA within the tube. Brilliant lights in the tube wall marked the ascent. The wrinkled bag of the LTA expanded as it lifted, smoothing finally in an orange expanse of the fabric that contained the hydrogen.

"There!" Ale spoke in a sighing voice as the sonde cleared the top of the tube. It drifted slantwise in a sea current, followed by a camera mounted on a Merman sub.

"Test key monitors," Panille said.

A large screen at the center of the console shifted from a tracking view to a transmission from the sonde package trailing beneath the hydrogen bag. The screen showed a slanted green-tinged view of the sea bottom - thin plantations of kelp, a rocky outcrop. They dimmed away into murkiness as Bushka watched. A screen at the upper right of the console shifted to the surface platform's camera, a gyro-stabilized float. The camera swept to the left in a dizzying arc, then settled on an expanse of wind-frothed swells.

A pain in his chest told Bushka that he was holding his breath, waiting for the LTA to break the surface. He exhaled and took a deep breath. There! A bubble lifted on the ocean surface and did not break. Wind flattened the near side of the bag. It lifted free of the water, receding fast as the sonde package cleared. The surface camera tracked it - showing an orange blossom floating in a blue bowl of sky. The view zoomed in to the dangling package, from which water still dripped in wind-driven spray.

Bushka looked to the center screen, the transmission from the sonde. It showed the sea beneath the LTA, an oddly flattened scene with little sense of the heaving waves from which the LTA had recently emerged.

Is this all? Bushka wondered.

He felt let down. He rubbed his thick neck, feeling the nervous perspiration there. A surreptitious glance at the two Merman observers showed them chatting quietly, with only an occasional glance at the screens and the plaz porthole that revealed Mermen already cleaning up after the launch.

Frustration and jealousy warred for dominance in Bushka. He stared at the console where Panille was giving low-voiced orders to his operators. How rich these Mermen were! Bushka thought of the crude organic computers with which Islanders contended, the stench of the Islands, the crowding and the life-protecting watch that had to be kept on every tiny bit of energy. Islanders paupered themselves for a few radios, satellite navigation receivers and sonar. And just look at this Sonde Control! So casually rich. If Islanders could afford such riches, Bushka knew the possessions would be kept secret. Display of wealth set people apart in a society that depended ultimately on singleness of all efforts. Islanders believed tools were to be used. Ownership was acknowledged, but a tool left idle could be picked up for use by anyone ... anytime.

"There's a willy-nilly," Gallow said.

Bushka bridled. He knew Mermen called Islands "willy-nillys." Islands drifted unguided, and this was the Merman way of sneering at such uncontrolled wandering.

"That's Vashon," Ale said.

Bushka nodded. There was no mistaking his home Island. The organic floating metropolis had a distinctive shape known to all of its inhabitants - Vashon, largest of all Pandora's Islands.

"Willy-nilly," Gallow repeated. "I should imagine they don't know where they are half the time."

"You're not being very polite to our guest, GeLaar," Ale said.

"The truth is often impolite," Gallow said. He directed an empty smile at Bushka. "I've noticed that Islanders have few goals, that they're not very concerned about 'getting there.'"

He's right, damn him, Bushka thought. The drifting pattern had seated itself deeply in the Islander psyche.

When Bushka did not respond, Ale spoke defensively: "Islanders are necessarily more weather-oriented, more tuned to the horizon. That should not be surprising." She glanced questioningly at Bushka. "All people are shaped by their surroundings. Isn't that true, Islander Bushka?"

"Islanders believe the manner of our passage is just as important as where we are," Bushka said. He knew his response sounded weak. He turned toward the screens. Two of them now showed transmissions from the sonde. One pointed backward to the stabilized camera platform on the surface. It showed the platform being withdrawn into the safety of the calm undersea. The other sonde view tracked the drift path. Full in this view lay the bulk of Vashon. Bushka swallowed as he stared at his home Island. He had never before seen this view of it.

A glance at the altitude repeater below the screen said the view was from eighty thousand meters. The amplified image almost filled the screen. Grid lines superimposed on the screen gave the Island's long dimension at nearly thirty klicks and slightly less than that across. Vashon was a gigantic oval drifter with irregular edges. Bushka identified the bay indentation where fishboats and subs docked. Only a few of the boats in Vashon's fleet could be seen in the protected waters.

"What's its population?" Gallow asked.

"About six hundred thousand, I believe," Ale said.

Bushka scowled, thinking of the crowded conditions this number represented, comparing it with the spaciousness of Merman habitats. Vashon squeezed more than two thousand people into every square klick ... a space more correctly measured in cubic terms. Cubbies were stacked on cubbies high above the water and deep beneath it. And some of the smaller Islands were even more condensed, a crowding that had to be experienced to be believed. Space opened on them only when they began to run out of energy - dead space. Uninhabitable. Like people, organics rotted when they died. A dead Island was just a gigantic floating carcass. And this had happened many times.

"I could not tolerate such crowding," Gallow said. "I could only leave."

"It isn't all bad!" Bushka blurted. "We may live close but we help each other."

"I should certainly hope so!" Gallow snorted. He turned until he was facing Bushka. "What is your personal background, Bushka?"

Bushka stared at him, momentarily affronted. This was not an Islander question. Islanders knew the backgrounds of their friends and acquaintances, but the rules of privacy seldom permitted probing.

"Your working background," Gallow persisted.

Ale put a hand on Gallow's arm. "To an Islander, such questions are usually impolite," she said.

"It's all right," Bushka said. "When I got old enough, Merman Gallow, I was a wavewatcher."

"A sort of lookout to warn of wavewalls," Ale explained.

"I know the term," Gallow said. "And after that?"

"Well... . I had good eyes and a good sense of distance, so I did my time as a driftwatch and later in the subs ... then, as I showed navigational ability, they trained me as a timekeeper."

"Timekeeper, yes," Gallow said. "You're the ones who dead-reckon an Island's position. Not very accurate, I'm told."

"Accurate enough," Bushka said.

Gallow chuckled. "Is it true, Islander Bushka, that you people think we Mermen stole the kelp's soul?"

"GeLaar!" Ale snapped.

"No, let him answer," Gallow said. "I've been hearing recently about the fundamentalist beliefs of Islands such as Guemes."

"You're impossible, GeLaar!" Ale said.

"I have an insatiable curiosity," Gallow said. "What about it, Bushka?"

Bushka knew he had to answer but his voice was dismayingly loud when he responded. "Many Islanders believe Ship will return to forgive us."

"And when will that be?" Gallow asked.

"When we regain the Collective Consciousness!"

"Ahhhh, the old Transition Stories," Gallow sneered. "But do you believe this?"

"My hobby is history," Bushka said. "I believe something important happened to human consciousness during the Clone Wars."

"Hobby?" Gallow asked.

"Historian is not a fully accredited Islander job," Ale explained. "Superfluous."

"I see. Do go on, Bushka."

Bushka clenched his fists and fought down his anger. Gallow was more than self-important ... he was truly important ... vital to Bushka's hopes.

"I don't believe we stole the kelp's soul," Bushka said.

"Good for you!" Gallow really smiled this time.

"But I do believe," Bushka added, "that our ancestors, possibly with kelp assistance, glimpsed a different kind of consciousness ... a momentary linkage between all of the minds alive at that time."

Gallow passed a hand across his mouth, an oddly furtive gesture. "The accounts appear to agree," he said. "But can they be trusted?"

"There's no doubt we have kelp genes in the human gene pool," Bushka said. He glanced across the control room at Panille, who was watching him intently.

"And who knows what may happen if we revive the kelp to consciousness, eh?" Gallow asked.

"Something like that," Bushka agreed.

"Why do you think Ship abandoned us here?"

"GeLaar, please!" Ale interrupted.

"Let him answer," Gallow said. "This Islander has an active mind. He may be someone we need."

Bushka tried to swallow in a suddenly dry throat. Was this all a test? Was Gallow actually screening him for entry into Merman society?

"I was hoping ..." Again, Bushka tried to swallow. "I mean, as long as I'm down here anyway ... I was hoping I might gain access to the material Mermen recovered from the old Redoubt. Perhaps the answer to your question ..." He broke off.

An abrupt silence settled over the room.

Ale and Gallow exchanged an oddly veiled look.

"How interesting," Gallow said.

"I'm told," Bushka said, "that when you recovered the Redoubt's data base ... I mean ..." He coughed.

"Our historians work full-time," Gallow said. "After the Disaster, everything, including the material from the Redoubt, was subjected to exhaustive analysis."

"I would still like to see the material," Bushka said. He cursed himself silently. His voice sounded so plaintive.

"Tell me, Bushka," Gallow said, "what would be your response if this material revealed that Ship was an artifact made by human beings and not God at all?"

Bushka pursed his lips. "The Artifact Heresy? Hasn't that been ..."

"You haven't answered my question," Gallow said.

"I would have to see the material and judge for myself," Bushka said. He held himself quite still. No Islander had ever been granted access to Redoubt data. But what Gallow hinted ... explosive!

"I should be most interested to hear what an Islander historian has to say about the Redoubt accounts," Gallow said. He glanced at Ale. "Do you see any reason why we shouldn't grant his request, Kareen?"

She shrugged and turned away, an expression on her face that Bushka could not interpret. Disgust?

Gallow directed that measuring smile toward Bushka. "I quite understand that the Redoubt has mystical implications for Islanders. I hesitate to feed superstitions."

Mystical? Bushka thought. Land that once had protruded from the sea. A place built on a continent, a mass of exposed land that did not drift, the last place inundated in the Disaster. Mystical? Was Gallow merely toying with him?

"I'm a qualified historian," Bushka said.

"But you said hobby ..." Gallow shook his head.

"Was everything recovered intact from the Redoubt?" Bushka ventured.

"It was sealed off," Ale said, turning once more to face Bushka. "Our ancestors put an air-bell on it before cutting through the plasteel."

"Everything was found just as it was left when they abandoned the place," Gallow said.

"Then it's true," Bushka breathed.

"But would you reinforce Islander superstitions?" Gallow insisted.

Bushka drew himself up stiffly. "I am a scientist. I would reinforce nothing but the truth."

"Why this sudden interest in the Redoubt?" Ale asked.

"Sudden?" Bushka stared at her in amazement. "We've always wanted to share in the Redoubt's data base. The people who left it there were our ancestors, too."

"In a manner of speaking," Gallow said.

Bushka felt the hot flush of blood in his cheeks. Most Mermen believed that only Clones and mutants had populated the drifting Islands. Did Gallow really accept that nonsense?

"Perhaps I should've said why the renewed interest?" Ale corrected herself.

"We've heard stories, you see, about the Guemes Movement," Gallow said.

Bushka nodded. WorShip was, indeed, on the increase among Islanders.

"There have been reports of unidentified things seen in the sky," Bushka said. "Some believe that Ship already has returned and is concealed from us in space."

"Do you believe this?" Gallow asked.

"It's possible," Bushka admitted. "All I really know for certain is that the C/P is kept busy examining people who claim to have seen visions."

Gallow chuckled. "Oh, my!"

Bushka once more felt frustration. They were toying with him! This was all a cruel Merman game! "What is so amusing?" he demanded.

"GeLaar, stop this!" Ale said.

Gallow held up an admonitory hand. "Kareen, look with care upon Islander Bushka. Could he not pass as one of us?"

Ale swept a swift glance across Bushka's face and returned her attention to Gallow. "What're you doing, GeLaar?"

Bushka inhaled deeply and held his breath.

Gallow studied Bushka a moment, then: "What would be your response, Bushka, if I were to offer you a place in Merman society?"

Bushka exhaled slowly, inhaled. "I ... I would accept. Gratefully, of course."

"Of course," Gallow echoed. He smiled at Ale. "Then, since Bushka will be one of us, there's no harm in telling him what amuses me."

"It's on your head, GeLaar," Ale said.

A movement at the Sonde Control console caught Bushka's attention. Panille was no longer looking at him, but the set of his shoulders told Bushka the man was listening intently. Ship save them! Was the Artifact Heresy true, after all? Was that the great Merman secret?

"These visions causing so much trouble for our beloved C/P," Gallow said. "They are Merman rockets, Bushka."

Bushka opened his mouth and closed it without speaking.

"Ship was not God, is not God," Gallow said. "The Redoubt records ..."

"Are open to several interpretations," Ale said.

"Only to fools!" Gallow snapped. "We are sending up rockets. Bushka, because we are preparing to recover the hyb tanks from orbit. Ship was an artifact made by our ancestors. Other artifacts and things have been left in space for us to recover."

The matter-of-fact way Gallow said this made Bushka catch his breath. Stories about the mysterious hyb tanks permeated Islander society. What might be stored in those containers that orbited Pandora? Recovering those tanks, and really seeing what they contained, was worth anything - even destruction of the Ship-God belief that sustained so many people.

"You are shocked," Gallow said.

"I'm ... I'm awed," Bushka replied.

"We were all raised on the Transition Stories." Gallow pointed upward. "Life awaits us up there."

Bushka nodded. "The tanks are supposed to contain countless life forms from ... from Earth."

"Fish, animals, plants," Gallow said. "And even some humans." He grinned. "Normal humans." He waved a hand to encompass the occupants of Sonde Control. "Like us."

Bushka inhaled a trembling breath. Yes, the historical accounts said the hyb tanks held humans who had never been touched by the bioengineering machinations of Jesus Lewis. There would be people in those tanks who had gone to sleep in another star system, who had no idea of this nightmare world that awaited their awakening.

"And now you know," Gallow said.

Bushka cleared his throat. "We never suspected. I mean ... the C/P has never said a word about ..."

"The C/P does not know of this," Ale said. There was a warning note in her voice.

Bushka glanced at the plaz porthole with its view of the LTA tube.

"She knows about that, of course," Ale said.

"An innocuous thing," Gallow said.

"There has been no blessing of our rockets," Ale said.

Bushka continued to stare out the porthole. He had never counted himself a deeply religious person, but these Merman revelations left him profoundly disturbed. Ale obviously doubted Gallow's interpretation of the Redoubt material, but still ... a blessing would be only common sense ... just in case ...

"What is your response, Merman Bushka?" Gallow asked.

Merman Bushka!

Bushka turned a wide-eyed stare on Gallow, who obviously awaited an answer to a question. A question. What had he asked? Bushka was a moment recovering the man's words.

"My response ... yes. The Islanders ... I mean, about these rockets. The Islanders ... shouldn't they be told?"

"They?" Gallow laughed, a deep amusement that shook his beautiful body. "You see, Kareen? Already his former compatriots are 'they.'"