"Where are we going?" said the Thing. "You have to name our destination."
"It's got a name already. It's called the quarry, isn't it?" said Masklin.
"Where is it?" said the Thing.
"It's ..." Masklin waved an arm vaguely. "Well, it's over that way somewhere."
"Which way?"
"How should I know? How many ways are there?"
"Thing, are you telling us you don't know the way back to the quarry?" said Gurder.
"That is correct."
"We're lost?"
'Wo. I know exactly what planet ise^re on," said the Thing.
"We can't be lost," said Gurder. "We're here. We know where we are. We just don't know where we aren't."
"Can't you find the quarry if you go up high enough?" said Angalo. "You ought to be able to see it, if you go up high enough."
"Very well."
"Can I do it?" said Angalo. "Please?"
"Press down with your left foot and pull back on the green lever, then," said the Thing.
There wasn't so much a noise as a change in the type of silence. Masklin thought he felt heavy for a moment, but then the sensation passed.
The picture in the screen got smaller.
"Now, this is what I call proper flying," said Angalo, happily. "With real Science. No noise and none of that stupid flapping."
"Yes, where's Pion?" said Masklin.
"He wandered off," said Gurder. "I think he was going to get something to eat."
"On a machine that no nome has been on for fifteen thousand years?" said Masklin.
Gurder shrugged. "Well, maybe there's something at the back of a cupboard somewhere," he said. "I want a word with you, Masklin."
"Yes?"
Gurder moved closely and glanced over his shoulder at Angalo, who was lying back in the control seat with a look of dreamy contentment on his face.
He lowered his voice.
"We shouldn't be doing this," he said. "I know it's a dreadful thing to say, after all we've been through. But this isn't just our Ship. It belongs to all nomes, everywhere."
He looked relieved when Masklin nodded.
"A year ago you didn't even believe there were any other nomes anywhere,"
Masklin said.
Gurder looked sheepish. "Yes. Well. That was then. This is now. I don't know what I believe in anymore, except that there must be thousands of nomes out there we don't know about. There might even be other nomes living in Stores! We're just the lucky ones who had the Thing. So if we take the Ship away, there won't be any hope for them."
"I know, I know," said Masklin wretchedly. "But what can we do? We need the Ship right now. Anyway, how could we find these other nomes?"
"We've got the Ship!" said Gurder.
Masklin waved a hand at the screen, where the landscape was spreading outand becoming misty.
"It'd take forever to find nomes down there. You couldn't do it even with the Ship. You'd have to be on the ground. Nomes keep hidden! You nomes inthe Store didn't know about my people, and we lived a few miles away.
We'd never have found Pion's people except by accident. Besides"-hecouldn't resist prodding Gurder gently-"there's a bigger problem too. Youknow what we nomes are like. Those other nomes probably wouldn't evenbelieve in the Ship."
He was immediately sorry he'd said that. Gurder looked more unhappy thanhe'd ever seen him.
"That's true," the Abbot said. "I wouldn't have believed it. I'm not sureI believe it now, and I'm in it."
"Maybe, when we've found somewhere to live, we can send the Ship back andcollect any other nomes we can find," Masklin hazarded. "I'm sure Angalowould enjoy that."
Gurder's shoulders began to shake. For a moment Masklin thought thenome was laughing, and then he saw the tears rolling down the Abbot'sface.
"Um," he said, not knowing what else to say.
Gurder turned away. "I'm sorry," he muttered. "It's just that there's somuch ... changing. Why can't things stay the same for five minutes?
Every time I get the hang of an idea it suddenly turns into somethingdifferent and I turn into a fool! All I want is something real to believein! Where's the harm in that?"
"I think you just have to have a flexible mind," said Masklin, knowingeven as he said the words that this probably wasn't going to be a lot ofhelp.
"Flexible? Flexible? My mind's got so flexible I could pull it out of myears and tie it under my chin!" snapped Gurder. "And it hasn't done me awhole lot of good, let me tell you! I'd have done better just believingeverything I was taught when I was young! At least I'd be wrong onlyonce! This way I'm wrong all the time!"
He stamped away down one of the corridors.
Masklin watched him go.
Not for the first time, he wished he believed in something as much asGurder did so he could complain to it about his life. He even wished hewere back, yes, back in the hole. It hadn't been too bad, apart frompeople being cold and wet and getting eaten all the time. But at leasthe'd been with Grimma. They would have been cold and wet and hungrytogether. He wouldn't have been so lonely... .
There was a movement by him. It turned out to be Pion, holding a tray ofwhat had to be ... fruit, Masklin decided. He put aside being lonely fora moment, and realized that hunger had been waiting for an opportunity tomake itself felt. He'd never seen fruit that shape and color.
He took a slice from the proffered tray. It tasted like a nutty lemon.
"It's kept well, considering," he said, weakly. "Where did you get it?"
It turned out to come from a machine in a nearby corridor. It looked fairly simple. There were hundreds of pictures of different sorts offood. If you touched a picture, there was a brief humming noise and thenthe real food dropped onto a tray in a slot. Masklin tried pictures atrandom, and got several different sorts of fruit, a squeaky greenvegetable thing, and a piece of meat that tasted rather like smokedsalmon.
"I wonder how it does it?" he said aloud.
A voice from the wall beside him said: "Would you understand if I told you about molecular breakdown and reassembly from a wide range of raw materials?"
"No," said Masklin, truthfully.
"Then it's all done by Science."
"Oh. Well, that's all right, then. That is you, Thing, isn't it?"
"Yes."
Chewing on the fish-meat, Masklin wandered back to the control room and offered some of the food to Angalo. The big screen was showing nothing but clouds.
"Won't see any quarry in all this," he said.
Angalo pulled one of the levers back a bit. There was that brief feeling of extra weight again.
They stared at the screen.
"Wow," said Angalo.
"That looks familiar," said Masklin. He patted his clothes until he found the folded, crumpled map they'd brought all the way from the Store.
He spread it out, and glanced from it to the screen.
The screen showed a disc, made up mainly of different shades of blue and wispy bits of cloud.
"Any idea what it is?" said Angalo.
"No, but I know what some of the bits are called," said Masklin. "That one that's thick at the top and thin at the bottom is called South America.
Look, it's just like it is on the map. Only it should have the words
'South America' written on it."
"Still can't see the quarry, though," said Angalo.
Masklin looked at the image in front of them. South America. Grimma had talked about South America, hadn't she? That's where the frogs lived in flowers. She'd said that once you knew about things like frogs living in flowers, you weren't the same person.
He was beginning to see what she meant.
"Never mind about the quarry for now," he said. "The quarry can wait."
"We should get there as soon as possible, for everybody 's sake," saidthe Thing.
Masklin thought about this for a while. It was true, he had to admit. Allkinds of things might be happening back home. He had to get the Ship backquickly, for everybody's sake.