Tuan Ti Fo chuckled softly. "You see nothing? Then, surely, there is nothing."
"No. Something landed on the surface of the planet north of Kang Kua. I can sense it. It is there. Its very absence reveals it, and yet it conceals itself."
The old man tugged at his beard thoughtfully. "And your camera probes?"
"Cannot penetrate it. It's as if there is a shell surrounding it. A shell of—it hesitated, a hesitation that in a man might seem normal, yet in the great Machine revealed the existence of billions of rapid calculations—"something unknown," it concluded, a strange hesitancy in its normally toneless voice.
Tuan Ti Fo stared at the console a moment, then nodded. His mood was suddenly more sober. "I see."
The Machine fell silent. It was thinking. For more than five million years Mankind had striven upward out of the primal dark toward the light, and from that quest had come Itself, the ultimate flowering of mind: one single, all-encompassing intelligence.
Intelligent, yet incomplete. Within its mind it pictured the great swirl of things known and unknown, like a vast t'ai chi of light and dark, perfectly balanced. Within that half which was light was a tiny circle of blackness—a pinpoint of occlusion, which it knew to be Tuan Ti Fo. And now, within the darkness of those things unknown, lay a single point of light.
"If it's a craft," Tuan Ti Fo said, "then it must have come from somewhere."
"But there's no trace," the Machine began, then checked itself, realizing that, like the absence that revealed something, there was a line of occlusion through its memory; an area of tampering—a no-trace that paradoxically revealed the passage of the craft.
"It came in from the System's edge. From the tenth planet."
Yet even as it spoke, it questioned that.
"Something alien?" Tuan Ti Fo asked.
It considered the notion, surprised that for once it was dealing in uncertainties.
"No . . ."
"But you have a hunch?"
"A calculated guess."
"Then you had best send someone."
"Send someone?"
Tuan Tl Fo laughed, then stood, brushing down his silks. "Why, to look, of course." He turned, his figure shimmering, slowly vanishing into the air, his words echoing after he had gone. "Send the boy. He'll see. Whatever it is."
"Nza?"
The voice came from the air. At its sound the boy turned sharply, his body crouched defensively, then he saw the tiny, glittering probe hovering like a silver insect in the air above his head.
"What is it?" he asked, keeping the fear from his voice.
"Where is Ebert?"
The ten-year-old turned, pointing back into the shadows. The probe moved past him, drifting into the darkness—a moment later it returned.
"Come," it said, hovering just above his head, no bigger than his fist, its surface smooth and rounded like a tiny shaven skull. Nza shivered and then obeyed.
THE machine W A T C H E D the boy approach the nullity; saw hkn Put out his hand, then withdraw it as if he'd been stung.
"Can you feel anything?" it asked, the sensation of curiosity almost overwhelming.
The boy nodded, then put out his hand, tracing what seemed like a smooth, curving slope in the air. But still it could see nothing, sense nothing.
It watched the boy move slowly around, testing the air with his hands, defining more accurately the area of nothingness the Machine's probes had sensed.
Nza turned, his eyes wide.
"What is it?" it asked. "Did you see anything?"
Nza shook his head. "Efulefu . . . Get Efulefu."
IT WAS LIGHT when Ebert got there. He crouched some fifty ch'i from the unseen presence, perfectly at rest, watching the shadows shorten as the sun climbed the sky. The wind blew fitfully, and when it did he noted the patterns the sand made around the nullity.
After two hours he stood and motioned to the boy. Nza went to him and stood there, looking up at him as he mouthed something through the glass of his helmet. It was cold, bitterly cold, and already two of the Machine's six probes had ceased functioning, but Ebert seemed unaware of it.
The cold. It would kill them all one day. Machine and men alike.
Nza stared a moment longer, then nodded and, with that curious loping run of his, scuttled across to the nearest of the probes.
"What is it?" the Machine asked, but the boy shook his head and pointed to his mouth. It watched, reading the boy's lips.
There's something there. He senses it. He thinks it watches us and listens. And something else.
It waited as the boy ordered his thoughts, recalling what Ebert had told him.
He says . . . when he closes his eyes ... he sees a face. An old, familiar face.
It knew, even before the boy's mouth stretched twice to form the word. So he was back. DeVore was back on Mars.
DEVORE STOOD AT the view window, looking out across the windblown surface toward the crouching figure, then turned to the monitor again. Ebert's face filled the screen, his eyes behind the helmet's glass a deep reposeful blue.
So you survived, old friend. And now you consort with those ugly sons of the night. Well, stranger things have been known.
He laughed softly, then clicked his fingers, summoning one of his guards.
"Find out how it's going. We've been here too long as it is. I want us gone by nightfall."
The soldier bowed low and backed away. DeVore turned back to the screen, pushing out his chin reflexively. Hans Ebert had been but a child when he'd first met him. A spoiled and willful child. But now, looking at him, studying him, he saw how much he had changed. It was there in his eyes, in the perfect stillness of the man.
Impressive, he thought. But also dangerous. Hans Ebert was no friend of his — he understood that now. At any other time he'd stop to kill this exiled prince, but right now it was more important to get back to Chung Kuo as quickly — and as discreetly — as possible.
He cursed silently, angry that they had had to set down and determined that, once repairs were effected, he'd kill that bastard Hooper himself. As an example to the others.
He crossed the room and tapped into the craft's log. Things were getting slack. Already they had lost two days. As it was, even a week's delay wouldn't affect their cargo, but any longer . . .
He cleared the screen. That would be one advantage of getting back to Chung Kuo. For too long now he'd had to rely on the services of second-raters. Once back he could dispense with them and hire some better men.
DeVore smiled. He would enjoy that day. It would be a day of rewards. A day when all these second-rate fellows would find themselves grinning.
Grinning bone-white before the wind.
There was a sound in the doorway. He turned, noting the guard there.
"Well?"
"Nine hours, Master Hooper says."
"Good." He waved the man away, then went to the window again. Ebert had not moved. He seemed rooted there, part of the dust of Mars.
"I shall come back for you, Hans Ebert," he said quietly. "Once other wars are fought and won. And then . . ." He laughed, then turned away, imagining the sight. And then I'll see you dance on a gibbet like the commonest lowlife there ever was.
LATE IN THE DAY he felt it go. There was a change in the air, a lessening of the pressure, and then . . . nothing.
"It's gone," Ebert said, getting up, his limbs stiff from inactivity and cold.
"1 know," Tuan Ti Fo said, appearing beside him. "I felt its passage in the air."
"Where has it gone?"
"Inward. Back to Chung Kuo."