Adrian stumbled forward, trying for a loping run but only sliding and wobbling as he fought the ragged ground and the pressure. Ahead of him, the scarab's side buckled sharply in-ward, as if it had been punched by an invisible fist. A thread-thin, black crack appeared.Vee's throat closed up tight.

"Veronica," said Josh, tentatively.

"What?" Vee tore her gaze off Adrian's stumbling form. Josh pointed ahead and to the right. Vee followed the line of his arm, until she saw the edge of the ragged wall the volcano made.

Something white floated next to it. Something shaped like an inverted teardrop or a hot-air balloon.

Vee froze in her tracks, tilted on the side of a stone wave. The balloon flew in an absolutely straight line. Vee saw a glint of silver on its swelling sides, like lenses, maybe.

"That's not from Venera, is it?" asked Vee quietly.

"No," answered Josh.

It was getting closer. Terry had seen it now. She also came to an abrupt halt with Troy right beside her.

"Adrian!" called Josh. Adrian stopped, teetered, and almost fell, but he righted himself, and he saw it too.

The thing flew like the wind. Silver scales covered its white skin.

Bundles of red-brown cables held an enclosed gondola to the balloon. At first, Vee thought it was heading for them, but it wasn't.

It was heading for Scarab Fourteen.

The balloon stopped, suddenly, as if it had hit a wall. From the bottom a flurry of... things emerged. They sparkled gold in the ashen light. Wings spread out from their oval torsos. Legs (arms?) hung under their bellies.

One carried a fold of cloth, one an egg, one a box, another a blob of gray jelly. They were followed by three others with empty hands. They all flew over Scarab Fourteen. The first of them dropped the cloth. The three with empty hands grasped the cloth and pulled it over the scarab, as if they were fitting a sheet to a bed. The cloth was transparent, but the dim light re-flected off an oily sheen on the edges where they held it.

The creatures holding the cloth dropped to the ground. The cloth madea tent over the scarab. The one with the egg cracked it open. A gout of milky liquid poured over the cloth. It sluiced down the sides, becoming transparent as it did so. The creatures let go; the tent stayed where it was.

The creature with the box shriveled and drew in its wings. It sank until it hovered just above ground level. Now Vee saw a complex series of markings, or maybe wires, running across its body. It pressed the box against the tent and its muzzle moved. Vee tried to set her suit controls to pick up outside sound, but she couldn't get her gaze to stay steady enough to activate the commands.

The one with the jelly blob joined the one by the box. It set its blob down. The blob had an eye and silver lines running through its body.

The blob moved.

It crawled into the box and emerged inside the tent. It lifted up into the air and became a jellyfish with tentacles hanging down, tipped with, what? Claws? Tools? It drifted unerringly to-ward Scarab Fourteen and slipped into the jagged, black crack in the hull.

Vee wanted to speak but had no words adequate to the task. This was unreal. Surreal. She was frightened, bemused, unbeliev-ing. She wanted to laugh her head off. Her heart fluttered high in her throat and she could hear her blood singing in her ears.

One of the creatures (aliens? There are no aliens. The base is a fake.

How can they be aliens?) was looking at her. It had two huge silver eyes, encased, she realized, behind something hard and clear, like a natural lens. But those were unmistakably eyes. She could distinguish the iris, pupil, and white. Huge eyes. Underneath its eyes, it had a wedge-shaped beak, like a bird's beak, or maybe a dolphin's.

It was beautiful. It was incomprehensible. It was looking right at her and she could tell nothing, nothing about what it saw.

Then, she realized it didn't see her at all. It saw a suit, with a smooth plate where its face should be. Maybe it was just wondering what was in there.

Voices were babbling. Voices she knew, but there were too many of them and she couldn't make out what they were say-ing. She didn't evenreally want to try.

The creatures ferried more blobs out of their balloon. They put them up to the box to become jellyfish and enter the space under the tent and eventually the scarab. The creatures them-selves flew all around the tent, angels, butterflies, prehistoric monsters glittering gold on a cloudy day.

Except for the one that looked straight at her.

Was it trying to divine something? Send a telepathic message? Judge her for salt content? What? What did aliens do?

"Veronica, we've got to go, now!" It was Josh. He had his hand on her arm and he was trying to pull her away. But she wasn't responding. She should respond. He was right. They needed to go, now, didn't they? Did they?

The side of the scarab tore like paper.

"No!" screamed Adrian like it was the only word he had left.

Two jellyfish floated out of the hole in the scarab's side. Their tentacles wrapped around something roughly oblong that shimmered.

It was Angela Cleary. Angela, who'd been helping Vee prove the Discovery was nothing but a fraud. Whom Vee had spent a whole week aboard the shuttle trying to get to know and fail-ing without really realizing it. She'd respected that in a weird kind of way. Angela, who gave nothing away by accident. An-gela, who had a sardonic grin and sharp eyes.

"Can't be. She'd be pulp. Less than pulp." murmured Josh. He wasn't pulling on Vee anymore.

Angela wasn't pulp. Something crystalline covered her, like the stuff that made the tent over the scarab or enclosed the alien's silver eyes. The creatures flying over the tent cracked another egg. More milky liquid sluiced over the tent sides. The tent tore and fell away like cobwebs.

The jellyfish turned away from the creatures and began fly-ing toward the team from Scarab Five.

"Get away, get away, get away," chanted Terry, like a mantra. Out ofthe side of her faceplate, Vee saw someone stumble backward and turn to slog away.

The jellyfish kept coming with Angela, encased in glass, supported between them. They drifted forward until they were about two meters away. Then, very gently, they sank down and laid Angela on the ground.

Their tentacles released her and they rose, drifting back toward the scarab.

"Holy God and Mother Creation, what've they done?" Josh moved forward. Vee looked up at the alien, her alien, who hadn't moved. Then, slowly, as if she had to remember how, Vee walked up beside Josh and looked down at the glass coffin.

Angela lay inside, whole, and perfect. Her eyes were closed and her arms lay straight along her sides.

"I think she's breathing," said Josh softly.

Vee bent closer. Yes. You could see it. Barely. Angela's chest didn't so much rise and fall as flutter like Vee's heart. But she was alive under there.

Alive and without a suit on Venus, and there sure as hell weren't air tanks on that glass case. Vee's mind fastened on these details and jolted her body into action.

"Help me!" She grabbed Angela's feet.

Josh grabbed Angela's shoulders. They heaved Angela up as if they were lifting a log and staggered back toward Scarab Five. Fighting pressure and the awkwardness of the suit, Vee could glance up only once. The jellyfish reemerged from Scarab Four-teen, carrying another glass-encased figure in their tentacles.

"Peachman, get back here! I need help!" shouted Terry.

"I'm there. I'm there." Troy waddled more than walked over the ridges.

His suit was scored. Had he fallen in his hurry to get away from the aliens?

"I'm sorry. Christ in the green, I'm sorry."

Maybe we should have brought Julia after all."Kevin, are you watching this?" came Josh's voice over the intercom.

"Get that door open!"

"Done!" shouted Kevin. "God, god, is she really alive?"

"I think so." Josh's voice was breathy with hope and uncer-tainty.

I hope so, thought Vee, because it means they saved her. It means they're... what? Friendly? Doesn't cover it. Human?

Obviously her brain could take only so much of this.

The airlock door was open. They laid Angela on the floor.

"Take her up!" ordered Josh.

"Can't," came back Kevin's reply. "The pump is almost dead. We can't risk running it more than once. You're going to have to get them all in here. Get moving!"

Vee stared at Josh. "This is going to sound dumb," she said, her voice too high and tight. "Will she be all right alone?"

"I hope so," said Josh. Obviously, that was the phrase of the day.

Vee slogged back toward Scarab Fourteen, wishing desper-ately that she could run. All she could manage was a fast walk. Sweat poured down her face. Her face plate blinked yellow warnings at her to drink and take a salt tablet. She ignored them.

Terry and Troy were hoisting Lindi Manzur off the ground when Vee and Josh reached them. The jellyfish were arriving with another woman in a pilot's coverall. Must be Charlotte. Charlotte... what was her last name?

Why is this bugging me now?

Adrian, all on his own, hoisted Charlotte into his arms and staggered across the broken landscape.

It was ridiculous. It was macabre. But they did it three more times, hefting colleagues and strangers like bricks and laying them neatly down on the airlock floor, trying to make efficient use of space but trying not to think too much because it would slow them down.They headed back one more time. The jellyfish had another form in their tentacles. But this one was shaped wrong. It was all curves. It didn't have enough straight lines for a human body. The jellies stopped about three meters away this time. When Vee registered what she saw, she had to choke back her bile while part of her mind said, "Ah, that's why they call it 'pulped.' "

The jellies did not put this one down. They carried it back past the gold creatures and vanished into the bottom of the balloon.

"Who was that? Why'd they do that?" asked Terry. "Sorry, sorry, I know you don't know... I-"

"It's okay," said Vee. "Really."

There were no more, what? Deliveries? The aliens flew back into their balloon, except the one still one. Vee wondered what it was waiting for. It stared at her with its huge eyes, as if mem-orizing every detail of Vee's form, as Vee was memorizing its, with the sharply angled wings and the thick, but amazingly flexible neck, the broad body, the crimson and ivory mane that streamed down its neck and the dark lines on golden skin.

Vee took a step forward, holding her hand out. The other's wings twitched minutely, its body swelled, and it drifted for-ward.

Vee's breath caught in her throat.

A second creature, this one more heavily lined, or wired, came up next to the first one. They hovered close together, their beaks, maybe they were really more like muzzles, almost touching. Then, together they turned and flew back into the gondola under the silver and white balloon.

The moment was gone so abruptly that Vee was a little sur-prised to find she herself was still there.

And Angela still has no air tank. Vee cursed herself for standing and staring. She turned and lumbered back across the ragged plain.

Last time, last time. You can do this. She held tightly to the thought.

Her plate warnings were now more orange than yel-low. Her muscles felt stretched out and limp. Sweat trickled down her face, pooling for a moment in her collar before the cloth wicked it away. Her back itched.Her hands had swollen until her gloves felt too tight.

"You all right?" asked Josh.

"Barely," she admitted. "But I'll made it."

From here she could see Scarab Five's open airlock and the glass-encased bodies lying on the floor.

If they can make it, I sure as hell can. She glanced back to make sure the others were keeping up. They limped and stum-bled their way back, just as she did. The aliens had vanished.

We'll all make it because we have to back each other's sto-ries up.

They bundled back into the airlock, trying to cram onto the benches.

Except Adrian. He squatted down next to Charlotte and laid a hand on her wrist, as if his gloved fingers could feel her pulse through that alien crystal.

"Shut it down, Kevin, depressurize," said Josh as he dogged the hatch.

He was panting hard, and Vee saw the rivers of sweat running down his face.

"Doing it now." Kevin's voice had relaxed, weirdly enough, and he sounded more like the pilot who had shepherded them all down than the terrified man she'd last seen on the corridor floor.

The pump began struggling to take them back to human conditions.

Relief surged through Vee. She slumped against the inside of her hardsuit.

Angela Cleary lay right at her feet, like a corpse that had been dipped in plastic. Vee closed her eyes. Angela was breathing under there. They all were. No one was dead yet. Except that person the aliens took away.

Why did they take the dead one away?

"It's a fake, huh?" Josh's voice interrupted her thoughts and she was grateful, even when she interpreted his tone. "If the Discovery is a fake, what the hell were those? Holographs?"

"You thought the Discovery was a fake?" said Troy. "When we've just seen the builders-""The Discovery is a fake," snapped Vee. She started shaking. A thousand different emotions churned inside her and she couldn't put a name to any of them. "Those creatures did not build the Discovery. Did those things look like they could fit through the tunnel? Those were birds, not moles."

"So there are two sets of aliens?" said Troy, sounding dazed.

"Yes," said Vee. "Us and them."

Adrian hadn't moved from his crouch next to Charlotte. He ran his gloves over the solid, crystal casing. Vee had no doubt he was thinking, How are we going to get them out of there? Vee sure was.

A sound like a shot split the air. Vee jerked backward. A crack swept down Charlotte's case. It branched out, sending a network of fractures all along the crystal. Another shot, and an-other and another. The cases shattered.

Well, that answers that.

"Charlotte!" Adrian brushed away flakes of crystal that turned to dust as soon as he touched them. Vee, then Josh, fell clumsily to their knees, following his example. Vee brushed off An-gela's face, trying to get the stuff clear before she inhaled it.

Angela gasped, then choked. Her body convulsed under Vee's hand and her face contorted horribly.