The hatch opened. Even accustomed, as he was, to Lhari lights, Bart
squeezed his eyes shut at the blue-white brilliance that assaulted him
now. Then, opening slitted lids cautiously, he found that he could see.

A weirdly desolate scene stretched away before them. Bare, burning sand,
strewn with curiously colored rocks, lay piled in strange chaos; then he
realized there was an odd, but perceptible geometry to their
arrangement. They showed alternate crystal and opaque faces. Old Rugel
noted his look of surprise.

"Never been here before? That's right, you've always worked on the
Polaris run. Well, those aren't true rocks, but living creatures of a
sort. The crystals are alive; the opaque faces are lichens that have
something like chlorophyll and can make their food from air and
sunlight. The rocks and lichens live in symbiosis. They have
intelligence of a sort, but fortunately they don't mind us, or our
automatic mining machinery. Every time, though, we find some new lichen
that's trying to set up a symbiote cycle with the concrete of our
bunkers."

"And every time," Ringg said cheerfully, "somebody--usually me--has to
see about having them scraped down and repainted. Maybe someday I'll
find a paint the lichens don't like the taste of."

"Going to explore with Ringg?" Rugel asked, and Ringg, always ready to
let bygones be bygones, grinned and said, "Sure!" Bart could not face
him.

Vorongil stopped and said, "This your first time here, young Bartol? How
would you like to visit the monument with me? You can see the machinery
on the way back."

Relieved at not having to go with Ringg, he followed the captain,
falling into step beside him. They moved in silence, along the smooth
stone path.

"The crystal creatures made this road," Vorongil said at last. "I think
they read minds a little. There used to be a very messy, rocky desert
here, and we used to have to scrabble and scratch our way to the
monument. Then one day a ship--not mine--touched down and discovered
that there was a beautiful smooth road leading up to the monument. And
the lichens never touch that stone--but you probably had all this in
school. Excited, Bartol?"

"No--no, sir. Why?"

"Eyes look a bit odd. But who could blame you for being excited? I never
come here without remembering Rhazon and his crew on that long jump. The
longest any Lhari captain ever made. A blind leap in the dark, remember,
Bartol. Through the dark, through the void, with