AT LONG last dawn came—Jacqui’s third full Day—and she was eager to go exploring once again. She stepped outside and saw that her canoe was still ‘moored’ to the building. All she needed was some supplies, and she’d be ready. But it was over two hours before Major showed up accompanied by two robots. She watched as the robots unhitched the canoe and towed it away. Something was wrong.

“We have a small problem,” said Major, “but it should not delay us for long. You must stay inside for the time being.”

“What’s happening?”

“Look across the sea and you may see something,” said Major. Jacqui looked, and sure enough, almost on the horizon, there was a thin black line, which she had not seen before. As she watched, it appeared to be slowly getting more prominent.

Then it dawned upon her. “A tsunami?” But the word meant nothing to Major. “A big wave, caused by a disturbance in the planet’s crust?” she explained.

“Yes. It happens quite frequently, although we have not had one here in the past five or six of our Days. Parts of our world’s foundations suddenly move against one another, and this causes a turbulent phenomenon in the water which spreads out from the point of origin.”

“I am familiar with them,” said Jacqui. “We get the same on Earth. Are we safe here?” She was becoming very worried, with the sea lapping the building just outside her ‘window’.

“Quite safe,” replied Major. “It would have been dangerous out­side, for us as well as for you, but this building will withstand it.”

Jacqui stood and watched, fascinated.

The ‘tsunami’, when it arrived, was something of an anti-climax. A breaking wave no more than three feet high, such as might be met on Brighton beach at high tide on any breezy day. She had often enough spent happy times romping about in such waves! It broke against the side of the building with a big splash, and left the sea calm again behind it. About two minutes later a similar wave appeared, and then another one after that. That was all.

Jacqui did not feel minded to tell Major about the terrible tsunami which had ravaged the lands around the Indian Ocean, many years before when she was still a child—and killed she knew not how many thousands of people. Hundreds of thousands, in fact.

“I believe all is clear now,” announced Major. “But we shall wait for the official signal. The robots will bring your canoe round again, and some supplies. You will find that they have made some modifications: the canoe should be faster now, and easier to propel.

Well, the Sous must surely be experts on streamlining in water—so she felt confident that there would be an improvement. The canoe, when it arrived, seemed a bit longer and its profile was slightly modified. Sitting in it and taking up the paddle, she indeed found it a dream to control—the very Rolls-Royce of canoes—or was it the Lamborghini?

“Can I visit the bigger island which I saw? The one with the mountains—the bigger hills—on it?”

“We had anticipated that you would ask that. Yes, but it will be hard work for you: the distance is much greater and the journey will take at least two of your days. But you can rest on the way. And there is something else I should like to show you.”

They set out. This time, Jacqui took care to bring along some pencils and ‘paper’. Even with the improvements, the journey was still quite tiring. After they had gone several miles, their building had sunk below the horizon behind them—but Jacqui could just about make out a dark object on the sea ahead of them. As they drew closer, she could see that it was another ‘building’ similar to the one she lived in. And there was something else.

They approached the building. About a hundred yards from it in the water, there stood the most extraordinary object Jacqui had ever seen. She at first took it for a gigantic puff-ball standing a good thirty feet clear of the water, with a smooth greyish surface. But on closer inspection it appeared more to resemble a colossal jellyfish, with three huge legs splayed from the centre of its underside, tripod-fashion, to support it, and numerous ‘tentacles’ dangling from its rim. She realised that the tentacles were in fact the same size as the tubes of which the buildings were constructed, and surmised that the Sous might enter and leave the structure via these tubes.

H. G. Wells’s Martians, she thought to herself. But the structure did not look menacing. She took out some paper and made a quick sketch of it.

A sudden thought struck her. The ‘blimp’-shaped spaceship that had settled on the village ‘green’ at Wistbourne—the spacecraft which she had recklessly rushed on board—and here she was now in consequence. But this object didn’t look quite the same. It had legs and was somewhat flattened.

“Is this—it’s not—is it one of your spaceships?” she ventured.

“Close, but not quite,” replied Major, rearing his Big Bell out of the water. “You have seen one of our spaceships: it is more rounded, larger, and discards its ‘legs’ for interstellar voyages. No: this is one of our Transporters, for making journeys to distant parts of our planet. It flies through the atmosphere but does not venture into Space.

“You may rest in this building, and I advise you to take the opportunity. We still have a long journey ahead of us. I am sorry, we are not able to provide you with a controlled atmosphere here, so you will need to keep your mask—although you may remove it for eating and drinking. You are becoming more acclimatised. And there is one here whom I would like you to meet.”

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Jacqui gratefully took up the offer, for she was very tired now. She found that there was no more than a recess in the side of the building, where the canoe could be moored, and a sort of hammock had been slung across it where she could sleep. Very spartan accommodation, but it was welcome enough.

She had settled herself in the hammock and was ‘enjoying’ (to some extent) her meal, when Major appeared with another, smaller Sou. Jacqui thought it looked familiar.

“This is one of those whom you met in Wistbourne, and who ac­companied you on your voyage. You called her ‘Wally’ as I recall.”

Of course! The medium-sized one of the three. Wally seemed to recognise her at the same time, and performed the same contortions as she had done in Wistbourne: twisted herself into a coil and straightened out, over and over again. This was clearly a sign of great enthusiasm amongst the Sou-folk.

“I am delighted to meet you once again, Jacqui,” came the familiar voice in her head. “It has been a long wait.”

“Are the others here?” she asked.

“No,” replied Major. “As I explained to you, they were dispersed to far-off regions of our planet: our normal practice to avoid in-breeding. Wally is the only one able to meet you.”

With a shock, Jacqui realised that although Wally looked exactly the same as when they had last met, she must have aged some forty-three years. Unlike Jacqui, she had not been under the ‘sleep’ field during the voyage. That would make her—Jacqui did a quick calculation—around ninety years old. But she still looked as young and vigorous as ever.

Not for the first time, she wondered how old Major was—but she had never dared ask. He had clearly been around before the first Wistbourne ‘visit’—indeed, before the expedition had even set out from this planet—which would make him well over two hundred years old, she reckoned. Yes! the year on Earth would now be around 2090. What on earth was Earth like, now?

She made an effort to dismiss these worries from her mind, and managed to sleep quite well in the hammock.

They set out again soon after she woke, and Jacqui guessed that they had covered about half the remaining distance to the island before she had to rest once more, again in a hammock at another building they arrived at. She was grateful for these pit-stops—it would have been most uncomfortable to sleep in the canoe. She wondered if the Sous ever slept. Possibly not.

At last they arrived at the ‘mountainous’ island. Jacqui was worn out. Wearily she dragged the canoe out of the water, stumbled to the inevitable ‘moss’, and threw herself down. After taking a gulp of water—she did not even bother with a meal—she was almost instantly asleep.

How long she slept this time she had no idea—she had no means of telling the time—but when she woke she felt a good deal refreshed, and ready to explore. Carefully donning her sandals and slinging the duffel-bag across her back, she set out. The slopes were steeper here than on the first island, and she found herself doing some serious climbing: quite an effort in spite of the lower gravity. The climb was fairly monotonous: moss on the ground and covering the low hummocks everywhere, but she could see what looked like dark cliffs looming ahead. She saw the familiar ‘animals’ again: the millipedes, the spider-starfish, the slugs. There was a new animal that she came across: something like the millipede but fatter and with fewer legs. On its back, above each leg-bearing segment, there was a pair of stiff spines about an inch long sticking up. One spine opposite each leg, it seemed. She hoped that these spines were non-venomous, but she wasn’t going to put it to the test! Something about the creature rang a bell with her—something she had read about back on Earth—but she could not place it. The creature did not seem to show any interest in her: it just crawled sluggishly over the moss.

She was getting tired again, so she sat down on the moss near one of the ‘spiny millipedes’ and made a quick sketch of it before eating and settling down to sleep.

When she woke, she looked over the drawing she had made, thinking hard. All at once, the memory came back to her. A fossil creature of Earth, which had caused much excitement amongst palaeontologists. Hallucigenia, it was called. Much was written about it in a book she’d read. They had at first deduced that the animal walked on its spines, with its legs in the air. But that animal had lived in the sea, and had died out 500 million years ago. Was she seeing a living fossil—on another planet?

She set out once more. Before long she came to the cliff, and her way was barred. The cliff was almost vertical with a smooth surface, and appeared to be composed not of granite but what she guessed was some kind of basalt. A volcanic plug, possibly. She made her way along the base of the cliff, hoping to find some sort of entry, and indeed, after about a mile, she came to a fissure in the rock, about ten feet wide. Eagerly she decided to explore, although the light was a lot dimmer in the fissure. She had gone about ten yards when a spider-starfish scuttled out of a crack in the rock and ran off up the fissure. And after it came an animal that looked almost exactly like a large hairless rat—except that it had no head: instead it bore the familiar ‘Bell’. It stopped in front of her and ‘looked’ at her for a moment, before dashing after the spider.

Was she seeing a mammal for the first time? If it was a predator, how did it feed? Perhaps it had a mouth somewhere about its body which she had not seen. Quickly she made a sketch of the animal as she had seen it.

She continued along the fissure for some distance, but the sides were closing in and before long it was roofed over. It was too dark to go any further, so, reluctantly, she decided to retrace her steps.

Once out of the fissure, she explored the mossy area below the cliffs for another Earth-day or two, without finding anything else of interest. It was time to turn back to the coast. The red Sun was now past the zenith, she noticed: although she had plenty of time, it was not a good plan to risk getting caught in darkness. Going down was easier than going up, and she needed only one stop for sleep, before she approached the shoreline and the canoe.

But no! The canoe was not there. Was she stranded? More likely, she had come down at the wrong place: apart from the cliffs behind her, there were few landmarks on this island. Which way should she turn? She was beginning to panic, when to her relief the familiar figure of Major emerged from the water about a hundred yards off. He had evidently been keeping an eye on her. She followed him along the shoreline for about three miles, until she came to her canoe.

On the return journey they made the same stopovers as on the way out, but when they came to the second building, she noticed that the strange ‘transporter’ wasn’t there any more. No doubt it had taken off on a journey to some distant part of the planet.

With immense relief she arrived at last at her familiar habitat, moored the canoe, and almost immediately she threw herself onto the bed and sank into a deep sleep. Exploration was stimulating but it sure was exhausting!