The four people sat still for quite a while, together and separate, unspeaking but linked. "The amber bead keeps slithering off into the Vastness pattern," Buckeye said with a smile, setting down her frame with its jewel-strung, crossing wires.

"All your beads end up in Vastness," her brother said. "An effect of your suppressed mysticism. You'll end up like our mother, see if you don't, able to see the patterns on an empty frame."

"Suppressed fiddlediddle," Buckeye remarked. "I never suppressed anything in my life."

"Kretyan," said Zove, "the man's eyelids move. He may be in a dreaming cycle."

The blind girl moved closer to the pallet. She reached out her hand, and Zove guided it gently to the stranger's forehead. They were all silent again. All listened. But only Kretyan could hear.

She lifted her bowed, blind head at last.

"Nothing," she said, her voice a little strained.

"Nothing?"

"A jumble—a void. He has no mind."

"Kretyan, let me tell you how he looks. His feet have walked, his hands have worked. Sleep and the drug relax his face, but only a thinking mind could use and wear a face into these lines."

"How did he look when he was awake?"

"Afraid," said Parth. "Afraid, bewildered."

"He may be an alien," Zove said, "not a Terran man, though how that could be—But he may think differently than we. Try once more, while he still dreams."

"I'll try, uncle. But I have no sense of any mind, of any true emotion or direction. A baby's mind is frightening but this …is worse—darkness and a kind of empty jumble—"

"Well, then keep out," Zove said easily. "No-mind is an evil place for mind to stay."