Louis gazed directly at the marigold sun for at least two seconds — long enough so that when he stopped he saw nothing but dark, pulsing circles. Even before they faded, he was running.

He had to get to the interior tunnels. He had to find Atvar H’sial, and bring her to the surface before any of the Zardalu saw what had happened and realized its possible significance.

The sun’s after-images blinded him to what lay ahead. Close to the entrance of the tunnel he ran full tilt into a springy surface that bounced him away onto the sand. Nenda heard a deep grunt. Three jointed limbs reached down and raised him effortlessly to his feet.

“Louis Nenda, save your energy for the future.” The pheromonal message diffused across to him from Atvar H’sial, with a subtext of concern and warning. “I fear we have troubles ahead.”

The giant Cecropian set him gently onto the sand. The creature towering over Nenda inclined her white, eyeless head, with its pair of yellow open horns below two six-foot fanlike antennas. Beneath the head was a short neck banded in scarlet-and-white ruffles, leading to the dark-red segments of the underbody. The whole effect, propped up on six jointed bristly limbs, was the stuff of nightmares.

But not to Louis Nenda. He did not give the Cecropian’s anatomy a second thought. He had seen too many aliens to go by appearances. “Trouble? What kind?” Nenda’s pheromonal augment went into action, even though he was too winded to speak.

“The interior of Genizee is changing, in ways that I cannot explain.” The pheromonal language of the Cecropian, unlike the slave talk of the Zardalu Communion, possessed degrees of subtlety and shading denied to even the richest of human tongues. Atvar H’sial’s speech included images of collapsing walls, closing tunnels, and vanishing chambers, deep within the planet. “If this continues, our pretence of the need for interior exploration will be destroyed. The Zardalu will demand that we demonstrate to them the powers that we have so long claimed, and take them to space.”