a fight, nor did he seek one. But perhaps his
quivering opponent could be daunted, backed down. Yet as he continued
to watch he felt no aggression, only puzzlement, coming from the other:
He was not part of its food chain, nor was its territory threatened.
It was only frightened, why so strongly he could not guess. He also
knew, with sudden sureness, that it was one of many. Somehow he knew.
He took a step forward, and it retreated swiftly along the way it had
come, moving onto the wall, perhaps instinctively, where it felt a
greater measure of safety. He followed it as best he could in the half
light, the flexing striped-brown body, hoping to find the source of its
food.

He passed the narrowing corner at the back of the high, curving chamber
and descended a long, often twisting, downward tunnel that branched off
from it. The other's speed was considerable, moving through the
regions of its birth, and try as he might he could not keep up. He
soon found himself alone in a roughly spherical vault, not large, with
five knife-slash passages opening off it.

The light here was thicker, and in a swift moment of recognition he
realized the reason for it. The soft glow was neither greater nor
weaker anywhere around him: it did not have a true source, nor did it
cast a single shadow. He felt a slight pulsing of moisture across his
face, like a fine drizzle-rain touched by the wind. The light was in
the mist itself. Also, there was the sensation of his flesh lightly
touching, warming against the inner edges of his armor. His senses
were heightened, and he was acutely aware of his hunger.

His antennae began to twitch, almost without his knowledge, turning him
to the left. He followed to a shallow rift at the lowest point of the
enclosure, where he found a tiny pool of dark water, sponged by a thick
and brackish black algae. He immersed his jaws and tasted. Again. He
filled his mouth, and painfully swallowed wave after wave of the wet
and mud sustenance.

Then he backed away and lifted himself up, feeling alive once more. He
moved to hide himself behind a jagged plate of rock, and waited for his
strength to return.

III

Simin stood before the flat porous surface of a section of a wall of
stone. The pale light which illuminated it was the same as ever,
perhaps a little brighter, or his eyes had dulled in growing used to
it. But through the worn blankness of his mind (though a fair measure
of