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CHAPTER FIVE - EXPLORING

Tony, Sam, and Cinnamon were having a bit of trouble with their drysuited companions. The three flouwen were not as interested in exploring the island as they were in exploring the interior of the Falcon lander and the Dragonfly aeroplane.

*Why do you want to look around out here?* Little Red grumbled.

«It looks just the same as the land underwater. Nothing but a lot of rocks. We will go look at your things!» Little White insisted. He didn't wait for the humans, but rolled on to his side and started toward the lander.

After he got almost halfway there, Little White slowed to a stop. Little Red, who was following him closely, ran into him and for a moment the humans had to struggle to keep from laughing as the two squashy blobs struggled to regain control of their momentum. Little Purple had no such restraint and the weirdly musical laughter of the flouwen echoed over the communications link. Finally the human's composure broke and they joined in.

*Why did you stop!? I can't just go through you!*

«I just realized that we will not be able to get up to the hole at the top! We can not just swim up to it and we will never be able to . go up those straight things.»

"We call them rungs, and to pull one's self up we call climb," Cinnamon offered.

"It will not be necessary to teach the flouwen words that they do not know," Jupiter said. "They will work out their own words that make sense to them and I will use those words to translate. We do not want to teach the flouwen English. They need to be able to tell the rest of the pod about their adventure in a way that all the flouwen will understand."

"Privately, Jupiter?" Tony asked the computer through his imp and the automatic translation to the flouwen of whatever he was saying stopped. "We really need to look around the island a bit before we give these guys the grand tour of our vehicles. Can you figure out some way to stall them?"

The others agreed, and the translation switched back on as Jupiter talked to the flouwen.

"We will be able to get you up into the lander; we even have a tank of water in there that you will be able swim around in. But the winch will take some time to set up. Why don't we look around the island in the meantime? Once we get away from the beach we will find things that will interest you."

‡Yes, you two. You can't solve the equation when there are too many unknowns. It behooves us to learn all we can about our own world. Not all of it is underwater.‡ Little Purple was no larger than the others, but the change in size had not affected Strong‡Lavender‡Crackle's pompous attitude.

Little White and Little Red came back and joined the others. Together they headed away from the Falcon and back up the beach. Before long they were traveling up a rather steep incline. The suited flouwen were having to struggle in order to climb the hill. They stopped to rest only when they could balance against a rock to keep from rolling back down. In the beginning, Little Red had enjoyed the dizzying speed that he could achieve spinning down the slope, but it was too much work catching back up to the others. Eventually he decided to stay with them and postpone his fun. He promised himself that he would roll all the way down the mountain on the way back.

"It seems awfully bare for a planet with such advanced life forms in the sea," said Sam. "You'd think that there would at least be some insect life."

"But all life has to start in the sea," Cinnamon objected. "The reason nature seems to have lost out on the dry land of Eau is that she got it right in the first place. Imagine you are in a primordial soup such as Eau's oceans must once have been. You are just one of a million other varieties of tiny animals that feed on the nutrients given off by the volcanic vents that warm the ocean floor. You reproduce by bifurcating and can propel yourself by undulating. Then, in some freak mutation, you find that by linking up with your own one-celled offspring, you become not only bigger but smarter than all the other single-celled beasties swimming around you. You would reproduce to grow and eat to reproduce, interlinking with all your single-celled children until you became more than what you were before. You, the collection of tiny things that make up you, reach sentience.

"But it needn't take eons, or even generations. While you are growing, those things around you have not grown. You are the one person on the planet surrounded only with tiny bugs and your one goal is the same as theirs. Survival."

"So the flouwen killed off all the competition," said Tony.

‡It is in my memory that it is important to eat those creatures that grow too large,‡ Little Purple offered reflectively. ‡But I have never seen an animal that tried to grow as large as a flouwen.‡

"The desire to grow to such a size would be bred out of them!" Sam concluded, enjoying the hypothesis.

"What is to stop a power-hunger flouwen from trying to grow so much larger and smarter than the others, to try and rule them?" Tony asked.

‡Why would it want to?‡ Little Purple was clearly puzzled.

"Well? What does make a flouwen decide to stop growing?" Tony countered.

*When you get too big, it is uncomfortable. You are too bulky to surf, and it takes more energy to hunt than you can replace. Better to make a youngling and then you only need to hunt for the rest of yourself.*

"Exactly what the prehistoric flouwen would do," Cinnamon guessed. "I'd bet at first it only budded off pieces of itself and sent them out to hunt for it. But each piece gained some independence. In time, it resented going back to anonymity within the flouwen whole. Instead, it would return and share tastes and thoughts with the parent body, but would retain its identity, mingling only when it found itself uncomfortably large."

*I think the first flouwen was red,* Little Red said proudly. Maybe the human was right. It was easy to imagine himself all alone with tasty stupid food all around him. Maybe it wasn't imagining, but a memory.

«What does color have to do with it?» Little White asked testily. From the time Clear»White"«Whistle had said his first words, all the elders had wondered at his odd color. Many had met or remember pale flouwen before, but milky whiteness was very rare indeed.

"Isn't there any relationship between color and temperament?" Cinnamon asked. "After all, Loud Red and Deep Purple are more alike than you and Loud Red are, and Blue Boy is more like Green Fizzer than Yellow Hummer. Maybe it is from shared memories related to the parents of each flouwen."

Little Purple objected. ‡But I was a parent to both Sweet•Green•Fizz and Roaring*Hot*Vermillion. They are not alike in color or personality.‡

"Perhaps you have a flouwen equivalent to human's recessive genes."

«Sweet•Green•Fizz and Shining?¿Chartreuse?¿Query were talking about this sort of thing. Maybe you should leave it up to them. I am not going to rock over it now, when it might delay my getting inside your metallic pet.»

Cinnamon dropped the subject but made a mental note. Both the green-colored flouwen were interested in heredity while the white one cared more about machines. Maybe there was something to this color business.

Meanwhile they were still passing signs of solid flouwen remains. At some point the oceans must have been a good deal deeper or the rim must have risen along with the central crater in a slow rebound from the meteorite strike that had formed the islands, Sam thought. It gave him an idea .

"Do you have to be trying to communicate in order to trade memory tastes with another flouwen?" he asked.

Little Purple finished pushing himself up the last few meters to a boulder and then wedged himself behind it. The other two also found places to rest a moment, although Little Red just leaned his weight against Richard.

"I think you may have upset them somehow," Jupiter told Sam privately. "I have never seen them wait so long before answering."

‡It is possible to force another to give up its thought. But it is abhorrent to us. It is more than cannibalism; it is . rape.‡

"I'm afraid that is not a literal translation, " Jupiter apologized, "But it is more relevant to a human than 'like forcing the laws of nature to change in order to fit the hypothesis' would be."

"But what if the flouwen concerned weren't aware of the intrusion?" Sam hurried on so that he would be able to make his suggestion before it was rejected out of hand. "What if we were to chip off a little piece of one of these 'rocks'. Could you taste it and tell us what it was thinking about when it went solid?"

There was an even longer pause than before. Sam began to feel that he had pushed them too far. While he would have no moral problem reading the diary of a long dead relative, Sam knew he would certainly balk at eating one of them.

‡We have always respected the privacy of Those Who Are Lost In Thought.‡

Sam was stung by the emphasis in the name for the flouwen rocks that managed to come through even in the translation. He was about to apologize when Little White spoke up.

«I will try it.»

‡Clear«»White«»Whistle!‡

«I, too, remember that we had never disturbed them, but I do not remember any reason why. Can you tell me why it is worse than allowing them to be eroded by the tides? Or broken in earthquakes? Or absorbed by plants like the Grey¤Boom? Any flouwen that stopped to think while this area was still underwater, can be no one I remember. And if this does work, think how glad the elder would be to have his thoughts conveyed to another, even after all this time."«

"Are you sure?" Sam asked. He didn't want the milky guy to get thrown out of the pod or anything.

‡If he will, he will.‡ Little Purple was resigned. ‡There is more than one way to calculate a volume.‡

"What?" Sam was confused by the phrase.

"I believe he means 'To each his own'" Jupiter clarified.

Sam went to the aqua-blue stone that was supporting Little White. With his hammer he chipped off a handful of its tiny double-lobed cells. Little White shifted so that his zipper opening was at the top of his suit. It wouldn't do to spill himself. Sam unsealed the zipper slightly and dropped the shiny, faceted bits inside. For a moment the chips were visible in the pale alien body, but as they watched through the clear plastic helmet, the aqua-blue cells lost their color and became lost as Little White assimilated the outside colored layer that contained the flouwen memory patterns.

«Ugh. Tastes terrible.»

*But did it say anything?* As long as he didn't have to be the one doing the experiment, Little Red was as eager as the humans to know the result.

«I'm not sure. It was very faint. Does 'Energy is equivalent to mass times the square of the speed of light.' mean anything to you?»

 

Back at the ridge, John and Caroline finished hooking the laser transmitter to the cable from the underwater touchscreen. Carmen and Richard had connected up the cables and were starting up the ridge. As they approached, Caroline signaled her imp to turn off by making a twisting motion of her hand outside her helmet. She then pressed the globe of her helmet up against John's so that she could talk to him without the computer relaying her comment to Carmen.

"Carmen has been acting odd lately," she said.

"More odd than usual, you mean?"

"I'm not kidding, John. She was moping about home, and about . well, babies."

"It's just that time of the month. All you girls get weepy and softhearted." Soft-headed he amended mentally to himself. "Besides, Carmen has let herself get so out of shape that all the men stopped boinking her, and for a while there, that was all she wanted to do. I can't imagine what it must be like to not be able to get it as often as you want it."

Spare me, Caroline thought. John had no way of knowing that, of all the men on board, his charms were the only one's Caroline had resisted. He was too much like the high school sweetheart that had abandoned her. What was his name? Funny she couldn't remember it now.

"All she really needs is a good fuck," John concluded. No point in being coy with Caroline, he thought. The little nip is probably gay.

Richard and Carmen cleared the top of the hill and came up the laser transmitter.

"So what are we going to call this place? We can't just keep referring to it as 'the cove where the flouwen use the underwater touchscreen console'," Richard said as he looked around.

"Why not call it Circle Cove?" Caroline offered.

Richard looked down at the cove. It had been formed by a meteoroid that had cut away the edge of the earlier crater that had formed the island, and it was almost a perfect circle. Still, the others greeted the suggestion in silence. They were all remembering the pictures they had seen of the island. It had been obvious that all the coves would be more or less circular.

"This bay is only refreshed at the highest tide. During the day it must boil away most of it's ammonia. At times it is probably pure aitch-two-oh," Richard prefaced. "How about we call it 'Sweet Water'?"

"Agua Dulce?" said Carmen.

"Agua Dulce it is," Shirley agreed. "John, will you do the honors?"

John activated the console built into the top of the laser transmitter. "Agua Dulce to Prometheus, John Kennedy here. Come in Prometheus." They waited the fraction of a second that it took the message to bounce through Barbara to Prometheus waiting in orbit. Then Arielle's face appeared on the screen.

"John! Is so good to hear you! Is good to hear anyone! Why do they have me sitting at the comm when there is no one out there?" She smiled at them. The twinkle of her imp brace shone from between her lips. Arielle would sport the gaudy brace until her tooth reattached, but it did nothing to diminish her startling beauty and left her with her Quebec accent.

"They have you at communications?" John smirked. "George must be getting old. I know where I would keep you if it was up to me." "You are such barbarian. This is permanent placement for the flouwen laser transmitter?"

"Yes, and we are calling it "Agua Dulce"." Then John adjusted the power supply console so that they were both connected to the underwater console submerged in the cove.

"Hello, Hello, Hello!" he called into the water below.

 

Tony, Sam, and Cinnamon in their spacesuits, and the three flouwen in their drysuits, finally made it to the top of a large rise leading inland. They looked down onto the circular valley that lay before them. The rise they were on stretched all the way around the valley. Below the ridge were other, smaller, concentric ridges. In the center of the valley was a circular lake with a low round island in the middle. Sam looked at the scene with the practiced eye of a geologist who had spent a lot of time on alien planetoids, and reported his observations and conclusions through his imp to Jupiter back on the Falcon. They were out of direct line-of-sight to the lander, so the laser communications link between Jupiter and their imps now involved a bounce up to the orbiting commsats and back down again.

"This valley is obviously a meteorite crater. The ridge we are on and the ones below it were formed in the crust when the meteorite hit, like frozen ripples, while the island in the middle of the lake is the rebound of the crust compacted under the falling rock." He looked around the edges of the lake. "The lake is landlocked. No connection to the ocean at all. Must be fed only with rainwater."

*I will go take a look at it.* Little Red decided. *Downhill!* he yelled and he careened off away from the others.

"Wait, slow down!" Cinnamon called out. She wasn't sure that the glassy foil that made up the flouwen suits would hold up to such rough treatment. It was flexible but strong, and supposedly tear-proof, but this was hardly normal wear. Little Red ignored her and continued his unrestrained plunge down the slope. The humans hurried after Little Red, while the other two flouwen followed carefully and slowly behind them, not allowing their momentum to overwhelm them.

Little Red was bounding downward, spinning crazily. Although he was not mentally capable of being dizzy since he didn't have ears with semicircular canals in them, Little Red was now feeling certain misgivings. The hillside was strewn with the same sort of boulders that the flouwen had rested on during their climb. Now Little Red was bouncing off those rocks that he couldn't avoid, and finding it harder than ever to control his path. Rocks were to be reckoned with now that he was confined to one shape. Just as his speed began to truly frighten him, Little Red came to a small ridge, the last unsubmerged segment of the concentric rings that formed the circular valley. His momentum carried him up the slope and threw him high into the air over the water. He landed on the still surface of the lake with a tremendous splash. The suit, never designed to take such stress, sprang open at the neckring joint, sending the helmet flying and Little Red squirting into the water.

By the time the others reached the bottom of the slope, Little Red had pulled himself together. They all ran to join him in the water, steam rising off the human's suits.

*What a ride! Even better than surfing!*

"What about the suit?" Tony asked Cinnamon. "Is it okay?"

"I don't know. I didn't design it, John did. But he did say that almost nothing could go wrong with it." She was holding the limp baggie before her in the water and looking at it carefully. It didn't seem to have any punctures, and the seal surrounding the neckring hadn't been torn when the helmet had sprung loose. But Little Red was truly lucky that he had not spilled until he was over the water. Had he landed in the dirt, they would have been forever trying to collect all the spilled blobs of red flesh.

‡If you broke the Shining¤Skin you would have had to stay here until we came back for you,‡ Little Purple chided. ‡I would not want to have to climb up all those hills again just for you.‡

«The humans will not take you up to the stars in their pets if you persist in acting recklessly,» warned Little White.

*It was fun! Besides there is nothing wrong with the Shining¤Skin.* To prove his point, Little Red flowed back into the shining glassy-foil suit and twisted the helmet back on. With his alien sensitivity he was able to reassure himself that the suit's integrity had not been breached. Opening the zipper in his drysuit, Little Red extended a pseudopod and held out a memory taste toward the other two flouwen. *Taste. It is still in fine shape.*

Little White opened his suit and took the sample of memory juices Little Red offered. Within the taste was more than the reassurance that the suit was okay. Little Red had included the exhilaration he had enjoyed during his ride, but the taste was also tinged with his momentary fears. Little White instantly understood that Little Red didn't want this part conveyed to the humans.

"Well," said Tony, reasserting control, "Now that we're in the lake we might as well look around. Jupiter said that we should try to find whatever life forms got picked up by waterspouts and carried to the lake." Cinnamon was the expert on water-based life, and Tony figured it was up to him to find something for her to study.

‡Almost anything can be picked up by our storms.‡

*Grey¤Booms, Pretty¤Smells, OrangeHunters, even flouwen have been known to get sucked into a whlee.*

«We will get out of these Shining¤Skins and scan the lake for you. If we find anything unusual we can come back and get you.* Almost instantly the flouwen unzipped their drysuits and began oozing out.

"Wait! What may seem normal to you could be something we haven't studied yet!" Cinnamon complained as Little White handed her his empty suit.

«We won't go too far.»

"Please can't we stay together?" she pleaded.

"Get back here right now!" Tony bellowed.

*What?*

«What?»

‡Why?‡

The flouwen all clustered around the humans again. So much for trying to be polite, thought Tony. This group had no notion of politeness or discipline, but curiosity kept them in line.

"One of you to stay with us and explain anything we are unfamiliar with," he insisted. "What if one of us walked right into trouble? Like setting off a Grey¤Boom and getting caught in its sticky threads like George did in the last mission?"

There was a pause. Maybe now they are seeing things from our point of view, Tony thought. Then the silence was broken.

«I suppose I can stay with the humans while you go off and have fun,» Little White offered to the other flouwen. «My fun will come when we finally get back to the ship.»

Oh good. Now we're a chore. These beasts are about as self-centered as it is possible to be and still be willing to mate! Tony tried to appeal to them one last time.

"What if we heard a loud roar and some huge beast came swimming up at us out of the deep and tried to eat us?"

Suddenly, they all heard a loud roar off in the distance. Through the water there moved a massive dark form. It was coming straight at them, roaring loudly as it came!

Cinnamon screamed with fright and tried to cover her ears, while Jupiter rapidly adjusted the volume of their imps to protect the humans from the booming roar of the blood-red shape looming toward them.

*HELLO! HELLO!! HELLO!!!*

"That sounds just like Loud Red!" said Sam, moving to protect Cinnamon.

The three little flouwen broke before the rush of the huge being as it shouted its greeting to them all.

*HELLO!* the newcomer boomed. *I am Roaring*Hot*Vermillion!*

There was a shocked silence, then Little Red exploded.

*You are not! I am Roaring*Hot*Vermillion!*

«It certainly sounds like you.»

*You are Strong‡Lavender‡Crackle,* the giant red flouwen said. *I remember you as being much bigger.*

‡This is only a piece of me,‡ Little Purple tried to explain. Refusing to be intimidated by this huge flouwen, Little Purple extended a tendril for the other to taste. He had concentrated his own introduction with a synopsis of all that they knew about the humans. At first the newcomer didn't respond but then, hesitantly, he took the taste from the elder. The humans had to scramble to get out from under as the huge lake dweller, bewildered by the taste and having to think more about it, started to solidify around them.

«Well, I guess any questions will have to wait for a while.»

*He is not Roaring*Hot*Vermillion. I am!*

‡I got a taste of him. He tastes just like you. Maybe this being is a piece of you. You did lose a large chunk of yourself in a whlee back when you were a youngling. I remember there was much debate over whether or not you were worth retraining. Sour#Sapphire#Coo was all for eating you and making a new youngling.‡

«Look, if this flouwen is a lost part of you, why don't you get back together and then you'll both know all each other's stories?»

*But I'm so small compared to him! I'll be assimilated!*

"But you'll only be getting back all that you lost long ago in that storm," Sam pointed out.

*I don't want to . I'll be more him than me.*

"I don't blame you," Cinnamon piped up. "I wouldn't want to risk my personality to be joined up with any one else."

*She knows the flavor!* Little Red insisted. Sooner than anyone expected, the lost red flouwen swelled up into the water around them. This time he listened the discussion without interrupting.

"Why would any one," Cinnamon continued, "want to join up with someone that, even though he seems to be the same, has so many different memories, memories that no other flouwen has ever tasted. And to join up with one so large! Look how quickly he was able to assimilate all that Little Purple had told him. Oh sure, you might be made into a huge, smart flouwen, certainly the largest and smartest thing in this little lake ."

While Cinnamon was talking, the two red amorphous shapes tentatively touched pseudopods, and before she had even finished her statement, they had started to blend into each other.

*Wow .

*Wow— What a .

*What a Life!* said the now gigantic red flouwen. *While part of me has been living a life of friendship and surfing in the oceans of Eau, part of me has been struggling to survive on the flotsam blown in on the storms. My lost part grew as large as the poor food supply in the lake permitted, but was starved for intellectual simulation. Elders are remembered as godlike figures and I am still struggling to match these memories with my own.*

"Then the Little Red personality is dominant?" Cinnamon asked, fearful that she had inadvertently caused the destruction of an intelligent entity.

*No, I am, and always have been, one person. I just didn't have the opportunity to share experiences before. We are . I am . Roaring*Hot*Vermillion.*

 

"Hello, hello, hello!" John called out into the bay. Standing on the high cliff, it was easy for the humans to see Blue Boy approach the touchscreen in the shallow water.

~Hello!~ The young blue flouwen's voice came clearly through the Agua Dulce substation. As he explored the touchscreen, a squawk of garbled sounds were transmitted up to the humans.

"The screen can transmit and receive light, thusly," said John as he sent a picture of the five of them standing by the substation. "It can also send electrically reproduced chemical 'tastes'." He sent the flavors of an ester compound. Soon he hoped to be able to read and duplicate the complex flavor memories that the flouwen used to communicate. When they did crack the chemical code, John expected the touchscreen would be equal to the challenge.

"For the time being, you might want to concentrate on sonic communication. We have a rather good working vocabulary for translating the flouwen language, and now that you can talk directly to Jupiter, we soon will be able to communicate completely."

For several minutes the substation continued to make the garbled sounds of Blue Boy playing with the touchscreen. Then, as they watched from a distance, the light blue cloud shrunk into itself. John tried to reach the flouwen through the screen, but the only picture he could raise was a blank blue screen.

"What's wrong with the console?" Carmen asked. "Has he broken it?"

"No," said Caroline. "He has solidified to think. Unfortunately he has rocked up right on top of the touchscreen, encasing it within himself. What you see on the screen is the view from inside a flouwen. "

"We will have to make some sort of rule about having the flouwen using the screen move to one side before they rock to think," John grumbled. "Otherwise half the time the touchscreen won't be available for the others to use. Every new concept they get from us will shut down Agua Dulce until the receiving flouwen figures it out."

"I'm sure that we'll only need to point the problem out to them once. I think that sometimes they are just too interested in getting the solution to the problem to worry about what happens when they condense." Caroline could sympathize with the flouwen. Sometimes new ideas came swarming into her mind, so fast and furious that nothing else seemed to matter. "Only when they know that the computations will be lengthy do they try to wait until they are where they will get the stimulation of the tides."

"So what do we do now?" Richard asked.

"We might as well go back to the Falcon," Caroline said. "We will be able to talk to the Agua Dulce through Barbara from there. Whenever Blue Boy liquifies, we'll know. Then we can go back to teaching him anything about the screen that he hasn't already figured out."

"Don't expect to do much more explaining," said John. "Remember how smart these creatures are. I'd bet that when Blue Boy wakes up from his think he'll be teaching us the best way to improve our designs!"

 

Back at the lake, the need to explore for interesting life forms had been removed by Roaring*Hot*Vermillion's explanations of the time he had spent there. Rightly believing that the best way to store food was inside, the young flouwen had patrolled the lake like a giant vacuum cleaner, eating everything the infrequent storms brought in. In the beginning there had been all sorts of plants and small animals living peaceful lives. Slowly, in his hunger, the lost portion of Roaring*Hot*Vermillion had absorbed them all. He managed to survive by eating all there was to eat during the rainy season, and then rocking up and fasting until the next storm brought a fresh influx of food. Over the many thousands of seasons, the lost flouwen had become very large. Now, the addition of Little Red made Roaring*Hot*Vermillion very large and bulky indeed.

The humans left the flouwen in the water and went to explore the marshy island. Time and rain had burrowed into the island, leaving many large puddles, some deep enough to be permanent during the dry season. Within these ponds, out of reach of the voracious flouwen living in the surrounding lake, were many types of plants, small quick animals, and some unidentified shapes. Since much of the life on Eau had rocklike shapes, Cinnamon took samples from all lumps that Sam could not definitely confirm were of geologic origins. Only when her collection bottles were full did Cinnamon reluctantly agree it was time to return to the ship.

They rejoined the flouwen in the water, but a problem confronted them. Little White and Little Purple flowed easily in to their suits but the enlarged Red posed new difficulties.

"I hate to mention it," said Tony. "But how are we going to get you back to the ocean? We'll never get all of you in a bag this size."

"Maybe we can leave him here and go back for several suits. That way we can bring him out a little at a time." Cinnamon suggested.

*I don't want to leave any of myself here.* Roaring*Hot*Vermillion remembered the stifling intellectual isolation of being alone. Size made him hungry for knowledge but the learning tools that were normally passed on from elder to youngling had been denied it. The lost red flouwen had been forced to derive formulas and theorems that its alter ego had easily learned from the rest of the pod. Roaring*Hot*Vermillion would not face the possibility of even a small subset being abandoned in the lake, even for a short time.

*Maybe I can fit in these three suits and you can come back for Clear«»White«»Whistle and Strong‡Lavender‡Crackle.* Even as he suggested it, Roaring*Hot*vermillion's massive and now trained intellect figured the relative volume of itself and the room available in each suit and came up woefully short.

"Couldn't you solidify yourself into the suit?" asked Richard. "Then we could roll you up the hill like a giant gumdrop."

‡I doubt it. We tend to go hard all at once. Still, maybe Roaring*Hot*Vermillion could try.‡

For the next several minutes, Roaring*Hot*Vermillion tried to harden only while in the suit, but it rapidly became clear that it didn't have enough control over the process. It would become hard too soon, blocking the entry to the suit or harden in such an awkward shape that more wouldn't fit. It soon became obvious that even at his most concentrated, the massive flouwen would never fit inside the drysuit.

"I've got it!" Sam said after he watched the flouwen's contortions. "First, we need to dig a shallow circular hole in the bottom of the lake."

*There is such a hole at the very bottom of this lake. It is where a huge Grey¤Boom lived for many years. I had to wait until I was very large before I could attack it. *

«You ate a Grey¤Boom?»

*It tasted awful! But I didn't want it eating food I did like. Anyway, it left a flat circular hole.*

"Good," said Sam. "I'll explain the rest of my idea when we reach it."

They walked along the bottom of the barren lake until they reached the hole. Sam outlined his plan. The normally quick flouwen were not used to thinking about the mechanics of geometry in their more fluid environment, but they recognized the simple beauty of Sam's suggestion. Roaring*Hot*Vermillion flowed into the depression until it filled it completely. Then he concentrated on imagining the last cardinal infinity and slowly shrank into a hardened disk of reddish rock resting on the lake floor. Sam and Tony tipped the disk up onto its rim and, with Cinnamon in the lead, carrying the empty suit and their heavy bag of samples, and the two drysuited flouwen steadying the sides, the two men rolled the red crystal wheel out of the lake and back toward the Falcon and the setting sun.

 

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