Little remained of the weather front. Over the area of the plain and the rolling hills were meager wisps of clouds. Darkness again was creeping across the face of E-T.
"That storm didn't amount to much," Moya said.
Storm, I thought. Rain.
"I know what I'd do," Moya continued. "I'd radiate and have done with it."
The medic dissented on clinical-curiosity grounds.
"I can't reconcile things yet," I said. "But let's assume that it was a tragedy of errors. Let's say that what hit me, killed them. But what was it? Where did it come from? And why? No, I'll have to go down again. It's my burden to find all the answers."
Moya growled: "There's a time for stubbornness."
I caught the rest of the crew staring at me; their expressions were a motley.
Back at the same old stand, open for business, looking at the pitiful alteration, feeling lonely, feeling vulnerable, too, despite the bug suit, Moya's parting blast still burning in my mind.