Xavier? Directions? From whom?
Another voice answered from the shoulder-box, bringing a second mental picture of a face—square and brown, black-browed and taciturnly humorless—that he had known and forgotten.
Whose, and where?
"Hold him there, Xav," it said. "Stryker and I are going to try to reach the ship now."
The moths floated nearer, humming gently.
"You're too late," Farrell called. "Go away. Let me wait in peace."
"If you knew what you're waiting for," a third voice said, "you'd go screaming mad." It was familiar, recalling vaguely a fat, good-natured face and ponderous, laughter-shaken paunch. "If you could see the place as you saw it when we first landed...."
The disturbing implications of the words forced him reluctantly to remember a little of that first sight of Falak.
... The memory was sacrilege, soiling and cheapening the ecstasy of his anticipation.
But it had been different.