Late in the afternoon the wind slackened, and died to a flat calm by sunset. Glawen dropped the sails, and the boat moved only to the rise and fall of the swells. Glawen went below, prepared a bowl of stew which he brought up to the cockpit and consumed, along with a crust of bread and a flask of Clattuc claret, while sunset colors faded from the sky.

The afterglow departed and stars appeared. Glawen sat back and studied the constellations. The flow of Mircea's Wisp, along with Lorca and Sing, was below the horizon. At the zenith glittered that collocation known as Perseus Holding High the Head of Medusa, with the two blazing red stars Cairre and Aguin representing Medusa's eyes. In the southern sky he found the circlet of five white stars known as the Nautilus. At the center of the circlet shone a yellow star of the tenth magnitude, much too dim to be seen. This star was Old Sol. Out there, coasting across the void in a great Glisunar space cruiser, was Wayness. How large would she seem at such a distance? The size of an atom? Smaller? The problem became interesting. Glawen went below and calculated. Wayness, standing a hundred light-years away, would appear as large as a neutron at a distance of twelve hundred and fifty yards.

"So much for that," said Glawen.

"Now I know."

Glawen returned to the cockpit. He looked around the sky, made sure all was secure, then went below, leaving the sloop to take care of itself.

Morning brought a favoring breeze from the south. Glawen made sail, and the sloop slid nicely across the water into the northeast.

At noon on the following day he sighted Thurben Island: a roughly circular mound of sand and volcanic debris, two miles in diameter, sparsely grown over with gray-green thorn bush a few straggling thyme trees and as many gaunt semaphore dendrons. At the center rose a crag of crumbling volcanic basalt. A coral reef encircled the island, creating a lagoon two hundred yards wide. The reef was broken by a pair of passes, at the north and south ends of the island, allowing access to the lagoon. Glawen lowered the sails offshore and powered the sloop through the southern pass against the outflowing current. Two hundred feet from the beach he dropped the anchor, in water so clear it seemed to magnify details of the bottom: coral drums, sea flowers armored molluscs. Imp-fish and falorials came to investigate boat, anchor and anchor chain, then moved away to await developments:

garbage, a swimmer, or someone falling overboard.

Glawen used the boom to lift the dinghy from its cradle and lower it over the side. With many precautions he stepped down into the dinghy, carrying a coil of line, one end of which he had already tied to the stem head of the sloop. He started the dinghy's impeller and. steered for the beach, letting the line pay out behind him.

The dinghy nosed up on the sand. Glawen jumped ashore and pulled the dinghy high and dry above the reach of the surf.

He tied the line from the boat to the gnarled trunk of a thorn bush thus doubly securing the sloop against the effects of a sudden squall.

Glawen was now at leisure. He had nothing to do: no tasks, no routine, no demands whatever upon his time which was why he had come.

He took stock of his surroundings. Behind him were thorn bush a few thyme trees, a few mock balsams, an occasional gaunt black gallows tree, and a knob of rotting basalt at the center of the island. In. front of him, the lagoon, apparently so innocent and placid, where the sloop now rode at anchor. To right and to left, identical ribbons of white sand, flanked by gray-green thorn bush thickets and thyme trees, with long slender leaves silver on the bottom and scarlet on the top. Cat's-paws stirred by a puff of breeze ruffled the surface of the lagoon and sparkled in the sunlight, while the thyme trees shimmered silver and scarlet.

Glawen sat down in the sand. He listened.

Silence, except for the whisper of the water moving up and down the beach.

He lay back on the sand and dozed in the sunlight.

Time passed. A land crab pinched Glawen's ankle. He stirred, kicked and sat up. The land crab ran away in a panic.

Glawen rose to his feet. The sloop floated placidly at anchor. Syrene had moved across the sky; nothing else had changed. For a fact, thought Glawen, there was little to do on Thurben Island, except sleep, ponder the seascape or, in a fit of energy, stroll up and down the beach.

He looked right, then left. With no evident difference in either direction, he set off to the north. Land crabs scuttled away at his approach, down the beach to the water's edge, where they turned to watch as he passed. Blue lizards jumped up on their hind legs and with mighty kicks and strides ran to the shelter of the thombush thickets, where they became bold and chattered angry challenges.

The shore veered away to the east, around the northern end of the island. Glawen arrived at a point opposite the north pass through the reef: a natural channel similar to the south pass, allowing the coming and going of boats into and out of the lagoon. Rounding the curve of the beach, Glawen stopped short in astonishment and shock.

Changes had occurred since his last visit. A rude dock extended into the lagoon. Near the foot of the dock, a pavilion of thatch and bamboo, in the Yip style, provided shelter from sun and rain.

For several minutes Glawen stood stock-still, studying the area. He could make out no fresh footprints in the sand; the premises would seem to be deserted.

Glawen relaxed a trifle, but still tense and wary, he approached the pavilion. Wisps of brown thatch rattled in the breeze; the interior was dry, dusty and devoid of occupation. Nonetheless, Glawen wished that he had brought a gun with him; in situations of this son its bulk and heft would be most reassuring.

Glawen turned away from the pavilion. He looked out along the dock in perplexity. What son of purpose could such an arrangement serve? A camp for far-ranging Yip fishermen?

Glawen noticed an odd contrivance attached to the dock, thirty or fony feet from the shore:

a derrick with an overhead beam, like a gallows, evidently intended to raise objects from a boat and swing them around to the dock--or back in the other direction.

Glawen walked out to the end of the dock, which sagged and creaked under his weight. He looked out through the pass, and found empty blue ocean. To right and left: the placid lagoon; shoreward, the ribbon of beach curving around the island. Below, bamboo pilings descended to the bottom; they seemed about fifteen feet long. Shades and shadows slid across the sand, refracted from wavelets moving along the surface.

Glawen stared down into the water, the skin of his back tingling. He;

had made a chilling discovery; indeed, at first, he could not believe | his eyes. j There was no mistake: on the bottom, near the end of the dock,." was spread a grotesque tangle of human bones. Some were sifted;

over with sand; some were draped with waterweed; others sprawled , uncovered, as if naked, with only the moving shadows to clothe them.

Glawen forced himself to study the bones. It was difficult to estimate :

the number of individuals involved. The lens like quality of the water distorted perception; the bones nonetheless seemed small and delicate.

Glawen seemed to feel the pressure of someone's observation.

He jerked around and studied the shore. Everything appeared as before.. There was no sign of living creature, though a dozen unseen eyes might be watching from behind the thorn bush thickets.

His nerves were playing him tricks: so Glawen assured himself.

Glawen returned to the beach. He stood a moment in contemplation of dock, derrick and pavilion. A new thought entered his mind: what if someone had watched him arrive, then, when he had departed up the beach, had gone aboard his boat and sailed away? The idea caused Glawen's heart to pound; Thurben was not an island where he cared to be marooned, with nothing to eat but land crabs, which were indigestible, and nothing to drink but seawater.

Glawen returned down the beach at a trot, looking over his shoulder every few yards.

The sloop lay serenely to its anchor, precisely as he had left it. His spasm of near-panic drained away. He was alone on the island. Nevertheless, tranquillity had departed; the beach no longer could be considered a somnolent place on which to idle away a few days.

The time was now late afternoon. The breeze had died completely;;

ocean and lagoon lay calm and flat. Glawen decided to make his' departure on the morning breeze. He pulled his dinghy into the water and returned to the sloop. Syrene sank; darkness came to Thurben Island. Glawen prepared and ate his supper, then went up to the cockpit and sat two hours listening to small unidentifiable sounds from the shore. Overhead blazed the constellations; but tonight Glawen paid them no heed; his mind was occupied with more somber speculations.

At last Glawen went below to his bunk. He lay staring into the dark, unable to control the ideas which came wandering into his mind. Finally he fell into a restless slumber, on several occasions starting up to what he imagined to be the bump and scrape of someone climbing aboard the boat.

The night, with all deliberation, went its way. Lorca and Sing rose behind the island and climbed toward the zenith.

Glawen finally fell asleep, so deeply that the coming of day failed to arouse him. Finally, with Syrene almost three hours into the sky, he awoke, edgy and hollow-eyed.

Glawen consumed a breakfast of tea and porridge in the cockpit. A breeze blew from the north, fair for the voyage home whenever he chose to raise the anchor. The deep blue of the sea was accentuated by pillars and domes of bright white cumulus, lifting over the horizon to the south. The world seemed innocent and clean; the circumstances at the north end of the lagoon were so incongruous to this sunny blue and white world as to seem unreal.

Glawen decided to make another quick inspection of dock and pavilion before departure; he might conceivably discover something he had missed the day before. He stepped down into his dinghy and with the impellers at full power, scudded north up the lagoon, with clouds of darting silver falorials following below.

The dinghy arrived at the north pass. The pavilion and dock were as he found them on the day before. Easing the dinghy up to the beach, Glawen jumped ashore with the painter, which he tied to one of the bamboo pilings.

Glawen stood a moment taking stock of the surroundings. As before, he discovered only silence and desolation. He went out to the end of the dock. The surface of the lagoon was ruffled by the breeze, making the bottom difficult to see clearly, but the bones lay scattered as before.

Glawen returned to the shore and examined the pavilion.

Behind a shaded open area at the front were eight compartments, furnished only with heavy floor mats. There were no cooking or sanitary facilities other than an outhouse to the rear of the pavilion.

Glawen decided that he had seen enough; he had not been hallucinating on his first visit. He returned aboard his dinghy and pushed off into the lagoon. As the boat moved away from the dock, Glawen glanced out the pass and saw, about two miles to sea, a pair of lateen sails bellying to the breeze.