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whenever we discuss our situation, which we don't do very often."
    "I'll remember that. Why don't you tell me about the other people who live here?"
    "No," said Molly, "I have to get back outside. The farm workers will be coming in soon, and you can meet them all then. Sheldon will be around to show you everything, and then there's your first supper in about, oh, an hour and a half. In the meantime, why don't you use the tect? It's in the den, down the corridor there, second door on the right."
    "Good," said Courane.
    "I'll see you at supper then. I hope you're hungry." Before Courane could answer, she turned and left the room.
    Sheldon found him later, sitting at the tect, playing a game of cribbage against the computer. "Hello," said the bald man.
    Courane looked up and recognized him. He cleared the screen of the console. "Hello," he said. "I was only—" He felt just a bit guilty about tying up the colony's only link to Earth with his game.
    "Let's take a walk. I'll show you the grounds, the farm, the barn, and the animals. Then we'll go upstairs."
    Courane was struck by the way he said the last words. "Both you and Molly speak about 'upstairs' in a kind of hushed voice. What do you have up there?"
    The pained look on Sheldon's face made Courane realize he had made just the kind of social error he had been trying to avoid. "Let's look around the farm then, all right?" said Sheldon. Courane stood up wordlessly.
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    Dreams. Courane sat up in the cold dawn and tried to remember. His dreams had become much more vivid, more like waking memories, like the visions that possessed him during the day. Like those memories, they faded quickly, mocking his vain attempts to hold on to them, to preserve them for melancholy examination. He had dreamed of the house and the people, but now he couldn't recall who they were or what they looked like. The house—
    The sun—he called it the sun, but it wasn't, of course; it was Epsilon Eridani—was peering over the hills that bordered the farther limits of this desert of stones. That was the way he had to go. The house was that way. The river was beyond the hills, he remembered. Many times in the months he had been on this world, he had wandered away from the farm into those hills, which now were gray with distance and dim with the mists of morning. He knew where he was, roughly speaking, and he felt good. It would take a couple of days more to cross the desert, another day among the hills themselves, and then he would find the river. How far upriver he was from the farm might determine if he'd live or die.
    He was lucid for the first time in days. He looked around, startled by how far he had marched while his mind was numbed. He shivered and wished that he had a coat. It might have been that he began the journey with more protective clothing, but he could easily have discarded it all when he wasn't thinking clearly.
    The day's labor called him. He stood and stretched and scratched his head. Then, when he could avoid it no longer, he turned to look at the corpse beside him.
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    "I knew it," Courane's mother said. "I knew it from the very start. I knew it, I knew it, I knew it. I always knew it." She sat at the dining table and wept. She didn't seem to notice that neither her husband nor her son were eating. Courane's father shrugged helplessly.
    "Don't look at it that way, Mom," said Courane. "I'm really excited about the whole thing. It will be a good experience for me. You know how I've always liked being in the country. You remember how much I liked going to camp when I was a kid."
    "A good experience," she said. "Sandy, an experience is something you have and then you tell all your friends about. An experience is something you come home after. Sandy, this isn't an experience you're going to have. You're going away to some planet, for God's sake."
    "Marie," said Courane's father, "the boy doesn't need this. Come on, stop crying. Be glad to see him."
    She just looked at