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equipment failure that prevented them from responding?”
    “Neither,” Acorna answered. “The base camp is fine, for the most part. Everyone here was asleep. Liriili was in charge of the com unit for the night shift, but she seems to have abandoned her post. None of the scientists have seen her since they retired for bed. We’ve been looking for her, but wherever she went to avoid her work, it is a good hiding place. We have looked extensively, and as far as we can tell, she isn’t in the laboratory or the cave, and we can’t find her anywhere in the vicinity. She appears to have vanished.”
    “Oh, dear,” Melireenya said. “Isn’t that just like Liriili? She can’t even handle a simple task like com duty without causing an uproar. She’s our shipmate, and we foisted her on the scientists. I suppose that makes her our responsibility. We’ll be en route at once and come to help you search. Normally, I’d guess she just wandered off to avoid working, but if you cannot find her, something might be wrong.”
    Acorna, still scanning the area, nodded to the com unit, then realized that it did not actually have a video component. “That will be fine,” she said. “We will be glad of the assistance. We should find out what has become of her. If it were anyone but Liriili, I would be frantic. I’m beginning to wonder if the Khleevi haven’t left behind a number of nasty booby traps for us.”
    “I’m afraid you might be right,” Melireenya said. “We’ll be there as quickly as we can. Now that I think about it, just disappearing without a word or a trace is completely unlike Liriili. She would never be so accommodating.”
    Acorna smiled at her aunt’s small joke, but was inclined to agree.

 
     
Two
     
     
    M any hours later Acorna looked at her gathered friends and shook her head. “I have nothing to report. We can find no trace of Liriili, or of her body. Our infrared sensors pick up no trace of her heat signature, and our DNA scans of the planetary surface are negative. She apparently never left this camp. She can’t have been buried in an avalanche, or have fallen into a crevasse, or have been engulfed in a volcanic cataclysm, or been consumed by any unknown life forms that might have survived the Khleevi, as traces of her skin or hair or bodily fluids would have been found on any path she would have taken to the areas where those disasters might have occurred. And, though the scientists were sleeping when she vanished, surely they would have heard any mental or vocal calls for help if Liriili had issued them. I believe that, whatever happened to Liriili, it happened with her cooperation, and perhaps at her instigation.”
    “Hm,” Miiri, Aari’s and Maati’s mother said, “I agree. Knowing Liriili, I think it is far more likely to assume that somehow or other she has left the planet than that she has managed to vanish into thin air as a result of foul play. I do have one possibility to suggest. The equipment we brought for this mission is aimed at detecting objects on or below the planet’s surface, not ships overhead. The flitters and shuttles have the standard suite of detection devices, certainly, but our attention has been concentrated here, upon this planet. It is possible that somehow an orbiting ship might have sent down a shuttle and that Liriili boarded it.”
    “Why would she do that?” the aagroni asked.
    “Well, look around you,” Miiri answered, indicating the rough and barren landscape surrounding the makeshift encampment. “Liriili was not exactly one who liked to do without the amenities. And surely she made some friends and contacts while she was viizaar . And she was in charge of the com unit for the night. Perhaps she hailed a passing, friendly ship whose signal she recognized and begged to be ‘rescued.’ I wouldn’t put it past her, would you?”
    The silence that followed her statement was telling. None of them could say for certain that they could.
    “Whatever