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cloth? A flag? It moved against the stark background of a barren hill.
    “What’s that?” Ronan asked him through the helmet com. “What do you see? What’s the orange thing?”
    Ke-ola was panting as he answered, “There’s a guy
waving
the orange thing.”
    Ronan and Murel began to run toward him, but Marmie’s voice crackled into their helmets. “Stop. The flitters will be faster.”
    Even as she spoke, the flitter skimmed the rocky, pitted ground as it swung toward them, pausing long enough for them to climb aboard before chasing down Ke-ola.
    There, they could spot the man waving the flag. It might have been his shirt, since he wasn’t wearing one.
    “Keoki!” Ke-ola yelled. The com unit shrilled painfully loud feedback. “That’s my bruthah, Keoki,” he explained, his voice, though quieter, quivering with excitement.
    “Excellent!” Marmie said.
    By then the flitter had set down, the hatch was opened, and Keoki was practically on top of it before Ke-ola and the others could climb out. The brothers wrapped their arms around each other, but while they were still entangled Keoki began steering Ke-ola back into the hill.
    After Johnny gave the other flitters their location and told them to stand by, the twins, Marmie, and Johnny followed.
    There was a cave entrance in the hill. Keoki lit a torch while Johnny and Marmie flicked the switches in their suits that turned the fingers of their gloves into flashlights and activated another powerful beam on each helmet. Ahead of them a long black tunnel curved sharply downward.
    “Lava tube, not the root canal!” Ke-ola crowed to the others. “Of course! Sure! I should have thought of that. These hills are full of them. Old volcanoes from long time ago, way before we came here.”
    Unencumbered by space gear, Keoki, torch in hand, trotted well ahead of them.
    “The meteors never hit our settlements while I lived here,” Ke-ola said, “but us kids found the tubes. We wanted to explore them but our folks always said it was too dangerous. Then one of my uncles who’d joined the Corps and come back with one leg missing said instruments on the expeditionary ship that brought him back showed subterranean water, bigger than what was in the canals. But they were really deep down so we never got to go all the way down while I was living at home. They’d make a good shelter, though, deeper than most of the meteors could penetrate and with water for the Honus and the others. Yeah. Makes sense.”
    He pulled off his helmet and shook loose his dark hair, which had grown to shoulder length since he left school. “Ahh, good air. Better than in the canals.”
    Johnny referred to the tiny control panel on his wrist again. “It does seem safe enough.”
    They removed their helmets and continued down the tube.
    The tunnel was of black rock that looked as if it had dried after being poured around the cave. In places it was perfectly smooth, in others the floor and walls rippled and undulated. There were no stalactites and stalagmites toothing the passage as they did in the communion caves on Petaybee. Also, deeper and farther along, huge roots pierced through the walls and ceiling of the passage.
    It’s as if they grow upside down,
Murel said.
These roots are more like their branches than the part that grows aboveground.
    The cave smelled pleasantly of life growing and decaying. Moisture soothed their nostrils, dry from breathing the recycled air of the helmets.
    Soon they began hearing noises: an occasional shout or even a laugh, some splashing, coughs, the slap of bare feet, the shuffle of shoes, the rustle of clothing or the rattle of rocks displaced by shifting bodies, sniffs, a sob, a low fevered repetition of unintelligible words that could have been a chant or could have been nonsense. There was even a little singing.
    It grew louder as they walked deeper into the tube. The twins’ knees ached with the steepness of the descent. Their lights bounced off the broadening