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side in the sand outside the cave.
    Tanya and Sue.
    Corrie and Rachel exchanged a glance. “Let’s go and get them.”
    They crossed the river and climbed the incline. The triptych of Gargoyles paid them no heed. Corrie hurried over to the women and knelt beside them. They were half awake, still clearly labouring under the influence of the toxic fruit.
    “Wait here,” Corrie said. She hurried towards the cave. At any moment she expected the Gargoyles to block her way but it was as if she no longer registered in their perception. She walked into the cave, paused and stared around her. She had not noticed it before, but the place stank of sweat and faeces. The remaining humans – all male, significantly – occupied the cells, semi-comatose and inert.
    Quickly Corrie located the water canister attached to Imran’s belt, took it and rejoined the others. With Rachel’s help she managed to assist Tanya and Sue across the river and into the shade of the palm-analogue.
    While Tanya and Sue slept off the effects of the drug, Corrie and Rachel searched the jungle for food and drinkable water. They found a couple of pineapples, and a spring of almost-clear water. Corrie filled the canister and returned to the palm tree.
    An hour later, first Tanya and then Sue stirred. Corrie helped Tanya into a sitting position, gave her a drink of spring water. When Sue resurfaced, they sat and ate a meagre meal of oily forest fruit.
    Corrie told the others why she had thought, mistakenly, that she had been evicted.
    Tanya shook her head. “It had nothing to do with the fact that you refused the fruit,” she said. “What do we have in common?”
    “Huh?” Corrie shrugged. “What, that we’re women?”
    Tanya smiled. “Even more basic than that. I mean, how the hell do the Gargoyles know we’re women?” She laughed at Corrie’s mystified expression. “Look,” she went on, pointing to her own crotch. Her leggings were adorned with a bright Rorschach blotch of blood.
    Rachel and Sue glanced down, nodded. Living and working so closely together, their periods had fallen pretty much into step with each other.
    Corrie said, “Me, too. I washed my leggings in the river. But why...?”
    Tanya shrugged. “Would you credit it, we come light years through space and discover the same old prejudices. The Gargoyles evicted us because they thought us unclean, or contaminated, or whatever. Faulty goods.”
    After a long silence, Corrie said, “So... any ideas about what the hell’s happening over there?”
    “Perhaps the Gargoyles are simply altruistic,” Rachel said. “They saw that we were starving...”
    Tanya looked sceptical. “One thing we can be sure of, girl, is that we can’t ascribe human motivations to the actions of aliens.”
    Sue said, “More important than the psychology of the Gargoyles, to be perfectly honest, is how are we going to feed ourselves?”
    Corrie stared across the river to the cave-mouths and the trio of immobile aliens. “The simple fact is that we can’t survive off what we can get from the jungle – the pineapple things and berries. We’ve tried that and failed miserably. But we can eat the fruit the Gargoyles provided us with. If we combine the two, ration ourselves to only one fruit a day, then maybe we can make it until the Darwinian arrives.”
    “That’s fine in theory,” Tanya said, “but how do we get hold of the aliens’ precious fruit?”
    Corrie shrugged. “We follow the Gargoyles to where they harvest the stuff, wait till they leave, and then help ourselves.”
    Tanya grunted. “Sounds easy enough...”
    Corrie looked up at the sun, calculated. “An hour till sunset,” she said. “The Gargoyles fed us at nightfall. Why don’t we cross the river and wait until they make a move?”
    They waited for thirty minutes, until the sun sank huge and ruddy behind the darkening jungle, and the lightning flicker of the evening’s static storm started to dance across the treetops. They waded