At the door, Snake turned and lifted the jewel from Geo's neck, and held it aloft. The jewel glowed now, with a blue-green light that seeped into the corners and crevices of the ruined entrance. Shreds of cloth hung at the windows, most of which were broken. Twigs and rubbish littered the metal floor. They walked between double seats toward a door at the far end. Effaced signs still hung on the walls. N .. SM .. K .. G The door at the end was ajar, and Snake opened it all the way. Something scuttered through a cracked window. The jewel's light showed two seats broken from their fixtures. Vines covered the front window in which only a few splinters of glass hung on the rim. Draped in rotten fabric, a few metal rings about wrists and ankles, two skeletons with silver helmets had fallen from the seats. Snake pointed to a row of smashed glass disks in front of the broken seats. _Radio_ ... they heard in their minds. Now he reached down into the mess on the floor and dislodged a chunk of rusted metal. _Gun_, he said, showing it to Geo. The three men examined it. "What's it good for?" asked Urson. Snake shrugged. "Are there any electricities, or diodes around?" asked Geo, remembering the words from before. Snake shrugged again. "Why did you want to show us all this?" Geo asked. The boy only turned and started back toward the door. When they were standing in the oval entrance, about to climb down, Iimmi pointed to the ruins of the building ahead of them. "Do you know what that building was called?" _Barracks_, Snake said. "I know that word," said Geo. "So do I," said Iimmi. "It means a place where they used to keep soldiers all together. It's from one of the old languages." "Where to now?" Urson asked Snake. The boy climbed back down into the clearing and they followed him into the denser wood where only pearls of light scattered through the trees. They emerged at a broad ribbon of silver, the river, broken by rocks. "We were right the first time," Geo said. "We should have stayed here." The sound of rippling, sloshing, the full whisper of leaves and foliage along the edges of the forest--these accompanied them as they lay down on the dried moss behind the larger rocks. And with the heaviness of release on them, they dropped, like stones down a well, the bright pool of sleep. * * * * * _The bright pool of silver grew and spread and wrinkled into the familiar shapes of mast, the rail of the deck, and the whiteness of the sea beyond the ship. The scene moved down the deck, until another gaunt figure approached from the other direction. The features, though strangely distorted by whiteness and pulled to grotesquerie, were recognizable as those of the captain as he drew near._ _"Oh, mate," said the captain._ _Silence, while the mate gave an answer they couldn't hear._