Dorothy said carefully, "But that is impossible." A column of smoke on the flank of the coastal range, above one of the beaches where building stone was found. Blue-gray against the red and black, it rose straight in untroubled air. "They weren't taking Betsy out till we got back." "Too high anyway," Dunin said. "No need to climb so high for the stone." Dorothy whispered, "I have _never_ quite believed that Ed and Ann----" "Oh, Dorothy! Well, we----" "Yes, I saw the lifeboat go down on the channel. It didn't sink." She shut her eyes. "It was a misty evening, lover, more ways than one. Remember, Dunin?" "I'll always remember." "Paul, I know that when the open-sea current below the island took the lifeboat it must have been smashed against the cliffs--oh, of course--and for nine years the sea spiders will have used the pieces of it for their little castles and hideaways. All the same--Ed and Ann could have managed to swim ashore. Cross the range somehow or go around it." "Nothing to eat. Barren rock straight up from the beaches, where there are any beaches, for ninety miles south of the only place where they could have landed and for twenty miles north of it." "But no kaksmas in the coast range either; no omasha, this side. There _are_ beaches here and there. They might have found--shellfish--blue seaweed." "Nine years----" "It _is_ smoke. Our people wouldn't be up there...." "You've never wanted to talk much about that day." "No, I--haven't. I didn't behave too well myself. Yes, there are things I've never told.... Paul, Ed Spearman was like somebody I didn't know. He did say in so many words that he planned to go to Vestoia, not to--to throw himself on the mercy of Lantis, but to 'give her civilization'--he said. We tried, Ann and I, tried to reason with him against that. I think he had some alternative plan--maybe flying south of Vestoia as far as the fuel would take him and starting a community of his own--with Ann and me, you know, and himself the old man of the tribe." "And without us," said Dunin mildly.