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“Lousy, but thanks for asking. Anything interesting happen in the night?” He scrounged around for a cigarette, started thinking about which of the ration bars to eat for breakfast.

“It … is … nighttime … now … outside.… Master … You … slept … through … the … day.”

“I don’t see that it makes all that much difference, down here. Where’s Mohs?” Lando had glanced around, up and down the tunnel, and hadn’t seen the old man. Perhaps he’d—

“What … Master?”

“We seem to be having some difficulty understanding one another this—er, afternoon. I said, where’s Mohs, did he wander off somewhere?”

“Master … there is something I must tell you.”

Lando felt a vague alarm. “What’s that, old watch-movement?”

“I believe … from measurements … that you’re shrinking.”

“What?”

“Everything is shrinking.… The tunnel grows narrower by the kilometer.… You have shrunk just enough that my weight upon you causes pain.… The previous rate at which I communicated is too fast.… We are nearing each other’s size and time-passage.”

“Which could mean just as well that you’re growing, did you ever thing of that?” Lando examined the tiny robot in his hand. Let’s see, he’d estimated Vuffi Raa’s previous size at perhaps three millimeters. Yes, no question of it, he was very nearly twice that size now and his miniscule weight was actually perceptible in Lando’s hand.

“Yes.… I considered it I think you are shrinking.”

“Well, I think you’re growing. What about Mohs?”

“Who … Master.… Who is Mohs?”

“Vuffi Raa, don’t do this to me! Mohs—the High Singer of the Toka—the old guy who led us here! Mohs!”

There was a long, long pause. It must have been vastly longer to the speeded-up droid. Finally:

“Master … I recall no Mohs.… Are you certain you feel all right?”

• XVII •

AS THE TUNNEL carried them along, they argued.

“Who was it that we met in the bar, who sang the Songs that pointed the way to Rafa V?”

“Why, Master, something that Rokur Gepta said must have given you the clue, and you guessed. Very good guessing, Master, highly commendable.”

“Well, then, damnit, what about that crowd at the port. Who had been leading the singing?”

“Why, no one, Master, it was simply community chanting, spontaneous on the part of the natives.”

“Arghhh! Okay, why did we land at the pyramid—never mind, I know: it was the biggest building on the planet. Tell me this: if there wasn’t any Mohs, who ambushed us, shot you full of holes, and carried me off to the life-orchard to die?”

“The natives, of course, Master. But there wasn’t any chief or head witch doctor or whatever. The Toka don’t have enough social structure for that.”

“Or to build crossbows? Look, Vuffi Raa, I couldn’t have made up that part about eating a lizard, I just couldn’t.”

“What do you expect me to say, Master?”

“I expect you to say that this is all an elaborate practical joke, and that you’re sorry and will be a good little droid from now on.” Lando shook the plastic package. There weren’t any cigarettes left. “Life is just full of annoyances these days.”

Vuffi Raa stood on the floor by Lando’s knee. He was five or six centimeters tall, by then, looking very much like one of those tropical spiders that eat birds.

“I wish I could do that,” he squeaked, no longer coding his messages in pulses. He had to make a conscious effort to slow them down for his still-gigantic master. “What reason would I have to lie, Master?”

Lando crushed the pack, started to throw it away, then, looking around him at the clean, uncluttered tunnel, thought better of it and put it in his pocket. “I’m not saying you’re lying, Vuffi Raa. One of us is wrong, that’s all. By the Eternal Core, I can describe the old man to you in the finest detail, from the tattoo on his wrinkled forehead to the dirt on his wrinkled feet!”

Vuffi Raa said nothing to that. He simply sat there growing—or watching his master shrink. That was something else they hadn’t been able to agree about, but they’d tired of arguing about it.

They were also tired of asking one another when the journey would be over. Lando extracted the deck