Thoughts of that delicious comfort even diminished the expedition's great achievement of being the first Toysarians in eons to touch the Genesis Planet.

Lom Seel's mind suddenly filled with the familiar rush of the co-mentality common to his species. "Lom Seel? Lom Seel?this is Fel Meesh."

He rushed back to the shuttle port. "Meesh?! Yes, I'm here." He pressed his face against the cold sylex, eyes straining skyward.

"Ah, so there you are," his friend responded. "And just what may I ask do you think you're doing down there?"

"I'm in trouble, Meesh." He tried to match Meesh's casual tone but couldn't. "The shuttle is wrecked. So is the radio."

"Oh, is that all? Did the shuttle somehow wreck itself?"

"Meesh, this is no time for your twisted sense of humor. Get me out of here!" Already the mental link was weakening as the ship plunged toward the horizon.

"Stay calm, Seel?we've got a general fix on your location."

He tore his gaze away from the sky and focused on the surface outside. Through the rain and fog he just barely made out the ghostly white of wind-torn waves crashing against black rocks.

"Can you see?" he called to Meesh. "This is where I am. Do you see?" There was no answer. He paced the cabin for a few moments, then returned to his seat at the control station.

There was still much work to be done. Preliminary exploration was complete. Next would come a global and minutely detailed investigation of the oceans. All along Seel had believed that the seas here, pitiful and threatened though they were, should have received the first thrusts of research. The genetic existence of his species hadn't begun in the oceans of Toysarus, but tracing their path backward always led there. Even today every Toysarian was linked to it in myriad ways. But would he be around for that crucial research? No, he mustn't think like that. His time could best be spent planning ways to solve the final part of the Toysarian genesis mystery.

How had they gotten from this world to Toysarus? It had always been hoped, when they found the planet of their origins, that they'd encounter the people who had transported the Toysarian progenitors off to their new home. Perhaps even a Toysarian core population would remain. It was not to be. The planetary civilization that had once thrived here never made the technological leap to interstellar space travel. Nor, Lom Seel suspected, would any artifacts or fossil remnants of some highly advanced Toysarian population be found.