Ki Teel fought rising panic by recounting the ways in which he'd been a fool. First, one never flew a shuttle alone, which he had. Second, one never flew in bad weather unless qualified, which he wasn't. Finally, a good pilot wouldn't have wrecked the reaction control grids by slamming down onto the rocky coastline, which he'd also done.

Lightning flickered beyond the ports. Thunder grumbled as the storm lumbered off towards the ancient city. There had been no logical reason for his return; all the important work was done, the data analyzed and preparations completed for moving on to the next site.

Something elemental had drawn him back though. For the first time in his life, on the surface of this dead world, he felt that he belonged. After all the millennia of searching and hundreds of light cycles from the twin suns Toy and Sarus, his species had found the world of its origin.

Through a pall of heavy rain he gazed thoughtfully at the ruins. A very long time ago a magnificent city had been there, outwardly not unlike thousands of others Toysarian scientists had excavated. This place, though, was different. The fractured and crumbled walls; the warped and blistered pavement of once broad thoroughfares; the towers of steel now little more than time-devoured remnants... All of this had drawn him back one last time, but nothing more so than the ghosts of the people who had built a grand planet-wide civilization. Tragic that it had been their very resourcefulness and creativity that had destroyed them and their world. Nothing remained now but a barren, blasted planet. It hadn't taken the Toysarian scientists long to find what they'd all seen before: world destruction wrought by a species too certain of their technology. The bloated star above testified to that universal frailty.

He pressed closer to the port and peered upward. Nothing but churning clouds; unlikely that he could spot the orbiting ship anyway. So dark out there, so barren and featureless, even time here seemed frozen. Fear wormed deeper and he cringed away from the port, forcing his thoughts elsewhere.

They'd found answers here, learned more about the supreme global species of this lost world, the people who'd long ago lofted a frail craft into space upon which they'd wistfully placed a plaque telling of themselves. Most importantly they'd also told anyone who chanced upon that tiny probe where they were in the galaxy. Also on that primitive space wanderer there had been a crude recording of sounds and voices of this world. He chuckled when he remembered how difficult it had been for Toysarian science to figure out how to use the recording. When they finally did they'd heard a call from their primordial past. Included in the foreign words and sounds was one that linguists identified as an aboriginal form of the Toysarian tongue.

No one knew for certain just how long his kind had searched the galaxy. But then, suddenly, along came that time-battered space probe. Toysarians knew more about its origins and builders than they did their own species.

All that could be said with certainty was that they'd flourished and advanced. Intelligence united with self-awareness until, in time, they'd recognized how truly unique they were. And how alone. Nowhere did there exist one fossilized scrap of bone, lingering cell, or DNA signature that could be called the fundamental beginning of the Toysarian species. They had simply, at some point millennia ago, appeared beneath the light of the twin suns.

Back in his seat he vainly tried the radio again. Useless of course. His so-called landing had destroyed that system too. Nothing to do but sit, wait, and hope. He squirmed uncomfortably. His skin was getting drier, irritated and itching from being away from a soak tank too long. Before anything else, when he got back to the ship, he'd treat himself to a long session in his tank.

Strange, he mused, that next to rescue he wanted nothing more than relief for his chafed skin. Thoughts of comfort even diminished the great achievement the expedition had attained, the verification that this world, where he was now trapped in a tiny cylinder, was truly the Genesis Planet.

Ki Teel's mind suddenly filled with the familiar rush of co-mentality. "Ki Teel... Ki Teel...this is Bar Lazron."

He rushed back to the shuttle port. "Lazron...! 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, Lazron." He wanted to match Lazron's casual tone but couldn't. "The shuttle is wrecked. So is the radio."

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

"Lazron, 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, Ki...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 Lazron. "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 so much work to be done. But would he be around for it? 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 assumed that when they found the planet of their origins the people who had transported the Toysarian progenitors away from their home would be encountered. Perhaps even a Toysarian core population would remain. The first possibility had been quickly eliminated. The planetary civilization that had once thrived here never made the technological leap to interstellar space travel. Nor, Ki Teel suspected, would any artifacts or fossil remnants of some highly advanced Toysarian population be found.

He called up a computerized checklist. Maybe he'd overlooked some emergency procedure that could save him. As he studied it, another part of his mind picked at a haunting question: why? Why had his species, instead of the more technologically advanced life form, been chosen for the transfer?

Thunder rolled, closer this time. That's all he needed...another violent squall. His sense of isolation and loneliness returned with renewed intensity. He paced the cabin frantically. Rushes of fear tingled through him like an electric shock, threatening at any moment to flash over into absolute terror. It was a bad time for an alarm to go off.

Ki Teel jumped when the nerve-grating buzz filled the cabin. He rushed back to the control console where a yellow light flashed insistently. He jabbed a button and a display readout gave him the bad news: the shuttle only had 30 tags of air left. It would be at least another 25 tags before help could arrive from the ship. Terror flashed into panic. Get into a torus was the only coherent thought that emerged from his racing mind. He stumbled around the cabin for a few moments, unable even to remember where the torus platform was, and when he did find it his shaking hands were nearly useless for activating the controls. He sobbed with blind desperation and frustration. Finally there was but a single pad to touch and the machine would activate, generating a quantum field that would sheath his body in an impenetrable flux. For one fleeting moment he hoped he'd done everything correctly. Just as he reached for the last push pad he sensed a subtle change; his mind seemed clearer, less fogged by the witless rush of thoughts.

A warm tranquility flowed through him. His panic eased, abated, then was gone.

"Bar Lazron?" The query emerged from his mind and raced off. "Is that you? Are you there?" There was no response, nothing but the familiar touch of some consciousness blending with his own and holding back the fear.

Ki Tell returned to his seat and waited quietly while the tags ticked away. "Who is this?" His call went out but there was no answer, only the warmth of serenity. When the control panel light changed from amber to red he rose and returned to the torus platform. As he prepared the system a strident alarm blasted into the cabin, but he hardly noticed.

Invisible flux fingers wrippled through his body and wormed inward. A vague glow shaped itself around his hairless, smooth head, moved swiftly down, sweeping into the recessed sockets around his eyes, encasing his bulbous nose, tickling the corners of his lips where ancient genetics had inscribed a perpetual grin. Within moments he was completely encased in the protective field.

Outside the shuttle he paused. Lightning from the oncoming squall flickered across a tumultuous landscape of jagged lava rock. Off to his left a short distance the ocean beat itself against the bleak shoreline. "Are you there?" Ki Tell asked, but once more he sensed no intelligible answer. A sound came then, a low hum in the sky. Briefly through the clouds he caught a glimpse of the descending shuttle. For a moment more he lingered. "Are you there?" Still no answer came, and with one final search of the rocky shore and churning ocean he set off towards the shuttle's lights.

Behind him in the sea, a glistening form broke the tossed surface. Grey and shining wet, the creature pivoted in the water, watching Ki Tell until he disappeared into the darkness. Beneath dark eyes a graceful elongated snout extended and the thin lines of a broad mouth turned upward in a perpetual grin.