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As his gaze roamed along the spokes of the twisted ladder, contemplating its all-but-infinite possibilities, he could not help thinking again of the pentominoes that Grandma Ellen had set out before him years ago. There were only twelve of those shapes-yet it would take the lifetime of the universe to exhaust their possibilities. And here was no mere dozen, but billions upon billions of locations to be filled by the letters of the genetic code.

The total number of combinations was not one to stagger the mind-because there was no way whatsoever in which the mind could grasp even the faintest conception of it. The number of electrons required to pack the entire cosmos solid from end to end was virtually zero in comparison.

Duncan stepped out into the blazing sunlight, waited for his dark glasses to adjust themselves, and set off in search of Dr. Todd, guide and friend of his previous visit. He would not be leaving for another four hours, and there was one major item of business still to be settled.

Luckily, as Sweeney Todd explained, there was no need to go out to the

Reef.

“I can’t imagine why you’re interested in those ugly beasts. But

you’ll find some on a patch of dead coral at the end of that groin; not much else will live there. The water’s only a meter deep-you won’t even need flippers, just a strong pair of shoes. If you do step on a stonefish, your screams will bring us in time to save your life-though you may wish we hadn’t.”

That was not very encouraging, but ten minutes later Duncan was cautiously walking out into the shallows, bent double as he peered through his borrowed face mask.

There was none of the beauty here that he had seen on the approach to

Golden Reef. The water was crystal clear, but the sea bed was a submarine desert. It was mostly white sand, mingled with broken pieces of coral, like the bleached bones of tiny animals. A few small, drably colored fish were swimming around, and others stared at him with anxious, unfriendly eyes from little burrows in the sand. Once, a brilliantly blue creature like a flattened eel came darting at him and, to his great surprise, gave him a painful nip before he chased it away. It was every bit of three centimeters long, and Duncan, who had never heard of cleaning symbiosis, worried about poison for a few minutes. However, he felt no pangs of imminent dissolution, so pushed his way onward through the tepid water.

The concrete groin-part of the island’s defense against the ceaseless erosion of the waves -stretched out for a hundred meters from the shore and then disappeared beneath the surface. Near its seaward end,

Duncan came across a pile of jumbled rocks, perhaps hurled up by some storm. They must have been here for many years, for they were cemented together with barnacles and small, jagged oysters. Among their caves and crevices, Duncan found what he was seeking.

Each sea urchin appeared to have hollowed out its own cavity in the hard rock; Duncan could not imagine how the creatures had performed this remarkable feat of burrowing. Anchored securely in place, with only a bristling frieze of black spines exposed to the outer world, they were invulnerable to all enemies except Man. But Duncan wished them no harm, and this time had not even brought a knife. He had seen

294 enough of death, and his sole purpose now was to confirm-or refute-the impression that had haunted him ever since he had set eyes on that drawing in Karl’s notebook.

Once again, the long black spines started to swing slowly toward his shadow. These primitive creatures, despite their apparent lack of sense organs, knew that he was there, and reacted to his presence. They were scanning their little universe, as Argus would search the stars…. Of course, there would be no actual physical movement of the Argus antennas-that was unnecessary, and would be impossible with such fragile, thousand kilometer-long structures. Yet their electronic sweeping of the skies would have an uncanny parallel with Diadema’s protective reaction. If some planet-sized monster, which used ultra long radio waves for vision, could observe the Argus system at work, what it “save’ would be not unlike this humble reef dweller.

For a moment, Duncan had a curious fantasy. He imagined that he was such a monster, observing Argus in silhouette against the background radio glow of the Galaxy. There would be hundreds of thin black lines, radiating out from a central point-most of them stationary, but some of them waving slowly back and forth, as if responding to a shadow from the stars.

Yet it was hard to realize that even if Argus was built, no human eye could ever see it in its entirety, The structure would be so huge that its slender rods and wires would be totally invisible from any distance.