The ghostly light following the double eclipse woke something in the Green Man, and he got up amid the crowd, now pointing into the heavens, and running here and there in disarray. Like some kind of sleepwalker, he made his way through them, and came upon a knot of Ternians around the Elder. The Elder was quietly ordering a variety of measures to be undertaken for the protection of all, and from moment to moment someone nodded and raced off. Finally, after the last orders had been given, the Elder spoke to the one known to Boukey as the Terran, who also moved off towards the gracefully carved city, now grotesquely marred by the landed Enterprise. The Elder looked skyward.

Boukey moved forward. "Sir."

The Elder saw him, and smiled. "Welcome to Tern."

And then Boukey did something strange. He reached up and touched the face of the Elder. "You -- you -- are like someone I once knew -- but has gone out of my memory. All I know is the ghost of a feeling."

The Elder stood quietly, and let him continue. There was a hum beginning high in the air.

"Sir", said Boukey, "I think, I think, I had to destroy these memories to protect something or someone. There was a world -- a world named --" and here he paused, groping, "named Margarnagarr, and on this world there were, what were there, there were tribes, yes, tribes, like yours, singing and piping in some celebration. And then the eclipse came, like the ghost light around us now. And we escaped, someone and I, except that something happened to the other someone, and to the world."

The humming in the high air began to turn sour, and another sound, like a harsh wind, arose.

Boukey began to cover his ears, but the Elder stopped him. "Keep on," he said,"What do you remember? Do you remember anything about the other person?"

Boukey shook his head."I cannot remember. All I remember is a vast river with bodies like fallen leaves drifting over it."

The Elder frowned. "I wish I knew whether you meant good or evil in the end. For I begin to suspect one thing --" and here he looked skyward again -- "I suspect that it was you who brought that ship here, through all that protective shielding and our asteroid circle, as if it were gossamer; and I suspect that it was you who brought the dark ships behind them. They followed something like a wave, planted or growing all the time in your mind, as if they were rats following the music of a pied piper. You or something in you is betraying Tern, I think."

Boukey looked panic stricken for a moment, and then said: "Sir, I believe you are right. And I believe that the Iceman and the woman Mandy who came with me somehow hold part of the truth."

And meanwhile the acrid music began to descend like a shrieking mist upon the peoples and cities across the planet of Tern.