A minute later she was down on the beach. Sonar Taxlaw was still sitting out on the islet wearing headphones. Einstein was snoring in a sleeping bag. Ty was sleeping in one of the little pop-up shelters that had been supplied by the people from Ark Darwin, which was still anchored offshore, detectable by the slap of waves against its hull. As for Esa Arjun, she nearly collided with him, for he was simply standing there on the beach, robed in a sleeping bag. Odds were fifty-fifty that he was silently meditating, or that he had gotten up to take a piss. Ivyns could be a little funny when their brains got the better of them. Either way—whether he was pissing or thinking—he was temporarily useless, and so she went straight to the shelter and awoke Tyuratam Lake. That took a bit longer than she had been hoping for, which frustrated her greatly since it was now so obvious to her that something was happening up above: she could hear the building whine of the body-orbiting flynk chains that Neoanders employed as both armor and weapons, but could not tell whether this was Langobard getting ready to mount a defense, or the interlopers coming down the hill. The latter she could easily hear now; they had abandoned stealth in favor of haste.