They walked briskly uphill for several minutes, their view across and down the valley improving as they went. Far below them, the Red delegation had been ascending toward the glider encampment at a stately pace, following in the footsteps that the Seven had made yesterday. Quite clearly, they wanted to be as obvious as possible, and so they were advancing in a pool of brilliant illumination made by portable lanterns, which the members of the peloton were aiming toward the center. The same goal—not seeming to sneak up on the Diggers—might have been achieved simply by waiting a few hours and doing it in daylight. But that was just typical Blue thinking. They were doing it at night for the sheer drama and pageantry of it, this being the sort of thing that Red, by and large, was simply better at than Blue. Ty almost laughed out loud when they got to a place where they could get their first clear look at the approaching spectacle. He was comparing it in his mind to the pitiful show that the Seven had put on yesterday. Of course, the Seven had been surprised, so it wasn’t a fair comparison. But the Diggers would not be making allowances for fairness. What they were seeing was probably a lot closer to how their folk, stuck underground, might have been imagining this moment during the last five thousand years. A tall Aïdan with a mane of glossy black hair preceded the rest. He wore some kind of ceremonial robe that streamed in the cold wind draining down the valley and glowed warmly in the light shone on him by the peloton. Advancing with a measured tread, he held the hoop standard in an absurdly dramatic pose with his upper hand reversed so that the thumb was down and the palm faced forward. It was meaningless but it looked great. A few paces behind him walked an older man with gray hair swept back from his high brow and a neatly trimmed beard. His robes were more subdued but, one suspected, really smashing if you could see them up close. A gold chain around his neck supported a medallion on his chest. His right arm was extended to cradle the left hand of none other than Marge the Digger, whom he was escorting up the hill in the manner of a dad giving away the bride. She was wearing what she’d last been seen in, supplemented with a warmer garment thrown over her shoulders like a cape. It kept trying to fall off as she waved her free hand over her head, signaling to her Digger kin that all was well. When they recognized her, they shouted words of greeting and she waved the more vigorously; her cape fell off and was replaced by one of the uniformed Betas.