The shae man's hands trembled as he tried to strum a few notes on the harp.

     It was a beautiful instrument, carved from the finest viwood. Assembled, sanded and polished with painstaking care and skill by the great Fal-Galdallan himself, the most skilled craftsman of his generation, and strung with hollow threads of Ghill by his son Tuvillendren who had gone on to surpass his father in almost every respect. The backboard was criss crossed with threads of platinum and gold, cunningly inlaid so as to seem a part of the wood itself, and the varnish gave the whole instrument a golden glow, as if it had its own inner radiance. The greatest experts of the shayen race praised the purity of the notes it produced, but now it was all the shae man could do to hold his fingers steady enough to pluck it. In the end he carefully set it aside and hugged his arms around his knees, rocking back and forth in misery.

     He was sitting in the branches of a dwelling tree, its massive trunk swollen and enlarged by the maggots of a certain kind of wasp that burrowed deep into its wood, secreting hormones as they did so to alter its growth habit, making it more to their liking. The shae folk then carefully hollowed out the tree's interior, turning it into a house, delighting in living in the heart of a living thing. This shae man, however, Daff-Kil by name, was far from delighted. His golden, slanted eyes stared unseeing at the colourful orchids and bromeliads that clung to the heavily ridged bark. His pointed ears were deaf to the singing of birds all about him. His thin lips were pressed tightly together as he strove to call up memories of people he'd met and places he'd been, tried to lose himself in the past. His memory, however, normally photographic in its perfection, now failed him as the reality of his present situation kept pressing itself back on him. Crushing his spirits even further and driving him ever closer to despair.

     Finally he stood and walked along the narrow branch, something he would normally do with the grace and poise of a cat. Now, though, he wobbled uncertainly and had to pause now and again to regain his balance. He entered the tree through the carved opening where the branch joined the main trunk, to where his equally miserable wife was trying to carve a piece of wood into the shape of a squirrel. A human would have declared it a beautiful piece of work, but both shae folk could see the crudity of her efforts. A sign of her distress. She laid it aside to hold his hand as he sat down beside her.

     "How long?" he asked, his voice trembling and unsteady.

     "Three weeks," she replied, giving his hand a reassuring squeeze. "We can do it, my beloved. We are both strong, and together we are stronger still. We have endured it this long..."

     "Three weeks!" cried the shae man in misery, and it was a measure of his distress that he interrupted his wife while she was still speaking; a terrible breach of etiquette among the characteristically polite shae folk. "Nine weeks still to go!"

     He began to shake violently and his wife put both her arms around him, hugging him tight and crooning into his ear. "A human could do this with no effort at all. Trogs live their whole lives underground. Are we so much weaker than they? We can do this, beloved. We can endure."

     He nodded in misery and looked out through one of the windows, looked at the forest stretching away into the distance. Some of those trees were dwelling trees, the homes of other families of shae folk, and the happy sound of music and singing drifted across on the wind. He stared at the scene, trying to believe that it was real rather than the illusion that he knew it to be. Nine more weeks! He could do it! He could!

☆☆☆

     In the grounds of Lexandria University, Saturn Vasil Mon-Morchov, one of the most powerful and respected wizards of the faculty, shook his head in annoyance as he watched the two shae folk in a small, hand held scrying mirror. "Get them out of there," he told his companion, a younger wizard whose dark eyes and long nose peeped out between the rim of his pointy hat and his bushy black beard. The pointy hat was an ancient symbol of wizardry that had been all the rage back in the heady days of the mighty Agglemonian Empire but which was regarded as old fashioned and anachronistic by modern wizards.

     Blackbriar Thorne would have been the first to admit that he was a bit old fashioned, though. He even possessed a genuine magic rod, despite the fact that virtually the entire rest of the magical community now used the more powerful and reliable wands and staves. His dark eyes narrowed a fraction as he turned to regard his superior. "They think they can go the distance. We should give them the chance to prove themselves."

     "Look at them," said the older wizard, though. "I don't doubt they can stick it out, they were chosen for their ability to endure hardship, but what good will they be to us in that state? Might as well spare them any more misery." The younger wizard nodded and went to obey.

     The dome was twenty yards across, and its single door had wards and alarms cast on it to alert the wizards if it was opened from either side. A previous pair of shae folk had tried to sneak out, unable to bear the confinement any longer but too ashamed to admit their failure. They had been caught, but Saturn had flown into a rage even so. If the shae folk couldn't handle confinement, they had to find out now, before they committed themselves to the mission for which they were training.

     Blackbriar Thorne spoke a word to release the locking spells and opened the door. Birdsong and the perfume of verdant green forest flooded out, and the wizard stepped inside onto the carpet of bracken and bluebells. He paused just inside to admire once again the perfection of the illusion that had been cast on the inner surface of the dome. Once the door was closed, there was no way that a human could have told that he wasn't in the middle of a real forest.

     The senses of the shae folk were more acute and discriminating, of course, but several shayen wizards had testified to the quality of the illusion and they'd had high hopes that it would allow shae folk to remain inside for indefinite periods with none of the psychological difficulties they normally suffered from confinement, away from the open skies and the stars they loved so much. The trouble was that, no matter how good the illusion was, the shae folk nevertheless knew that it was only an illusion, that they were confined under a dome of carved wood, and the vast majority of the fair race was simply incapable of coping with that knowledge.

     Blackbriar Thorne stepped carefully around the dense clumps of real greenery planted in the soil of the floor, carefully placed to force the occupants to take circuitous routes from one place to another, to give the impression of greater space under the confining dome. The dwelling tree at the centre was a magically created replica, designed to be indistinguishable, even to shayen senses, from the real thing. The wizard opened its door and the two shae folk looked up in surprise. Another symptom of their condition that they hadn't heard him coming.

     "Saturn ordered the experiment cut short," he explained, gesturing to the exit. "Thank you for your co-operation."

     The shae folk stared in stunned disbelief, then slowly stood and stumbled towards the door. "We could have done it," Daff-Kil said as he passed the wizard, staring up at him with dark, sunken eyes. "We could have... We could..."

     "I'm sure you could," said Blackbriar kindly, offering his arm for the woman to steady herself on. "Saturn needs the chamber for something else, though, and everything else has to be put aside until it's done."

     The shae man nodded gratefully for the pretence, and they stared in soulrending relief at the distant mountains as they emerged from the dome. The man took his wife in his arms as she began sobbing gently, and together they made their way back to the shaewoods; the corner of the valley in which Lexandria's small shayen population made their homes.

     Blackbriar Thorne went to rejoin Saturn, whose single eye was glowering with annoyance and frustration as he watched the departing shae folk. "How many do we have?" the younger wizard asked.

     "Three husband and wife couples able to endure the full twelve weeks without too much discomfort," the senior wizard replied, "and the mission may last a lot longer than that. A lot longer."

     "But the ship's going to have a teleportation chamber, isn't it? Can't they work in shifts, returning to Tharia when the confinement of shipboard life gets too much?"

     "So long as the ship remains in our universe, yes, and so long as there's no maximum range for cabinet teleportation. Using cabinets may extend the range only so much and no further, and of course you can't teleport from one dimension to another. If the place we're looking for is indeed on the other side of a far distant transdimensional portal, as I believe it is, than the ship will be totally cut off from Tharia once it passes through it."

     "Can we get by with only three shayen couples?"

     "We can get by with no shae folk at all, but they're fanatical about protecting their magical secrets. They want shae folk aboard to keep an eye on them, and on us. If it turns out that none of their race can endure space travel, they may pull out altogether, taking their magics with them, and the whole project will be sunk without trace."

     His hands were clenched into fists by his sides and he scowled with impotent fury. "Years of labour could be just thrown away because shae folk don't trust humans. A vital mission to gain intelligence on a potentially powerful and dangerous enemy could be scrapped because of fear and suspicion between the various Tharian races. Dammit! Maybe we deserve to be conquered and enslaved!"

     "Perhaps the fourth couple could be an unmatched pair of shae folk," suggested the younger wizard hopefully. "Two men or two women, for instance. There have been a few couples where the man could take the confinement and the woman couldn't, or vice versa. Put two shayen men together to make the fourth couple."

     "Shae couples hate to be split up," said Saturn, though. "They tend to pine when separated from their partner. The one left at home would suffer as much as if she were onboard ship." He sighed wearily. "I'll look into it. It may be our only chance."

     "At least the new Orbs of Skydeath Protection are working," said Blackbriar, hoping to cheer up his master. "The new test chamber came down this morning with all the lab animals alive and well."

     "After all the trouble we went to retrieving the original, it would have been a shame if they didn't," replied Saturn acidly, "but now it may make no difference. We solve one drassing problem only to run smack into another. I begin to despair that the bloody ship will ever be launched at all!"