The only news item worth noting is the persistent rumor that the Atlas expedition to the outer Poseidon system has discovered a second gate. Everyone knows this, but everything else about the rumor - where the gate goes, where it is, how they found it - varies.

Something attacks the CICADA again and Jenny wakes up Dive, who is excited but then realizes that it's just the CICADA and strolls rather than runs to the bay. Once there, he realizes that it's on Whitney, and chases it towards one of the lava tubes before losing it. Whitney was having a dream about floating hurt on a seaweed mat somewhere, that stopped abruptly.

"Whitney, do you realize you were wrapped in this... creature?" - Dive. Float. Whoever.

"I'm quite jealous that you're letting flat-fishes ravish you during the night." - Pilot.

Everyone is awakened, and they decide that the dreams must be coming from the thing, which is clearly an aborigine. Regina wonders if it would give her dreams and access her memory if she slept in the bay.

"Do you have an inflatable Whitney?"

"No! But I've heard they sell them."

"What?"

"There are places online where you send them pictures..." - Pilot et. al.

The next day (110.101) they do some blood analysis on Whitney but find only trace amounts of a few odd chemicals. Pilot has a severe anxiety attack on the plane, feeling like he's drowning, but doesn't have the same reaction to being in the aborigine trap, which is similarly confining. Jenny starts disassembling his flight software.

While Jenny is doing that, everyone else goes to explore the lava tubes. They send the CICADA down the one that Float remembers the aborigine going down, but find the end closed off, and strangely free of marine life. They debate sending the machine down another tube, but are worried about encountering the eel. They put a camera in there, but limpets keep crawling over the lens and trying to mate with it.

Jenny finds that there is a module in the code that after a while starts sending ultrasonics through the control interface. She disables it, and makes a copy to look at further.

That night everyone is awakened by an alarm and pounds down to the bay. Whitney and Pilot chase the aborigine back to the tube, Whitney pausing on the edge and Pilot charging in (a tight fit). The Great White Eel is also in the tube, and rams Pilot out rather than fighting in the tube itself. Then it stays in the mouth of the tube with its own mouth open, making clicking noises in a threat display. They debate a bit what to do, but Float shows up with a concussion grenade and demonstrates his hydroshot skills by putting the grenade right into the eel.

It takes them half an hour to clear the remains out of the tube. Pilot finds the eel tenderized and tasty. When they enter the tube, they find it smoother than before, but there is nothing in there. They decide that the end is definitely a seal rather than natural. Then they take the opportunity to check the other tubes, since they no longer fear the eel. One is collapsed, one sealed like the first, and the last leads out of the water to a cache of weapons - a crate of plastic explosive, one containing four SASER carbines, a rocket launcher with four rockets, and a big crate of jars of some kind of purplish paste.

In the morning they decide they want to blow open the seal. Pilot and Jenny spend the morning placing explosives, and they blow it open around midday. All hell breaks loose.

Whitney and Regina go in, followed by Pilot. The two women are quickly disabled by aborigines who poke them with some sort of numbing toxin. Pilot is driven out by electrical and chemical attacks. Float goes for the weapons cache. Meanwhile Pilot tries to get back into the tube to save the women, but can't get past the aborigines. Finally, just as Pilot is tranquilized, Float returns with a SASER and seriously wounds an aborigine, causing them to retreat into the tunnel in a cloud of black ink. Following them, he is struck from behind and has time only to shoot wildly (hitting Pilot) before passing out.

Jenny finally overcomes her fear seeing the blood in the water and gets Pilot to the surface and conscious. Pilot pulls up Float, and the three of them tend their wounds and wonder what to do.

"They took his SASER and shot you with it!" - Jenny.

Whitney turns up a couple hours later, floating in the bay, and remembers one of those memory dreams which focussed on their discussions about breaking in to the tubes. More debate follows, but they decide to hope that Regina will also be returned rather than call the law or anything like that. Regina will have drowned long since in any case if the aborigines disliked her.

In the morning, Regina does in fact turn up. She has relived her entire life in dreams, and it wasn't what she expected. She remembers now being a native child in a small village where the adults went crazy. Running off into the woods, she was found by a survey team including the couple who she thinks of as her parents. They take her back with them and a psychiatrist friend basically brainwashes Regina into thinking she grew up on Earth, thus masking the terrible trauma and making her a functional little girl instead of a quivering wreck.

Afterwards, Whitney leaves an offering in the lava tube - flowers, alcohol, food - as a native style apology to the aborigines.