David Allen abducts Enli and drags her out of the mountains, passing through sections of high radiation to do so. Enli, wearing one of the team's four e-suits, is protected, but David takes thousands of rads. (Back with the team, Ann speculates that David is suffering from grandiose paranoid schizophrenia). The two then descend back down to civilization, where they proclaim to be real and explain that a "sky sickness" is coming. David teaches Worlders the proper techniques to shelter against radiation, and, having proclaimed his reality by dying for the sake of others, convinces the Worlders that Terrans "do" share reality. Meanwhile, Bazargan, Dieter and Ann receive the final transmission from the "Zeus" (having traveled 54 light-minutes to reach them), only to discover that Dieter's artifact reacted to the destruction of Orbital Object #7 "when it was destroyed", once again implying macro-level entanglement. World is ultimately unaffected by the destabilizing wave, for reasons that are not revealed until the sequel. Armed with new hypotheses, the team is retrieved by Terran forces a few days later.