When he came, he felt as though his entire body were gushing out through his penis. His back arched, and he cried out, pulling her down on him, his fingers digging so hard into her shoulders that they left vivid bruises for days. Krysty collapsed on him, kissing him tenderly around the face, her lips brushing him with the softness of a moth's wings.

"That was good, lover," she whispered.

"Yeah," Ryan said. "It was."

They made love twice more during that long night. They did it the second time with infinite slowness during the quiet hours of early morning when normally the blood flows at its most sluggish and the elderly and ailing are nearest to death.

The third time was around Din the red. Ryan woke, nestled against Krysty, and he was immediately possessed of a desperate need for her body. He rolled on her and took her quickly, almost brutally, while she was still barely awake.

Afterward, they held each other tightly, slipping back into sleep until they'd had their fill of sleep and were ready for another day.

Ryan went alone to visit Jak Lauren.

The corridors were patrolled by the helmeted sec men, marching in clumsy unison in pairs, none of them even turning to watch the stranger walk by. Ryan tucked his scarf into the neck of his coveralls, pausing at a corner with an attack of painful gas from the turgid food they'd been given. There had been no word from any of the scientists on what they should do that day.

"Go where you can and find out what you can," he'd told the others.

The security units were at the end of one of the corridors farthest away from the center of the Wizard Island complex. Once upon a time they might have been considered unbreakable, but now some of the comp bolts and locks had ceased to work, and there were ordinary bolts rusting on a couple of the doors. One single guard stood outside the main cell where the albino was being kept.

Ryan stopped in front of the sec mutie. "Can I go on through?"

The vid camera above their heads turned and whirred. After a delay of several seconds, Ryan heard a human voice answering him.

"Permission granted, visitwise."

But the sec man didn't move. He stood foursquare, blocking the doorway. Ryan looked up at the camera again, hoping for intervention, but nothing happened. He took a half step forward, and the sec man's blaster shifted, its narrow muzzlecentering on his stomach.

"Fireblast! Move out of the fucking way, you stupe bastard!"

The speaker crackled again. "Regret signals not being received. Please go away and return in one-half letter. May the peace of Central go with you."

"Thanks," Ryan muttered.

When he returned, he found Dr. Ethel Tardy waiting for him, pacing up and down the narrow passage outside the security section.

"Apologies for delay," she snapped. "We are most busy and normal operational repairs have been put on the back burners for too many years. Soon, it will all change. You and your companions may work with us, involvementwise, and share Central's rewards."

"Sure. Can I see the kid?"

The tiny woman nodded, waving her withered arm in a sort of salute. The sec man had disappeared, and all Ryan had to do was slide the bolt at the top and bottom of the door and pull it open. Jak was sitting on a narrow bunk bed. As the door opened, he stood up, his body tensing, but he relaxed as soon as he saw Ryan.

"Hi," he said.

Ryan glanced around and saw Dr. Tardy waddling off. But the dark figure of the sec man had mysteriously reappeared and now stood with his back to them. Ryan pushed the door closed and glanced around the cell. Then he looked closely at the boy's face for any sign of ill treatment. But Jak looked just as he always did — a narrow foxy face devoid of color, the eyes like distant rubies in sockets of wind-scoured bone, the familiar scar across the left cheek that tugged the mouth up into a simulacrum of a smile.

"How ya doing?" he asked.

"Not good. Not bad. Food's terrible. Bread and milk'd be better. How the others?"

"All fine. We found out the truth about Doc Tanner. Where he came from. How old he is. That kind of stuff."

"Yeah. How come?"

Ryan told him quickly, knowing it didn't matter much if the room was bugged. What they knew was already known to the scientists anyway.

Jak sat silent, occasionally asking a question. He wanted to know whether the date of Doc's trawling was linked with the date of the deaths of his two children and was puzzled about Doc's real age. But he never questioned the truthfulness of the story.

"So we could go time traveling? Yeah?"

Ryan nodded. "That's the theory, kid. All we have to do is find a redoubt with the right controls. And find someone who knows how to operate it."

"How 'bout Doc?"

"Who knows?"

They talked for another half hour or so. Jak told Ryan he'd been visited by a couple of scientists who had been interested in his highly developed fighting skills.

"Didn't care I chilled two sec men. Just wanted to know why did it. Not even how. Mostly why."

"After their generations of inbreeding, they must find the idea of slaughtering with your bare hands really weird."

"But minds weren't on it. Worried about research. Told me Central'd be pleased. Nearly got Eurydice done. Any day now."

"Any way now," Ryan muttered, vaguely aware he'd quoted from some old song one of the drivers on War Wag One used to sing all the time.

"How 'bout getting me out?"

"They talk about doing any experiments on you?"

Jak nodded. "Sure. Fuckers wanted neural readings. Synaptic reflex results. Motor speed. Muscle response. Plus lotta brain scans and bone samples. Not facing that, Ryan. You read me?"

"Sure. But not yet, you figure?"

"Not yet. Not until got their experiments done. Won't belong, Ryan."

"No. See you later. Any news, tell us. Any real problem, then get out and run for it. Best advice I can give you, kid."

"When you going to move?" he whispered, head very near to Ryan's.

"Soon." Ryan held up three fingers, showing not today, not tomorrow, but maybe the day after.

As he closed the door and walked past the sec man, Ryan realized how much he was coming to dislike the Wizard Island Complex for Scientific Advancement.

Lori stayed in the dormitory all day, nursing her stomach illness. Krysty stayed with her for some of the time. At one point, though, she went back to the library on her own, but this time the sec door was securely closed. J.B. completed his working plan of the redoubt, putting in all the blind corners and potential danger spots, marking elevators and filling in where he knew. But when he showed his completed plan to Ryan that evening, there were huge blank areas he'd marked only as "Research?"

"What do they do there?" he asked. "I just can't figure it out. They got what I guess is around seven-eights of the place out of our sight. If they're doing weapons research, then they could be building missiles to the sun for all we know."

Dr. Tardy appeared around early Bin green. Her whole diminutive body reflected her anger.

"Your colleague and leader, Dr. Tanner, has caused disgrace here."

"How? What's he done?"

Lori heard this and came running out. She was on the edge of tears. "Where is he? How is he? Is he all right? Tell me."

"Terminate noise," the scientist snapped. "For the first occasion in seventy years there has been an incident of a person being drunk here."

"Doc? Drunk!" Ryan exclaimed.

"Yes. And with poor Dr. Avian, who is diminished, health wise."

"How come?"

"He is being brought here now. His stomach has been pumped in the medic wing, and he will recover."

"Sorry 'bout that," Ryan said.