Quickly the three began gathering their equipment and hoisting bulky packs onto their backs. After passing his own pack to Eldene, Fethan took up one of the bulky ones as well. Carl, who was now the one without a pack, exchanged his heavy rifle for an even more lethal ugly-looking weapon.

"You still got the ajectant?" Lellan asked when they were nearly ready to go.

Fethan pretended to search his pockets in panic before finding the tube of pills and tossing it to her. She studied them for a moment then carefully buttoned them into her top pocket.

"A more important question to ask is, 'Have the manufactories arrived yet? " he said.

"Not yet," Lellan replied. "But they're on their way — along with some arms, more ballots, and a U-space transmitter."

"A lot," said Fethan, puzzled.

"There, old man: you don't know everything. We've got a ship coming in soon, with enough maybe for us to tilt the balance down here."

"How the hell will you get something that big past the arrays?" Fethan asked.

Lellan turned to Eldene and grinned at her. "Wouldn't he like to know?"

Eldene smiled back uncertainly — she just did not know her own position here. These people behaved as if she was one of them, yet they discussed things that were beyond her. She realized she had a great deal to learn.

They all headed to the cave mouth, Lellan and her two comrades moving some sort of apparently opaque visors across their eyes. Fethan took the lead out into the night, followed by Lellan and Beckle. Before waving her ahead, Carl passed Eldene a pair of glasses of a similar material to the visor he himself wore. She at least understood enough to know that these must provide night vision, but she let out a sound of startlement when she discovered just how effectively — it was as if day had descended instantly. Carl moved in behind her, his head moving from side to side with almost robotic vigilance — his heavy gun hanging from a strap over his shoulder.

It gave her a weird sense of dislocation, this sudden daylight, and walking out into it while realizing that if she raised these glasses she wore it would be night again was weirder still. Trudging along with her new companions, Eldene wondered just how much her life was about to change. She felt trepidation at this, but also a growing excitement at the feeling that she might be taking part in major events. With a sense of irony she realized that just about anything might appear 'major' to someone who had spent a dull five seasons managing squerm ponds. However, a grinding weariness — with which she was all too familiar — soon extinguished excitement. One of the few benefits of her previous employment had been that you got to go to bed at night.

As the trek went on and on, Eldene found herself slipping into a state of fugue. Even seeing three grazers — of the type she had seen earlier — close by on a slope, worming their snouts between the rocks, did not arouse in her any curiosity this time, and later, when something flew overhead making a strange whickering, she didn't even look up at it.

"Watch your footing," warned Carl from behind her, and she gazed down at her boots as if they were somehow disconnected from her. Nevertheless, the boots trudged on, without any intercession from her brain.

How long this continued she had no idea, until Beckle glanced back towards her, his visor raised, and informed her, "Calypse is up."

Eldene removed her night glasses and blinked in the twilight of early morning. Placing the glasses in her pocket, she felt herself coming out of her stupor, as if they had disconnected her from reality. The gas giant had breached the horizon and, in this stage of the cycle, the sun would not be far behind it.

"Not much further," said Carl in a more affable tone, slapping her on the shoulder as he moved past her.

"Well, that'll be one to tell the kiddies," said Beckle.

From all of them there now seemed a relaxing of tension. When Fethan slipped back to walk at her side, Eldene asked him, "The hooder?"

"From what I gather they only hunt in the full dark. Best stay alert, though — they might be wrong about that," Fethan replied. "Be a bit of a bastard to get hit when we're this close."

"Close to what?" she asked.

"The real Underworld," he replied.

Soon they were walking along under a rocky overhang that resembled a breaking wave. The further along this they proceeded, the further it overhung them, until soon it closed over completely on their right and they were entering a perfectly circular tunnel. Seeing the others push their visors back into place, Eldene took out her night glasses and put them back on. Here the effect of them was even stranger, for the inside of a cave was not a place one ever expected to be as bright as day. She found it weird that it could be so light in here without any apparent source of illumination.

The cave curved off to the left then began to drop. Before the floor became too steep to negotiate easily it became stepped. Staring down at these steps, Eldene realized that they were not natural, and had obviously been specially cut.

"What if proctors ever found this place?" she asked Fethan. "They could march straight in."

"Pin-head cameras," Fethan explained, gesturing to the curving walls. "If they did find this place and tried to go down lower they'd find themselves at the hot end of a pulse-cannon."

Before they had descended much further, Lellan held up her hand and the party came to a halt while she unreeled a thin optic cable from her coms helmet and plugged it into a hidden socket in the wall. She then stood frowning with her hand up against the speaking side of her helmet.

"It here yet?" Carl asked.

She detached the cable, then shook her head. "Nothing yet. The dishes are out to track Ragnorak, but they've picked up nothing else."

"Ragnorak?" Eldene whispered to Fethan.

"A weapon powerful enough to destroy what you're just about to see," he replied.

After a time they came down to a level tunnel lit by wall panels, where they all removed their visual aids. Eldene was already thinking how grim an existence it must be to live constantly under the earth in tunnels like this one, when the tunnel itself opened out into a circular chamber. At the centre of this gaped the mouth of a wide shaft, and poised over this stood a steel framework containing a cable mechanism, electric motor, and lift cage. Lellan led the way over, throwing the locks on the cage's wire door with a remote control she took from her pocket. Inside, Eldene noted a more visible camera that moved on its little stem up in the corner of the cage to inspect each of them in turn. Without any of them touching another control, the lift jerked and began to descend, the motor droning.

Against the sides of the shaft clung square light panels like crystals of some exotic mineral, and at one point an encircling ring of what could be mistaken for nothing other than heavy weapons. The deeper down they went, the whiter the calcite glittered in runnels down the walls; and, as the shaft curved, this calcite formed stalactites and stalagmites, so it seemed they were flying between the teeth of some underground monster. Finally reaching the bottom of the shaft, they exited the lift into another tunnel, curving round towards a huge armoured door with another smaller door inset in it.

"A lot of lights," Eldene observed, gazing at the numerous light panels set on faces of stone, their glow reflecting in rainbow hues from the crystalline surfaces of a forest of calcite above.

"Geothermal and hydroelectric energy," said Carl — answering a question she had not asked. "No shortage of that down here."

Eldene noticed then that he had removed his mask and was breathing easily. Feeling gauche, she hinged her mask down and breathed clear air. It was cold and tasted of iron, but sweet.