"That's me," Sondra said, and her husband pretended not to hear.

Anna wanted to go. Like a drowning woman wants air, she wanted space and sunlight. In an act of mind-bending courage, she put temptation from her and said nothing.

Holden's rigging through the high slit above the aragonite forest of Razor Blade was a work of artistry. He edged through, a line tied into a carabiner at the back of his belt. A rig and tag line were pulled through using that first line as a tow. Pulleys were anchored at either end by running webbing around a boulder on the Lounge side and a formidable stalagmite on the far end. As he had promised, Frieda went through as neatly as silken thread through a needle's eye.

It took considerably longer for the rescuers, now nineteen in number, to creep and contort through the lower, decorated passage. They went on the buddy system, two at a time, with orders to take it slow, warn each other of endangered formations, and never, under any circumstances, stray from the existing trail. In Holden, Lechuguilla had a staunch protector.

Razor Blade opened on Lake Rapunzel, so named, Oscar said, because the only way to the lake was across fifty-five feet of flowstone, a stunning formation created by eons of trickles leaking down the side of the basin to leave behind golden locks that cascaded as enticingly as the imaginary damsel's tresses.

Traveling in, they had passed through the chamber, but Anna had seen it only fleetingly via scraps of light that served more to irritate her exhausted retinae than to illuminate the room. Now, as it turned out, her lucent fantasy of earlier in the day had come true.

Along with the rigging team working from Rapunzel to the cave's entrance came two newspaper photographers, sent by the Times and allowed in by George Laymon and Carlsbad's superintendent, to record the rescue. They had brought powerful floodlights. When Anna corkscrewed out of the aragonite embrace of Razor Blade, the room and lake were bathed in light. She laughed and clapped her hands like a delighted child. For that instant she was no longer tired, no longer afraid.

The chamber was made of magic. From where she stood on the lip of the run, liquid gold poured down to a lake as crystalline and blue as a summer sky. Beneath the water's surface floated great clouds of white stone, appearing as ethereal as any she'd watched forming over the mountains of southern Colorado. This jewel was in a setting befitting its splendor. Flowing draperies ringed the water in a delicate golden tracery. It staggered the imagination to know this was all made of solid rock. That it had remained hidden from human eyes for the short eternity of its existence lent it a mystical aura. Anna was transfixed.

In short order, bustling humanity compromised the beauty. Zeddie hovered at the drop, checking anchors as the teams began rigging the descent to the water from Razor Blade Run and the shorter climb up a second golden fall to a bleak section of the cave dubbed Katie's Pigtail.

Sublime became surreal as a giant alligator flopped into the diamond waters.

"What in the heck…" Anna heard Oscar whispering beside her.

"It's Frieda's ride."

Anna turned to see Holden looking particularly delighted at the gray-green amphibian. "It's Andrew's favorite. The boy has a deeply generous heart."

Andrew, Anna recalled, was Tillman's four-year-old son.

Oscar shook his head. Fatigue robbed him of his sense of humor.

"Somehow I think the Park Service could have come up with a few inner tubes that would have done the job."

"Oscar, Oscar, Oscar," Holden said sadly, a man lamenting the failure of a promising protégé. "Inner tubes are unclean. Andrew's 'gator is clean, lightweight, easily packed, and designed to float supine bathers."

Even in whimsy, Tillman had a plan. The alligator was ideal. Anna was sorry when he commanded a moratorium on photographs of the actual crossing. It would have made a picture worth having, but Holden wanted his people to keep their minds on their work and not on how their naked hind ends were going to look on the front page of the Sunday paper.

Every caver to cross Lake Rapunzel stripped down to helmets and rubber water socks, then sponged off with water brought up from the lake in plastic pitchers. Their clothes and packs would be ferried over on the alligator as soon as Frieda no longer needed it. Once they had climbed the opposite wall to the entrance of the Pigtail, they would dress and put their boots back on.

Frieda was the only one to remain clothed. The Stokes was wrapped in plastic and a second float put on top of Andrew's alligator to keep her out of the water.

Again Anna was hooked into the spider on the Stokes. This time she was joined by Oscar and Peter. Her job was to watch Frieda, theirs to keep the litter away from the flowstone so the formation would not be scarred. Naked people of all shapes and sizes dangling from ropes over a pint-sized paradise; the picture so tickled Anna she had to think dark thoughts to keep from giggling.

Katie's Pigtail was a miniature version of the North Rift. A jagged crack bordered by breakdown, it cut upward for close to thirty yards, ending in a choked crawl that led into the Distributor Cap-the Swiss cheese room where Anna had waited on the way in while Oscar and Holden negotiated the Wormhole.

The Pigtail wasn't as impressive as the Rift. At its deepest it was forty-two feet, and at no place was it more than ten or twelve feet across. As at the Rift, a litter could not be carried along the breakdown on either side of the drop.

A team from the outer world worked from the far end stringing a traverse so the litter could travel in a more or less straight line. Because of the emergency situation, a power drill and pitons had been okayed by the superintendent, saving the rescuers the time required to find natural anchors: jug handles, arches, stalagmites, knobs, boulders.

Near the end of the Pigtail a pile of breakdown created a wall that continued down to clog the end of the slot. It was this mountain of rock and scree they would climb to reach the exit. Forming the base of this sliding heap of earth was a wedge-shaped boulder fifteen feet across at the top and six feet at the foot. It was lassoed with webbing secured with locking carabiners. The traverse rope was attached to the webbing and so to the boulder.

Faces, arms, and legs burnished bronze by sweat and dirt, cavers crawled everywhere. Cracks were crammed with bodies wrapped in various colored ropes. Ledges held packs, water carriers, and those with no immediate task. Shadows scurried over surfaces to be swallowed by the canyon below and the crevice above. Instructions, questions, and remarks hollered by workers caromed off the walls till conversation was broken down into meaningless words.

In the cacophony of sight and sound, no one was easily recognizable. Like ants, they all looked the same. Sitting at the mouth of the Pigtail with Frieda, Anna had to close her ears and shut her mind to escape the suffocating congestion.

Within two hours the rigging was complete. All personnel not needed for the traverse went on ahead. Noise abated. Once the Pigtail was behind them, the team would break up, most of them leaving for the surface. The core group would remain to set up camp in the Distributor Cap.

Since escape was beyond the realm of possibility as far as Anna was concerned, she found herself looking forward to the departure of the others. As welcome as they had been hours earlier, they were coming to seem an absolute crush of humanity, a veritable horde of interlopers. And she wasn't dreading camp as much as she thought she would. Movement toward the surface was a balm to her soul that allowed her to go on with some show of equanimity, but fatigue was overriding paranoia. Every cell in her body cried out for rest. Regardless of personal demons, she had little doubt that she would sleep like a log.