"N O, THERE'S NO chance this thing could be two billion years old," said Dr. Katz to one of the marines. "It would have eroded in this environment long ago."

They were all crammed into an inflatable airlock at the axis of the spinning habitats. The lock was transparent. Michael had trouble focusing on his suit checklist, because his gaze kept drifting to the infinite expanse of stars surrounding them. It was nothing he hadn't seen before— but to say that was to completely miss the point. There were few sights more awesome than space itself, devoid of worlds.

He tried to concentrate on the nasal twang of Katz's voice. "Any dust and debris we encounter comes at us as high-energy cosmic radiation. A few thousand years of that and even the best structure will deteriorate. No, this ship can't be more than a century or two old, if that."

"Yeah, what about this radiation thing," said another marine. "We're going so fast now, if we hit anything bigger'n a pin, we're vapor, right?"

"Maybe so," said Katz, "but you and I can't begin to comprehend just how empty it is out here. Every second each one of us is passing through about a million and a half times our own body's volume worth of space. In all that volume, we're only hitting a few stray particles— the rest have been cleared out of the way by the plow sail and there weren't that many to begin with."

The marine didn't look reassured. Michael couldn't say he blamed him.

"The stars don't look any different," said the first marine, who now had his suit check completed and his helmet dogged. Michael was still struggling with his gloves. "Isn't there supposed to be some kind of 'starbow' thing happening?"

"Popular misconception," said Katz. "Nope; you'd need a spectrograph to figure out our velocity. We might as well be standing still as far as I can tell."

Michael glanced behind him. Rue Cassels was already in her suit and was chatting with one of her crew. There were three of the halo-worlders on this jaunt, plus two marines and four scientists, Michael included. His scientific qualifications were pretty thin compared to some of the others, but he did have the benefit of five years spent with Dr. Herat.

The professor was suited up too. "Snap to it, Bequith. Here, let me help you." Dr. Herat settled the helmet on his head. "Nervous?"

"Of course. What kind of a fool do you take me for?"

Herat laughed. "There! You're all set. Not a second too soon, too— they're evacuating the airlock."

Michael looked around, expecting to see the transparent balloon crumpling in around them. It took him a few moments to figure out that since there was no air pressure outside it, it wouldn't collapse even when all the air inside was removed.

"Load up! Four to a cart!" shouted the lead marine. Space suited figures began jumping up to the waiting EVA carts; these were little more than I-beams with clips, spare oxygen, and supply nacelles and a motor at the back. Michael clipped his safety line to one and found himself face-to-face— or more properly, faceplate-to-faceplate— with Rue Cassels.

"Mr. Bequith," she said brightly. "I'm sorry for my behavior in the cantina this morning. It was rude."

"No offense taken," he said, a little stiffly to his own hearing.

"It just threw me when you said you were from Kimpurusha," she said. The cart lurched into motion and Michael grabbed for a handhold. Without missing a beat, Rue continued, "I didn't realize I felt so strongly about it."

Michael tried not to look beyond her to where the translucent habitats were rapidly receding. They seemed the only objects in all of space.

"I feel pretty strongly about it, too," he said. He quickly checked to ensure that she had opened a private channel between them; then he said, "I was involved in a rebellion against the R.E. when I was seventeen."

He couldn't see her face now; she was a silhouette against the diamond-hard stars. She didn't say anything for a moment and he thought he must have revealed too much. Then she said, "I feel like an idiot."

"What do you mean?"

"Here I go knowing just how different all us halo-worlders are from each other and it never occurred to me that people from High Space might be diverse, too. I just assumed you were all one big happy family."

"I remember before the Reconquista," he said. "It was only twenty years ago."

"I guess so," she said. "We only heard about Kimpurusha four years ago. I grew up thinking that of all the worlds, it, at least, would never give over to the R.E."

Now that he thought about it, it was plain that news about Kimpurusha's fall would not even now have reached the farthest outposts of the Cycler Compact. Dispatches from his brothers at the monastery, sermons, and theological abstracts were still winging their way at light-speed to the struggling colonies around isolated Jovian planets and methane dwarfs hanging in the silent darkness between the lit worlds. For them, the events of his childhood had not yet occurred.

"Turnover in five seconds," said the marine flying the cart.

"Hang on," said Rue. "No, like this." She drew his hand to a ring he hadn't known was there. "And watch the stars— it'll keep you from throwing up."

There was a stomach-lurching moment as the cart flipped over; watching the stars turn seemed to work, though, since that way Michael knew the feeling was real and not the phantom-falling sensation that he always had when weightless. "Deceleration in five," said the marine.

"There it is," said Rue. Her silhouetted arm pointed almost straight down. "Lake Flaccid."

Somebody had a floodlight and was roving it over the structure; there was no way to tell where the light was coming from, of course, since there was no air here to show a beam. Michael could see a disembodied oval of illuminated metal, which zipped to and fro dizzyingly, sometimes sliding off the giant sphere and disappearing completely. The first time that happened, he thought the light had been switched off, the effect was so total. It didn't help that the habitat rotated, so the vision of metal sliding through the spotlight made it seem as though the beam itself was moving, even when it wasn't.

"First time we came here," said Rue, "I was so scared. The place looks like my home, you know— like Allemagne. But it wasn't. It could hold anything— monsters, maybe, ghosts. I swear I have never been so frightened in my entire life as I was when we went to open the airlocks of the lake."

He laughed shakily. "I can believe that."

Whoever held the spotlight switched it to broader illumination and the whole habitat appeared, a ghostly white metal sphere covered with zigzag seams. A little vapor hazed off it; the marine, his voice flat, said, "See a bit of hydrogen evaporating from the heat of the lamps." They were probably still half a kilometer away and the light was not very strong. Michael decided he would not ask what the local temperature was.

The other cart blinked into existence below them; simultaneously its shadow appeared, hugely distorted, near the limb of the sphere.

"Knock knock," said someone; it sounded like Katz. "Anybody home?"

"There's two hotspots," said Corinna Chandra. She was on the other cart. "Opposite one another. Last time we found a hatch by one. Maybe there's one by the other."

"Did you mark the hatch you used?" asked Dr. Herat.

"We clipped a line to a ring there. You can see it at four o'clock."

It took a while for Michael to see it, because Corinna's four o'clock was his ten o'clock. A thin thread of white hovered just over the habitat's horizon; that must be it.

"We'll explore the second entrance later," said Dr. Herat. "Today we're going to follow your original route in. This time out we're interested in the lake, not the external structure."