“I wasn’t serious,” he said.

“When are you? Serious?”

“Never on ghost hunts.” It was cold in the cabin. Solly pulled his jacket tighter, and she raised the temperature.

“If I’d known we were going on an expedition,” he said, “I’d have suggested doing it by daylight.”

Kim was thinking of what she’d say to Sheyel. We went out to the valley. We spent time in the woods. And we even looked in Tripley’s house. There’s nothing.

But she wanted to get it done now. Didn’t want to make a second trip in the morning.

Another aircraft, a patrol flyer, appeared on the edge of the short-range scan, headed in the opposite direction. It passed within two hundred meters, but they never did actually see it.

Eagle Point had receded into the darkness, and there were now no lights visible anywhere. The AI followed the Severin River south, displaying its winding image on the sensor screen. It narrowed and entered the first of a series of gorges which would take it down to the dam.

Her preoccupation with the legends increased as they flew deeper into the night. Even Solly seemed affected. They spoke with lowered voices, the way people do in empty churches, and Kim found herself sinking down inside her jacket even though the temperature in the cabin had now reached a comfortable level. The conversation consisted mostly of bravado. Remarks like how no self-respecting spook would be abroad in weather like this. Or how Solly thought he saw something moving out there. Ha-ha.

Solly’s story of the haunted stateroom came back to trouble her now. At the moment, in the snow, in the glow of the instrument panel, such things seemed possible.

They were only a few hundred meters off the ground when they broke out of the storm. The remains of the Severin Dam loomed just ahead.

The structure had not actually been removed. Weakened sections had been taken down and the rest simply left standing. Now, the river roared around piles of rubble and concrete slabs. The slabs seemed to be moving, an effect created by the flyer’s lights reflected off the water. The aircraft dropped lower and a last few flakes whirled up.

They passed over the ruins. On the south side, the river ran through a narrow corridor and emptied into Lake Remorse. The sky was still heavily overcast and the lake remained shrouded until they were out over it.

Solly directed the AI to turn on the aircraft’s spotlights. It complied, and twin beams swept the darkness, but they could see nothing other than water.

“It’s almost an inland sea,” said Kim, recalling that at its widest it was more than twenty kilometers across.

They rode through the night, beneath heavy skies, not saying much. Eventually a coastline appeared onscreen. Forest, mostly. Some hills, some open spaces. And then she saw a few stone walls and broken houses jutting out of the shallows.

The village had occupied the south shore of the original lake, then also called Severin. But after the dam had been taken down, the lake had expanded, swallowing most of the town.

Kim looked down at a world covered by snow.

“I’m surprised no one’s claimed the area,” said Solly. “It wouldn’t take much to rebuild here now.”

They circled, trying to locate Tripley’s villa. The map placed it atop a low rise just outside the town line, about a hundred meters north of the Scott Randal Stables, which had been a well-known producer of racehorses at the time of the event. They found the stables, now just a few crumbling buildings and a couple of fences. The rest was easy.

“Problem is,” said Solly, “there’s no open ground here anywhere.”

“There.” A strip of beach.

Solly looked at it reluctantly. “It’ll be a long walk,” he said. But it was all they had, and the AI took them down.

They settled into the snow. Kim pulled her hood up and adjusted the foul-weather mask while Solly changed into boots. The lake surface was rough in the lights, and when she opened the door the wind tried to tear it out of her hand.

They couldn’t see much of the village, just one or two houses in the water. An old lifeguard tower stood near the tree line. And a white building stenciled SNACK SHED was sinking into the sand. “This is Cabry’s Beach,” said Kim, reading the name off the map.

Solly climbed down and looked around. The wind blew his hair into his eyes.

“Didn’t you bring anything to wear on your head?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “I didn’t know we were going for a walk.”

“You’ll freeze.” She looked into the backseat. “I’ve got a mountain hat back here somewhere.”

“It’s okay, Kim. I’ll be fine.”

She found it and held it out for him. But he looked stubbornly back at her. She shrugged and switched on her wrist-lamp. “Maybe you should wait here.”

“Let’s go,” he grumbled, pulling up his jacket collar and stuffing his hands into his pockets.

She turned up the heat in her jacket, and they started for the trees. Their boots crunched in the snow. The wind blew in steadily off the lake and they walked with their backs to it. Neither tried to talk until they’d made it to the shelter of the forest.

“You okay?” he asked when they were in the trees. His hair was already covered with blown snow.

“I’m fine.” It was a deep hood and she felt as if she were looking out of a tunnel.

He pointed the way and took the lead. Overhead, something shook snow out of the branches.

Kim looked up, and wondered about the wildlife. “Solly,” she whispered, “are there, do you suppose, any animals here we need to worry about? Cougars, maybe? Or bears?” The terraformers in their wisdom had neglected nothing. Greenway even had mosquitoes.

“I never thought of it. I don’t know.”

“Are you by any chance carrying a weapon?”

“No,” he said. “If we run into something, we’ll beat it off with a stick.”

“Good,” she grinned. “Nothing like being prepared.”

They pushed through thick brambles and shrubbery, crossed glades, and eventually found a trail that seemed to be going in their direction.

They passed a collapsed house, entangled in new-growth trees, almost invisible until they were within a couple of meters. And a,bench, incongruously set off to one side of the trail. “This was probably the way to the beach at one time,” Solly said.

She looked at her map. “Yes. Here it is.”

“How’re we doing?”

“Headed in the right direction. It’s not much farther.”

“You don’t think we ought to come back and do this in the morning?”

“We’re here now, Solly. Let’s just take a quick look, so I can say I’ve been here, and then we can head out.”

After Tripley’s disappearance, the villa and its furnishings had been willed to Sara Baines, his mother. According to the reports, Sara had closed up the house, but had been unable to sell it. The town was emptying out; people had too many bad memories, there were doubts whether the rest of the mountain might come down, the dam could go at any time.

So nobody had really lived in the house since Tripley came back from that last flight.

They left the trail at a glade with a tumbled shed, clumped through a stream, skidded down a slope, and got confused about directions because nobody had thought to bring a compass. “Don’t blame me,” said Solly. “I thought we were going to sit in the flyer and look at the lake.”

Kim was now in the lead. The trees closed in again. In some places the snow was too deep for her hiking shoes. It got down her ankles, and her feet got cold.

It was hard to keep a sense of direction. On one occasion they came out in a swampy area along the lake shore. They turned back, retraced their steps for about a hundred paces, and struck off in a new direction. Kim had never been a hiking enthusiast, and she was beginning to have second thoughts when the ground started to rise.

“This might be it,” she said. “The place was on the brow of a low hill.”