It was a slippery climb. They took turns falling down and suddenly they were tumbling in the snow and Solly, who probably would have preferred to look irritable, couldn’t resist laughing.

But they got to the summit, and there it stood!

Whatever lawn might have once existed behind a peeling wooden fence had been swallowed by bushes, weeds, and shrubbery. The villa itself lay in a tangle of spruce and oak trees. Vines had grown over it and the wind had taken the roof off. The front door was missing.

She played her lantern across it and compared it with pictures she’d brought. “Yes,” she said. “This is it. No question.”

They circled around to the rear. A side wall had collapsed. Windows were broken, frames shattered. An oak was threatening to push over the east wing.

It was made mostly of brick. Two stories, glass dome, oval windows, rotunda, turret. None of that cheap mass-produced stuff for Kile Tripley. Kim stood in the snow, transfixed by the ruin.

“What are you thinking?”

“About transience, I guess. I was wondering if Emily was ever here.”

Followed by Solly, she stepped over the threshold into the rotunda. It was good to get out of the wind. She flashed her beam around the interior, which the elements had destroyed. Overhead, two stories up, the dome was covered with dirt and vegetation. During Tripley’s time it would have revealed the stars.

The walls were mottled and crumbling. A sagging staircase arced up to the second floor where it became a circular balcony. There were several doorways on both levels, and a fireplace on the lower.

One door hung out of its frame. Others were missing altogether. A central corridor opened off the rear of the rotunda directly in front of her and ran to the back of the house. Solly pointed his lamp into it, and they saw at the far end a flight of stairs leading down.

The floor creaked. “Careful where you put your weight,” he said.

Everything was covered with leaves and dirt. The ground-level rooms looked empty. Kim swung her lamp beam up, trying to see through the second-floor doorways. Shadows moved around the walls.

“I don’t think we’ll find much here,” Solly said.

Claws scrabbled across a hard surface. An animal retreated from the light, but she couldn’t see what it was.

“Probably a squirrel,” said Solly.

“Or a rat.”

The wind howled around the house. Branches creaked.

Had she been alone, she would have called it off at that point and gone back to the flyer. She had met, and exceeded, her obligation to Sheyel. To Emily.

But they’d come all this way and Solly would expect her at least to look in the rooms.

Stairs first. Go up and confront the rat. Solly took the lead, testing each step as they went. The entire structure swayed and sank under their weight. Near the top a board gave way underfoot. He lost his balance and grabbed the banister, which sagged outward. Solly would have gone down the quick way had Kim not grabbed him and hauled him back. She took a moment to compare herself favorably with the young woman at the Germane Society.

“This might not be a really good idea,” he said, shaken. They went cautiously the rest of the way to the top and peeked quickly through each doorway. In some, ceilings had given way. The rooms were filled with dirt and dry leaves. Carpets had turned to mold.

They found a broken bed frame and a bureau with no drawers, a smashed table, a couple of chairs. The smell of the place was strong.

Pipes stuck out from broken walls. Basins, tubs, and showers were filled with the detritus of decades.

They went back downstairs.

The rooms at ground level were not quite so ill-used because they were slightly less open to the elements. But here again no usable furniture was left. Cables hung out of ceilings, the floors were in a state of decay, and they found a dead, half-eaten squirrel in a corner behind a collapsed table whose top, when she cleared it off, had a chessboard design. Kim had read somewhere that Kane enjoyed the game and wondered whether he and Tripley had ever played here. And if so, who had won.

She crossed to the kitchen and dining areas, found a broken chair and shattered pottery. Weeds pushed up through the floor.

Solly was standing in the middle of the rotunda, idly shining his lamp around, bored, shivering, ready to go.

Kim walked back to the down-stairway at the rear of the house. “Let’s take a quick look,” she said, testing the handrail.

“Careful,” he cautioned.

The stairs sank under her weight. “Maybe you should stay here,” she said. “I’m not sure it’ll support you.”

He thought about it, looked at the stairway, pushed at the rail and watched the structure sway. Then he pointed his light down into the room below. It looked harmless enough, with a long table, a couple of chairs, and several trash bags stacked against a wall.

“I think we ought to just pass,” he said.

“Only take a minute.” She went down, testing each step, and was glad to get off at the bottom. The basement was less cold and damp than the rest of the house.

There were three rooms and a bath. She found a broken sofa decaying in one, and some carpets stacked up in another.

The table had data feeds, housings, and connections for electronic equipment. A mount hung from the ceiling. Probably for a VR unit.

“See anything?” asked Solly. The beam from his lamp illuminated the stairway.

“It was a workroom or lab at one time. I’ll be up in a minute.”

The walls were cedar-paneled, and they’d held up fairly well. The floor was artificial brick. There were magnets where pictures or plaques had once hung.

“Well,” she said, “that’s interesting.”

“What is?” called Solly.

The stairway started to swing. “Don’t try to come down,” she said. “It’s a trash can.” With the imprint EIV 4471886. She checked her notes: It was Hunter’s designator.

It was half-filled with metal parts and crumpled paper and rags. There were expended cartridges of compressed air and cleaning fluid canisters and an empty wine bottle. She found food wrappers and packing for computer disks and reams of printed pages.

They consisted of lists of names, possibly donors for the Foundation; financial statements; purchase records; test results for various engine configurations; and all kinds of other data whose purpose she couldn’t make out. But all had dates, and the most recent she could find was January 8,573. Before Tripley had left on the last Hunter voyage.

Several of the trash bags had been ripped open, probably by animals. She turned them over one by one and spilled their contents, finding corroded cables and hardened towels and dust cloths and battered monitor housings and interfaces and juice cartons.

Someone more thorough than she was might have been willing to take the time to go methodically through the trash. Who knew what might be there? But it was getting colder. And it seemed pointless.

The wind moved through the house like something alive. There were noises in the walls and tree limbs brushed windows upstairs. She turned the beam around the room, watching the darkness retreat and close in again.

“I don’t think there’s anything here,” she told Solly. “I’ll be up in a minute.” She hoisted herself onto the table, took off her shoes and socks, and rubbed her feet, which had lost all feeling. When she got the circulation going she turned the socks inside out. It didn’t help much because they were stiff and cold, but it was something.

When she was finished she dropped back onto the floor. Amid the debris, she saw a woman’s shoe. It was impossible to know what color it had originally been, but it had a curious kind of fibrous sole, unlike any she’d seen before.

What was it?

She put it into her utility bag.

“Kim.” Solly’s voice betrayed impatience. “Are we ready yet?”