The woman won the battle in three moves.

Some time later they did play a game of doubles—and were wiped off the board in twenty minutes. While

Sam was saying, “Well, we may not have won, but I bet we’ve learned something! Lawrence better watch out when we get back, hey Bron?”, Bron, smiling, nodding {her memory deviling him in every flicker on the mosaic ceiling above), retired down into the free-fall chamber, determined never to play that stupid game again, with anyone, on any world, or in between, in or out of any league!

He was going hundreds of millions of kilometers to forget her: he zipped himself into the lounge net and rolled himself up in the idea. The stars drifted by the darkened chamber.

“Do you want to try some of this?”

“Oh, no, I can never eat on these trips ... I have no idea why ...”

“You know I never mind synthetic food as long as they aren’t trying to make it taste like something else—algae or seaweed or something.”

“I think the reason the food is so terrible on these flights is because they expect you to drink yourself to death.”

“Did you ever think of Sam as a drinking man before? Lord, is he putting it away!”

“Well, this is supposed to be a political mission. He’s probably under a great deal of pressure.”

“What are we supposed to do after we get there?”

“Oh, don’t worry. The government takes care of its own—are we decelerating?”

“I think so.”

“Isn’t some light or something supposed to go on down here so that we know to get back upstairs when that happens? I’m surprised this whole cabin just doesn’t fall apart. Nothing seems to be working right!”

“Well, there is a war on.”

Over the ninety hours, Bron was on the edge of, or took part in, or overhead ninety-nine such conversations. He was in the free-fall chamber when the lights did come on. “I think that means we better go upstairs.” Around him, people were unzipping their lounge nets. “We make Earthfall in about an hour.”

“Why didn’t they come on when we were doing those turns out by the Belt?” someone asked.

“I think they only come on when we’re going to accelerate or decelerate over a certain amount.”

“Oh.”

The wall rolled closed across the window for landing (on the screen, descended once more, the two blue numbers still flickered), customary, everyone said, with atmospheric touch-downs.

He was swung from side to side on his couch, bumping and thumping in a way that would really have been unsettling if he hadn’t taken his full compliment of drugs. But world landings were notoriously rough.

There was some not very serious joking about whether or not they were still in the air; or in the ship for that matter, as the trundling began.

Then the window-wall rolled back: no glass behind it now—And some of the company were visibly more relaxed, laughing and talking louder and louder: some, unaccountably, were more subdued (which included Sam); they wandered out into another, green, pastel corridor. (Bron was wondering about the Taj Mahal—but then, this was a political mission.)

“Do we get any scenery on this trip?” someone asked.

“I doubt it. The government doesn’t believe in scenery for moonies.”

“Ah! But which government?”

Over the next few days, though they went to sumptuous restaurants, took long trips in mechanical conveyances through endless, dark tunnels, even went to several symphonic concerts, and spent one afternoon at a museum in which they were apparently the only visitors (the collection was a private one; they had come up from some deep level in an escalator; at night they returned down to their separate, sumptuous rooms by different escalators), Bron had the feeling that they had not really left the Earth space-port complex. They had seen no sky. And, outside concert audiences (their party always had a private box), or other diners (their

Samuel R, Delany tables were always grouped alone), no people—although, as the little redhead took evident delight in explaining, if you took the time they had spent on mechanical transportation and averaged it out at even a hundred fifty K’s an hour, they could be as much as two thousand kilometers from their point of arrival—quite a distance on a moon, but not so long considering they were on Earth.

It was a sumptuously pleasant and totally edgeless time—indeed, its only edges were provided by those moments when he could reflect on how edgeless it was.

One morning (at least he thought it was morning), wondering if he could hunt up anyone else who had also overslept for a late breakfast, Bron came out of his room and was crossing between a lot of lush vegetation under a high, mirrored ceiling, when he saw Sam hurrying toward him, looking worried.

And two strangers in red and black uniforms were coming toward him from where they’d apparently been waiting by a thick-trunked tree. The woman grabbed Bron’s shoulder. The man said: “You’re a moonie, aren’t you? Come on!”

And twenty feet away, Sam froze, with a perfectly shocked expression.

He started to say: “I am a moonie. But I doubt if I’m the moonie you’re—” But they led him, roughly, off through the imitation jungle.

Rusted metal showed through the door’s gray paint: the amazing lock contraption actually had a hole for a key; bright red letters spelled out exit.

They pushed through into a cement stairwell. He protested once and got a shove for it; they hurried him up. The walls and steps and banisters were grimed to an extent for which neither youth on Mars nor maturity on Triton had prepared him. More apprehensive each flight, he kept thinking: Earth is an old world ... an old, old world.

They pulled him, breathless with the climb, out on a narrow sidewalk as a good number of people hurried past (who, in the less than fifteen seconds he got to see them, must, he decided, have only three basic clothing styles the lot); only one glanced.

Above irregular building tops (he had never seen irregular building tops before), the air was a grainy gray-pink, like a sensory shield gone grubby (was that sky? With atmosphere in it ...?). A warm, foul odor drifted in the street (equally astonishing). As they pushed him to the vehicle, a surprising breeze (it was the first breeze he’d ever felt not produced by blower convections from some ventilator grate within meters)

carried with it a dozen, clashing, and unpleasant smells.

“In here!”

They opened the vehicle door and shoved him down into a seat; “sky”—colored ticking pushed from one open seam. The two uniformed strangers (some kind of e-girls) stalked around the other side, leaving him momentarily alone with clambering thoughts (I could run\ I could run now ...!), but the unfamiliarity of everything (and the conviction that there was some mistake) paralyzed him: then they were inside too; the doors slammed: the vehicle dropped straight down, and was caught up by, and bounced into, a subterranean stream of traffic with the jerkiest acceleration and, save for the Earth-landing, the strongest, he’d ever felt.

Ten minutes later he was yanked (“All right! I’m not trying to resist! I’m coming. I’m—”) and yanked again from the car and hauled past towering buildings and finally marched into one that might have been eighty, a hundred eighty, or eight hundred years old (the oldest extant structure in Bellona was a hundred and ten years old; in Tethys, no more than seventy-five). He had not even noticed this time if there were sky outside or not.