This is where it was supposed to be.

But it isn't. It's not here.

Neither is the wall. The whole goddam chamber dropped. Or rose.

Why didn't you take a picture?

We did. It was here two days ago.

We thought we could see it. It was the plank. We were looking at the damned plank!

Maybe we just missed it. Is that possible?

No'.

And the words that stung her, enraged her, spoken by Henry: Get the scanner over here. Take another look. Let's find out where it is.

She activated Richard's private channel. "You're out of time."

"I know. Just give us a few minutes. Till we find out where the goddamned thing went."

"Richard, the creek is about to rise."

"Hutch, you have to understand. This isn't my call. These people know the risk. This is just too important to turn around and walk out on. Come on, you can tough it out."

"You're beginning to sound as crazy as they do," she snapped. And she broke the link without letting him reply. She switched to Carson, who was waiting in his shuttle at the inlet. "Frank, you got any control over this?"

"Not much."

"Henry's going to get them all killed."

"No. He won't do that. Whatever else happens, he'll be out in time. You can trust him."

Okay, I recognize this.

You sure, George?

Yeah. Yeah, no question about it.

All right, let's go. Where the hell's the goddam projector?

"Hutch," said Carson. "Another hour here may be worth years of research at home. Be patient."

"Another hourT'

"That's my guess. But it still gets us out of here with time to spare."

"Hutch." George's voice. "Do you have a winch on board?"

"Yes. I can activate a winch."

"Okay. Plan is that after we free the printing press, we'll lift it into the Upper Temple. We've got everything in place to do that. You drop the line. As soon as the press is clear of the shaft, we'll connect it, and you can haul it in. The rest of us should be on board a few minutes after that."

She shook her head. "This is crazy, George. You haven't even found the press yet."

"We're working on it."

Richard came back. "It's okay," he said soothingly. "We'll make it. And we'll have the printing press with us."

She watched the shoreline unroll below. It was a brilliant, sun-washed day, white and cold, filled with icebergs and needle peaks and rocky islands. Long thick waves slid across snow-covered beaches. Beach monkeys walked and played at the edge of the surf.

The inlet came into view, and she started down. The Temple shuttle, resplendently blue and gold in the sunlight, waited on the shelf.

Hutch landed clumsily. As if her haste would change anything. Carson stood on the rock. He was too courteous, or too distracted, to comment on her technique.

0837 hours.

The particle beam cast an eerie blue-white glow through the chamber. Water bubbled and hissed. George was firing blind. He was cutting through that most dangerous of obstacles, loose rock and sand.

The digging strategy was to pick an area that looked stable, if you could find one, divide it into individual targets, and attack each separately. You sliced a hole, and stopped. If nothing happened, you enlarged the hole. Then you braced everything and moved on. "The problem," he told Henry, "is that the tunnel will have to be widened further to get the printing press out."

George was pleased with himself. In the field, engineers tend to exist in a somewhat lower social stratum than pure archeologists. Not that anyone mistreated him. The Temple team had always been a close-knit crew. But he was taken less seriously as a professional. His was a support role, and consequently he was something of a hanger-on. When celebrations broke out, they never drank to George.

But this time, he had made the discovery. George's Printing Press. And he was leading the assault on the Lower Temple. It was a good feeling. A good way to wrap up his efforts here. It was a little scary, maybe. But he felt immortal, as young men invariably do, and he did not believe that Kosmik would actually pull the trigger if there were still people down here.

Moreover, the timing was perfect. He was entranced by Hutch, infected with her brilliant eyes and her vaguely distant smile. His own tides ran strong when she was nearby, and she was now watching him in action. How could he possibly fail to stay the course? And during those dark, claustrophobic moments when an appreciation of the risk seeped through, he drove it away by imagining the hero's reward that waited.

Maggie's voice cut in. "We have a preliminary reading from the 'sex' tablet." She was referring to the character group that appeared atop the wedge, and in the Oz inscription. "We don't think it's a sexual term."

"What is it?" asked Richard.

"We've located parts of the same cluster of symbols elsewhere. We've got the root, which suggests duration, maybe infinite duration."

"You're right," said Sandy. "That does it for sex."

"There's a positive connotation. It's linked with sunlight, for example. And ships in peaceful circumstances. I would be inclined to translate it along the lines of good fortune rather than pleasure."

"You sure?" That sounded like Tri.

"Of course I'm not sure," she snapped. "But there's a fair degree of probability."

"So," said Richard, "we have good fortune and a mythical beast. What's the connection?"

Ahead, George turned off the projector, and waited for the water to clear. "I think we're through," he said. "We have a tunnel."

Henry and Sandy moved forward to insert the braces. George poked at the roof. Gravel and silt floated down. "No guarantees," he said.

Henry shrugged and plunged ahead. "George," he called back, "do what you can to widen it."

"Not while you're in there."

"Do it," said Henry. "My authority."

Your authority's not worth much if you're dead. Suppose George started cutting and the roof fell in? He shouldn't even allow Henry to proceed before he conducted a safety inspection. But things were happening too fast.

Obediently, he activated the particle beam, and chipped away at the sides of the tunnel.

The chamber had partially collapsed. Henry crawled between broken slabs and decayed timbers. His lamp blurred. "Up ahead somewhere," he told his throat mike. The printing press should have been close enough to show on the sensors. But he was getting no reading.

He came to a wall.

He floated to a stop and laid his head against it. That's it, he thought. He hated this place the way it was now: squeeze past rock, dig through mud, grope in the dark.

Richard moved up behind him, held his lamp up. "Over there," he said. "It's open to your right. Look."

He pointed and Henry saw that it was so. But he knew it was getting desperately late and that he had a responsibility to get his people out. While he hesitated, Richard pushed past. His lamp moved in the dark.

"I think I can see it," he said softly.

Sandy's hand gripped his shoulder. "We ought to wait for George," she said.

"Attaboy, Richard," said Maggie. She was ecstatic.

Henry followed the light, turned a corner, and swam down into the small room that he remembered from his previous visit. "We've got it," Richard was saying. He knelt two meters away, blurred in the smoky light.

The frame was half-buried. They scrounged around, digging with their fingers, trying to work it free. They found a rectangular chase. A gearbox lay beneath loose rock. "It's the press bed," said Maggie.

A second chase was wedged under a cut slab.

Sandy's scanner revealed something in the floor. She dug it up. At one time, it had been a compartmented drawer or case.

Henry poked at the chases. "There is type set in these things," he said.

"Good!" Maggie egged them on. "It's enough. Let's go. Get it out of there."