“Rachel?”

“Right here,” she said, very close by. “I thought you were going to land on me.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

He felt a hand on his hip that slid onto his butt. “Careful,” he said. “This isn’t the time or place.”

“God, be serious.”

Well, he usually was. But for the past few days, he had felt the urge to at least pretend to be like a movie hero…quipping to hide his terror. If he hadn’t already found Rachel immature and irritating, her lack of understanding would have done the trick.

He rolled onto hands and knees. The ground here was harder and more rocklike than that of the habitat. As he got up, he bumped into Rachel, doing the same. “Thank God for low gravity,” she said.

“How much room do we have here?” He stretched out his arms.

“A lot,” Rachel said. He could hear her walking around.

“Don’t go too far.”

“Where’s your Slate? Let’s get some light and see if there’s a way to climb out of here or call for help.”

Pav realized that he had been holding the unit when he fell. “Shit.” He got to his knees and began feeling around for it. So did Rachel.

“It can’t be far….” In fact, it was only a meter away. “Well, got part of it,” he said. “The back broke off and the battery must have fallen out.”

Then Rachel pressed both items into his hand. Pav went to work reassembling the Slate. “By the way,” he said, “I’m pretty sure there’s a way out of here.”

“Really? Do we just sprout wings and fly?”

“Not up,” he said. “Sideways.”

“Don’t get your hopes up—”

“Rachel,” he said, “Where did the dog go?” And he clicked the last pieces of the Slate into place.

“Fine,” she said, unwilling to admit error. “Give us some light.”

There wasn’t much, but there was enough to show that they were in a good-sized tunnel. “He could have gone one of two different directions.”

“What do you want to do? Split up and find him?”

“Are you insane? We are not splitting up!” she said. “Call my father.”

He showed her the Slate display. “No link.”

Rachel walked away from him. “Cowboy!” she shouted. “Now, that was really weird,” she said.

Pav had noticed it, too. “No echo.”

“Let’s find the way out of here,” she said.

“You don’t want to sit tight and wait?”

“Who’s going to be looking for us?”

“I don’t know. But if we wait, we could hear somebody calling from up there.”

“Really? I just shouted for the dog and I felt like I had a pillow over my head. I don’t think sound carries in here.”

“Well, we can’t climb back up, and we’ve got two choices. Which one?” He aimed the light at the ground. “It’s not like we can follow the dog, ’cause there ain’t no tracks.”

Rachel turned around and around until she faced Pav and the opening behind him. “Okay, this is the direction of the Temple. When we…buried my mom, we went…that way.” She raised her right hand. “That was down-habitat, my dad said. And where he had seen a passage and another big habitat.”

“Down-habitat it is,” he said. “Uh, we should probably turn off the light, if we can. Save the batteries.”

Rachel slumped. “Yeah, good idea.”

He killed the light. “Our eyes will adjust.”

“You hope.”

VALYA

For Valya Makarova, diving into the reincarnation pod and surrendering to it was ten times worse than being sucked into the Bangalore Object.

She had had no time to think or comprehend what was happening. Aided by Zack Stewart, she had clutched her purse and plunged into the hideous yellow light of the pod.

She had easily pushed through its interior wall and fallen into a much larger chamber beyond that. Or so it seemed; it was entirely dark. She was suspended like an insect in a medium but could not touch sides, floor, or ceiling.

As she thrashed about, she bumped into something, or someone.

Within moments she felt a thick coating covering her ragged clothes and the purse against her middle. It reminded her of a mud bath at a spa, a luxury she had experienced exactly once in her life, but all-encompassing.

And invasive, too. The wrap invaded her armpits and her vagina and anus as well as eyes, nose, and mouth. For several agonizing seconds she was convinced she was drowning. But the fabric quickly liquefied, and if it got into her lungs it either dissolved or got absorbed.

Either way, she was still breathing and, though her vision was clouded, still able to see—

—and beginning to see light, and other shapes that were human.

She found that if she moved her arms and legs, she could swim, after a fashion, though it was also likely that the fluid around her was dissolving or changing.

She took her first big breath and found it welcome and easy, even though she was now securely enclosed in a full-body cocoon.

The fluid that had filled the chamber around her began to transform, turning first to Membrane-style bubbles, then to powder, which quickly began to wisp away, blown across her legs by either convection or the air leak.

She was sitting on the floor with three other encased humans. “Dale!” she screamed, as loud as she could. (Which turned out to be loud only in her ears. It was like trying to shout underwater.)

He must have heard something, however, since the figure nearest turned toward her, nodding vigorously and making flapping gestures with his skin-coated hands. He clambered to his feet…a bit unsteadily…then reached for her.

Meanwhile a third figure—Zack?—was helping the fourth, likely Williams.

“Valya, can you hear me?” Dale said.

She could, to her surprise, though it wasn’t exactly hearing with ears. The “sound” seemed to originate in the bones behind her ears, likely some kind of inductance. “Yes.”

“How do you feel?”

“Like a sausage.”

The wind was whipping the powder around. The four rips in the inner wall seemed to have grown. “I hope there’s some mechanism that seals it off,” Valya said.

Then, from an entirely unexpected direction (Dale was to her right, with Zack and Williams beyond him), a hand landed on Valya’s shoulder.

Makali. In her suit, she had poked through the chamber’s outer wall. “We’ve got to get away from here,” she said.

It was like escaping from a collapsing circus tent. The outer wall of the annex turned out to be more like fabric than a harder, plasticlike substance. Makali’s in-and-outs had created an opening that was tearing apart under the assault of the now-massive air leakage.

One by one, they exited into a dark, rocky chamber that reminded Valya of a modern-day mine shaft: wide, twice as tall as a human, clearly carved out of rock.

There was a bright patch a hundred or more meters farther down the shaft. The eyes of Valya’s skinsuit adjusted for the transition from dark to bright and back without the telltale green tinge of night-vision goggles, which surprised Valya more than she’d expected. Well, the Architects were thousands of years more advanced technically—as if the reborn animals and skinsuits weren’t sufficient examples. But those were, frankly, magical.

Having a great low-light vision system…that was something she could more readily appreciate.

The others were performing the same skinsuit familiarization. “I guess that’s Keanu day,” Makali said. “The sun is shining down to the base of Vesuvius Vent.”

Zack stood silently, regarding the scene. Valya realized that this was the route he had taken a week in the past. Finally he spoke. “How are you all doing?”

There was a flurry of grumbled assents. “Everyone breathing without difficulty?”

“I lost my glasses,” Williams said.

“How well can you see?” Valya really wanted to know, because she was finding that the skinsuit enhanced her abilities.

“Much better, actually. Whatever this suit is, it has a vision correction.”