He hurried onward. The passage narrowed until it was little more than a man’s width across. Athin man’s width, Saul thought, as he squeezed through, stretching ahead with his hands to pull himself along the narrow stricture.

He couldn’t help comparing it to a birth canal. Something in the tunnel—perhaps a new Halleyform his immune system had not yet come to terms with—was causing a burning, itching reaction in his sinuses and throat. His nose twitched and tingled.

Aw hell… he thought, closing his eyes, squinting.

“A-a-a-chblthooh!”

The echo of his sneeze reverberated from an open chamber just ahead. Saul shook his head to clear it, and crawled on as he heard the distinct sound of a child crying.

His hand pushed through snow and met open space letting. more light in. High-pitched shrieks greeted its appearance.

“Old Hard Man! It’s Old Hard Man!”

“Shush, kids. Quiet,” a deeper voice soothed. “See? The skin is white, not green. You know that Old Hard Man is part black, part green.”

The whimpers softened. Saul felt a hard grip on his wrist and kicked to help his benefactor drag him through the crumbling snow. He popped free into one of the beam-cut, Halleyvirid-lined colony tunnels. Saul had to swivel to cushion his impact on the opposite wall.

“Thanks,” he said, waving away a cloud of sublimed vapor that had followed him. “I…”

An elderly man—an Ortho named Hans Pestle, Saul recalled—held the hands of two skinny children dressed in ragged fibercloth. Four other small, scrawny figures clung to the walls nearby. The old man stared at him.

“What’s the matter, Hans?”

Pestle shook his head. “Nothin’ Dr. Lintz. I was just… No, I must’ve been mistaken, is all.”

Two of the older children edged forward. “Got goobers for me?” one asked shyly.

“Sorry, Ahmed.” Saul smiled and stroked the little boy’s sparse hair, keeping his hand away from the long, floppy, ferretlike creature the child wore, stolelike, over his shoulders. The gene-crafted animal watched Saul with gleaming eyes.

“Sorry. No goobers this time.” Usually, the children got their medication in candy form—sweet flavors were common in the mutated food plants, but sourballs were one of his widely treasured specialties. “I promise, next time you come to the clinic.”

“Aw, gee.” But the child took the disappointment well. It had been some time since he had had any of the fits of temper that used to drive him into uncontrollable tantrums.

Actually, Ahmed had made a lot of progress. He was talking more, and had put on weight. Still, to look at him, seventy pounds and barely five feet tall, you wouldn’t think he was sixteen years old, Earth-measure.

Unfortunately, there were limits to what Saul could accomplish with damage so advanced. And some of his best methods had turned out to be applicable only to a narrow range of genetic types. He found it terribly frustrating.

Saul shook his head, fighting down the ringing in his eats brought on by a fit of allergy-symbiosis reaction. He sneezed, and the children clapped their hands laughing at the explosive report.

“What are you and these kids doing down here, Hans?” Saul recognized the nearby intersection by its incised markings. They were deep, far below these Orthos’ clan territory.

Pestle looked at the floor. “Just strollin’… you said the kids should get more exercise…”

Clearly, Hans was concealing something. But Saul didn’t have time to probe.

“Did you see someone else come this way?” he asked the old man—a once-famous astrophysicist, now reduced by frailty to tending crippled children while the clear-minded and able-bodied labored on the surface.

“Minute or so ago.” Pestle jerked his head toward the nearby shaft and gestured upward. He seemed about to ask a question, then shook his head and was quiet.

“Thanks,” Saul said, and started off toward the shaft.

“Wouldn’t, if I were you.”

The voice of the old man stopped him abruptly. Saul turned. “Why not?”

Pestle looked away again, bit his lip nervously. One eye was still cloudy from damage done long ago. Saul had managed to eliminate the lingering disease, but not the harm already done.

“You’re our doctor,” the old man mumbled. “Can’t afford t’ lose you.”

“Lose me?” Saul felt a sudden sinking feeling. “What are you talking about? Is there danger above?”

Virginia’s gone up there, was his chilled thought.

Pestle shook his head. “Heard tales. May be more fightin’ soon. Took the youngsters down here to be safe. That’s all.”

Saul frowned. This was not good.

“Thanks for the warning, Hans. I’ll be careful.”

He kicked off and started climbing the shaft, grabbing tufts of tamed, hybrid Halleyvirid covering and using his toe-spikes to speed upward almost at a run.

He had nearly reached B Level when a shrieking noise, like giant stones rubbing against each other, echoed shrilly in the passage. Another damn quake, he thought. Or was it something else? Something more sinister? The vegetation up ahead started swaying, like a wave rolling down the dimly lit shaft. The ripples arrived and suddenly it was as if he were trying to ride a furry snake, one that bucked and slithered and threw him back and forth.

Saul’s grip tore loose and he was flung across the shaft, landing inside a tunnel mouth just as pieces dislodged from the ceiling. He rolled to one side to avoid a jagged boulder that dropped slowly, but irresistibly. Another one popped free of the left wall and proceeded with terrible inertia to collide crushingly with the right side.

So busy was he dodging those, he did not see the third and smallest rock. A sudden, crushing blow to his head sent him reeling against the floor. He slumped over an icy boulder and moaned.

Consciousness never completely vanished, but neither did it quite remain. To Saul, the next few minutes, or hour, or several hours, were a confusion of rumbling sounds, of icy dust settling slowly, of blinking and not being quite sure what it was he was supposed to remember.

Finally, it came to him.

Get to Carl…warn him…

He couldn’t quite recall what it was he was supposed to warn him about, or why. Perhaps it would come to him when he arrived. He knew only that he had to go back into the shaft and start climbing again.

Find Paul… he reminded himself. Hurry… find Virginia…

He repeated the instructions over and over again, pushing aside the ringing and the pain in his head.

Hurry…

As she stepped onto the surface she felt again the chilly majesty of the ice, the void, the swallowing darkness they all swam in. Earth is the sultry Hawaii in a solar system of perpetual Siberias, she thought. Willwe ever feel true warmth again?

As she took long, loping strides across the speckled gray ice Virginia resolutely banished the thought. She had had quite enough experience with the onset of depression, thank you, in the last several years. It was an occupational hazard. Even her love for Saul had not proved an adequate shield against it… just as the psychology people Earthside had predicted, decades ago. They had warned the crew not to put too much weight on any relationship, that no human bond could take the full pressure of their isolation, the unremitting hostility of the hard empty world.

People weren’t made to take the full brunt of the world, she thought. Particularly not one as barren as this. Anthropologists had found that even the simplest societies had quickly invented alcohol—usually beer—probably as a shelter against the storm of naked, incessant reality. Intelligence able to deal flexibly and subtly with its environment was also inescapably vulnerable to it. Halley’s crew had tried the predictable escapes—alcohol, drugs, senstim, torrid and fleeting affairs—and weathered the years. But no victory was permanent, and Virginia knew she had to steer herself through shoals of depression, avoid the triggering thoughts and moods.