Carl gestured as a bank of aquamarine signifiers flickered and died. “There went the autocontrol monitors. Anything breaks, anywhere in Halley, we won’t even know.”

Saul jerked suddenly on his pallet, fingers clawing. Then his body went slack. Abruptly he called in a thin, dry voice, “Wendy. Wendy.”

“We should do something,” Lani said.

“We can’t. They’re on their own.”

“We could lose both of them!”

Slowly a part of Carl stirred to life again, a fragment shaking off his pervading shocked numbness. Virginia was gone forever, no matter what Saul did. No matter what remained in JonVon, the bright, warm woman had slipped away.

“Carl?”

He breathed deeply and dragged his eyes away from the emerald city, where whole blocks now flared with crisp brilliance, while others smoldered in acrid ruin. He wondered how long he had been like this, absorbed. “Ah?”

“Jeffers just got through on a narrow datapatch. He reports the launchers have been undercut. Ould-Harrad has finished.”

“Oh.” He had no other reaction. This was merely another fact, a random fragment of information in a meaningless universe. He was surprised to find that he had clasped Lani’s hand.

Then the holo image shifted violently. The emerald city dissolved into red lava, the translucent granite of the vast towers crumbling silently, melting and flowing into the bulging, erupting streets.

Saul relaxed completely. A long silence stretched, Carl not daring to say anything.

The acoustics crackled to life. He flipped the switch back and forth, without effect.

“You can’t shut me up that easily, blithe spirit.”

“Virginia!” In his excitement he leaped to the ceiling, banging his head. “You’re there.”

The visage was back, now crisp and sure. Virginia Herbert smiled, her face tanned, a big yellow flower tucked behind an ear. Over her shoulder, cottony clouds dotted an impossibly blue sky.

“Had a little sorting to do,” the face said.

Lani asked tentatively, “Is that… really…”

“Me?” The woman in the holo shrugged, bringing bare shoulders into view. “Sure feels like it.”

“You can see us?” Lani asked.

“And hear you, too. That news from the surface you brought—what fools! Ould-Harrad is an idiot.” Then she paused, as if listening. “Oh, Saul. I see why now. I understand.”

Saul did not stir. He seemed to be sleeping normally.

Dazed, Carl knew he was listening to the voice of the dead, but she seemed so vibrant, so full of the old zest…

“With this much damage, the equator is finished as a site for launchers.” Virginia’s tone mellowed, gained harmonics as she tinkered with it. “That leaves the north pole. And there’s only one possible mission profile that uses a northern push.”

Carl could scarcely speak. She’s just died. How can any mind…? “I…”

“Jupiter. The orbital dynamics leave open that flyby.”

Lani frowned. “I thought that was impossible.”

The voice was calm, almost conversational. “No, just tough. It demands a very high delta-V. A completely different approach to Jupiter than the original mission plan. With the launchers firing from the north pole for the whole infall time, thirty years, we can—”

“Thirty years?” Lani cried.

“Correct. We’ll have to go through perihelion to do it.” The face lifted its eyebrows in amusement. “This Jupiter passage is on the outbound leg, folks.”

Carl heard the words but they were all a cascade of sounds with little meaning. She had fought and died and now had come back, a voice echoing in the narrow confines of this room, the Virginia he knew and yet not her at all. The voice had no fear, no shock, not even a trace of sadness. What was it? He listened to her go on, felt Lani’s firm grip, and slowly the realization settled on him that the voice was right. There was still a way out, and no matter what tragedies they had suffered, what remorse they felt, time and the great blank darkness all around could heal them, and they would keep on.

The vulpine’s tongue lolled as it flapped gently through the forest, legs splayed to keep its wing membranes taut, catching crosscurrents in the air as it hovered in search of prey.

LeGrand Cavern was a riot of color, a wilderness of broad, delicate leaves and verdant creepers. At intervals along the green-lined walls, vent tubes dripped condensation that dispersed in a soft fog, lying glistening droplets on the gently waving foliage. Bright purple, orange, and yellow fruits—massive and juicy—hung from slender, threadlike stems.

Fibrous vines laced the heart of the chamber, looping from column tree to keystone root to the next column tree, making a dense, three-dimensional jungle in what had once been an empty ice cathedral.

Saul watched the vulpine sniff, flap closer to a thick patch of Demicasava leaves, and shove in its long snout to worry whatever was hiding there.

In a sudden explosion, a skin-fowl hen burst from the thicket, furiously beating featherless wings just ahead of the vulpine’s snapping jaws. The bird dove into the notch of a keystone root, leaving the disappointed vulpine to whimper in frustration, nosing for a larger opening that wasn’t there.

Life goes on, Saul thought, smiling. A game played in earnest by pieces that only dimly perceive their places in the whole.

He filled his lungs with the rich, living smells. Alot has been accomplished, since the aphelion war. Ought to be, in more than thirty years. Man and environment, adapting to each other.

Le Grand Cavern was one of three “natural” chambers in which new twists to Halley’s ever-more-complicated ecosystem were tested. In other vaults, humans and mechs tended less riotous, more orderly life-mixes… orchards and farms and lobster pens. But this canyon was one of Saul’s favorite spots, where various experiments sorted themselves out and where startling new solutions appeared.

The vulpine—a construct based on fox genes, but modified so extensively as to be nearly unrecognizable by now—snuffed after another scent and let out a sharp yip. It flapped around one of the giant column trees, which crisscrossed the chamber at every angle like spokes or massive braces.

The trees served other purposes than just supporting the walls of Le Grand Cavern, but that role would become crucial over the next few months, as Halley’s Comet zoomed sunward toward its most perilous, and possibly last, perihelion passage.

He touched the trunk of the nearest, a bole a meter across that shone bright, cool light from narrow strips of bioluminescent bark. Power from the colony’s fusion generators ran directly into the genetically engineered giants. Some of the electricity went into feeding the trees’ life functions. The rest emerged as a soft glow that suffused the chamber from all directions, driving photosynthesis.

The trees had been a delightful surprise when Saul had awakened from another decade-long slumber, year ago. Clearly, the colonists had been busy. The craft of life-tailoring and ecosystem management had been carried much further by the watches since aphelion.

Of course, atany time there had always been two or three of Saul’s cloned near-duplicates around to help. In a sense, Saul had had a hand in most of the wonders of this chamber—through his younger versions who shared so many of his memories and skills. It could, in fact, be said that he had invented the column trees…