It was a natural locus for Percells to gather, skating high above the clumping, festering masses who feared and despised them. Space held beauty, sure, but the places men had carved out for themselves in it were more like the rusty scows moored at Morro Bay, worn and smelly, dented and makeshift, working fine but looking like hell.

Around him, bulky masses glided by, spotlights poked the chilly gloom. Coffins nudged into sockets in the black ice. Beethoven’s violin sang to a rippling piano across the yawning silent centuries. Carl labored on, thinking of his long years spent in space, far from Earth’s green confusions.

It was hard to remember that the hall was actually a great crystal chamber, carved out of the heart of an ancient ice mountain. Nowhere could be seen the dark glittering of carbonaceous hydrate, veined with shiny seams of frozen gas. Everywhere pink fiberthread and bright yellow spray-on sealant hid the primordial stuff of Halley Core.

To Saul Lintz it far more resembled some vast cathedral of kitsch.

The Great Hall was the heart of Central Complex—the ant farm of rooms sculpted here deep under Halley’s surface. Tunnels led off in the six cardinal directions, color-coded amber, lime, strawberry, peach, aquamarine…and a broad vertical avenue of orange—Shaft 1—fifteen meters across and rising straight up half a mile to the comet’s cluttered north pole.

Machines had scrubbed the atmosphere and warmed it, leaving only a faint, almondlike odor to greet people as they streamed into the Hall for the dedication.

Now and then, when my head clears, even I can smell it.

Saul blew his nose and quickly put his handkerchief away before anyone noticed. That was why he sat perched on an empty packing crate at the back of the chamber instead of closer to the speakers’ platform. He was stoked with antihistamines, but still his nose dripped and he felt perpetually on the verge of sneezing.

Drat Akio and his damn tame viruses.

He looked up at the vaulted ceiling. In the two days he had been underground, supervising the transfer of the bio lab to new, larger quarters, he had not yet gotten used to the strange perspectives here.

Across the chamber, the slot tug Sekanina lay like the frail skeleton of a dissected beast. Its cargo of machinery and supplies and eighty sleeping men and women had been taken elsewhere. At one end dangled the “fishing poles” that had helped control the vessel’s gigantic, gossamer solar-light sails, apparently the only machinery not cannibalized or stored away in great tents on the polar plain.

The hall slowly filled as men and women floated in from all directions. Here, nearly a kilometer into the core, the sensible gravity was so low that anyone dropping through the overhead, orange-colored tunnel took several minutes to fall to the floor.

Experienced spacers did not like long transits. Old hands pushed off at the tunnel mouth to hurtle across the gap in seconds, swiveling at the very last to land with flexed legs.

One young bravo—trying to show off, Saul supposed—had already miscalculated. He was being treated for a broken wrist in the side chamber down Tunnel F, where Akio Matsudo and his doctors had set up the main infirmary.

People arrived in pairs and trios. They gathered in small groups to chat or merely lie back on packing crates, catching a moment’s rest.

Next to the Sekanina, a small cluster congregated, the leaders of the expedition.

Miguel Cruz-Mendoza stood at least a head taller than the others—captain and guiding force behind the decade of preparation leading to this day. The soft-spoken Chilean spacer had distinguished streaks of gray at his temples, which only added to his charismatic poise. It was bruited about, mostly in jest, that he had pushed and lobbied and pressured so hard for this mission in order to take a great leap forward in time… and thereby get away from his accumulated mistresses and women suitors.

The idea wasn’t so preposterous, at that. Saul had never known a man better skilled with the ladies. Some of his enemies credited Cruz’s success to his friendliness with certain women senators.

No matter. The captain was also the sort of leader people would follow. Many had helped prepare for the Halley Mission; however, no one but Miguel Cruz could have made this day a reality.

The captain caught Saul’s eye briefly and grinned. They had come to know each other well during the development of the cyanutes and other environmental symbionts. Saul smiled back and nodded. This was a grand day for his friend.

Cruz turned back as Dr. Bethany Oakes said something to him. His laughter was deep and rich as he shared his second-in-command’s joke.

Saul did not know Oakes as well, but what he had seen of the strong-jawed, brown-haired woman had impressed him. As well as assisting the captain in administering the vast, complex project, Oakes was also head of the Science Division.

Near the leaders stood the section heads—all except Matsudo, who presumably was still treating his patient. Nick Malenkov or Dr. Marguerite van Zoon could have handled the minor emergency just as easily. Even Saul, rusty as his clinical skills were, could certainly have managed a simple splint.

But rank hath its privileges. Akio had been bored, lately. Accidents that weren’t instantly fatal had been rare. With this infernally healthy crew, there wasn’t much for a physician to do except oversee the sleep slots, and occasionally release challenge parasites to keep everyone’s immune systems up to par.

Physician, heal thyself, Saul thought. He had made up a special batch of dexbrompheniramine maleate, a long-obsolete antihistamine but one easy to synthesize, so that he wouldn’t have to prescribe for himself out of the expedition pharmacy and leave an inventory record.

He knew he was being a tad unethical, hiding this from Matsudo. But Saul had no intention of being sleep slotted over yet another blasted head cold. Not at one of the most exciting moments in the history of science.

More than a hundred people gathered on the shallowly curved floor of the chamber. Except for a score or so on watch duty elsewhere, all of Edmund’s crew were present—along with about thirty temporarily awakened slot sleepers, identifiable by their pale complexions and still slightly jerky movements.

A few people sat down out of habit, but most simply rested on their toes, knees bent and arms hanging before them in the almost fetal spacer’s crouch.

Captain Cruz and Dr. Oakes stepped up onto a platform set on the girders of the gutted slot tug. Cruz raised his hands and the low murmuring of conversation died away.

“Well!” The tall astronaut rubbed his hands together. “Anyone for a snowcone?”

The assembled spacers and scientists chuckled. In spite of all the diverse cultures and beliefs represented here, it was clear that nearly everyone liked and admired their commander.

Cruz warmed them up a little more.

“I’d like to thank you all for coming all these millions of miles to attend this meeting. I’ve called you up here from Earth to tell you that, alas, the mission has been canceled. We’re all to pack up and head for home tonight.”

That got them. The hall erupted in laughter and applause. Saul grinned and clapped as well. Cruz was a genius at the subtle art of morale—of drawing the best out of a group.

Of course, there was no way any of them were returning to Earth…not before the appointed seventy-odd years had passed. They were riding Halley out of the planetary system at thirty kilometers per second right now, swooping up and out of the sun’s deep gravity well. That streaking velocity had to ebb and die—and the great comet begin to fall again—before anyone here was, going home.