You get lost, he’d heard Melody say, Old River he talk loud, loud. You hear he long, long way.

And it was true. He wouldn’t have known his way without remembering that. The Base was upriver, always upriver.

Foot slipped. He went down a slope, got to his knee at the bottom. Suit was torn. He kept walking, listening to River, walking in the dark as well.

Waked lethargic in the morning, realizing he’d slept without changing out; and his fingers were numb and leaden as he tried to feel his way through the procedure. He’d not dropped a cylinder yet, or spoiled one, even with numb fingers. But he was down to combining the almost-spent with the still moderately good, and it took a while of shaking hands and short oxygen and grayed-out vision before he could get back to his feet again and walk.

He changed out three more, much sooner than he’d thought, and knew his decisions weren’t as good as before. He sat down without intending to, and took the spirit stick from his suit where he’d stashed it, and held it, looking at it while he caught his breath.

Melody and Patch were on their way by now. Feathers bound to the stick were getting wet in the rain that heralded the hisa spring, and rain was good. Spring was good, they’d go, and have a baby that wouldn’t be him.

Terrible burden he’d put on them, a child that stayed a child a lot longer than hisa infants. The child who wouldn’t grow.

He’d had to be told, Turn loose, let go, fend for yourself, Melody child.

Satin said, Go. Go walk with Great Sun.

That part he didn’t want. He wanted, like a child, his way; and that way was to stay in the world he’d prepared for.

But Satin said go. And among downers Satin was the chief, the foremost, the one who’d been out there and up there and walked with Great Sun, too.

He almost couldn’t get his feet under him. He thought, I’ve been really stupid, and now I’ve really done it and Melody can’t help. I’ll die here, on this muddy bank.

And then it seemed there was something he had to do… couldn’t remember what it was, but he had to get up. He had to get up, as long as he could keep doing that.

He went down again.

Won’t ever find me, he thought, distressed with himself. It must be the twentieth time he’d fallen. This time he’d slid down a bank of wet leaves.

He tried to get up.

But just then a strange sound came to his ears.

A human voice, changed by a breather mask, was saying, “Hey, kid! Kid!”

Not anymore, he thought. Not a kid anymore.

And he held onto the stick in one hand and worked on getting to his feet one more time.

He didn’t make it—or did, but the ground gave way. He went reeling down the bank, seeing brown, swirling water ahead of him.

“God!” A body turned up in his path, rocked him back, flung them both down as the impact knocked the breath out of him. But strong hands caught him under the arms, saving him from the water. There was a dark spot in his time-sense, and someone sounded an electric horn, a signal, he thought, like the storm-signal.

Was a worse storm coming? He couldn’t imagine.

Hands tugged at the side of his mask. His head was pounding. Then someone had shoved what must be a whole new cylinder in, and air started getting to him.

“It’s all right, kid,” a woman’s voice said. “Just keep that mask on tight. We’ll get you back.”

The woman got him halfway up the slope. A man showed up and lifted, and he finally got his feet under him.

He walked, his legs hurting. He hung on one and the other of his rescuers for the hard parts, and drew larger and larger breaths, his head throbbing from the strain he’d put on his body.

They got him down to a trail, and then someone had a litter and they carried him. He lay on it feeling alternately that he was going to tumble off and that he was turning over backwards, while Great Sun was a sullen glow through gray clouds and the rain that sheeted his mask. It was hard going and his rescuers didn’t talk to him. Breathing was hard enough, and he figured they’d have nothing pleasant to say.

By evening they’d reached the Base trail and he realized muzzily he must have been asleep, because he didn’t remember all of the trip or the turn toward the Base.

Somebody waked him up now and again to see that he was breathing all right, and he had two cylinders, now, both functioning, so breathing was a great deal easier, better than he’d been able to rely on for the days he’d been out.

Satin didn’t want him. Melody didn’t want him…

The bottom dropped out of the universe. He was falling. Falling into the water. He fought it.

Second pitch. It was V -dump. He wasn’t on Old River’s banks. He wasn’t suffocating. He was on a ship, a million—million klicks from any world, even from any respectable star.

His ship was slowing down, way down, to match up with a target star. They were all right.

No enemies. They’d have heard if there’d been enemies.

Finity’s End was solidly back in the universe again, moving with the stars and their substance.

He opened his eyes. Lay there, fumbled open a nutri-pack and sucked it down, aware of Jeremy rummaging after one.

“You all right?” he asked Jeremy.

“Yeah, fine.”

He saw Jeremy had gotten his own packet open. The intercom gave an all-clear and told them their schedule. They had two hours to clean up, eat, and get back underway.

He lay there, thinking of the gray sky spinning slowly around above the treetops. Of rain on the mask. Of the irreproducible sound of thunder on the hills.

The room smelled like somebody’s old shoes. And two nutri-packs down, he found the energy to unbelt and sit up.

“Shower,” he said to the kid, as Jeremy stirred out of his bunk. “Or I get it.”

“You can have it if you want,” Jeremy said.

“No, priority to you.” His stomach hadn’t quite caught up. He had an ache in his shoulders. Another in his heart. “Three hours at this jump-point. We’ll both make it.”

“Yeah, we’re going to make it,” Jeremy said, and hauled his skinny body out of the bunk. “No stinking Mazianni at the point, we’re going to get to Esperance and the Old Man’s going to be happy and we’ll be fine .”

“Sounds good to me,” he said, and while Jeremy went to the shower, he got up, self-disgusted, out of a bed that wanted changing, in clothes that wanted washing. He dragged one change of clothes out of the drawer, wished he had a change of sheets. He got out one of the chemical wipes and wiped his face and hands. It smelled sharp, and clean.

He could remember the stale smell of the mask flinging his own breath back at him. He could remember the fever chill of the earth, and the uneven way his legs had worked on the way home.

And Satin’s stick in his hand. He’d refused to let go of it. He’d said, “Satin gave it to me,” when the rescuers questioned him, and that name had shaken them, as if he’d claimed to have seen God.

He was here . He was safe.

He’d clung to the stick during that rescue without the remotest notion what to do with it, or what he was supposed to do.

Satin, in that meeting, had seen further into his future than he could imagine. She’d been in space. She knew where she sent him.

But he hadn’t known.

He sat on the edge of his bunk, listening to the intercom tell them further details, where they were, how fast they were going, numbers in terms he didn’t remotely understand.

But he was safe. He’d come that close to dying, and he sat here hurtling along in chancy space and telling himself he was very, very lucky; and, yes, beyond a doubt in his mind, now, Satin had sent him here. Satin, who’d known the Old Man.

He wondered if Satin had had the faintest idea he was a Neihart, or why he was on her world, when she’d sent him into space. He’d never from his earliest youth believed that downers were as ignorant as researchers kept trying to say they were. But he’d never attributed mystical powers to them: he was a stationer, too hard-headed for that—most of the time.