"You said that," Dirk replied.

"I say it a second time. I want you to remember." Vikary frowned. "And now I will go. It is a long flight to Challenge, a long cold flight."

The screen went dark before Dirk could frame an answer.

Gwen was waiting just outside the door, leaning up against the carpeted wall, her face in her hands. She straightened when Dirk came out. "Are they coming?" she asked.

"Yes."

"I'm sorry I… left. I couldn't face him."

"It doesn't matter."

"It does."

"No," he said sharply. His stomach ached. He kept imagining far-off screams. "It doesn't. You made it clear before-how you feel."

"Did I?" She laughed. "If you know how I feel, you know more than me, Dirk."

"Gwen, I don't– No, listen, it doesn't matter.

You were right. We have to… Jaan said we have a weapon."

She frowned. "He did? Does he think I took my dart gun? Or what?"

"No, I don't think so. He only said that we have a weapon, that we stole it ourselves and insulted Iron-jade."

She closed her eyes. "What?" she said. "Of course." Her eyes opened again. "The aircar. It's armed with lasercannon. That has to be what he meant. They aren't charged. I don't even think they're connected. That was the aircar I used most of the time, and Garse…"

"I understand. But you think the lasers can be fixed? Made to work?"

"Maybe. I don't know. But what else could Jaan have meant?"

"The Braiths may have found the car, of course," Dirk said. His voice was cool and even. "We'll have to take that chance. Hiding-we can't hide, they'll find us. Bretan may be on his way right now, if my transmission to Larteyn registered anywhere down below. No, we double back to the aircar. They won't expect that, if they know we were headed down along the concourse."

"The aircar is fifty-two levels above us," Gwen pointed out. "How do we get to it? If Bretan has as much control over the power as we think he does, he has surely killed the tubes. He stopped the slidewalks."

"He knew we were using the slidewalks," Dirk said. "Or at least that we were on the concourse. The ones tracking us told him. They are in contact, Gwen. The Braiths. They have to be, the belts stopped too conveniently. But that makes it easy."

"Easy? What?"

"For us to draw attention to ourselves," he said. "For us to get them after us, to save the goddamned Emereli. That's what Jaan wants us to do. Isn't that what you want us to do?" His voice was sharp.

Gwen paled slightly. "Well," she said. "Yes."

"Then you win. We're going to do it."

She looked thoughtful. "The tubes, then? If they are still working?"

"We couldn't trust the tubes," Dirk said. "Even if they were working. Bretan might stop them while we were inside one."

"I don't know of any stairs," she said. "And we'd never find them without the Voice even if they do exist. We could walk up the concourse, but…"

"We know of at least two Braith hunting parties roaming the concourse. There are probably more. No."

"What then?"

"What's left?" He frowned. "The centershaft."

Dirk leaned forward across the wrought-iron railing, looked up and then down, and grew dizzy. The center-shaft seemed to go on forever in both directions. It was only two kilometers from top to bottom, he knew, but everything about it gave the feeling of all but infinite distance. The rising currents of warm air that gave buoyancy to the feather-light floaters also filled the echoing shaft with a gray-white mist, and the balconies that lined the circumference-level on level on level -were all identical, giving the illusion of unending repetition.

Gwen had taken something from her sensor pack, a palm-sized silvery metallic instrument. She stood next to Dirk by the railing and tossed it lightly out into the shaft. Both of them watched it travel, spinning over and over, winking at them with reflected light. It sailed halfway across the diameter of the great cylinder before it began to fall-slowly, gently, half supported by the rising air, a mote of metal dust dancing in the artificial sunlight. They watched it for a eon before it vanished in the gray gulf below them. "Well," Gwen said after it was lost to sight, "the gravity grid is still on."

"Yes. Bretan doesn't know the city. Not well enough." Dirk glanced up again. "I guess we should get started. Who goes first?"

"After you," she said.

Dirk opened the balcony gate and retreated to the wall. He brushed a tangle of hair out of his eyes impatiently, shrugged, and ran forward, kicking as hard as he could when his boot touched the edge.

The leap took him out and up and up. For one wild moment it was like falling, and Dirk's stomach wrenched, but then he looked and saw and felt, and it was not like falling at all, it was flying, soaring. He laughed aloud, suddenly giddy, and he brought his arms in front of him and swept them back in powerful strokes, swimming higher and faster. The rows of empty balconies went by: one level, two, five. Sooner or later he would begin to drop, a slow curving descent into gray-shrouded distance, but he would scarcely have time to fall far. The other side of the centershaft was only thirty meters off, an easy jump against the paperclip chains of the shaft's trace gravity.

Finally the curving wall grew near, and he bounced off one black iron railing, spinning out and tumbling upward absurdly before he reached and caught a post of the balcony just above the one he'd hit. It was easy to pull himself in. He'd come clear across the center-shaft, and eleven levels up. Smiling and strangely elated, he sat and gathered strength for a second leap while he watched Gwen come after him. She flew like some graceful impossible bird, her black hair shimmering behind her as she soared. She also outjumped him by two levels.

By the time he reached the 520th level, Dirk was bruised in a half-dozen places where he'd banged up against the iron railings, but he felt almost good. At the end of his sixth dizzy leap across the plunging shaft he was half reluctant to pull himself onto the target balcony and return to normal gravity. But he did. Gwen was already there waiting for him, her sensor pack and field supplies strapped to her back between the shoulder blades. She gave him a hand and helped pull him over the railing.

They went out into the broad corridor that circled the centershaft, into the now-familiar blue shadows.

Globes shone dimly at junctions on either side of them, where long straight passages led away from the city's core like spokes on some great wheel. At random they chose one and began to walk swiftly toward the perimeter. It was a longer walk than Dirk would have thought possible, past numerous other intersections (he lost count at forty) each like the others, past black doors that differed only in their numbering. Neither he nor Gwen spoke. The good feeling that he had touched briefly, the joy of wingless flight, dropped from him as suddenly as it had come while he walked through the murky dimness. In its place, a faint tinge of fear. His ears conjured up phantoms to worry him, far-off howl-ings and the soft footfalls of pursuers; his eyes made the more distant light globes into something strange and terrible, and found shapes in the cobalt corners where only darkness lay. But they encountered nothing, no one; it was only his mind playing tricks on him.

Yet the Braiths had been here. Close to the perimeter of Challenge, where the cross corridor met the outer concourse, they found one of the balloon-tired vehicles that the Voice used to carry guests back and forth. It was empty and overturned, lying half on the blue carpet and half on the clean cold plastic that floored the concourse proper. When they reached it, they stopped, and Gwen's eyes met Dirk's in wordless comment. The balloon-tired cars, he recalled shortly, had no controls for their passengers; the Voice drove them directly. And here one lay, on its side, without power or motion. He noticed something else as well. Near one rear wheel the blue carpet was damp and smelly.