"Come," Gwen whispered, and they started out across the silent concourse, hoping that the Braiths who had been here were gone out of earshot. The airlot and their car were very close now; it would be cruel irony if they did not reach them. But it seemed to Dirk that their steps echoed horribly loud on the un-carpeted surface of the boulevard; surely the whole building could hear them, even Bretan Braith in the deep cellars kilometers below. When they reached the pedestrian walkway that bridged the median strip of unmoving slidewalks, the two of them began to run. He was not sure who started, Gwen or himself. One instant they were walking side by side, trying to move as quickly as possible with as little noise as they could; then suddenly they were running.

Beyond the concourse-uncarpeted corridor, two turns, a wide door that seemed reluctant to open. Finally Dirk smashed his bruised shoulder against it, and he and it both groaned in protest, but the door gave way, and they stood again on the airlot of Challenge's 520th level.

The night was cold and dark. They could hear Worlorn's eternal wind whining against the Emereli tower, and a single bright star burned in the long low rectangle that framed the outworld sky. Inside, the airlot itself was just as black.

No lights went on when they entered.

But the aircar was still there, hunched in the darkness like a living thing, like the banshee it was intended to resemble, and no Braiths stood guarding it.

They went to it. Gwen took off her sensor pack and field supplies and put them in the back seat, where the sky-scoots still lay. Dirk stood and watched her, shivering as he did so; Ruark's greatcoat was gone, and the air was frigid tonight.

Gwen touched a control on the instrument panel, and a dark crack opened in the center of the manta's hood. Metal panels swung back and up, and the guts of the Kavalar machine were before them. She came around front and turned on a light built into the underside of one of the hood panels. The other panel, Dirk saw, was lined with metal tools in clips.

Gwen stood in a small pool of yellow light studying the intricate machinery. Dirk went to her side.

Finally she shook her head. "No," she said in a tired voice. "It won't work."

"We can draw power from the gravity grid," Dirk suggested. "You have the tools." He pointed.

"I don't know enough," she said. "A little, yes. I hoped I'd be able to figure… you know. I can't. It's more than just a matter of power. The wing lasers aren't even connected. They might as well be ornaments for all the good they're going to do us." She looked at Dirk. "I don't suppose you…?"

"No," he said.

She nodded. "We have no weapon, then."

Dirk stood and glanced out past the manta, toward Worlorn's empty sky. "We could fly out of here."

Gwen reached out and caught the hood panels, one in each hand, and brought them down and together again, and once more the dark banshee was whole and fierce. Her voice was toneless. "No. Remember what you said. The Braiths will be outside. Their cars will be armed. We wouldn't have a chance. No." She walked around Dirk and got into the aircar.

After a time he followed her. He sat twisted about in his seat, so that he faced the lonely star in the cold night sky. He was conscious of being very tired, and he knew it was more than physical. Since coming to Challenge, his emotions had washed over him like waves over a beach, one after another, but suddenly it seemed as though the ocean had gone. There were no waves left at all.

"I suppose you were right before, in the corridor," he said in a thoughtful, introspective voice. He was not looking at Gwen.

"Right?" she said.

"About being selfish. About… you know… about not being a white knight."

"A white knight?"

"Like Jaan. I was never a white knight, maybe, but back on Avalon I liked to think I was. I believed in things. Now I can hardly even remember what they were. Except for you, Jenny. You I remembered. That was why… well, you understand. The last seven years, I've done things, nothing terrible, you know, but still things that I might not have done on Avalon. Cynical things, selfish things. But until now I'd never gotten anyone killed."

"Don't flog yourself, Dirk," she said. Her voice was weary too. "It's not attractive."

"I want to do something," Dirk said. "I have to. I can't just… you know. You were right."

"We can't do anything, except run and die, and that won't help at all. We have no weapon."

Dirk laughed bitterly. "So we wait for Jaan and Garse to come and save us, and then… Our reunion was terribly short-lived, wasn't it?"

She leaned forward without answering, and cradled her head against her forearm on the top on the instrument panel. Dirk glanced at her and then looked outward again. He was still cold in his thin clothing, but somehow it did not seem important.

They sat quietly in the manta.

Until finally Dirk turned and put a hand on Gwen's shoulder. "The weapon," he said in a strangely animated voice. "Jaan said we had a weapon."

"The lasers on the aircar," Gwen said. "But-"

"No," Dirk said, suddenly grinning. "No, no, no!"

"What else could he have meant?"

In answer Dirk reached out and turned on the air-car's lifters, and the gray metal banshee stirred to life and rose slightly from the floor plates. "The car," he said. "The car itself."

"The Braiths outside have cars," she said. "Armed cars."

"Yes," Dirk said. "But Jaan and I weren't talking about the Braiths outside. We were talking about the hunting parties inside, the ones roaming around through the concourse killing people!"

Understanding burst across her face like sunlight. She grinned. "Yes," she said savagely, and she reached out to her instruments and the manta growled and from somewhere under its hood bright columns of white light fanned out to chase the darkness before them.

While she hovered a half-meter from the floor, Dirk vaulted out over the wings, went to the battered door and used his equally battered shoulder to knock loose a second panel, wide enough to give the aircar exit. Then Gwen moved the manta to him and he climbed in again.

A short time later, they were in the concourse, floating above the boulevard, close to where the overturned balloon-tired car lay. The bright beams of the headlamps swung over the stilled slidewalks and the long-deserted shops to point straight ahead, down the path that would lead around and around and around the tall tower of Challenge until it reached the ground at last.

"You realize," Gwen said before they started, "that we're in the up lane. Descending traffic is supposed to stay on the other side of the median." She pointed.

"This is prohibited, no doubt, by the norms of ai-Emerel." Dirk smiled. "But I don't think the Voice will mind."

Gwen gave him a fault smile back, touched her instruments, and the manta beneath them leaped forward with a rush and gathered speed. Then for a long time they made their own wind as they swept through the gray gloom, faster and faster, Gwen pale and tight-lipped at the controls, Dirk beside her idly watching the level numbers as corridor after corridor flicked by.

They heard the Braiths a long time before they saw them-the howling again, the wild baying shrieks unlike any canine that Dirk had ever heard before, made even wilder by the echoes that raced up and down the concourse in their wake. When he first heard the pack, Dirk reached out and snapped off the aircar's lights.

Gwen looked at him, questioning.

"We don't make much noise," he said. "They'll never hear us over the howls and their own shouts. But they might see the light coming up behind them. Right?"

"Right," she said. Nothing more. She was intent on the aircar. Dirk watched her in the pale gray light that