Teresa squeezed both arms around him again and wriggled the pungent belt out of her mouth. Now came the hard part — holding her breath while worming her way up Alex’s body, centimeter by centimeter. His shirt was in tatters of course, and blood streamers stained the chill water as she noted with one dim corner of her mind that the man’s chest was even hairier than Jason’s… And that, of all things, he had an erection!

Now? Males are so bizarre.

Then she recalled the old wives’ tale — that men sometimes grow tumescent when they are close to death. Teresa hurried.

Her arms were close to giving out and her lungs were burning by the time she wrapped her legs around his thighs, held tight with one arm, and reached upstream with the knife. She tried not to stab him in the face or throat as the fickle, trickster river tore and twisted at her grip with sudden surges, forcing her hand this way and that.

He had to be alive and conscious still. Or was it just a reflex that caused Alex to run a hand along her outstretched arm, nudging her aim? All at once, through the metal blade, she felt the taut, bowstring tension of the thong, thrumming a bass tone of death.

Now! Bear down, bitch. Do it!

With a force of will Teresa drove strength into her arm. The thong resisted… then parted with a sharp twang that reverberated off the narrow walls.

Suddenly they were tumbling downstream, bouncing against the floor and ceiling. Teresa had to choose between protecting her goggles from the tearing slipstream and cramming the breather tube back into her mouth. She chose breath over sight and grabbed the aerator, quenching her agonized lungs even as the high-tech optics were torn off her head, turning everything black.

The wild ride ended just a few chaotic moments later. Abruptly, the bottom seemed to drop out as she flew into what felt like open air! The former low, thrumming growl now crested to a clear, crashing roar. Gravity took her, and the plummet lasted a measureless time… ending at last in a splash at the foot of a noisy waterfall.

The pool was deep and cold and utterly black. Teresa struggled toward what she devoutly hoped would be the surface. When her head finally broached again, she treaded water, spat out her mouthpiece, and drank in the sweetness of unbottled air. Up was up again, and down was down. For a moment it didn’t matter that nothing — not even the green glimmer of worms — illuminated her existence. Other people, after all, had gone blind and lived. But no one had ever managed very long without air.

“Alex!” she shouted suddenly, before even thinking of him consciously. He might be knocked out somewhere in this inky lake, drifting away silently, unconscious…’ and she without sight to look for him!

She swam away from the falls until the clatter and spume faded enough to let her hear herself think. “Alex!” she called again. Oh God, if she was alone down here. If he died because she passed within inches, just missing him without even knowing it… ?

Was that a sound? She whirled. Had someone coughed? It sounded like coughing. She kicked a turn, seeking the source.

“Uh… over…” More coughing interrupted the faint, croaking voice. “Over… here!”

She thrashed the water in frustration. “I lost my goggles, dammit.”

The current seemed to be drawing them closer, at least. Next time his voice was clearer. “Ah… that must be…” He coughed one last time. “… must be why I can see your face now. You look terrible, by the way.”

He sounded nearby. Alex kept talking to guide her. “Go left a bit… um… and thank you… for saving my life. Yes, that’s it. Gets shallow about there… left a bit more.”

Teresa felt sandy bottom beneath her feet and sighed as she dragged her heavy, shivering body out of the clinging black wetness. “Here, this way,” she heard him say, and a hand grabbed her arm. She clutched it tightly and sobbed suddenly with emotion she hadn’t been aware of till that moment. Now that all the furious action had stopped, a sudden wave of lygophobia washed over her and she shivered at the intimidating darkness.

“It’s all right. We’re safe for the time being.” He guided her to sit down beside him and put his arms around her to share warmth. “You’re an impressive individual, Captain… um, Teresa.”

“My friends…” she said, catching her breath as she clutched him tightly. “Sometimes, my friends call me… Rip.”

She knew he was smiling, though she couldn’t even see the hand that brushed her stringy, sopping hair out of her eyes. “Well,” he said from very close. “Thanks again, Rip.” And he held her till the shivering stopped.

Some time later, Teresa borrowed his goggles to look around. The Hadean lake stretched farther to the left and right than the tiny beam could reach, and the ceiling might as well have been limitless. Only echoes confirmed they were underground — and her fey sense, which told her countless meters of ancient rock lay between them and any exit from this place.

She gasped when she saw the extent of poor Alex’s scrapes and bruises. “Whoosh,” she sighed, touching the noose mark around his throat. It was certain to be permanent.

“A Scotsman, one of my ancestors, died this way,” he commented, tracing the bloody runnel with his fingertips. “Poor sod was caught in bed with the mistress of a Stuart prince. Not wise, but it makes for good telling centuries later. My famous grandmother says she always expected to wind up on the gallows, too. Finds the idea romantic. Maybe it runs in the family.”

“I know a thing or two about ropes and nooses also,” she told him as she dressed his worst cuts. “But I’ve got a feeling that when you go it’ll be a lot flashier than any hanging.”

He agreed with a sigh. “Oh, I imagine you’re right on about that.”

Their supplies were meager, since their hip pouches had been packed in a hurry and hers was torn in the struggle. Besides the first-aid kit and one capsule containing a compressed coverall, there were two protein bars, a compass, and a couple of black data cubes. Carefully scanning the pool, Teresa failed to find her lost goggles or anything else of value.

“How well do you remember George’s map?” she asked when they were both a bit recovered. Alex shrugged in what was, to him, utter darkness. “Not too well,” he answered frankly. “Had I it to do over again, I’d have made a copy for you. Or we ought to have taken the time to memorize it.”

“Mmm.” Teresa understood after-the-fact regrets. Her entire career had been about avoiding rushed planning — parsing out every conceivable contingency well in advance. And yet she trained for the unexpected, too. She was always ready to improvise.

“You had no time,” she replied. “And Glenn Spivey’s no fool.”

Alex shook his head. “Back in the conference room he spun out a scenario so reasonable, it almost had me convinced.”

“You seemed to be going along when I left. What changed your mind?”

He shrugged. “I didn’t so much change my mind as decide I didn’t want it made for me. We’d all worked so hard. It was starting to look as if we might be able to deal with Beta ourselves. Though how to expel it safely at the very end — that I still hadn’t figured out, yet.”

Teresa recalled her dream about the fireball, erupting into the sky from a boiling ocean… rising, but certain to return.

“So maybe Spivey’s plan’s a good one… keeping it inside the Earth, but up so high it’ll lose mass slowly?”

“Maybe… if it loses mass fast enough while in the mantle to make up for its gains lower down, if there aren’t instabilities we never calculated, if constant pumping on the gazer doesn’t crumble too many farms or cities or change the Earth’s innards somehow—”

“Could it do that?”

His face took on a perplexed look. “I don’t know. Last time I looked over my big model on Rapa Nui…” He shook his head. “Anyway, that’s where we’ve got to go now. From there we can answer Spivey’s proposition with one of our own.”