"We promise, Gaby," Valiha said.

Gaby nodded wearily and closed her eyes. She opened them again and looked troubled. Her voice was nearly inaudible.

"You know," she said, "the only thing I really regret is that Rocky couldn't be here with me. Chris, would ... no." She looked away from him and found Robin's eyes. Robin took her hand. "Robin, when you see her, give her a kiss for me."

"I will."

Gaby nodded again and quickly went to sleep. After a short time her breathing became ragged and then stopped. When Valiha listened for a heartbeat, she could find none.

It was strange.

Gaby had read of the commonality of near-death experiences. Those who had gone to the edge of death so often saw the same things that she had some idea of what to expect. People spoke of serenity, an absence of pain, of achieving a peace so sweet and alluring they could calmly take stock and decide whether to live or die. Whether real or hallucinatory, many had also reported standing outside themselves and looking at their bodies.

She knew what they were talking about now, and words could not describe it. It was wonderful, and it was strange.

They thought she was dead, but she knew she wasn't, not yet. She soon would be because she had stopped breathing. Her heart stopped, and she waited for the final experience with what might have been amused curiosity: I know what it's like to be; what will it be like to not be? Does one come apart, gradually shut down, or just fade away? Will there be trumpets and harps, fire and brimstone, rebirth, or the steady-state hum of cold intergalactic hydrogen? Will it be nothing? If so, what is nothing?

Her body no longer held her. It was good to be free, to drift in space and time, to look back on the scene frozen behind her. It made a striking tableau.

And there was Cirocco, sitting patiently on the pile of stone. Her arm was in a sling. It was good to have had a friend. For the early part of her life Gaby had been in dire danger of dying without one, and that would have been worse than any hell. Thank you, Rocky, for being my friend ...

It was taking more time than she expected. Now there was open sky and the vast desert below, and she continued to drift upward. Higher and higher she went, up through the roof and into space, up and up... .

To where?

For the first time she began to have doubts.

Wouldn't that be the cosmic joke to end them all? What a surprise to theologians if it turned out the Answer really was... .

What if she were not City Hall?

Presently it could no longer be ignored. Whatever Gaby had become, her destination was clear. She was going to the hub.

She wished she knew how to scream.

Chris and Robin talked it out, explored it from all angles, and it added up to a hopeless situation. But the human animal is seldom hopeless, really hopeless in the real world. Had they been sealed off above and below, they could have waited to die. It might almost have been easier to do so. But while the stairs still beckoned, they both knew they had to descend them.

"It's in the best tradition of heroes," Chris pointed out "To die trying."

"Will you stop that hero business? We're talking about survival. We don't have a chance here, so if there's even a million-to-one shot at the bottom of the stairs, we have to take it."

But it was not easy to get Valiha moving.

The Titanide was a bundle of nerves. Logical argument had little effect on her. She could agree that they must look for a way out and that the only possible route was downward, but at that point her mind stopped, and something else took over. It was wrong for a Titanide to be in this place. To go deeper was almost unthinkable. Chris was beginning to feel desperate. For one thing, there was Gaby. It was not pleasant to remain near her body. Before long... but that did not bear thinking about. To be unable to bury her was terrible enough.

They never found out how long it took to descend the stairs. The clocks had been in Hornpipe's pack, and there was just no other way to measure the passage of time. It became an endless nightmare, relieved only by meager meals taken when hunger became intolerable and by the dream-ridden sleep of exhaustion. They might make twenty or thirty steps down before Valiha would sit and begin to shake. It was impossible to budge her until she had screwed up her own courage. She was too big to move, and no words they could say did any good.

Robin's temper-none too even at the best of times-became volcanic. At first Chris tried to restrain her language. Later he began to add comments of his own. He thought it unwise when Robin began to pummel the Titanide, to get behind her and push in her desperate urge to get moving, but he said nothing. And he could not just leave her. Robin agreed.

"I'd love to strangle her," she said, "But I couldn't abandon her."

"It wouldn't have to be abandonment," Chris said. "We could go ahead and try to get help."

Robin scowled at him. "Don't kid yourself. What's at the bottom? Probably a pool of acid. Even if there's not, and if Tethys doesn't kill us and we make it to one of those tunnels-if there even are tunnels down here like the other place-it's gonna take weeks to get out and weeks to get back. If we leave her, she's dead."

Chris had to admit the truth of it, and Robin went back to physically trying to force Valiha to move. He still thought that might be a mistake, and Valiha proved him right. It happened suddenly and began with Robin slapping her.

"That hurt," Valiha said.

Robin slapped her again.

Valiha put her huge hand around Robin's neck, lifted her off the ground, and held her at arm's length. Robin kicked a few times, then held completely still, gurgling.

"The next time I pick you up," Valiha said, with no particular menace in her voice, "I will squeeze until your head comes off." She set Robin down, held her shoulder while she coughed, did not let go until she was sure Robin could stand on her own. Robin backed away, and Chris thought it was fortunate her gun had been safely stowed in Valiha's pack. But Valiha did not seem to bear her any malice, and the incident was never mentioned again, nor did Robin ever again so much as raise her voice to the Titanide.

He thought they must be past the halfway point. It was the fifth time they had slept. But this time, when he awoke, Valiha wasn't there.

They started to climb.

One thousand two hundred twenty-nine steps later they found her. She was sitting with her legs folded under her, glassy-eyed, rocking back and forth gently. She looked no more intelligent than a cow.

Robin sat and Chris collapsed next to her. He knew that if the tears started now, he might never stop weeping, so he fought them back.

"What now?" Robin asked.

Chris sighed and stood up. He put his hands to Valiha's cheeks and rubbed them gently until her eyes focused on him.

"It's time to go again, Valiha," he said.

"It is?"

"I'm afraid so."

She stood and let him lead her. They made twenty steps, then thirty, then forty. On the forty-sixth step she sat down again and began to rock. After more coaxing Chris got her to her feet and they made sixty steps. When he got her up the third time, he was optimistic, hoping to make one hundred steps, but what he got was seventeen.

Two sleeps later he awoke to the sound of Robin crying. He looked up, saw that Valiha was gone again. He put his arm around her, and she made no objection. When she was through, they got up and once more began to climb.

It seemed that no one had done any talking in years. There had been arguing and once he and Robin had come to blows. But even that could not be sustained long; neither had the energy for it. He limped for a while after the fight, and Robin sported a black eye. But it was amazing what a little adrenalin could do. "It looks like the floor is dry," Robin whispered. "I can hardly believe it."