Kevin Walsh is a good kid. He knows relationships take work, he's willing to do what it takes to keep the spark—such as it is—alive. Or at least, to stretch its death out over the longest possible period.

He attached himself to her arm after Lubin handed out the first fine-tuning assignments, and wouldn't take Later, maybe for an answer. Finally Clarke relented. They found an unoccupied hab and threw down a couple of sleeping pallets, and he uncomplainingly worked his tongue and thumb and forefinger down to jelly until she didn't have the heart to let him continue. She stroked his head and said it was nice but it really wasn't working, and she offered herself in turn for his efforts, but he didn't take her up on it—whether out of chivalrous penance for his own inadequacy or simply because he was sulking, she couldn't tell.

Now they lie side by side, hands lightly interlocked at arm's length. Walsh is asleep, which is surprising: he's no more fond of sleeping in gravity than any other rifter. Maybe it's another chivalrous affectation. Maybe he's faking it.

Clarke can't bring herself to do even that. She lies on her back and stares up at the condensation beading on the bulkhead. After a while she disentangles her hand from Walsh's—gently, so as not to interrupt the performance—and wanders over to the local Comm board.

The main display frames a murky, cryptic obelisk looming up out of the seabed. Atlantis's primary generator. Part of it, anyway—the bulk of the structure plunges deep into bedrock, into the heart of a vent from which it feeds like a mosquito sucking hot blood. Only the apex rises above the substrate like some lumpy windowless skyscraper, facades pocked and wormy with pipes and vents and valves. A sparse dotted line of floodlights girdles the structure about eight meters up, casting a bright coarse halo that stains everything copper. The abyss presses down against that light like a black hand; the top of the generator extends into darkness.

A conduit the size of a sewer pipe emerges at ground level and snakes into the darkness. Clarke absently tags the next cam in line, following the line along the seabed.

"Hey, what are you…"

He doesn't sound sleepy at all.

She turns. Walsh is crouched half-kneeling on the pallet, as though caught in the act of rising. He doesn't move, though.

"Hey, get back here. I wanna try again." He's going for a boyish grin. He's wearing the Disarmingly Cute Face of Seduction. It's a jarring contrast with his posture, which evokes the image of an eleven-year-old caught masturbating on the good linen.

She eyes him curiously. "What's up, Kev?"

He laughs; it sounds like a hiccough. "Nothing's up… we just didn't, you know, finish…"