On the opposite side of the compound, a train pulled away from the elevated station. She glanced at her watch; as scheduled, the fourth chamber stop, 1400 hours. The platform was empty; none of the trains were being used for troops, only trucks. The trains were doing their automatic best to keep everything normal.

"Jesus," she said, suddenly realizing. Vasquez had wanted to return to the library. Which one did she mean?

Farley ran up beside her. "We're being invaded," she said, astonished. "Paratroopers. Russian soldiers. Cosmonauts. Whatever they are, they've come down in the first and second chambers. They're coming down here, too."

"I've seen them," Carrolson said. "Patricia's gone to the library. We have to find her—"

"How? The train's gone. Not another for half an hour. We can't take a truck—they're all in use."

Carrolson had never felt so helpless and out of place. She stood with fists clenched, facing the southern cap. Most of the parachutes had descended below their line of sight.

Patricia stared at the seat ahead of her, biting her lower lip. Nobody was guarding the train; that was either an oversight, or providential.

She had been in a dream ever since leaving Earth. Was it possible to be trapped in a dream?

In a dream, you can do anything, if you learn how to control, to shape and command.

And the equations hit by the chalk. . .

If what she had seen in the equations was correct, then at this very moment, there was a place—a curve—where Father sat in his chair, reading Tiempos de Los Angeles, and the corridor would pass right near it. She only had to search for the right door, the right section of the corridor, and she could find Rita and Ramon, Paul and Julia.

She could hardly wait to tell Lanier. He would be pleased. Rimskaya would be proud he had recommended her. She had solved the secret of the corridor—the last pieces of the puzzle falling into place in a dream, no less.

She could take them all home again.

The train came to her stop and she exited, climbing the stair to the ground level.

"Miss Vasquez?"

Patricia turned to face a man she had never met before. He sat on the concrete edge of the underground entrance. His hair was black and short and he wore a close-fitting black suit.

"Excuse me," she said, her eyes not really focusing on him. She was in the grip of a powerful working state. "I don't know who you are. I can't stay."

"Nor can we. You must come with us."

A tall creature with a head almost as narrow as a board and jutting eyes rose from behind the ceiling. Its shoulders were wrapped in silvery fabric; otherwise it wore nothing. Its skin was smooth as fine leather and just as brown.

She stared, inner concentration evaporating.