"Yes. Very interesting."

Rimskaya fixed his stern gaze on her for an uncomfortably long five or ten seconds, then nodded. "I must speak with Farley now," he said, walking away.

The expedition trucks parked twenty meters from the camp. Lanier walked out to meet them. Carrolson stayed with Patricia. "That's as far as we've gone down the corridor," she said. "From what they radioed back, we still haven't found much."

The arrival was something of an anticlimax. Nobody left the vehicles; and one by one, at Lanier's instructions, they moved past the camp and up the ramp into the tunnel, vanishing into the sixth chamber.

Lanier returned with three memory blocks. He gave one to Carrolson and one to Patricia, pocketing the third. "Expedition report, unedited," he said. "Nothing spectacular, according to Takahashi, except. . .”

He glanced behind him, down the corridor.

"Yes?" Carrolson urged.

"The second circuit is more than just floating cupolas. There are openings beneath the cupolas. They appear to be wells of some sort. They didn't find out where the wells lead, but they're definitely open."

"Then the corridor has holes," Carrolson said. "All right, Patricia, it's time we made plans for a trip to the first circuit. When are you going to be free?"

Patricia took a small breath and shook her head. "Any time. I can work wherever I am."

"Make it day after tomorrow," Lanier said. "Patricia and I have to spend some time in the library." He discreetly gestured to Carrolson: time to leave. She made her excuses and glanced back at them as she entered the tent.

"Part two of the indoctrination will begin next shift," he said. "The most difficult part of all. Are you ready for it?"

"I don't know," she said, feeling her chest contract. "I must be. I've survived so far."

"Good. Meet me at the ramp in twelve hours."

Chapter Nine

The Axis City had moved a million kilometers down the corridor since its construction five centuries ago. Olmy and the Frant had covered that distance in less than a week, flying their craft in a smooth stretched spiral around the plasma tube.

In the history of the Thistledown and the Way, no one had ever entered the asteroid from the outside.

Olmy and the Frant had surveyed the Thistledown's new occupants for two weeks and had learned a great deal. They were indeed human, and not even Korzenowski himself could have expected what Olmy now knew.

The Thistledown had come full circle. Geshels had warned there might be displacement, but no one had suspected what kind of displacement, or what the results might be.

Having completed his principal duties for the Nexus, Olmy then turned off his data and mission recorders and returned to his old home in the third chamber. The cylindrical apartment building where his triad family had lived, where he had spent two years of his childhood, stood right at the edge of Thistledown City, not quite a kilometer from the northern cap. Once, the building had held twenty thousand people, chiefly Geshels, technicians and researchers employed on the Sixth Chamber Project. It had then served as temporary home for hundreds of orthodox Naderites expelled by the Nexus from Alexandria. Now, of course, it was empty; there was no evidence it had even been visited by the asteroid's new occupants.