Patricia held her multi-meter before her. The value of pi held steady. She knelt down and hung the instrument over the rim. The readout remained the same.

"Now step into the depression," Takahashi suggested. The marines, Farley, Carrolson and Takahashi stood beyond the rim in a group. She wrinkled her nose at them. "Another initiation? You first, then."

"That would spoil the fun," Carrolson said. "Go ahead."

Patricia pushed one foot forward, then put her weight onto the sloping, sandy soil.

"All the way," Lake urged.

She sighed and walked into the dimple. Ten meters from the rim, feeling peculiar, she looked back. Her body was not inclined at the same angle as the others. Dizzy, she tried to right herself and almost fell over. The natural stance was along the radius of curvature, as if the corridor force followed the curve of the bowl. Yet there was no local distortion of space registering on the multi-meter. The rest of the group followed after.

In the shadow of the floating dish was a slightly protruding bronze-colored plug about half as wide. Takahashi walked across the plug to show it was safe. Patricia followed, multi-meter again at the fore. No change.

"Any idea what holds the dish up?" she asked. Farley and Carrolson shrugged. The marines sat in the sand around the well, looking bored.

"That may not be an appropriate question," Takahashi said. "Look at the material of the dish and plug—up close. As far as we can tell, it's the same stuff as the corridor walls."

Patricia kneeled and ran her hands along the plug's surface. The color was not uniformly bronze. There seemed to be red and green streaks, even spots of black, merging, separating and twisting in the surface like worms.

"This stuff is geometry, too, then?" Patricia asked.

"It isn't matter," Carrolson said. "We ruled that out just after the wells were discovered."

"It took us all some time to get used to the idea of using space as a building material," Takahashi said. Farley nodded emphatically.

"Not at all," Patricia said coolly. "I wrote about it four years ago. If nested universes are somehow kept from assuming one definite state, a barrier against penetration will form due to continuous opposed spatial transforms."

Takahashi smiled but Carrolson and Farley simply stared. "So," Takahashi said, "nothing supports the dish. It doesn't have any real existence. It's simply a shaped jam-up of probabilities. Makes perfect sense."

"Oh," Farley said.

Lake sat in the middle of the plug, Apple lying across his knees. "I'm just a small-town boy from Michigan," he said. "But it sure feels solid. It isn't even slippery."