Bzya turned his face to the lamp. "When it does, they can tell almost immediately, up in the Harbor," he said. "The cable starts to run free. You know the worst straight away. You don't have to wait for the empty end to be returned..."

"And us? What would happen to us?"

Hosch pushed his thin face forward. "You ask a lot of stupid questions. I'll give you some comfort. If the cable breaks, you won't know anything about it." He made his hand into a loose fist and snapped it closed in Farr's face.

Farr flinched. "Maybe you should tell me what else can kill me. Then at least I'll be prepared..."

There was a crash which jarred him loose from the support pole. The Bell swayed, rocking through the thick fluid of the underMantle.

Farr found himself floundering in the Bell's stuffy Air. Once again he needed Bzya to reach out and haul him back to the central post.

Bzya raised a silencing finger to his lips; Hosch merely glowered.

Farr held his breath.

Something scraped across the outside hull of the Bell; it was like fingernails across wood. It lasted a few heartbeats, and then faded.

After a few minutes of silence, the lurching, unsteady journey continued; Farr imagined meters of cable above his head, kinks mansheights tall running along its length.

"What was that?" He glanced up at the windows, which grudgingly admitted a diffuse purple light. "Are we in the Quantum Sea?"

"No," Bzya said. "No, the Sea itself is still hundreds of meters below us. Farr, we're barely going to penetrate the upper layers of the underMantle. But we're already a couple of meters below the Spine now."

"Yeah," said Hosch, his deep eyes fixed on Farr. "And that was a Colonist, come back from the dead to see who's visiting him."

Farr felt his mouth drop open.

"It's a Corestuff berg," Bzya said steadily. "Corestuff. That's all."

Hosch sneered, his gaze sliding around the cabin.

Farr knew Hosch was taunting him, but the sudden shock of the words had penetrated his imagination. He had always enjoyed Core War stories, had relished staring into the unachievable surface of the Quantum Sea and frightening himself with visions of the ancient, altered creatures prowling its depths. But the stories of the War, of humankind's loss, had seemed so remote from everyday experience as to be meaningless.

But Dura had told him of the fractal sculpture she had seen in Parz's University — a sculpture of a Colonist's physical form, Ito had said. And now he was descending into the underMantle himself, protected only by a rickety, barely understood technology.

He clung to the post, staring at the bruised light in the windows.

—

Again there was a scraping against the hull. Again the Bell swayed, causing Farr's stomach to lurch.