I'll need your help," he said to the black man.

Gordette looked startled, but quickly recovered and followed Brudnoy as the old ex-cosmonaut hurried along the corridor toward the cross-tunnel that led to corridor one.

Brudnoy stopped at one of the wall phones only long enough to call security and ask for an emergency team with a pair of UV lamps to meet them at airlock one.

"Why two lamps?" Gordette asked as they started trotting down the corridor toward the airlock.

"In case one fails," Brudnoy said, puffing.

"Redundancy.' Gordette understood. An astronaut's way of thinking.

The emergency team was not there yet when they got to the end of the corridor. Brudnoy muttered under his breath in Russian.

"Here they come," Gordette said, pointing up the corridor.

With a tight glance, Brudnoy reached out his long fingers and touched the MANUAL OVERRIDE stud on the airlock control panel set into the wall.

"Tell Doug that I am cycling the airlock manually," he said to Gordette as he pressed the stud that opened the outer hatch.

Gordette picked up the wall phone and spoke into it with a hushed urgency. "He's telling her to step inside the airlock," he said to Brudnoy.

The emergency team came up. Its leader, a roundish dark-haired woman, was panting.

"We were in The Cave with everybody else when the call came through. Hadda run all the way down to the storage lockers to find a second ultraviolet lamp. Why the hell do you need two?"

Brudnoy ignored her. "Is she inside?" he asked Gordette.

"Yeah, you can close the outer hatch now."

Edith never doubted for a moment that they would let her inside. Stavenger sounded too level-headed, too organized to do something stupid.

"We're going to open the outer hatch," his voice said in her helmet earphones. "Get inside quickly, because we'll need to shut it before any of your Peacekeeper buddies can make a charge for it."

The hatch slid open before she could reply. She stepped into what looked like an empty telephone booth with walls of smooth blank metal, lit by a single lamp set into the metal ceiling.

Soundlessly, the hatch slid shut again.

Nothing happened. It was like being in a spacious metal coffin. Room enough for two; maybe three, if you really squeezed it.

Edith heard a throbbing sound. She didn't really hear it so much as feel it through the soles of her boots. I wonder if the nanobugs really are chewing up my boots, or is the whole thing just an elaborate trick?

She could really hear a pump chugging away now, and the hiss of air.

"In a minute or so the inner hatch will open," Stavenger's voice told her. "Don't move. Do not step through the hatch. Understand me? Do not step through."

"I understand," Edith said. He sure sounds uptight all of a sudden.

"Good," Stavenger said. "One or two men will come into the airlock with you and help you out of your suit. Do exactly what they tell you."