That brief, ghostly smile again.

"But really," he says, pushing it. "Why's everyone staying behind? This some kind of a labor action? One of those—" —what did they used to call them— "strike thingies?"

"Something like that." Clarke looks up at the overhead bulkhead. "How long to the surface?"

"A good twenty minutes, I'm afraid. These GA 'scaphes are fucking dirigibles. Everyone else is out there racing with dolphins, and the most I can manage with this thing is a fast wallow. Still—" he tries a disarming grin— "there's an up side. They're paying me by the hour."

"Hooray for you," she says.

Floodlight

It's almost silent again.

Little by little, the voices have stopped screaming. Now they converse among themselves in whispers, discussing things that mean nothing to him. It's okay, though. He's used to being ignored. He's glad to be ignored.

You're safe, Gerry. They can't hurt you.

What— who—

They've all gone. It's just us now.

You—

It's me, Gerry. Shadow. I was wondering when you'd come back.

He shakes his head. The faintest light still leaks over his shoulder. He turns, not so much toward light as toward a subtle lessening of darkness.

She was trying to help you, Gerry. She was only trying to help.

She—

Lenie. You're her guardian angel. Remember?

I'm not sure. I think—

But you left her back there. You ran away.

She wanted— I— not inside...

He feels his legs moving. Water pushes against his face. He moves forward. A soft hole open in the darkness ahead. He can see shapes inside it.

That's where she lives, Shadow says. Remember?

He creeps back into the light. There were noises before, loud and painful. There was something big and dark, that moved. Now there is only this great ball hanging overhead, like, like,

—like a fist—

He stops, frightened. But everything's quiet, so quiet he can hear faint cries drifting across the seabed. He remembers: there's a hole in the ocean, a little ways from here, that talks to him sometimes. He's never understood what it says.

Go on, Shadow urges. She went inside.

She's gone—

You can't tell from out here. You have to get in close.

The underside of the sphere is a cool shadowy refuge; the equatorial lights can't reach all the way around its convex surface. In the overlapping shadows on the south pole, something shimmers enticingly.

Go on.

He pushes off the bottom, glides into the cone of shadow beneath the object. A bright shiny disk a meter across, facing down, wriggles inside a circular rim. He looks up into it.

Something looks back.

Startled, he twists down and away. The disk writhes in the sudden turbulence. He stops, turns back.

A bubble. That's all it is. A pocket of gas, trapped underneath the

—the airlock.

That's nothing to be scared of, Shadow tells him. That's how you get in.