She groaned and dropped her head onto her knees. “Oh, stupid!” she said aloud. “Now you've done it. Nothing to eat or drink. And no lunch. Why didn't I think about food before I left?” She thought about it now, and she wasn't able to stop thinking about it. Supper. A big juicy soy burger. A tomato. Perhaps even a hard-boiled egg from the chickens that scratched around the Dome garden. And lots of water. Water to drink. To bathe her hot face. To soak her sore feet.

What am I going to do? I won't go back. I can't go back!

As she sat, hunched over the discomfort of her empty stomach, the wind brought her a new message. In fact she had been hearing it for some time without understanding it. It was the sound of running water. Over there. To the left.

She took off her ill-fitting sandals and walked barefoot through the grass. The sound grew clearer and closer. The long grass became short. The short grass turned to moss. And there it was, right at her feet. A small stony brook, too small to be on any map, trickling down the hillside.

She fell on her stomach and splashed her hot face and drank. The water was surprisingly cold for August. She drank until her stomach no longer felt empty. Then she sat on a lichen- painted stone and soaked her sore feet until they turned numb and white and she could not feel the pain in her heel.

Feeling better, she fastened her sandals as securely as she could and got to her feet. How stiff she was. Her calves ached. Her thighs ached. But she had hardly walked any distance at all. She could still see Ark Three, the dome an almost perfect circle on the meadowland to the north-west far below her.

She plodded uphill, trying to ignore the ache in her legs and the throbbing pain that returned to her heel as soon as the numbness wore off. At last, when the sun had dropped below the smoky purple line of the western hills, she began to look for a place to sleep.

Trees grew on the slope above her, and among them Ruth felt more comfortable. She curled up at the foot of one giant, on a bed of fallen and decayed leaves. She dozed and woke, stiff-necked and cold.

The stars were out. How different they looked here from the warm security of the Dome. There, they had been a familiar pattern that defined time and season, as if the Ark itself were a cog in the works of some enormous clock.

Here they were individuals, burning down on her, hard and unwinking, as if to say: What are you doing out here, you troublesome human? Go back underground where your kind belong. Leave the Earth you tried to destroy to heal its wounds in peace.