'Always get it confused.'
'Well, there aren't any here to befuddle you.'
'Doesn't take much, for me.'
In the womblike darkness, Susan snuggled closer.
'I wonder why,' she said.
'Why what?'
'Why aren't there any?'
'Any what?'
She nipped my ear. 'Stalactites, silly.'
'Oh. No limestone, I guess.'
'Limestone?'
'Yup. Makes sense. This is practically a lifeless planet, from what Ragna told us. Mostly microscopic organisms. Life never really got going here. Limestone comes from sediments containing coral, polyps, stuff like that. Back on Earth, that is. Here, who knows what they have going, if anything. You need water that's high in carbonate of lime to make stalactites.'
'And stalagmites.'
'And stalagmites,'
'Interesting.'
'Hardly.'
'No, I mean it. It always amazes me how much you know, for a truckdriver.'
'Duh.'
She giggled. 'Sorry, didn't mean it quite like that.' She kissed me on the cheek. 'You're strange. So very strange.'
'How so?'
'Well…' She lay on her back. 'You obviously have some education. Quite a lot, it seems. True?'
'Oh, here and there.'
'Right. U. of Tsiolkovskygrad, I bet.'
'Right,' I admitted.
'I knew it. Graduate work?'
'Some. A year, if I can remember back that far.'
'Doing what?'
'I was going for a doctorate in government administration.'
She was surprised. 'How in the world did you wrangle your way into that program? Pretty restricted.'
'Didn't wrangle at all. Actually, I was asked to sign up. Someone apparently thought I was bureaucrat material. They like to recruit from the provinces now and then. Or they did.' I shifted to my side. 'You have to remember, this was almost thirty years ago. U. of T. was a podunk school then, a bunch of pop-up domes and Durafoam shacks. It was the only university in the Colonies.'
'The entrance requirements must have been stiff.'
'They were. I'll admit to a certain native intelligence. I was young, in love with learning, tired of the farm. It seemed a good idea at the time.'
'And you quit.'
'Yeah.'
'To drive a truck.'
'No, I went back to the farm. By that time, my eyes had been opened.'
She turned over on her side to face me. 'You gave up a lot. By now, you could have been a high-level Authority functionary with a six-figure income and a dacha on the resort planet of your choice.'
'Instead, I have the freedom of the road, very few responsibilities, and a clear conscience. No punking money, no dacha, but I have what I need.'
'I see.'
We were silent for a long while.
Finally, I said, 'Should be stalactites.'
'Hm?'
'Seems to me there should be something like them here. Caves are usually formed by the erosion of water- soluble rock, like limestone. I don't know what this stuff is?I'm nobody's geologist. Gotta be gypsum, dolomite, something like that. But in that case?'
'Didn't the lava do some of it?'
'Yeah, there are definitely volcanic processes at work. But most of the weirder formations have to be the result of some pretty exotic geochemistry.'
'Well, it's an alien planet,' she said.
'Uh-huh. But we're the aliens here, honey.'
'Move closer, you horrible alien beast.' After a moment, she said, 'my, what's this?'
'A stalactite.'
''Mite,' she said, moving to position her body over me.
We even got lost down there, which bothered me not much. We had food, rivers of fresh water, more peace and quiet than I had had in a decade. It was the first real vacation I had taken in… I didn't know how long. Eventually, Susan became a little nervous, suggesting that it would be a good idea to begin a serious effort to find a way back. I told her we had time, nothing but time.
'But we're getting more and more lost,' she protested.
'Not so,' I said, crouching near the tunnel wall. 'Getting some interesting readings here on this handy-dandy pocket seismometer Ragna gave me. Remember that room we called Chichester Cathedral? It's probably not more than five meters away, on the other side of this wall'
'But we were there days ago.'
'Day before yesterday.'
'How do we get through five meters of rock?'
'Oh, here's another way back. This just means we aren't really lost. We've been keeping to the same general area. All we have to do is find a shortcut back to Chichester. From there we'll have no trouble locating that last transponder.'
'You make it sound so simple.'
'Besides, Ragna and his people should already be looking for us. This was supposed to be an overnight trip originally, if you remember. They'll be worried.'
'To say nothing of John and everybody.'
'Well,' I said, 'they shouldn't be. This is the first non-life and-death situation we've had in weeks. We've been shot at, bombarded, and kidnapped. We almost got stomped by a Roadbug, and we shot a portal with a giant sugar doughnut for a roller. God! You name it, we've been subjected to it. How can you let a little thing like this worry you, Suzie?'
'It's my nature, I guess.'
'Take off your clothes.'
'Okay.'
Before long, though, I had to concede that we really were lost. Susan was for probing farther, but I came down squarely for staying put, making camp, and waiting for a rescue party. I reminded her of her warning that wandering around blindly would probably just get us more lost. She remembered, and concurred for more than one reason. Food was getting low, and there was zero chance of finding anything down here. Limiting our activity would help to conserve it, and so would strict rationing. We were pretty good about the former, but we caught each other raiding the food satchel more than once. Neither of us could be totally serious about the situation, but as time progressed and the realization grew that we had set out fully four days ago, we gradually sobered up.
Then things got worse.
It happened in a narrow corridor whose walls were broken by side tunnels sloping up to vertical chimneys through which only Susan could squeeze to see if any of them led to higher levels. We had gradually descended over the past few days, according to the air pressure readings.
