March shook his head. “Not wearing this. No, I can’t jog and won’t try.”

  “Well, take it off.” The young woman’s fear was almost palpable.

  “I won’t.” March caught her arm. “In a minute I’m going to let you run if you want to, but I need to say something first. If you decide you want out, just look me up. I’ll get you out if I can. Understand?”

  The young woman nodded and tried to smile. The smile was a pathetic failure.

  “Fine.” March released her. “You jog ahead and find a place to hide.”

  His suit felt heavy now even in the slight gravity of Number Nineteen. His wristwatch told him that only six and a half hours of the day had passed for him. The knowledge did nothing to relieve his aching shoulders; he was hot and tired.

  “We have seen the founder’s statue,” he told his mike, “and learned that this asteroid contains copper, tin, and gold. Those metals—the last, particularly—no doubt financed much of the building of this memorial. We have learned two other things of considerable interest. I have, at least, in the course of walking over several miles of it.” Some time ago, he had removed his gloves and pushed them under his utility belt. Now he employed a forefinger to wipe his sweating forehead.

  “First, this is the only memorial I am aware of that actually enlists visitors to serve its agenda, which we may assume was that of the Founder. As you have heard, some of them are returned to Earth. We can only speculate as to their purpose.

  “Second, it seems at least possible that the Founder’s accomplishments included one of the holy grails of physics, the creation of artificial gravity. You may recall that our guide told us the gravity here was a combination of mass and spin. Real gravity—gravity from mass—pulls us inward. Spin forces us outward. The two are antithetical, in other words, and cannot be made to act in concert. I would estimate the gravity I feel here to be about one quarter that of Earth. I doubt that a core of heavy metals could provide that much gravity to an asteroid this small, and this asteroid is certainly not spinning fast enough. If it had been, it would have thrown me back into space when I landed.”

  Beyond the flowery border, a rolling green landscape displayed two neat white cottages some distance apart. The light had diminished twice before March reached the first.

  His knocks brought a remarkably handsome, angry, and suspicious man who answered all March’s arguments with “We don’t let anybody into our home.”

  Total darkness came before March reached the second cottage. It was a night without stars, and without the least attempt to counterfeit them. The day sky had been a passable imitation of Earth’s: a blue dome traversed by a single bright light, wispy clouds that might, perhaps, have been steam. By night, the cavern was plainly that. The air was cool, and soon grew cooler still.

  “March? March?” The voice was plaintive, sad, and old.

  “That’s me,” he said. “Who are you?”

  “You left me to die, March. You left me alone in that hospital so you could go off to some meeting. And I died, March. I died alone, abandoned.”

  “Mom?” His free hand was fumbling with the flashlight on his utility belt.

  A child’s voice said, “You don’t know me. You’ll never know me, March. You’ll never know me because I was never born. I’m March Wildspring, Jr. I’m the son you never got.”

  “Uh huh.” March’s fingers had found the switch. “I’m going to turn this on now, son. You might want to cover your eyes. It’s a lot brighter than a helmet light.”

  He did, and there was no one there. For two minutes and more, the glaring beam probed the darkness in search of the other white cottage he had seen; there was no such cottage, and it began to rain.

  Sighing, he returned the flashlight to his belt, resumed his helmet, and switched on his helmet light.

  “I sat beside you, March. Beside you in home room, and behind you in history. You let me copy your answers once, March, and I thought you liked me. I liked you and tried to show you I was yours for the asking. You were in all my daydreams, March. Other things changed, but you were always there.”

  He said nothing, plodding wearily forward. His helmet light showed no one.

  “Remember the time I touched your hand? You pulled away. I loved you, and you pulled away.”

  “You scared me,” he told the disembodied voice. “I was one of the biggest boys in the class, and you were bigger than I was. You had those hungry eyes.”

  The old voice said, “You left me alone, March. You left me alone to die.”

  “You weren’t supposed to die.” His helmet light revealed no speaker. “There was a meeting I had to attend, a planning meeting for next year’s schedule. They said you’d be home in a week.”

  A dog barked. It was a soft and friendly bark, and though it did not bark again he could hear its panting. “I’m sorry,” he told the dog. “I didn’t know how sick you were.”

  By the time he reached the second cottage, he was determined to get in at any cost. “I’m a new arrival,” he told the handsome young man who answered his knock. For a moment he paused, sniffing.

  “So are we.” The young man made no attempt to conceal his naked body. “Get your own dump.”

  The air March’s suit was utilizing now carried a whiff of tobacco smoke. “I’m out here with the nightmares, and I don’t like it. I need a place to sleep, and something to eat, if you’ve got it.”

  The muscular (and very naked) young man tried to close the door, but March had stuck the toe of his boot into it. “I’ll behave myself, and I’ll be eternally grateful.”

  “You get the hell out!”

  From behind the muscular young man, Kit’s well-remembered voice called, “Let him in, Jim!”

  The muscular young man snarled, “Shut the fuck up!”

  March’s shoulder forced the door open, throwing Jim backward. A split second later, March’s left took him in the pit of the stomach. It was followed at once (perhaps unnecessarily) by March’s right, which caught the side of Jim’s neck.

  He went down, March unhooked the flashlight from his belt, and Kit said, “Windy! Thank God.” She was wearing the pink brassiere he remembered so well.

  He had never tried to kiss anyone through his helmet before. Both laughed, he unscrewed the helmet, they kissed properly, and he picked Kit up and swung her around like a child.

  “You shouldn’t do that,” she told him breathlessly. “I’m too fat. You’ll hurt yourself.”

  “You’re not fat, and there isn’t much gravity here.”

  “I should lose ten pounds and you know it. Twenty would be better.”

  “You look great.” It was difficult to keep his eyes on her face.

  “Everybody looks great here. You look great, too.”

  “How did you know it was me? I didn’t know you were in there until I heard your voice.”

  “I didn’t, at first.” She grinned. “I couldn’t see you because Jim was in the way, and I didn’t recognize your voice because you sound better here. It was just that you were a stranger, and maybe you’d protect me from him. He tore my clothes off, and I think I’m going to get a black eye.”

  By that time, Jim had picked up the flashlight and was trying to stand. March took it from him and hit him with it. Twice.

  “Shove him out the door,” Kit suggested.

  March shook his head. “Not yet. I’ve got something to show you. If it’s what I think it’s going to be, I want him to see it, too. Hell, he’s entitled to see it. Turn on that vid, will you? You can keep the sound off.”

  She did, and dancers as naked as Jim Redd capered across the projection area.

  “I didn’t know it was you,” she told March, “until I saw the orange suit. The lights in here aren’t very good.”

  “I’ve noticed, and I think I may understand that. Another thing I’ve noticed is that though whatever the Founder’s got makes everybody else look different—”

  “Better,” Kit said.

  “You look just the way you always did. You’re still the most beautiful woman in the world.”

  “I look different, Windy, and you know it. You just won’t admit it.”

  He shook his head. “You look exactly the same. You sound the same, too. When you couldn’t see me, I couldn’t see you, either. I heard your voice, and it was the most beautiful voice in the business. No different.”

  “I don’t think I understand.”

  “Neither do I. That’s how it was, and that’s all I know.” He was sweeping the room with his digicorder. When he finished, he found the remote and changed channels.

  “Vid looks just the same as at home,” Kit said. “I don’t understand that either. Do you?”

  “If you mean how the system here does that, no. If you mean why it does it, it ought to be pretty obvious. The people get reminded of how it really was back home every time they look at it. This place is the carrot. What they see on vid is the stick. It’s what they’ll be going back to if they try to leave. So they don’t. Wait a minute. Is there a hand-mirror around here?”

  “Probably. I can look.”

  “Do that,” March told her.

  Redd groaned. After a minute or two, he groped the contusions on his head.

  “Stay flat on the floor,” March told him, “or you’ll have another one.” He had opened his suit and taken out his wallet.

  Kit returned with a mirror. “You know, this is really a pretty place. It’s not big, but it’s awfully nice. Our watcher explained that the couple that had it before had gone back to Earth. The Founder’d sent them there, she said. They might come back eventually, but we could have it until they did. All this was before Jim jumped me.”

  March nodded.

  “She said she’d go back to her gate and sleep there, but she’d come by for us in the morning. I thought I could handle Jim—that was a big mistake—and this looked nice. It would give us a base to operate out of while I looked for you and Jim looked for Robin. So I said okay, fine.”

  “You saw my lifeline.”

  “That’s right. So we knew where you’d gone, Windy. Only it had been cut in front of the airlock, and that worried the hell out of me.”

  “The door did it,” he said absently. “The airlock door. When you look into that mirror, do you see a new, improved you?”

  “That’s right, and I look great.”

  “Now look at this.” March held up his wallet. “Which you is this?”

  There was a long pause before Kit said, “That’s the old me. This isn’t real, is it? I never thought it was.”

  “But it was fun to pretend.”

  Kit nodded.

  “Besides, philosophers have argued for centuries over what we mean by ‘real’ and what we ought to mean. When I look at you, the physical body I see is composed of atoms that form molecules. That’s what it really is, but I see a person. Which one’s real?”

  “Both of them,” Kit said promptly.

  “I agree, but not everyone does. I used to know a man whose wife cheated on him and bragged about it. He told himself it wasn’t real because it didn’t matter. What was real was the love he had for her, and the love he thought she had for him.”

  “I think I know him, too.”

  “Nothing mattered but that love, so only that love was real. It wasn’t a lie he was telling himself, because he thought it was the truth. He’d convinced himself.”

  With an almost inaudible grunt, Redd sat up. Though still handsome, he looked sick; a few seconds later he spat onto the intricately beautiful Persian carpet.

  March switched off his digicorder and took out the disk. “I want to play this. Let’s see what we see.”

  What they saw first was a blue screen dotted with instructions and cautions printed in yellow. He pressed fast forward, stopped at a shot of Kit, and turned up the sound.

  “No, Sarah. We’d like to hear about your cooking. It made you famous all over Southton.”

  The real Kit said, “That’s the way, Windy. Hide those hips.”

  March hit fast forward again. “If only you knew what I feel every time I see them. Is Jim watching?”

  He was, still sitting and looking only a little the worse for wear.

  “Let’s see if we can find Sue.”

  Robin appeared, simpering. Soon, March’s voice said, “You are. You’re really quite beautiful.”

  She laughed.

  March’s voice continued, “Is it all right if I jump?”

  Kit asked, “Is that how she looked to you then?”

  March shook his head and killed the sound. “She was lovely, and looked like nineteen or twenty. Did you notice the dolls behind her?”

  “And the mess. There was a teddy bear, too.”

  “She wanted me to think she was a kid, twelve maybe, who looked older here. She tried to talk like that at first, but after a while she forgot and I noticed. She’d seen me coming, somehow, and gotten to the gate in time to talk the real kid into going out for coffee or something while Sue subbed for her. Presumably there’s a place where you can watch like that, and Sue had found out about it fast, because she thought Jim here might come after her. So I came and was met by a gorgeous redhead who told me her name was Penny. Look at the screen.”

  It showed a vast cavern, with a floor of mud and water. Here and there grass struggled to live, its sallow blades ill-nourished by sunlamps high overhead.

  “That isn’t what I saw when I jumped,” March said wryly. “It isn’t even what I saw in the viewfinder. It’s what the digicorder saw, just the same.”

  “You mean…?”

  “I mean it’s where we are. Right now.”

  Redd snarled, “You got me into this.”

  “If you’re talking to me,” March said, “I agree. I did. If you’re talking to Kit, you and I are going to have words again.”

  “Without the flashlight?”

  “Try it and see.”

  “That’s what I want,” Kit said. “I want to see. You were shooting when you came in here. I know you were. I want to see Jim and me, and I want to see what this place really looks like.”

  They did.

  · · · ·

  The three of them left together the next morning, after eating what they now knew was a paste of ground grain.

  “I’m going to make you a deal,” Redd told them.

  “Think you can outrun me? Either one of you?”

  Kit shook her head, but March said, “I’d be willing to try. Want to find out?”

  “In that suit?”

  “You’re a smoker, and I’m willing to try.”

  “You may get the chance. Look, I could just take off and look for Robin. When I found her—and I would—I’d take her to my hopper and we’d be back in New York before you knew we were gone. Capeesh?”

  March nodded.

  “That’s got one big hole in it.” Redd paused, looking thoughtful. “Are they going to let us go without a fight? Maybe they will. Maybe they won’t.”

  “They won’t,” Kit said.

  “I don’t think so either,” March told her, “but I’d like to hear your reason.”

  “Simple. We’ve seen through this place. They’ll know we have, because nobody who hasn’t would want to leave. If we get out we’ll tell other people. So we don’t get out.”

  Redd grinned. “Smart lady. How about you, March? You thinking the same as she is?”

  “Close enough. What about you?”

  “I’m not as sure as she is.” Redd picked his teeth with a fingernail.

  “But you think so, too. Why?”

  “Everything’s easier to get into than to get out of, that’s all. You probably think I’m a goodfella.”

  March shook his head. “You were working as a sound man, so it didn’t seem likely.”

  “That’s right, I’m not. But I could’ve been a dozen times over. I’d be a made man by now. Or maybe dead, or in the slammer.” Redd shrugged. “I know people, okay? Guys from my old neighborhood. Guys I went to school with. It was easy for most of them, and there was a couple who didn’t even know where they were till somebody told them. You get in really easy, like here.”

  Kit said, “But you don’t get out.”

  “Exactly. So I figure what I figure. They’re sending people back to Earth, capeesh? She told us, and that’s who had our shack before. For their health? I don’t think so. They’ve got an angle.”

  “So do you,” Kit told him.

  “That’s right. Mine is that we’ve got a better chance getting out together than doing it separately. I’ll help you two, if you’ll help Robin and me.”

  March said, “We will.”

  Kit looked from one to the other. “What if Robin doesn’t want to go with him, Windy?”

  “We’ll deal with that after we’ve gotten out,” March told her. “If we start fighting among ourselves now…” He shrugged.

  Redd opened a battered vacpack of Old Camels, looked into it, and reclosed it. “I’ll deal now. Kit, if you’ll give your word you’ll take her back to the city and turn her loose, I’ll give mine that I’ll let you do it. That’s unless she decides to come back with me and tells you so herself.”

  “It’s a deal.” Kit offered her hand.

  “I want to know about the footrace,” March told him.

  “Just this. I’m splitting. Two of us will have a better chance of finding her than one. If you don’t like it, you’ll have to run me down.”

  “I like it,” March told him. “You won’t have to run.”

  “That’s great. We’ll meet you at the gate, okay? The gate you came in through. We came in through that one, too.”

  Kit added, “I saw your lifeline, Windy.”

  “That was Gate Four,” March told Redd. “We’ll wait a while there—if we can. You do the same. That doesn’t mean we’ll wait for days. An hour or two, tops.”

  Redd nodded and left, walking fast. They saw him stop where the path threaded a picture-perfect little grove to light a cigarette; then he was lost to sight.

  Before the path vanished into the grove they turned aside, flanking the grove and a small but lovely lake. At last Kit said, “Don’t you care whether Robin gets out?”

  “Yes,” March told her, “but not very much. They’re not going to kill her in here. They’ll keep her—drugged or whatever it is—and happy. She may be better off here than she’d be with Jim.”