'There was a worm like that in a book," Bill said. "A movie, too," Cirocco said. "It was called Dune." Calvin seemed annoyed at the interruption, and glanced up to see if the blimp was still close.

"Anyway," he said, " I wondered if that worm might be what's giving Mnemosyne such a had time. Can you imagine what it'd do to tree roots? It could wreck the whole area in a couple years. The trees die, pretty soon the soil is going bad, can't hold water anymore, and right after that the rivers go underground. They must, you know; Ophion goes through Mnemosyne. You can see where it disappeared and where it comes up again. The flow isn't broken, but it doesn't do Mnemosyne any good. "

"So then I thought that nobody who was planning this place would have put a worm like that in it. It must not like the dark, or else it would go right through Oceanus and wreck the whole place. I think it's just luck that didn't happen, and if this place is .getting by on luck, it can't have too long to go. That worm's got to be a bad mutation, and that means there's nobody around with enough power to kill it and get things back on the track. I'm afraid I think the builders either died out or reverted to savagery, like those stories you were telling us, Bill."

"It's a possibility," Bill agreed. Cirocco snorted. "Sure it is. It's also possible you're reading too much into that worm. Maybe the people here like worms and couldn't bear to leave this one behind. Then he grew until he needed a bigger house, and they gave him Mnemosyne. Anyhow, we've still got to try to get to the hub."

"You do that," Calvin agreed. "I'm going to sail around the rim and see who's still alive down here. The builders could have taken a tumble, and still have enough technology to make a radio. If they do, "I'll come tell you, and you folks are home free."

"'You folks'?" Cirocco said. "Come on, Calvin. We're all in this together. just because you won't stick with us doesn't mean we'd abandon you here."

Calvin frowned, and would say no more.

Before Whistlestop got under weigh, Calvin tossed out a few smilers attached to parachutes. He was using them as weights to draw chutes out of the dispenser, because the bluish silk and the shrouds were the most useful items they had yet found.

Gaby folded the chutes and stowed them carefully, vowing that she would dress Cirocco like a queen. Cirocco resigned her- self to it. It was a small price to pay to keep Gaby happy.

And once again Titanic was launched, this time with a new sense of urgency. They had to contact a race advanced enough to help with antiseptic surgery or find a way to build a fire, and it had to he soon. The thing in her belly would not wait.

She thought about it a lot in the following days. Her revulsion was like a tight fist inside her. Most of it stemmed from the unknown nature of the beast that had planted its seed in her.

And yet abortion would have been her course even if she had been sure she was nurturing a human foetus. It had nothing to do with the idea of motherhood itself; she planned to become a mother when she retired from NASA, probably at age, forty or forty-five. She had a dozen cells in cryogenic suspension at O'Neil One, ready to be fertilized and implanted when she felt ready to give birth. It was a common precaution among astronauts, and even the Lunar and LS colonists: a hedge against radiation damage to reproductive tissue. She planned to raise a boy and a girl while old enough to be their grandmother.

But she would choose the time. Whether the father was a human and a lover, or a shapeless monstrosity in the bowels of Gaea, she would control her own reproductive organs. She was not ready, not by many years. Notwithstanding that Gaea was no place to be burdened with an infant, she had many things yet to do, endeavours where a child would be as great a problem as it would be here. And she fully intended to get out and do those things.