"You'd be wrong. We have been quarrying this one rock for more than thirty years. Current estimates are that we'll still be at it a century from now."

"This must be strange for someone used to Saturn," Kimber said as she gave Lars's hand a reassuringsqueeze. She smiled at him in the polished inner surface of the lift door, aware of his unease at being underground.

He nodded jerkily. "Funny, I've lived my life suspended over a bottomless abyss, never giving it a second thought. Yet, here I am headed down a hole and I can barely breath. Do you suppose I'm claustrophobic?"

"No more than the average Saturnian. A true claustrophobe would be climbing the walls."

Sands had been on Titan for nearly two weeks and this was the first time he had been outside Titania's main dome. He had spent most of his waking moments talking to the factor's security people. Kimber had also been grilled. She had finally rebelled and interceded with her father to give them some time off.

Since none of them could be seen in public yet, she had suggested an excursion to one of Titan's mines.

Halley, when offered the opportunity, had flatly refused to venture underground. That left Sands and Kimber to make the tour accompanied only by a few security people.

The lift reached the bottom of the shaft and decelerated smoothly to a halt. The door opened and the mine foreman, a taciturn individual named Dard Eisley, gestured for the two of them to lead the way.

They walked down a short corridor and out into a cavern lit by flood lamps. Rather than the milky sheen of ice, the walls reflected the black of nickel-iron. At the center of the cavern a large machine was gnawing away at the ore, taking giant bites of metal and crushing them into powder before sending the residue down a side tunnel on a conveyer belt. Only the work helmets they wore kept the noise from deafening them.

"The ore is being sent to the next chamber over," Eisley said, "where we have a smelter in operation.

There we refine it, then hoist the ingots the thirty kilometers to the surface. The slag we dump back into chambers that we are through quarrying. Saves a lot of energy that way."

The tour took two hours. In that time, they saw the refinery with its electric furnaces and white-hot ingots, a slag pile that nearly filled a huge underground chamber, and the lift station where ingots were loaded into hoppers. By the time they returned to the personnel lift, Sands felt like the legendary Earth tourist who traveled through twelve countries in seven days.

"Is there anything else you would like to see, Captain Sands? Miss Crawford?"

"No thank you, Dard," Kimber replied. "I appreciate your taking the time to show us around."

"You're welcome. I will leave you two here. The lift will be down shortly. Give my best to your father.

Captain Sands, it was good to meet you." With that, Eisley shook their hands, and then strode out of sight down the tunnel.

"Well, what did you think?" Kimber asked.

"Impressive. I had no idea Titan produced this much metal."

"It's only a small percentage of what Earth produced before the sun flared. The cloud cities are so mass conscious that they use metal sparingly."

"I can see why the Alliance wanted to get control of Titan's production."

"It would have given them a strangle hold on the other cities, all right!" She peered closely at him. "You still look a little green."

"I'll be fine as soon as I get back to the surface. It is the waiting. My mind keeps thinking about howmuch ice we've got over our heads."

She smiled, stepped forward, and kissed him lightly. It was little more than a quick brush of lips against lips, but it left a burning sensation everywhere she touched.

He blinked as she pulled back. "What was that for?"

"For saving my life, among other things. I never did get to thank you properly."

"You're welcome."

"Also," she said with an impish look on her face, "I thought it would take your mind off your fears."

"It helped, but it's wearing off fast. Perhaps another treatment is in order." He reached up and tilted her face toward his own. They stood that way for half a dozen heartbeats. Finally, he leaned forward and kissed her. They were still locked in the embrace when a musical tone announced the arrival of the lift.

Lars sat with his arm around Kimber as the surface crawler ground its ponderous way across the frozen moonscape. Overhead, the orange tinged clouds of Titan were an opaque roof, while around them, methane snowflakes swirled just outside the cab blister. Their one-man/one-woman security team was in an aft compartment drinking tea. That left Kimber and Sands the sole occupants of the observation compartment.

"Do you know the first moment I loved you?" Kimber asked as she cradled her head against his shoulder.

"When?" His nose was nestled in her hair, taking in the fragrance.

"When you let me aboard your ship after Dalishaar had sabotaged mine."

"But you hadn't seen my face. I might have been a big, ugly brute."

"It didn't matter. You were the answer to my prayers ... literally!"

He smiled. "Do you know when I first knew I loved you?"

"In the rescue pod after we peeled down to keep from dying of heat prostration?"

He snorted. "What makes you think that?"

"I saw the way you looked at me."

"And here I thought I was being subtle. No, it was while you were modeling those ugly clothes that first afternoon aboard Glasgow."

"I take it that Karin Colin is more your type?"

He made a face. "Hardly! No, it was the seriousness with which you threw yourself into the masquerade.

It told me that here was a woman worth knowing."

They sat nestled together for several more minutes. The snow had given way to an oily mist that was the product of very complex photochemical reactions in Titan's atmosphere. The mist scintillated in the crawler's headlamps to form a rainbow. After a few minutes spent watching the phenomenon, Sandsasked, "What is your father going to say about us? Maybe he won't like you falling in love with an ex-privateer."

"It's none of his business."

"He could make things hard for Halley and me if he doesn't like the idea."

"He wouldn't do that!"

"He might. If you were my daughter and someone took advantage of you, I'd break both his legs."

She looked at him with an odd expression. "But you haven't taken advantage of me ... not yet!"

"What are you implying?"

She laughed. "That invitation was far more explicit than implied, my love. To put it bluntly, your place or mine?"

"Which is closest?"

"Mine. We'll go there!"

Kimber's apartment was in a wealthy section of Titania, close to the factor's residence, but sufficiently removed that she could lead her own life. All four walls of her bedroom were view walls. At the moment, they were displaying a beach scene from Earth before the evacuation.

Lars watched as the setting sun sank below the waves of a long vanished ocean. The sun's distorted, shimmering orange sphere turned the sky red-orange above a vast expanse of fire-tinged water. On the wall opposite the setting sun, glass and steel towers reflected the dying light in sheets of flame. People long dead strolled a walkway, while on the two adjacent walls; bathers lay on towels and watched the sunset.

"This is my favorite viewscene," Kimber said. She was lying on her back, propped up on her elbows with one leg bent skyward. She was a goddess with red-orange skin and fiery hair. Her green eyes peered out from under droopy lids as she gazed at the sun. Her bare breasts rose and fell in time with her breathing. She seemed oblivious to Lars's fingers, which were resting lightly on the dark triangle of her pubic mound.

"Oh?" he asked. Like Kimber, he was lying on his back, peering at the setting sun over crumpled sheets and through the vee formed where his feet rose up from the bed. "Why this particular one?"

"I don't know. Maybe it reminds me that the sun was once humanity's friend. In ancient times, people worshipped it. Now we hide here in the outer system, praying it won't kill us all in a further fit of pique."

"I would hardly call it pique. The sun flared because it suffered a minor energy imbalance. Maybe in a few hundred years, it will subside once more."

She shrugged, sending a series of oscillations down her body that threatened to rouse Lars's desire once again. "When something tries to kill you, it only seems right to think of it as a living thing. To die because of a minor shift in a few nuclear processes seems so pointless."

"Surely you don't agree with those who think God was punishing humanity for its sins."She smiled. "No, I wouldn't go that far."

As they spoke, the sun disappeared. Within seconds, the sky glow was gone as well and streetlights began coming on all over the ancient city behind them.

Sands frowned. "Surely night didn't fall that fast on Earth!"

Kimber shook her head. "The playback has been time shifted for dramatic effect. We are about at the end of the recording. Want to see it again?"

"I'd rather spend the time watching you."

His comment brought an arched eyebrow and a surreptitious glance downward. "Is that an invitation, sir?

If so, I fail to see the will to carry it through."

"Give me a moment to recuperate."

"While we're waiting, perhaps we should order up something to eat."

"Is that a polite way of saying you don't think I can rise to the occasion?"

"It's a polite way of saying that I'm famished. We missed lunch, you know."

He rolled over in bed and noticed the chronometer on the nightstand. It was getting on toward dinnertime. As on Saturn, Titan adhered to a 21-hour day. Unlike the larger world, the Titanians had never adopted the dual day/night cycle. Beneath their layer of orange clouds, they had never had the need.

Kimber sat bolt upright in bed. "What say we go out for dinner?"

"What about your father's orders that we not be seen in public?"

She shrugged. "I think we can arrange it so no one will recognize us. I will go out as Karen Colin. You can fix yourself up, too."

"Security won't like that."

"I'm tired of being cooped up. We can't live our lives in fear of the Alliance forever. Besides, we will take all the precautions we need to. Come on, it will be fun!"

The restaurant was a small one in a section of main dome that was as far from the factor's complex as it was possible to get. The restaurant catered to miners and their families. Kimber had chosen it to avoid long-term acquaintances that might see through her disguise.

They talked about little things over dinner and wine. Lars told her more of his life aboard Sorrell Three and she in turn talked to him about her days in college. Two hours passed quickly. It seemed like no time at all before they had each polished off a dessert and had drained a last cup of coffee. Sands remarked in a whisper that there was nothing like an afternoon of lovemaking to work up a person's appetite.

"And to keep up their strength for nighttime!" she replied with a grin.

After they left the restaurant, Sands asked, "Where to now?""I'd like to take a walk through the park. It has been years since I was there last. Do you think it will be all right?"

He let his gaze traverse her figure as though he were seeing her for the first time. He had to admit that the disguise was a good one. The woman before himresembled Kimber Crawford, but was obviously not her. The differences were subtle, and therefore, convincing.

"I'd say we'll be safe. I don't even think your father would recognize you in that getup."

"Then let's smell the flowers. Afterward, we'll go back to my place."

"Let's stop at my apartment on the way. I need to pick up some gear for morning."

The park was a large, circular open area at the center of the dome. It was an expanse of green similar to dioramas Sands had seen aboard several of Saturn's cloud cities. Yet, where the cloud cities simulated open spaces on Earth, the Titanian park was a reproduction of one of the hanging gardens on Luna.

Kimber explained that was only natural since most of their ancestors had come from Earth's moon.

The park was an intricate living sculpture. Everywhere one looked, a wild profusion of plants grew from planters suspended from an open geodesic framework. A raised walkway moved in a serpentine pattern through the foliage, spiraling upward toward the apex and then back down the outside of the frame. The walkway was two meters wide and rose as much as twenty meters off the ground.

The gardeners who took care of the park had performed several impressive feats of low gravity engineering. Here a giant rosebush arched an impossible distance across the raised footpath; there a giant tree towered upwards, reaching to the peak of the supporting framework; another place, a score of giant yellow flowers moved to follow an artificial light source that moved on a track. The whole place was a riot of color as the various plants were backlit by colored lights.

As they made their way up the walkway, Sands was struck by the heady aroma of the place. The mixture of scents was overpowering. Some odors were pungent, others sweet, but all caused an awareness to stir deep within him. It was as though the floral odors triggered a response in the genes and chromosomes that made him human, a reminder that his species had evolved on a world where such organisms had grown without the need for this complex artificial ecosystem.

Lars noted a preponderance of couples as they strolled arm in arm amid the greenery. He commented on it to Kimber.

"This is where young unmarried people come to get away from parents and roommates. Did you notice the dark alcoves all around the periphery? At this time of night, you will find them filled with lovers.

"Perhaps I should be steering you toward one of them," he said.

She smiled and took his arm. "We've no need, as you well know from this afternoon, my love!"

They walked on for another ten minutes, glorying in each other's company and the feeling of freedom they shared. For the first time since the Battle of New Philadelphia, Sands felt truly safe and content.

"Ready to go back?"

Kimber nodded.

"All right. My place first, then to bed."