She took a breath. I have the authority for that? If you want it. He left it hanging.

All right. Find her. Send me your file on her. But stay legal, Admiral. And be nice.

He grinned. All part of the service.

Paxton was happy, she saw suddenly. He had been waiting for this moment, waiting out the whole of his anticlimactic life since his heroic days on Mars during the sunstorm. Waiting for the sky to fall again.

Bella suppressed a shudder. As for herself, she only hoped she could avoid creating any more James Duflots.

9: FLORIDA.

Myra got Bisesa out of the Hibernaculum and took her to Florida.

They flew in a fat-bodied, stub-winged plane. It was driven by a kind of air-breathing rocket called a scramjet. Bisesa still felt frail, but she used to ride helicopters in the army, and she studied this new generation of craftnew to a sleeper like her, anyhowwith curiosity. A jaunt across the continent, from Arizona to Florida, was nothing; this sturdy vessel really came into its own on very long-haul flights when it had the chance to leap up out of the atmosphere altogether, like a metallic salmon.

But the security was ferocious. They even had to submit to searches and scans in flight. This paranoia was a legacy not just of the sunstorm but of incidents when planes and spaceplanes had been used as missiles, including the destruction of Rome a couple of years before the storm.

Security was in fact an issue from the beginning. Bisesa had come out of her Hibernaculum pod without the latest ident tattoos. There was an office of the FBI maintained on site at the Hibernaculum to process patients like her, refugees from slightly more innocent daysand to make sure no fugitives from justice had tried to flee through time. But Myra had come to Bisesas room with a boxy piece of equipment that stamped a tattoo onto Bisesas face, and she gave her an injection she described as gene therapy. Then they had slipped out of the Hibernaculum through a goods entrance without going anywhere near that FBI office.

Since then they had passed every check.

Bisesa felt faintly disturbed. Whoever Myra had hooked up with evidently had significant resources. But she trusted Myra implicitly, even though this was a strange new Myra, suddenly aged and embittered, a new person with whom she was, tentatively, building a new relationship. Really, she had no choice.

They deplaned at Orlando and spent a night at a cheap tourist hotel downtown.

Bisesa was faintly surprised that people still shuttled around the world to destinations like this. Myra said it was mostly nostalgic. The latest virtual reality systems, by interfacing directly with the central nervous system, were capable even of simulating the sensation of motion, acceleration. You could ride a roller coaster around the moons of Jupiter, if you wanted. What theme park could compete with that? When the last of the pre-sunstorm generations gave up chasing their childhood dreams and died off, it seemed likely that most people would rarely venture far from the safety of their bunker-like homes. They ate room service food and drank minibar wine, and slept badly.

The next morning, a driverless car was waiting outside the hotel for them. It was of an odd, chunky design that Bisesa didnt recognize.

Cocooned, they were driven off at what felt like a terrific speed to Bisesa, with the traffic a hairsbreadth close. She wasnt sorry when the windows silvered over, and she and Myra sat in a humming near-silence, with only the faintest of surges to tell them that they were speeding out of the city.

When they drew to a halt the doors slid back, allowing bright sunlight to flood into the car, and Bisesa heard the cries of gulls, and smelled the unmistakable tang of salt.

Come on. Myra clambered out of the car, and helped her mother follow stiffly.

It was March, but even so the heat hammered down on Bisesa. They were on a stretch of tarmacnot a road or a parking lot, it looked more like a runway, stretching off into the distance, lined with blockhouses. On the horizon she saw gantries, some of them orange with rust, so remote they were misted with distance. To the northit had to be that way, judging from the wind blowing off the seashe saw something glimmering, a kind of line scratched onto the sky, tilted a little away from the vertical. Hard to see, elusive, perhaps it was some kind of contrail.

There couldnt be any doubt where she was. Cape Canaveral, right?

Myra grinned. Where else? Remember you brought me here on a tourist trip when I was six?

I expect its changed a bit since then. This is turning into quite a ride, Myra.

Then welcome back to Canaveral. A young man approached them; a smart suitcase trundled after him. Ident-tattooed, he was sweating inside a padded orange jumpsuit plastered with NASA logos.

What are you, a tourist guide?

Hi, Alexei, Myra said. Dont mind my mother. After nineteen years she got out of bed on the wrong side.

He stuck out his hand. Alexei Carel. Good to meet you, Ms. Dutt. I suppose I am your guide for the daysort of.

Twenty-five or twenty-six, he was a good-looking boy, Bisesa thought, with an open face under a scalp that was shaven close, though black hair sprouted thickly, like a five oclock shadow. He looked oddly uncomfortable, though, as if he wasnt used to being outdoors. Bisesa felt like an ambassador from the past, and wanted to make a good impression on this sunstorm boomer. She gripped his warm hand. Call me Bisesa.

We dont have much time. He snapped his fingers and the suitcase opened. It contained two more orange suits, neatly folded, and more gear: blankets, water bottles, packets of dried food, what might have been an assembly-kit chemical toilet, a water purifying kit, oxygen masks.

Bisesa looked at this junk with apprehension. Its like the gear we used to take on field hikes in Afghanistan. Were taking a ride, are we?

That we are. Alexei hauled the jumpsuits out of the suitcase. Put these on, please. This corner of the facility is low on surveillance, but the sooner were in camouflage the better.

Right here?

Come on, Mum. Myra was already unzipping her blouse.

The jumpsuit was easy to put on; it seemed to wriggle into place, and Bisesa wondered if it had some limited smartness of its own. Alexei handed her boots, and she found gloves and a kind of balaclava helmet in a pocket.

In the Florida sun, once she was zipped up she was hot. But evidently she was headed somewhere much colder.

Myra bundled their clothes into a smaller pack she took from the car, which also contained their spare underwear and toiletries. She threw the pack into the suitcase, which folded closed. Then she patted the car. Empty, it closed itself up and rolled away.

Alexei grinned. All set?

As well ever be, Myra said.

Alexei snapped his fingers again. The tarmac under Bisesas feet shuddered.

And a great slab of it dropped precipitately, taking the three of them and the suitcase down into darkness. A metal lid closed over them with a clang.

Shit, Bisesa said. Sorry, Alexei said. Meant for cargo, not people. Fluorescents lit up, revealing a concrete corridor.

10: LAUNCH COMPLEX 39.

Alexei led them to an open-topped vehicle a little like a golf cart.

They clambered aboard. Bisesa felt bulky and clumsy, moving in her jumpsuit. Even the suitcase was more graceful than she was.

The cart moved off smoothly down the tunnel. It was long and crudely cut, and it stretched off into a darkness dimly lit by widely spaced fluorescent tubes. There was a musty smell, but at least it was a little cooler down here.

This is kind of a cargo conduit, Alexei said. Not meant for passengers. But its away from prying eyes, Bisesa said.

You got it. Its a couple of klicks but well be there in no time.

His accent was basically American, Bisesa thought, but with an odd tang of French, long vowels and rolled rs. Where are we going?

Youve slept through the rebuilding, havent you? Were heading for LC-39.

Faint memories stirred in Bisesas head. Launch Complex 39. Where they launched the Apollos from.

And later the space shuttles, yeah.

Now its used for something else entirely, Myra said. Youll see.

Of course it had to be LC-39 they used, Alexei said. As indeed it had to be Canaveral. I mean, its not an unsuitable site, especially now they have the hurricanes licked. There are better locations, closer to the equator, but no, it had to be here. The irony is that to launch the new Saturns that are taking the Apollo retreads into orbit, they had to build a new pad altogether.

Bisesa still didnt know what they were talking about. They used the pad for what? Carelhow do I know that name?

You may have met my father. Bill Carel? He worked with Professor Siobhan McGorran.

It was a long time since Bisesa had heard that name. Siobhan had been Britains Astronomer Royal at the time of the sunstorm, and had ended up playing a significant role in mankinds response to the crisisand in Bisesas own destiny.

My father was with her as a graduate student. They worked together on quintessence studies.

On what?...Never mind.

That was before the sunstorm. Now Dads a full professor himself. The cart slowed. Here we go. He hopped nimbly off the cart before it had stopped. The women and the suitcase followed a bit more cautiously.

They gathered on a block of tarmac. A lid opened above them with a metallic snap, revealing a slab of blue sky.

Alexei said, We shouldnt be challenged aboveground. If we are, let me do the talking. Hold tight, now. He snapped his fingers.

The tarmac block became an elevator that surged upward with a violence that made Bisesa stagger.

They emerged into sunlight. Alexei had seemed more comfortable underground; now he flinched from the open sky.

Bisesa glanced around, trying to get her bearings. They were at the focus of roads that snaked out over the flat coastal plain of Canaveral, crammed with streams of vehicles, mostly trucks. There was even a kind of monorail system along which a train of podlike compartments zipped, glistening and futuristic. All this traffic poured into this place.

And before her was a vast rusting slab, a platform that reminded her oddly of an oil rig, but stranded on the land, and mounted on tremendous caterpillar tracks. The crude metal shell of the thing was stamped with logos: mostly Skylift Consortium, a name that rang faint bells. Close by stood more strange assemblies, squat tubes that stood erect in mobile stands, like cannon pointing up at the pale blue sky.

This platform looks for all the world like one of those old crawlers they used to use to haul the Saturns and the shuttles out to the pad.

Thats exactly what it is, Alexei said. A mobile launch platform, reused. And what are those cannon? Weapons? No, Alexei said. Theyre the power supply. For what?

Myra said gently, Things have changed, Mum. Look up.

Mounted on top of the big crawler was what looked like a minor industrial facility, where unlikely-looking machines rolled around in a kind of choreography. They seemed to be trucks, basically, but with solar-cell wings on their flanks, and on their roofs were pulleylike mechanisms that made them look like stranded cable-cars. Their hulls were all stamped with the Skylift logo.

These peculiar engines were lining up before a kind of ribbon, shining silver, looking no wider than Bisesas hand, that rose up from the platform. Each truck in turn approached the ribbon, dipped its pulley spindle, clung to the ribbon, and then hauled itself off the ground, rising rapidly.

Bisesa stepped back and lifted her face, trying to see where the ribbon went. It rose on up; Bisesa could see the trucks climbing it like beads on a necklace. The ribbon arced upward, narrowing with perspective, becoming a shining thread tilted slightly from the vertical, a scratch ruled across the sky. She tipped her head back higher, looking for whatever was holding the ribbon up Nothing was holding it up.

I dont believe it, she said. A space elevator.

Alexei seemed interested in her reaction. We call it Jacobs Ladder. In 2069, its an everyday miracle, Bisesa. Welcome to the future. Come on, time to find our ride. Are you up to a little climbing?

They had to scramble up rusty rungs, fixed to the side of the mobile platform. Bisesa struggled, Hibernaculum-enfeebled, encased in her suit. The others took care of her, Alexei going ahead, Myra following.

Once on the upper surface of the platform they gave her a few seconds to catch her breath. The trucks rolled to and fro in their orderly way, their motors whirring gently.

Embarrassed, she tried to say something intelligent. Why use a crawler?

Alexei said, Its best to keep the base of your elevator mobile. Most of them are based on facilities at sea, actuallyreused oil rigs and the likeincluding Bandara, the first.

Bandara?

The Aussie elevator, off Perth. They call it Bandara now. Named for an Aboriginal legend of a world tree.

Why do you need to move your base? In case a hurricane comes?

Well, yes, though as I said theyve got hurricanes pretty much licked these days. He glanced at the sky. But further up there are other hazards. Relic satellites in low Earth orbit. Even NEOs. NearEarth objects. Asteroids. This thing goes a long way up, Bisesa, and has to deal with a lot of perils along the way. Are you ready to move on?

He brought them to one of the trucks. He called it a spider. It had solar-cell wings folded up against its flanks, and that complicated pulley mechanism on its roof. Its transparent hull was loaded up with some kind of cargo, palettes and boxes. The spider was actually moving, though slower than walking pace, rolling in a line of others identical save for registration numbers stamped on its hullthe spiders were making for the thread in a kind of complicated spiral queuing system, Bisesa saw.

Alexei walked alongside the spider. He dug a plastic disc the size of a hockey puck out of his pocket, and slapped it to the spiders hull. Just give it a moment to break through the protocols and establish its interface He briskly leapt up onto the spiders roof, and stuck another hockey puck to the pulley mechanism up there. By the time he was down on the ground again a transparent door had slid back, and he grinned. Were in. Myra, can you give me a hand? He jumped easily inside the hull, and began to bundle the cargo carelessly out of the door. Myra helped by shoving it aside.

Just so Im clear, Bisesa said uncertainly, we shouldnt be doing this, should we? In fact were stowing away in a cargo truck.

Its human-rated, Alexei said confidently. Pressurized. Good radiation shielding, and well need it; well be spending rather a long time in the van Allen belts. Well be fine with the gear I brought along. It was thought best to get you off the planet as fast as possible, Bisesa.

Why? Myra, are you on the run? Am I? Sort of, Myra said. Alexei said, Lets move it. Were nearly at the ribbon.

Once the cargo was cleared, Alexei summoned his suitcase. It extended little hydraulic legs to jump without difficulty into the spiders hull. Myra followed, and then only Bisesa was walking alongside the trundling spider.

Mura held out her hand. Mum? Come on. Its an easy step.

Bisesa looked around, beyond the jungle of spiders, to the blue sky of Canaveral, the distant gantries. She had an odd premonition that she might never come this way again. Might never set foot on Earth again. She took a deep breath; even among the scents of oil and electricity, she could smell the salt of the ocean.

Then she stepped deliberately off the crawler platform and into the hull, one step, two. Myra gave her a hug, welcoming her aboard.

The hulls interior was bare, but it was meant for at least occasional human use. There was a handrail at waist height, and little fold-down seats embedded in the walls. The view through the transparent hull was obscured by those big folded-away solar panel wings.

Alexei was all business. He spread a softscreen over the inner hull, tapped it, and the door slid shut. Gotcha. He took a deep breath. Canned air, he said. Nothing like it. He seemed relieved to be shut up in the pod.

Bisesa asked, Youre a Spacer?

Not strictly. Born on Earth, but Ive lived most of my life off the planet. I guess Im used to environments you can control. Out there in the raw, its a littleclamoring. He reached up and peeled his tattoo off his face.

Bisesa touched her cheek, and found her own tattoo came away like a layer of wax. She tucked it in a pocket of her suit.

Alexei advised them to sit down. Bisesa pulled down a seat, and found a narrow pull-out plastic belt that she clipped around her waist. Myra followed suit, looking apprehensive.

The spiders before them in the line were clearing away now, revealing the ribbon, a vertical line of silver, dead straight.

Alexei said, Whats going to happen is that our spider will grab onto the ribbon with the roller assembly above our heads. Okay? As soon as it has traction it will start to climb. Youll feel some acceleration.

How much? Bisesa asked.