If others had been here, and they were anything like him, he pitied them. Canopus set up in his mind a resonance ofterror beyond reason and beyond explanation.

At last Drake could stand it no longer. Like a lost soul flying from hell's gate he turned and ran. He needed the infinite silence of space, and beyond that the comforting shelter of the solar system. If another trip out were necessary with Ana, it would be to a smaller and less turbulent star.

As the ship began to accelerate he turned the imaging equipment for one last look at Canopus, knowing even as he did it that he was making a mistake. The lost souls were there. Unable to flee like him, they burned in dark torment within the stellar furnace. Smoky demons danced about them, in tongues of flame that gaped and gibbered in triumph. Drake shuddered, cringed, and looked away.

As the star receded to a blazing point of light, he tried to settle back into his shipboard routine. But all harmony, mental and musical, had been banished. What he saw, over and over, was that vision of the Pit. He was circling endlessly, in tight orbit around Canopus. Flaming gas prominences, bright jets of green and white and blue danced a witch's sabbat in his mind. He could not eat, drink, or sleep. The urge to see Ana, to seek peace in her face, grew within him.

Finally Drake went aft and sat by the cryotank. It was guaranteed to soothe all worries.

But not today. His mind churned.

"What's wrong with me, Ana? Am I going crazy?"

The usual imagined reply did not come. He stared at the cryotank. There she was, only a few feet away. If only he could see her, just for a second . . .

The outside of the cryotank was at room temperature. Inside, the cryocorpse was insulated by two more protective layers. Both of them were transparent. He could open the tank, take one look, and close it before there was a noticeable temperature change.

Slowly, he released the seals and lifted the tight outer cover.

She lay quiet in the tank, pale and peaceful as a Snow Goddess. He took one look at her pearly eyes and skin of milky crystal, afraid to open the cover more than a crack. An icy vapor, colder than innermost hell, breathed from within.

While he watched, dew formed and froze on the inner layer. Ana's body faded and blurred, like an image placed behind frosted glass.

Rapidly, he closed and sealed the outer lid. That one moment had been enough. He was able to control himself again and think of other things.

He told himself, for the hundredth time, how fortunate he was. He had never dreamed of light-speed ships and time dilatation, when he had made his plans so long ago. At best he had envisioned a chancy succession of freezings and thawings, farther and farther off in time, until at last Ana could safely be revived and cured. He had imagined and dreaded the uncertainty of multiple awakenings, not sure where he was, not sure where Ana might be, not even sure if she still lay within a cryowomb.

Instead of such a dangerous quest, Ana was here with him. He could safeguard her himself and protect her from all risks.

The rest of the journey home was, if anything, more tranquil than the voyage out. During the final phases he scanned all the ship's communication channels, electromagnetic and neutrino, wondering what might await him back in the solar system. He found nothing but silence. The centuries must have changed technology again; he had been away long enough for some totally new communications system to have taken over. Three centuries were also-a frightening prospect- time enough for humanity itself to have changed; even, perhaps, for humans to have destroyed themselves.

He would proceed with great caution, until he knew the nature of the system to which he and Ana were returning.

While still far from home he decelerated from their near light-speed race. Moving at a steadily diminishing velocity the ship coasted in toward Sol; past the barren and arid Dry Tortugas, the outermost limits of the Sun's gravitational domain; past the outer borders of the Oort Cloud; into and through the Kuiper Belt. There was no sign of human presence. The scouts who had been busy on the Outer System survey when Drake left were all gone.

By the time that they came to the frozen wastes of Pluto, the ship was drifting inward at only a few hundred kilometers a second. Drake was becoming worried. The imaging system, even at highest resolution, showed no evidence ofactivity on either Pluto or Charon. The research station had vanished.

Did Melissa Bierly lie in the Pluto cryowombs now? Or had a treatment been found, one that could relieve the torment of a flawed masterpiece of genetic science? Drake realized that he was afraid of Melissa's power over him. Rather than approaching the planetary doublet for a landing, as he had intended, he stepped up the ship's speed and headed for the inner planets. He had started from Earth; he would return there, and make his case to whomever or whatever he found.

The mode of his approach to the inner system was taken out of his hands as the ship passed the Asteroid Belt. As they floated high above the ecliptic, a navigation and guidance beam locked on to them, taking over the ship's internal controls. Drake attempted a manual override. It had succeeded once, but now his command was ignored. Powerless to affect his path, he watched the ship steered steadily in to a landing on the surface of the Moon.

The spaceport was new. Drake was dropping toward a flat plain of gleaming yellow, dotted with massive silver columns set in a regular triangular array. Ships, if they were ships, formed dark, windowless tetrahedra at the center of each triangle. Nothing remotely like Drake's ship was visible. Space flight, and perhaps everything else, had changed in three centuries.

A small wheeled guide met Drake at the ship's lock. Its body comprised a one-foot sphere, with a thin up right cylinder above it, and a whisk-broom of flexible metal fibers above that. The broom head dipped toward Drake in greeting. The machine rolled toward a head-high oval aperture at the base of a silver column. Drake followed, ducking his head, and passed through the opening. There was no sign of an airlock, but his suit monitor suddenly showed breathable air and a comfortable outside temperature. He removed the suit as his wheeled guide instructed and followed it along a short corridor to another interior chamber.

One man was waiting there, a dignified figure with the distant eyes of a prophet. Drake had expected more: a reception committee, perhaps, or maybe even a show of force. The man merely nodded and said quietly in Universal, "Welcome again to Earthspace, Drake Merlin."

Drake had been wrong. He had thought himself prepared for anything. What he had never expected was to be recognized, and named.

Even with that thought, he realized that he had no reason to be surprised. The ship would have revealed its identity back in the Asteroid Belt, during its first handshake with the navigation and guidance beam of the inner system. The data banks would have shown the ship's history. Presumably they would also have recorded its sudden disappearance from the solar system.

Drake wondered what else the files might say about the ship's run from Pluto. No matter what they said, he would gain nothing by lying about his actions.

"Since you know my name," he said, while the other man regarded him calmly and without expression, "then perhaps you also know my history. If you do, you will realize that I have returned to seek your help."

Drake found it hard to accept that he had been greeted in a familiar language. Par Leon had been able to speak to him on his resurrection, but only because of long preparation for Drake's arrival, and extensive studies of the right historical period.

Had language become static, totally fixed over the centuries because it had become embedded within the universal data banks? Or was the robed figure in front of him simply giving a formal greeting, a single sentence that he had learned of Universal?

But the man was nodding and speaking again. "My name is Trismon Sorel. I know something of your history as it has come down to us from long ago, although a serious . . . event, almost a century ago, led to our records being seriously incomplete and inconsistent. In your case, there are two versions of events. One states that three centuries ago you lost control of your ship, and were carried off unwillingly to the far depths of space. Another version suggests that your removal of a cryocorpse from the Pluto cryowombs and the immediately subsequent departure of your ship were linked events. It proposes that your disappearance at close to light speed, however curious and bewildering, was intentional. I await your elucidation. However, we should first proceed to another environment, where we will find conversation easier."

There were small pauses in his speech, slight hesitations in places where it was not natural to break the pattern of words. As Drake was led out of the room and down a spiral flight of metallic stairs, he decided that Universal must be a learned language for Trismon Sorel, just as Old Anglic had been for Par Leon. But to learn Universal so quickly and so well, in the day since the return of Drake's ship to the inner system, was beyond the powers of the learning inducers. Itsuggested that Trismon Sorel, in spite of his normal appearance, represented some huge advance in human mental powers.

They had entered a room that could have existed in Drake's own time. Only the light lunar gravity, one-sixth of Earth's, told Drake that he was far from home. Sorel gestured to two comfortable-looking chairs and settled into one of them.

As the little wheeled servant moved forward with refreshments, he gazed at Drake with steady, knowing eyes.

"Speak, Drake Merlin. Tell your story."

Drake nodded and sat down opposite Trismon Sorel. He felt a rising tension. In a few minutes he would know if the long quest was finally over, and his life could begin again.

"My departure from the solar system was indeed intentional." It had become difficult to speak, and he had to swallow and pause before he could continue. "It was intentional, and done for a good reason. But I cannot begin there. I must begin long ago, more than eight hundred years ago. At that time, the cryocorpse who now lies safe within the ship that brought me here was my wife. After many happy years together, we learned that she was suffering from an incurable disease ..."

As Drake told his story he was forced to relive scenes that he had suppressed for centuries. If Ana was to be helped, Trismon Sorel had to know everything: all Ana's symptoms, the progress of her illness, the manner of her death, the procedure in her freezing.

Sorel listened intently. He raised his hand to interrupt only when Drake spoke of the awful hours with Ana at the Second Chance cryonics facility.

"One moment. You say that the original medical records were stored with the cryocorpse. Are they there now?"

"They should be. Everything should be there, inside the cryotank."

"Then before we proceed further let me summon the necessary experts, in both antique Medicine and Languages. Let me say at once, we are able to cure all known diseases. That includes every past disease of which we have ever heard.

However, we will need to examine the records and the cryocorpse itself." He sat, eyes distant, for three or four seconds.

Two waves of emotion swept through Drake. He felt a wild and terrible joy, like an agony of relief: Ana would be cured at last. But he also felt a superstitious awe. Trismon Sorel's advanced mental powers seemed to include telepathy.

"You are speaking to other people directly, by transmitting your thoughts?"

Sorel looked puzzled, and again there was a brief pause before he smiled. "Not in the way that you are perhaps thinking. I can do no more than you yourself will be able to accomplish in a few days' time. You will share your thoughts with others. You will have instant" access to all information in the data banks. You will calculate faster and better than the computer of the ship that brought you here. Look."

He turned his head and raised the hair above his temple. Drake saw a faint, thin discoloration, normally covered by the hairline.

"That marks where the implant sits," Sorel went on. "It is normally installed in early infancy, and can be changed at any time. It is tiny, smaller and thinner than a pin, and it serves multiple purposes: as a body function monitor, as a slave computer, and as a transmitter and receiver. Commands, requests, data, and programs can be sent or received. I can speak with data banks or with other individuals. I have requested via the Copernicus network that both medical and language experts go directly to your ship. And I am able to speak to you now, in real time, because although your language is new to me, I am employing the language translation modules within the Tycho network."

Some transfer of information was still directly from person to person. Sorel read Drake's misgivings from his facial expression. "Do not worry about this. In your case-as in all cryowomb revivals-the implant will be totally optional.

Before you make a decision you will have ample opportunity to observe its use in others. But I can assure you that if you do proceed, you will find it hard within a few weeks to believe that you were ever able to function without such a service. You will possess total recall; you will be a calculator beyond the most powerful computers of your time; and you will have immediate access to every data bank within the solar system-although, naturally, access and transmission time to people and data banks on other planets is considerable. Do you have questions, Drake Merlin?"

"Only one. I want to know if Ana can be cured."

"I have asked the medical team that question. They are already on board your ship, and they are performing theirassessment. I will inquire as to their progress. One moment."

The gray eyes widened. Their expression again became remote and preoccupied. This time the wait stretched on, to become one minute and then two.

As the silence continued, Drake felt a knife of tension twisting inside him. If communication was mind-to-mind, what was taking so long? He was afraid that something was going wrong, but what could it possibly be? He comforted himself with Trismon Sorel's assurance: this society was able to cure all diseases of humans, including every known past disease.

But it was taking too long. Finally he could stand to remain silent no longer. "Are you talking to them? What do they say to you?"

Sorel's eyes focused again on Drake. "I am talking now to the medical specialists. It is somewhat . . . complicated. Give me one moment more."

The gray eyes were changing. They became gentler and more personal. At last Trismon Sorel nodded, as though confirming something that he already feared. He spoke to Drake more slowly, choosing his words with great care.

"They ask me to ask you certain questions. The woman in the cryotank, Anastasia. According to our records she had been constantly maintained in the Pluto cryowombs. Is that correct?"

Drake nodded.

"And when you found her, she was within a cryotank?"

Again, Drake nodded.

"You did not remove her, but you brought the whole cryotank with you on board the ship?"

"That's right." Drake's mind was filled with foreboding. "I had the tank carried from the cryowombs to the ship, exactly as I found it. It was done very carefully. The gravity on Pluto is low, and the machines had no trouble handling it."

Trismon Sorel was frowning. "Then it is difficult to see how there could be any problem. Unless-Drake Merlin, think hard. Did you open the tank, for any reason, after your ship left Pluto?"

Drake saw again before him Ana's peaceful face, her pearly eyes and milky skin. He felt a sickness like death. "I did open it. Just once. The outer case, for a few moments, after we left Canopus. The inner seals were unbroken. I looked for only a second or two. I was careful to seal the cryotank afterward ..."

It was pointless to try to explain why he had done it, to say that he had been unable not to do it. Trismon Sorel was regarding him sorrowfully, across an eight-hundred-year gulf. Somehow his face was Tom Lambert's, and also Par Leon's. The eyes spoke the same sad message.

"Drake Merlin, a Pluto cryotank is not designed for sealing and resealing. Closing calls for special equipment and special procedures, available only in the cryowombs. When a seal is broken, it is assumed that the person will at once be resurrected, or special resealing methods must be adopted. Do you understand what I am saying? With an imperfect seal, suitable conditions cannot be maintained within a cryotank."

"Then Ana . . ."

"One moment more. Again I must consult the specialists, and the data banks." The eyes once more became unblinking.

The silence dragged on and on, longer than before. When Trismon Sorel at last focused on Drake, his face was beyond doubt.

"I have checked all our references. The medical team, at my request, did the same to provide independent confirmation.

We have formed the same conclusion. The problem that faces us is quite different from that of curing a disease. The damage caused to a body, and particularly to a body's brain, when a cryotank is opened and resurrection is not performed at once . . . that damage is permanent. It cannot be repaired, and there can be no possible revival. Now, or ever.

"I am sorry, Drake Merlin. Anastasia is dead. Forever dead."

Forever dead. Ana is dead. Trismon Sorel's words echoed those of Tom Lambert, so long ago. But this time Drakeheard the ring of complete certainty.

Yet each man kills the thing he loves. He, not disease, had killed Ana. Like Orpheus of the old myths, he had pursued his Eurydice through hell. In his case it had been a double hell of cryodeath and Canopus, but like Orpheus in Hades he had found his love and brought her back toward life. Like Orpheus he had looked at her; and in looking he had lost her.

With that thought age-old barriers came down inside his mind. For the first time he noticed a spicy fragrance in the air that he was breathing. He felt a steady dry breeze blowing past him, and far-off along the corridor he heard the faint concert pitch A-natural of vibrating metal. It was as though all his senses were opening, after long centuries of hibernation.

Trismon Sorel was speaking again. "One possibility remains. Anastasia, the woman that you knew, cannot be reanimated. That is quite impossible. However, many whole cells remain intact within her body. She could be cloned without difficulty. Her growth and education would begin anew. But it would, you must understand, be a new Anastasia. There is no hope of sufficient memory transfer from undamaged cells for any inkling of her former existence to pass to her new body. Your former relationship would of course be known to you, but it would be irrelevant to her.

Should we proceed?"

The temptation was enormous. To see Ana once more standing before him, blooming and vibrant as he had once known her. . . .

That was the selfish answer. There was a better one; Ana had the right to a healthy new life in this world, eight hundred years beyond their own time. He could not deny it to her.

She would live again. And yet . . .

It would not be the Ana that he knew and loved. It would be a quite different person. Could he bear to look on her, a woman who was Ana and yet not Ana, a woman who would not feel for him the overwhelming love that he felt for her?

Except that he had no choice. Ana deserved resurrection, and a new life.

Sorel had been waiting sympathetically. Drake nodded at last. "Proceed. Make a clone of Ana."

Trismon Sorel also nodded, and smiled. Drake saw the relief on his face. Sorel knew, with the authority of eight hundred more years of science and technological progress, that the Ana whom Drake had known was gone forever.

But- A tiny seed of doubt sprouted deep in Drake's mind. But what would science say in another three hundred years? in a thousand, or ten thousand, or a hundred thousand? Science had come so far. Surely no one, least of all a scientist, would say that it was now at an end and could go no further.

Trismon Sorel was talking to him again, trying to catch his attention. He forced himself to listen.

"Ana cannot be revived and cured," Sorel was saying, "not in the way that you hoped when you took her body from the cryowombs. But we can help you."

"Me?"

"Certainly. We can cure you. There is evidence that a cure was attempted three hundred years ago, but it clearly failed.

We have superior techniques now. They can end your obsession with Anastasia. It would, of course, be done only with your consent."

"Do I have a choice?"

"You have an infinite number of choices. The right to self-determination-even self-destruction, if you wish it-is basic." Trismon Sorel leaned forward. "Now I would like to speak personally, for myself alone. I hope that you will agree to a cure, and enjoy your own new life. I have vast sympathy for you. I have searched the whole data bank as we have been speaking, and your suffering seems unique. No quest and sacrifice comparable to yours can be found, anywhere."

"I have not suffered." Drake had made up his mind. "I have not sacrificed. And I know what I would like."

"State it.""I would like a cloned form for a new Ana, just as you offered."

"We have agreed, that will be done. But for yourself?"

"I want to remain here just long enough to be sure that Ana's cloning can proceed without problems. Then I wish to leave."

"Leave?" Trismon Sorel was bewildered. "Go from here? Go where? The universe is open to you, but we can offer you everything that your heart might desire."

"No, that is not true. You cannot offer me the Anastasia that I know and love. And that is what I want-all I want. Put me back into the cryowombs, with Ana's body at my side. Let us travel together to the future."

"But I told you, the real Ana, the Ana that you knew, is not in that body. Too many brain cells have been destroyed.