Am I dreaming of the impossible? he thought. Is it foolish to believe in a physical escape, simply because of a rumor I overheard in space? Return from death. Freedom. Perhaps even… completion?

The motion stopped. The door opened to roaring darkness.

Heat blasted in, oppressive, suffocating. Sweat drenched his light uniform.

Knowing that he had no choice, Aton stepped into the gloom.

“One side!” a voice bellowed in his ear. Rough hands shoved him away. He stumbled into the center of the room, his book clamped under one arm, barely making out the shapes of men as they moved between him and the lighted interior of the lift.

They worked silently, three of them, hauling out crates and stacking them against the nearest wall. When the elevator was empty they carried smaller metal caskets carefully inside.

One of them slammed the door, cutting off the light. The garnets, Aton realized. The men were husky, bearded, longhaired, and naked, and each had a sloshing bag of some sort strapped to his back. The effect, in the poor light, was grotesque; they reminded Aton of hunch-backed trolls.

The noise in the room was so great that Aton could not hear the elevator ascending, but he knew that his only link to the outside world was gone. He was now at the mercy of Chthon.

There was light after all—a sputtering glow, green and strange, given off by the walls and ceiling, as though they were smoldering. His eyes adjusted. He would be able to navigate.

Now the men came at him. “New man, eh. Name.”

“Aton Five.”

“Five?”

“Take it or leave it.”

They considered that, weighing him as wolves of the pack weigh the stranger. “O.K., Five—this’s your orientation. Down here we don’t ask questions. We don’t answer questions. We don’t care why they shipped you here, only don’t do it again. Just don’t make trouble, hold your end, and you’ll get along. Get it?”