The man still seemed to be unconscious, though. Louise, soaking wet, almost naked, and still chilled from the water, was starting to feel quite self-conscious. She struggled back into her jumpsuit and zipped it up-Paul watching her, she knew, even while he pretended not to.

It would still be a while before Dr. Montego arrived. SNO wasn’t just two kilometers down; it was also a kilometer and a quarter horizontally from the nearest elevator, at mineshaft number nine. Even if the lift cage had been at the top-and there was no guarantee it would have been-it would still take Montego twenty-odd minutes to get here.

Louise thought she should get the man out of his wet clothes. She reached for the front of his charcoal gray shirt, but But there were no buttons-and no zipper. It didn’t appear to be a pullover, even though it was collarless, and Ah, there they were! Hidden snaps running along the tops of the broad shoulders. Louise tried to undo them, but they didn’t budge. She glanced down at the man’s pants. They seemed to be dark olive green, although they might have been much lighter if dry. But there was no belt; instead, a series of snaps and folds encircled the waist.

It suddenly occurred to Louise that the man might be suffering from the bends. The detector chamber was thirty meters deep; who knew how far down he’d gone or how quickly he’d come up? Air pressure this much below Earth’s surface was 130 percent of normal. At that moment, Louise couldn’t figure out how that would affect whether someone got the bends, but it did mean the man would now be receiving a higher concentration of oxygen than he would have up top, and that surely must be to the good.

There was nothing to do now but wait; the man was breathing, and his pulse had strengthened.