Sure enough, he continued down at the same rate as before. This freed his hands for anything else they might be needed for. He relaxed and looked around.

Moonlight illuminated the pit, showing him details he had not been able to see from above. There were dozens of gigantic vertical pipes rising from the depths, reminding him vaguely of a monstrous calliope. Somehow he was sure they didn’t play music! But what did they do? They weren’t here as a work of Martian art!

There was a vibration at his waist. Something was going wrong with the reel! He grabbed for it, but his clumsy gloves either had no effect or made things worse. The cable uncoiled at a terrifying rate.

Quaid plunged into the bottomless abyss. He flailed wildly, trying to stop himself. His feet lost contact with the wall, and he spun around, seeing the wall, the pipes, and the space between them whirl dizzyingly as he fell.

“Doug!” It was the woman, calling in alarm from above.

He tried to answer, but was too disoriented even to do that. He kept falling, hurtling down into the void, out of control.

“Doug!” her voice came, despairingly, faint in the distance.

The abyss filled with bright white light. Quaid knew it was the end. Somehow he wasn’t frightened; all he could do was meet his destiny.

CHAPTER 2

Lori

Quaid woke, startled. He was in bed, on Earth, quite safe. The bedroom was bathed in morning light. As he reoriented and his heartbeat returned to normal, he realized that he should have known that his experience wasn’t real. He had never been to Mars, so how could he have found himself there, without even questioning it, without knowing how he had come? He had simply popped into existence on the barren surface, and met a girl, and gone into a cave or crevice in the side of a mountain shaped like a pyramid, and down into a huge hole. Did any of that make sense on any rational basis? In the dream he had accepted it, but that was the way of dreams.