her enough that his hand met her foot from time to time. He knew she was setting a slower pace because of him and this pained him. Still, he was glad for the reserves it might give him. There was still that yawning void below, a place made even more frightening by its drop into a dim void. When he felt the final rung and another ledge, he wrapped an arm around the ladder's vertical supports and drew in deep, gasping breaths.
Scudi's hand touched his head. "You all right?"
"Just ... catching my breath."
She put a hand underneath his right arm. "Come up. I will help. It is safer up here. There is a railing."
With Scudi's hand lifting, Brett crawled over the lip of the ledge. He saw the rail and caught a good grip on it, pulling himself the last few millimeters and then stretching out on the hard metal grate. Scudi rested a hand on his back and, when she felt his breathing smooth out, drew away.
"Let's review the plan," she said.
She sat with her back against a metal wall.
"Go ahead," he said. He drew himself up beside her, smelling the sweet freshness of her breath, feeling the brush of her hair against his cheek.
"The hatch is directly behind me. It's a double hatch. The docking bay is kept under enough pressure to hold a working level on the water. We'll open in an alcove off the docking bay. If no one is there, we will just go out and walk normally toward one of the foils. You are my charge and I am showing you around."
"What if someone sees us coming out of the hatch?"
"We laugh and giggle. We're young lovers on a rendezvous. We may get a lecture. If so, we should at least appear to be sorry."
Brett looked at the smooth profile of Scudi's face.
Clever. Close enough to the truth that he wished it were so.
"Where can we hide in this docking bay?" he asked.
"We won't hide. We will go to one of the foils, one where the operating crew is not aboard. We will escape topside in the foil."
"Can you really operate a foil?"
"Of course. I go topside often in the lab foil." She was all seriousness. "Do you understand what we're going to do?"
"Lead the way," he said.
Scudi slid away from him. There was the slightest sound of metal grating against metal. A small hatch swung wide, letting in dim light. It was bright enough to Brett that he was forced to squint. Scudi slipped out and reached back a hand for him. Brett followed, wriggling through the tight opening. He found himself in a low, rectangular space with gray metal walls. Light came in from a port at the far end. Scudi dogged the hatch behind them, then opened the far hatch. As she had promised, they emerged into a narrow alcove.
"Now," she whispered, taking his hand. "I am showing you the landing bay and the foils."
She led Brett out onto a narrow platform with a railing and stairs down to a deck about three meters below them. Brett stopped and resisted Scudi's attempts to drag him farther. They were under a transparent dome that stretched away from him for several hundred meters.
Plaz, he thought. Has to be. Nothing else could take that pressure. The docking bays were located inside this gigantic inverted cup that held out the sea. A plaz umbrella! He looked up at the surface, no more than fifty meters away, a milky silver region with the doubled shafts of light indicating that both suns stood above the horizon.
Scudi tugged at his arm.
Brett looked down to the deck - a giant metal grate with piers stretching out the far side toward the descending lip of the facility's plaz cover. As he watched, a submerged foil cruised under the far lip and lifted into the bay with a cascade of water off its hull. The foil slid into an empty bay, its engines a painful growl in his ears even at this low speed. With the newcomer, Brett counted six of the huge boats lined up in a row. Mermen worked busily around them on the piers, securing the lines of the new arrival, wheeling cargo on carts to and from the open hatches in the line of craft.
"They're so big," Brett said, craning his neck at the prow of the foil directly ahead of them. Someone was working up there, dreamily scraping a dry skin of green kelp off the