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now that it was not attached to anything on the far side, but they held.
    Niress’s eyestalks wriggled with mirth. “As if cutting the bridge will stop us,” he said. He and Fralk began the long climb up to the top of the gorge.

2
    The red numbers on the digital readout spun silently down to zero. “Initiate separation sequence,” Emmett Bragg said.
    “Initiating.” His wife flipped a toggle.
    Strapped in his seat, Irv Levitt heard distant metallic bangs and rattles different from the ones he no longer consciously noticed. After a while, Louise said, “Separation sequence complete.”
    We’re on our own, Irv thought. As if to emphasize the point,
Athena
’s monitor gave him an image of the rocket motor package that had accompanied the ship to Minerva. While he watched, the motors slowly grew smaller as they drifted away. They would wait in orbit while the hypersonic transport that was
Athena
proper went down to the planet and—if everything worked exactly right—returned to rejoin them for the trip back to Earth.
    He glanced over at his wife, whose seat was next to his in the cabin. Sarah’s answering smile was forced. “Just another flight to a new research lab,” he said, trying to cheer her by coming out with the most ridiculous thing he could think of.
    “I hate them all,” she said. “I don’t like being in any situation where I don’t have full control of things, and I can’t do that in an airliner—or here,” she added pointedly. “Once we’re down, I’ll be all right.”
    He nodded. A lot of doctors he knew felt that way, some of them much more than Sarah. That was, he supposed, why so many of them flew their own planes. He smiled. Sarah would get her chance at that.
    The radio crackled to life. “Tolmasov here. Good luck,
Athena.
”
    “Thank you, Sergei Konstantinovich,” Bragg said. “The same to you and
Tsiolkovsky
. Give our regards to Comrade Reguspatoff.”
    “To whom?” Puzzlement crept into the Russian colonel’s precise voice.
    “Nichevo,”
Bragg replied. “It doesn’t matter.”
    “As you wish,” Tolmasov said: an oral shrug. “We will see you on the ground, then. We also are about to uncouple.”
    “Expected as much,” Bragg said. “We’ll both be busy for a while, so I’ll say good-bye now.
Athena
out.” He cut the transmission.
    “Reguspatoff?” Frank Marquard asked. He made a good straight man.
    “Registered—U.S. Patent Office,” Bragg explained with a grin that looked more like a wolf’s lolling-tongued laugh than any gentler mirth. “Or do you think
Tsiolkovsky
looks so much like
Athena
just by accident?”
    “It’s bigger,” Frank said. “Why don’t we copy their rockets?”
    “I wish we would,” Bragg said. “Well, we do what we can with what we’ve got. Not too bad, I suppose: we’ll be down ahead of them.”
    His wife broke in. “Or maybe we won’t. Radar shows two images from
Tsiolkovsky
. I’d say that means they
have
uncoupled from their engine pack.”
    The mission commander’s head jerked toward the screen. “
Son
of a bitch,” he said softly. He picked up the mike, punched the TRANSMIT button, and started speaking Russian. “
Athena
to
Tsiolkovsky.
”
    “
Tsiolkovsky
here: Lopatin.” The engineer’s English was accented but easy to follow.
    “Tell your boss he’s a sandbagging bastard.”
    “Sandbagging? I do not understand this word,” Lopatin said; Bragg had left it in his own language. A moment later, Colonel Tolmasov came on. He sounded like a man fighting laughter. “I do, Emmett. That is uncultured.”
    “You should talk.”
    “You will excuse me if I lack time for casual conversation, Brigadier. We are, as you said, rather busy at the moment.
Tsiolkovsky
out.”
    Growling, Bragg killed the circuit. Before he could ask her, Louise said, “Coming up on three minutes … mark.”
    “Damnation!” Bragg seldom swore; Irv could not remember his doing so twice in the space of a couple of minutes. The pilot