The ship's momentum had begun to deteriorate, as if such principles did not apply here. This did not startle him. It seemed almost doubly familiar. But then the outer hull began to deteriorate as well---he could feel it. "It isn't possible." The shields were down, this he knew, but the vessel's outer skin was of pure platinated osmodidium, seven times descended from stainless steel. It resisted heat, friction, impact and atmosphere. But in that cold wet nothing it tinged and flaked as if with rust, was pocked and threw out buds like a face torn by a shotgun. It broke down, came apart, and fell away all around him, leaving him naked and without a ship. He stood alone in the black without protection. The celluloid and wires were all that remained---why he couldn't say. For a time his body was suspended, and his feet danced like those of a marionette trying to find the stage. Then they touched bottom on something very hard and smooth. A wide stair. He began to feel suffocated, knew there was no oxygen but this wasn't why. He took a step forward, up another, and the feeling eased, if only slightly. He was as a shark that could never sleep. Unless it kept moving, he would die. He continued to climb, as the steps got steeper, which was very soon. They were taller, progressing, and he labored on and it was harder and harder to breathe. Finally the stairs were eight feet high and he could go no further. He was almost weeping, feeling lost, when he went to lean against the obstructing wall before him. But it was gone, and he fell forward into grey mists. He stumbled to the rocky ground---the rocks were red---and he found himself in a deep chasm lit and shadowed by a pale sun in a purple sky. Looking up he saw an ancient and abandoned stone fortress upon the heights to his left, with tattered streams of white flying distended circles about it and a sound like the wind wailing but there was no wind. The air was thin and weak. He suddenly felt exposed there, and sought shelter from the wraiths above among the overhung shadows of the left-hand wall. He hunched to a leaning sit and tried to think very carefully. He understood. This was his past, and he knew what must be done. A beautiful and wistful woman was imprisoned there, in that place, and he would have her as his own at all costs. And for the first time he felt his aggression not as a flaw, a defense against the void, but as a rightness and a strength, because he knew she needed him. So he stayed very still and waited for the darkness of night. Not that this would blind their sight but because he felt safer in the dark, though not the black. So as the sky lost red and reached its deepest blue, he set out. He moved out from the overhang to a narrow vertical slit, a long scar in the rockface. He climbed slowly and determinedly, sure of each step and never making a sound. He reached and sweated and pulled, till he was nearly halfway up.