may not sustain life. I never heard of Minor
Maintainers wearing out. We have all the future, all the security,
anyone can hope for. We have a Place to live together."

* * * * *

You know, she was dead right and I realized that all the time I'd had
the conviction in the back of my mind that we were going to suffocate or
something if we didn't get a Door open pretty quick. I should have known
differently, if anybody should, because I'd once been in the Place
without a Door for as long as a hundred sleeps during a foxhole stretch
of the Change War and we'd had to start cycling our food and it had been
okay.

And then, because it is also the way my mind works, I started to picture
in a flash the consequences of our living together all by ourselves like
Lili said.

I began to pair people off; I couldn't help it. Let's see, four women,
six men, two ETs.

"Greta," I said, "you're going to be Miss Polly Andry for sure. We'll
have a daily newspaper and folk-dancing classes, we'll shut the bar
except evenings, Bruce'll keep a rhymed history of the Place."

I even thought, though I knew this part was strictly silly, about
schools and children. I wondered what Siddy's would look like, or my
little commandant's. "Don't go near the Void, dears." Of course that
would be specially hard on the two ETs, but Sevensee at least wasn't so
different and the genetics boys had made some wonderful advances and
Maud ought to know about them and there were some amazing gadgets in
Surgery when Doc sobered up. The patter of little hoofs ...

"My fiance spoke to you about carrying a peace message to the rest of
the cosmos," Lili added, "and bringing an end to the Big Change, and
healing all the wounds that have been made in the Little Time."

I looked at Bruce. His face was set and strained, as will happen to the
best of them when a girl starts talking about her man's business, and I
don't know why, but I said to myself, "She's crucifying him, she's
nailing him to his purpose as a woman will, even when there's not much
point to it, as now."

And Lili went on, "It was a wonderful thought, but now we cannot carry
or send any message and I believe it is too late in any event for a
peace message to do any good. The cosmos is too raveled by change, too
far gone. It will dissolve, fade, 'leave not a rack behind.' We're the
survivors. The torch of existence has been put in our hands.

"We may already be all that'