The guide advertised an excursion service on the outer skin of the great cube. He'd known about this, of course, but now he also knew how to reach it. The trip consumed a few gravity lifts, a turn or two in branching corridors and ended in an airlock attached to a luxurious bar. He had a Manhattan or two while an attendant fitted a spacesuit on him.
"You're sure you're not subject to giddiness, sir? If you are, I wouldn't advise shutting off the magnetic shoes. The bulk of the structure will keep you from flying away too far, but...."
"It will be quite all right," Condemeign said. He drained the last glass and let the attendant help him to the airlock opening.
"The oxygen cartridge lasts just an hour, sir, remember that," the attendant said.
Condemeign smiled. For him it might last two minutes. But the clock over the bar told him that even with that, and given a few more minutes of slow, numbing asphyxiation, he'd be able to do the job he'd come to Nepenthe to do. In fact, if they weren't too fussy about picking up bodies before the oxygen cylinder exhausted itself, he could do the job dead as well as alive.
The door closed behind him and then a great glass wheel in front of him opened and there was a little, abrupt snowfall as the air in the chamber condensed into crystal. He inched forward to the edge of the cube and pulled himself out on the surface.
Above and behind him, the sun blazed hot and silent in the crawling sky. He watched the slow revolution of the heavens above him, fascinated, for a moment, stared as the great ball of the earth jumped over the far boundary of the great metal field and began climbing up, dragging its moon. He staggered. The flat side of the three mile cube seemed to wobble and he realized that the attendant's warning had been far from overcautious. A man might go mad out in this absolute silence, bounded now by nothing but the great black wall of the universe and its billions of pinholes. He closed his eyes, listening to the tick of his wristwatch and then opened them suddenly, as he realized that the watch was gone.
He remembered how close she'd been, how neatly she'd fallen against him, pinching him with one hand, while, with the other she slipped the simple catch of the watchband and palmed it. And he'd never noticed.
Firelie Gluck. He laughed.