  It is well known that in single step breaking of R-parity conserving SUSY
SO(10) that needs the Higgs representations $126+\bar 126$ the GUT-gauge
coupling violates the perturbative constraint at mass scales few times larger
than the GUT scale. Therefore, if the SO(10) gauge coupling is to remain
perturbative up the Planck scale(=2x10^{18} GeV), the scale $M_U$ of GUT
symmetry breaking is to be bounded from below. The bound depends upon specific
Higgs representations used for SO(10) symmetry breaking but, as we find, can
not be lower than $1.5x10^{17}$ GeV. In order to obtain such high unification
scale we propose a two-step SO(10) breaking through
$SU(2)_LXSU(2)_RXU(1)_{B-L}XSU(3)_C(g_{2L} \neq g_{2R})$ intermediate gauge
symmetry. We estimate potential threshold and gravitational corrections to the
running of gauge couplings and show that they can make the picture of
perturbative GUT- gauge coupling running consistent at least up to the Planck
scale. We also show that when $SO(10) \to G_{2213}$ by $210 + 54$,
gravitational corrections alone with negligible threshold effects may guarantee
such perturbative gauge coupling. The lifetime of the proton is found to
increase by nearly 6 orders over the current experimental limit for $p \to
e^+\pi^0$. For the proton decay mediated by dim.5 operator a wide range of
lifetimes is possible extending from the current experimental limit up to
values 2-3 orders longer.
