Chiang cut his way through to the entrance. He cleared away some of the shrubbery, and they filed in, under the usual low ceiling. First the women, then Chiang, and then Nightingale.

The interior consisted of a single chamber and an alcove. In both, vegetative emblems, flowers and branches and blossoms, were carved into baked clay panels that covered the walls. A stone table dominated the far end of the chamber.

The place smelled of decay. MacAllister finally squeezed through the door and squatted so he wouldn't have to stand bent over. "It doesn't look all that old," he said. He put one hand on the floor to steady himself.

Chiang stood by the table. "What do you think?" he asked, pressing his fingers against it. "Is it an altar?"

The other races of whom humans had knowledge had all established religions early in their history. Nightingale recalled reading Barashko's classic treatise, Aspects of Intelligence, in which he'd argued that certain types of iconography were wired into all of the known in-telligent species. Sun-symbols and stars, for example, inevitably showed up, as did wings and blood-symbols. There was often a martyred god. and almost everyone seemed to have developed the altar. "Yes," Hutch said. "I don't think there's any question that's what it is." It was rough-hewn, a pair of solid blocks fastened together with bolts. Hutch played her lamp on it, wiped down the surface, and studied it.

"What are you looking for?" asked Nightingale.

"Stains. Altars imply sacrifices."

"Oh."

"Like here."

Everyone moved forward to look. Nightingale walked into a hole, but Kellie caught him before he fell. There were stains. "Could be water," he said.

Hutch scraped off a sample, bagged it, and put it in her vest.

MacAllister shifted his weight uncomfortably and looked around. He was bored.

"It's on a dais," said Kellie. Three very small steps led up to the altar.

MacAllister stood, more or less, and walked closer. "The chapel in the woods," he said. "What do you suppose became of the god-in-residence?"

Hutch flashed her light into a corner. "Over here." She got down on a knee, scooped at the debris and dirt, and lifted a fragment of blue stone. "Looks like part of a statue."

"Here's more," said Chiang.

A score of pieces were scattered about. They set them on the altar and took pictures from a variety of angles, which would allow Bill to put them together.

"The fragments are from several distinct figures," the AI reported back a few minutes later. "We have one that's approximately complete."

"Okay," said Hutch. "Can we take a look?"

Marcel sent the image through Kellie s link and it blinked on.

Nightingale had seen right away that the statuary had not depicted the hawk-image they'd seen back at the tower. In fact the figure that appeared could hardly have been more different: it had no feathers. It did have stalked eyes. A long throat. Long narrow hands ending in claws. Four digits. Eggshell skull. Ridged forehead. No ears or nostrils. Lipless mouth. Green skin texture, if the coloring had not faded. And a blue robe.

It looked somewhat like a cricket.

"What happened to the hawks?" asked Nightingale.

"One or the other is probably mythical," said Hutch.

"Which? Which is mythical and which represents the locals?"

She frowned at the image. "I'd say the hawk is mythical."

"Why?" asked Chiang.

"Because," said MacAllister, "the hawk has some grandeur. You wouldn't catch hawks imagining heroes or gods who looked like crickets"

Nightingale exhaled audibly. "Isn't that a cultural prejudice?"

"Doesn't make it any less valid. Prejudices aren't always invalid, Randy."

The robe was cinctured down the middle, open at the breast. Its owner wore sandals, and it carried a rod whose top was broken off. A staff. The right arm was also broken, at the elbow. Had it been there, Nightingale was certain, it would have been lifted toward the sky. In prayer. In an effort to invoke divine aid. In a signal to carry on.

Among the missing pieces were an antenna, a leg, a chunk of what could only have been a thorax. But the head was intact. And it struck Nightingale that, despite MacAllister's comment, the creature did possess a certain dignity.

"What do you think?" asked Hutch.

The question was directed at him, but MacAllister answered it. "It's not bad workmanship," he said.

There was much in the image that spoke to Nightingale. The creature had endured loss and was making its appeal, or perhaps was simply resigning itself. To what? he wondered. To the common death, which is the starting point for all religions? To the everlasting cold, which had become part of the natural order?

"They would have been worth knowing," said Hutch.

Nightingale agreed.

He was the last to leave.

They'd put a couple of the pieces into artifact bags, taken a final look around, and filed out. Hutch paused at the doorway and turned back toward him. "Coming?" she asked.

"They've probably been dead a few centuries," he said.

She gazed at him and seemed worried. He suspected he looked pale and gray. "There may be a few survivors left. Out in the hills somewhere."

Nightingale nodded. "But their civilization's gone. Everything of consequence that they ever did is lost. Every piece of knowledge. Every act of generosity or courage. Every philosophical debate. It's as if none of it ever happened."

"Does it matter?" she asked.

He had no answer. He walked slowly out of the chapel and paused in the doorway. "I guess not. But I'd prefer to think it's only a pile of rock and water that's going to get swallowed next week by Jerry. And not a history."

Hutch nodded. "I know."

He looked at the artifact bag. "The god. Who's here to rescue the god?"

She gazed at him and he saw a sad, pensive smile. "We are," she said. "We're taking him home with us."

"Where he'll have no believers."

"Careful, Randy. Keep talking like that and people will think you're an archeologist."

A few minutes later, as they walked under the arch, a temblor hit. They stopped and waited for it to pass.

Beekman appeared on-screen wearing a triumphant smile. "We were right, Marcel," he said. "It's there."

Marcel, wrapped in his own dark thoughts, had been staring down at the planetary surface. "What's where, Gunther?"

"The skyhook base."

"You found it!"

"Yes. It was right where we thought."

"On the west coast."

"Mt. Blue. There's a large structure on top. Six-sided. About two hundred meters across. It's enormous."

"How high is it?"

"It's about six, seven stories. Looks as if it was broken off at the top."

"And the rest of it?"

"In the ocean. It's all over the sea bottom. Hundreds of square kilometers of wreckage." He brought up pictures.

Marcel looked at the outline of the mountaintop structure, and then at vast agglomerations of underwater debris. Some pieces even jutted above the surface.

"It's been a while since it happened," said Beekman. "The fragments that stick up out of the water look like rocky islands." That had in fact been the assessment during Wendy's original hasty survey. "We really don't have the right people or the equipment to do an analysis, but we think that if we reassembled the pieces on the bottom, we'd have a piece of the skyhook approximately a hundred kilometers high."

"I wonder where the station itself is?" said Marcel.

Beekman shrugged. "Who knows? We don't even know how long ago it broke up. But once we get through this, it would be worth the Academy's time to send another mission out here to look for it."

Marcel studied the images. "I don't understand," he said, "how these people could build a skyhook, but not leave anything in the way of a skyscraper. Or any other kind of technological artifact. Is everything buried under the glaciers?"