She followed him in. Ahead, past his long form, she could see white lights and movement.

"George?" Richard was now speaking on the common channel. "Is that you?"

An enormous figure crouched over a black box. It stirred, and looked up. "Damn," he said. "I thought you were the relief shift. How you doing, Richard?"

She could hear the soft hum of machinery, and the slush of moving water.

"Hutch," Richard said, "this is George Hackett. Project engineer."

Hackett must have been close to seven feet tall. He was preoccupied with a device that was probably a pump, and tried to say hello without looking away from it. It was difficult to see him clearly in the uncertain light, but he sounded friendly.

"Where's your partner?" Richard asked.

Hackett pointed at the tubes, which trailed off into a side corridor. "At the other end," he said.

"We're directly over the military chapel," Richard told Hutch. "They're trying to clear the chambers below."

"What's in them?" she asked.

"We don't know yet," said George. "We don't know anything, except that they're located at the western limit of the palisade. They were probably a barracks. But they could also be part of the original chapel."

"I thought you'd already found that," said Hutch. "That's where the Tull tableau was, right?"

"We've got into part of it," said George. "There's more around here somewhere. There's a fair chance this is it."

The silt in the passageway was ankle-deep. They stood amid the clutter of electric cables, collection pouches, bars, picks, rocks.

"Why is the chapel important? Aside from finding samples of the Casumel series?"

George spoke to someone else on a private channel. The person at the other end of the tubes, Hutch assumed. Then, apparently satisfied, he turned toward her. The pressure in the tubes subsided. "This was an outpost of a major civilization, Hutch. But we don't know anything about these people. We don't know what was important to them, how they thought about themselves, what they would have thought about us. But chapels and temples tend to be places which reveal the highest values of the civilizations they represent."

"You can't be serious," said Hutch.

"I don't mean directly. But if you want to learn what counts to people, read their mythology. How do they explain the great questions?" He grinned, suddenly aware that he had become pedagogic. She thought his eyes lingered on her, but couldn't be sure.

"Hutch," said Richard, "Henry is up forward, in one of the anterooms. Where they found the Tull series. Would you like to see it?"

"I think I'll pass," she said. "I'm out of time."

"Okay. You know how to get back?"

"Sure." She watched Richard swim past George, and continue down the tunnel. Moments later, he rounded a bend and was gone.

Hutch listened to the faint hiss of her airpack. "How are we doing?" she asked.

George smiled. "Not so good."

"I expected to find most of the team down here. Where is everybody?"

"Frank and Linda are with Henry. The rest are at Seapoint. There's really not much we can do until we get things cleared out below. After that, we'll do a major hunt for more Casumel C samples. When Maggie—You know Maggie?"

"No."

"Maggie Tufu's our exophilologist. We've got several hundred samples of Casumel Linear C from around the area. But most of the samples are short, only a few words. When she tells us she's got enough to start reading it, that will be the signal to pull out." He sounded weary.

"You okay?"

"I'm fine." He glanced down at the tubes, which had collapsed. They were blue-black, flexible, painted with silver strips at intervals of about one meter. The strips were reflective.

He didn't seem to have anything to do except sit by the device. "I'm just collecting data from Tri's monitor," he said. "Tri holds the vacuum, and I sit here in case the Temple falls in on him. That's so we know right away." He turned toward her, and she got her first clear look at him.

George had good eyes, dark and whimsical. She could see that he enjoyed having her there. He was younger than she would have guessed: his brow was unfurrowed, and there was something inescapably innocent in his demeanor. He was handsome, in the way that most young men are handsome. But the smile, and the eyes, added an extra dimension. He would be worth cultivating, she decided.

"How unsafe is this place?" she asked.

The passageway was too small for him. He changed his position, trying to get comfortable. "Normally, we'd have taken time to buttress everything, but we're on the run. We're violating all kinds of regulations being in here at all. If something goes, somebody may get killed." He frowned. "And I'll be responsible."

"You?"

"Yes."

"Then close the place down."

"It's not that easy, Hutch. I probably should do that. But Henry is desperate."

Eddie Juliana had no time to waste. "Red tags first," he said. Hutch glanced around at stacks of cases, most of them empty; and at rows of artifacts: clay vessels, tools, machines, chunks of engraved stone. Some cases were sealed. These were labeled in red, yellow, and blue.

"Okay," she said, not certain what she was to do with the red tags.

Eddie moved around the storeroom with the energy of a rabbit in heat. He ducked behind crates, gave anxious directions to someone over his commlink, hurried in and out checking items on his inventory.

He stopped and gazed at Hutch. "You were planning on helping, right?"

Hutch sighed. "Tell me what you want done."

He was thin and narrow with red hair and a high-pitched voice. More than any of the others, he seemed driven by events. Hutch never saw him smile, never saw him relax. He struck her as one of those unfortunate people who see the downside of everything. He was young, and she could not imagine his taking a moment to enjoy himself. "Sub's waiting," he said. "There's a cart by the door, ready to go. Take it over. Carson'11 be there to unload. You come back. I need you here."

"Okay."

"You really did come in the Wink, right?"

"Yes."

"That's good. I didn't trust them not to change their minds, try to save a buck, and send a packet for the evacuation."

She looked around at the rows of artifacts. "Is this everything?"

"There are three more storerooms. All full."

"Okay," she said. "We've got plenty of space. But I'm not sure there's going to be time."

"You think I don't know that?" He stared morosely at a cylindrical lump of corrosion. "You know what that is?"

"No."

"It's a ten-thousand-year-old radio receiver." His fingers hovered over it, but did not touch it. "This is the case. Speaker here. Vacuum tubes back here, we think. It was a console." He swung toward her, and his brown, washed-out eyes grew hard. "It's priceless." His breast heaved, and he sounded very much like a man who was confronting ultimate stupidity. "These cases are filled with artifacts like this. They are carefully packed. Please be gentle with them."

Hutch did not bother to take offense. She drove the cart to the submarine bay, turned it over to Carson and a muscular graduate student whose name was Tommy Loughery, got Carson's opinion that Eddie was a basket case, and came back. "We have room on the sub for two more loads," she said.

"How much can your shuttle carry?"

"About two and a half times the capacity of the sub."

"And ours will carry about half that much." He looked around in dismay. "We're going to have to make a few trips. I'd hoped you'd have more capacity."

"Sorry."

Stacks of tablets piled on a tabletop caught her eye. They were filled with symbols, drawn with an artistic flair. "Can we read them?" she asked.

"No," he said.

"How old are they?"

"Six thousand years. They were good-luck talismans. Made by mixing animal fat with clay, and baking the result. As you can see, they last a long time."