“Which is good for us how?”

She was within a meter.

“What do you see inside?”

“Not much,” she said. It appeared that the ground surface continued into the opening. “It’s dark.”

“Oh.” Suddenly Pav was past her, raising the Slate and clicking on its flashlight.

The light didn’t do much, but it showed a foggy tunnel that descended gently for a few meters, then seemed to turn to their left. “Cowboy!” Rachel called.

“I don’t see or hear him.” He turned to face her. “What do you want to do?”

“The dog is important, I think. And so is this tunnel thingie. Let’s just…”

“Okay.”

He took her hand, which Rachel found she liked, and both stepped and stepped again. Half a head taller, Pav had to stoop to get through. “How far do you want to go?” he asked.

“Two meters.”

“Why two meters.”

“I don’t know. ’Cause I can jump two meters, okay?” She was finding Pav a tad pedantic. “Cowboy!” she yelled.

“Now, that was weird,” Pav said. “There was no echo.”

True; something had struck Rachel as wrong, but she had not realized there was no echo. “What do you suppose that means?”

“Either this passage is kind of small, or the walls are coated with some material that absorbs sound.”

She kept going forward, half-step by half-step.

Pav was playing the Slate light up, down, and sideways. Up showed a low ceiling with the same texture—smooth dirt and rock—as the floor. The walls were different, however. They looked…moist, like the opening, now a full two meters behind them.

Just then the dog barked. “He’s not far,” Pav said, “not if we can hear him.”

“What do you think?” Rachel said. “Good for another two meters?”

“Sure,” he said, slipping the Slate back to his belt and taking her hand again.

They stepped forward confidently—

—and fell into darkness.

XAVIER

“You don’t look so good, mister.”

Xavier Toutant found Gabriel Jones flat on his back behind a rock, out of sight of the Temple or, indeed, anyone.

Xavier had just returned from one of several trips to the rubbish heap, a newly designated area near the down-habitat latrine that now served as the resting place for any garbage.

Not that there was much. Manufactured items brought from Earth were the closest thing the combined HBs had to money; no one would be throwing even a milk carton away. Hell, cut off the top of a milk carton and you’ve got a pot or a cup!

But there were rinds and leaves and stray bits of vegetation that needed to be collected and removed from the eating area up against the Temple’s south wall, and without hearing any discussion, or seeing anyone doing the work, Xavier had started the cleanup. It wasn’t that he was especially tidy by nature; his room back in La Porte never passed one of Momma’s infrequent inspections. But he was clean.

And he knew from experience that you didn’t want trash around when you were dealing with food. Bad enough that there were no tables, no pots and pans, no fire, no utensils. This was seriously stone age, except that, from what Xavier knew, even stone-age people had fire.

Mr. Jones opened his eyes. “Hey, brother,” he said. His voice was weak.

“This ain’t the best place to be resting.”

Xavier offered his hand and helped Jones up. “I didn’t plan to rest,” Jones said. He looked ashamed.

“Well, we’re all so tired and strung out that I’m surprised we aren’t trippin’ over bodies.”

Jones smiled now and seemed to be stronger. “You got that right. Xavier, right?”

“Right, Dr. Jones.” He and Jones had been introduced at least twice before, but Xavier was used to the fact that it seemed to take a while before he got really noticed.

“Gabriel.” The two of them resumed Xavier’s journey back toward the Temple. “You’ve been doing a hell of a lot of work around here,” Jones said. “Don’t think no one’s noticed.”

Xavier thought that was nice, if funny, given that Jones barely remembered his name. “Things gotta be done.”

“That’s right.” He nodded toward the Temple, which rose in front of them, fifty meters away. “Like figuring out how to work this thing.”

“Is that what you’re doing?” Xavier wondered what Jones and the other NASA guys, including the new mayor, were actually up to. It had seemed that they spent most of their time shaking their heads and complaining to each other.

Jones must have sensed his contempt. Now apparently fully recovered, he smiled, took Xavier by the shoulder, and said, “Come see.”

Like most of the Houston-Bangalores, Xavier had been inside the Temple, but only as far as its massive ground floor. The scale of things—everything seemed to be twice as high as needed, including the ceiling—unnerved him. But it also had benefits; the high ceiling and open side let in enough light to let the ground floor serve as a shelter.

Not that the HBs needed it, yet. There had been no rain. There was light, but no harsh sunlight. No wind. The temperature had not changed in any way that Xavier could determine. It was all very…well, Momma would have called it the Garden of Eden.

Xavier knew better, of course.

He followed Jones to where most of the members of the new HB Council were clustered. Weldon was one. So was Harley Drake. Vikram Nayar. The pretty tall girl, Sasha. “There you are,” Weldon said to Jones. He glanced at Xavier, as if to say, What the hell are you doing here? But only for a moment.

“What are we up to?” Jones said.

“Based on what we see and think we understand from looking at the exterior, we’ve got three stories of structure,” Sasha said. “And those stories are double height.”

“So…close to thirty meters high?” Jones said.

“Right.” Sasha was moving around the floor, pointing up, then to the corners. “That’s in one dimension. This chamber here is twenty meters by fifteen. But the outer perimeter is twenty by twenty.”

“So we’ve got a hidden chamber on this ground floor?” Jones looked at Xavier, as if to say, Someone’s got to state the obvious.

“And two double-sized floors of possible chambers above us.”

Nayar said. “But how did they access them? There are no stairs, no elevators.”

“These Architects build ramps,” Weldon said. “At least, they did in the vents outside.”

“Zack said the Architect guy was big, on the order of twice human height,” Sasha said. “I don’t know, maybe they just…climbed up?” She smiled awkwardly, knowing it wasn’t the best suggestion.

Harley said, “Maybe this is easier for me because I’m closer, but look at the floor.”

To Xavier it appeared as if a third of the floor had been scraped. “Well,” Jones said, “were they moving something? A piece of equipment, maybe?”

“They could have been peeling off a layer,” Nayar said.

“Something moved across this floor,” Harley said.

Xavier squatted down and touched the scraped area. He could feel tiny grooves. He looked at the near wall. “I think it was the wall,” he said. He walked over to it…something about the combination of the position and the grooves on the floor convinced Xavier that that was what had happened. “They moved it,” he said.

“Maybe,” Jones said. “Why?”

“To give us room?” Harley said.

As the great minds debated this, Xavier followed the wall to where it joined the adjacent one. This wall was also featureless…except for one object up high, as much as four meters. It was a round plate probably a third of a meter across, slightly darker than the dun-colored wall.

“What do you suppose that is?” Xavier said.

Jones was with him now. Xavier was aware of the man’s heavy breathing; shit, he was one sick dude. “Some kind of sensor, maybe?”

Xavier looked around. Between Jones, on the verge of another collapse, and Harley in his wheelchair, it was hardly an able-bodied group. But between Weldon, Nayar, and Sasha Blaine—