Warning sounds, complete with growls.

With a clap of thunder so loud the sound flattened them, the lake exploded. Thrown flat on his back, Zhao could only watch in amazement as a gusher of blue fluid shot toward the roof of the habitat…to disappear into a rooftop portal.

It was over within seconds, the only evidence of the massive eruption being the empty lake…and a misty rain.

“God, that tastes awful!” Rachel said, wiping her mouth.

“Don’t drink it!” Pav said, but it was difficult, since they had been coated with the fluid.

“Will it hurt us?” Zhao asked Yvonne. “And what was it?”

“Good questions,” she said. “I’m putting them both in the queue. Meanwhile, we’re here.”

Zhao immediately classed the structure—four stories tall, and twice as wide, looking much like the Temple in the human habitat—as a public building of some kind. It just had a more majestic aspect, like British colonial centers in India.

Except that whereas those would face a broad avenue or a public square, or even this bizarre exploding lake, this rested at an odd angle to those next to it. At least two “alleys” simply dead-ended here, as if this building had been dropped into the neighborhood long after the others.

Yvonne stopped in the front, with Pav, Rachel, Zhao, and Cowboy looking the place over…and waiting. “Okay,” Rachel said. “We’re here. Now what?”

“We go in.”

The building not only wasn’t barred or locked…it wasn’t even closed in; an entire side was open to the elements, such as they were. Or visiting strangers, in their case.

Entering its shadowy interior, Zhao was struck by the sheer size, the darkness, and what appeared to be illustrations along the walls.

“It’s like a museum or something,” Rachel said. Actually, to Zhao it was a planetarium; the exhibits were star fields. As they approached the first one, a solar system emerged from the stars…one more step and a giant green planet grew prominent.

There was no actual lighting, but the exhibits—there was no better word—provided their own light. “I count a dozen of them,” Yvonne said.

“You counted, or the voices in your head?” Zhao said.

“The voices are quiet right now, thank God.”

“Whoa!” Pav said. “Check this out!”

He had gone closer to the first planet exhibit. “What happened?” Rachel said.

He simply took her by the hand and pulled her with him. “Oh!” she said.

The planets disappeared, replaced by a landscape—and several alien beings. They were two-legged, but with three appendages. Their world, judging by the illustration, was heavily industrialized and densely populated.

“Okay,” Rachel said, “we’re being shown different worlds, and the beings who live there, right?”

“I have no better suggestion,” Zhao said. He had shifted to the next one, which showed a ringed world and several moons. The landscape on display was mountainous, covered with patchy ice, and drenched in a dark rain. The inhabitants were squat, flat creatures…alien centipedes.

A third world, a banded gas giant like Jupiter, showed no surface landscape at all, but rather a sea of clouds and floating islands of vegetation…and beings that reminded Zhao of jellyfish.

The fourth…brilliantly scarlet desert, and an alien whose head looked like the bleached skull of a long-dead steer, wearing a monk’s habit.

Rachel was already two exhibits ahead of him, in front of the first Earth-like world Zhao had yet seen…though this one looked to be ninety percent ocean. “This creature looks like the Sentry my father talked about.”

Before Zhao could go closer, Pav said, “You know what these guys have in common?” Without waiting for an answer, he said, “Clothing.” It was true; even the alien jellyfish wore delicate armor of some kind.

“What did you expect?” Rachel said. “They’d be naked?”

“In all the sci-fi I used to watch, aliens usually were naked.”

“Maybe they’ve all eaten from the Tree of Knowledge of Life and Death,” Yvonne said. Zhao knew what she meant, but Rachel and Pav looked at her as if she were gibbering. “The Garden of Eden,” she explained. “Adam and Eve were running around, happily naked, until Eve took a bite of the apple and got Adam to do it, too. Next thing you know…loincloths. Don’t know why I remembered that. I haven’t looked at a Bible since I was twelve.”

“Maybe the voices in your head are Christians,” Zhao said. “Speaking of the voices, we’re hungry and thirsty and I think we need to know what’s going on.”

“In a minute,” Yvonne said. “It’s not as though they just shut up…it’s just that the volume dropped. It’s like I have ringing in my ears, only all through my head.”

“Well, what would we be learning?” Rachel said.

“You’re eager for more unfounded speculation?” Zhao said, remembering the talk in the tunnel.

“Sure!”

“I assume,” Zhao said, “that these are races the Architects know.” He waved farther down the row of exhibits. “It may be that we’re looking at the Architects themselves.”

“I don’t think so,” Rachel said. “My dad told me a little about the ones he’d met, and these don’t look right.”

“Here’s a question,” Pav said, gesturing to Yvonne. “Why did your voices guide us here? So we know all these aliens if we run into them? It’s not like we can talk to them—”

“It’s more than that,” Yvonne said abruptly. “There is something these races all have in common—”

“Hey, what about this one?” Rachel said.

Zhao realized that Rachel had separated herself from the group. She was standing in front of a being far off to the side.

All of the half-dozen aliens Zhao had seen could be classified as strange, but this one was strange in a unique way. It looked a bit like a human-sized anteater, all legs and snout and spindly arms…but either wearing a garment composed of fractal elements, or—

That was the unusual thing: This alien was naked! Zhao also realized that, approaching it, he saw no related planetary display.

His training in espionage had sensitized him to dangerous situations. Right now, all his internal alarms were sounding—

Rachel reached for the creature. “When does the image change…? Oh!” The image didn’t change; Rachel actually touched the face of what now appeared to be some kind of lifelike statue.

“Get away from there,” Yvonne said.

“Why?” Rachel said, turning back to her. “It’s not like it’s going to—”

It moved!

“Rachel!” Pav shouted. He shot toward her, swiftly moving her out of the anteater’s immediate reach.

The alien unfolded itself, head swiveling right and left, as if recording the positions of each human. To Zhao, it seemed to be measuring their distance and threat potential.

He wished for his Glock. He wished he carried something more weaponlike than an empty water bottle.

With the others, he backed away carefully. He allowed for the possibility that the alien was not hostile…but would take no chances. “Yvonne, what is this thing?”

“I’m getting the name ‘Long Legs,’ that’s all.”

“What does it do?” Rachel said.

“Nothing good,” Yvonne said.

“What the hell does that mean?” Pav snapped.

“All these other exhibits, the voices in my head just sort of drone on. This one…it’s like an alarm went off.”

As if to demonstrate its hostile nature, the Long Legs extended its arms, showing multifingered appendages, like fingers with nasty “claws.” With more speed than Zhao would have believed, it sidled toward the opening. As it did, the Long Legs sliced through the exhibit next to it, destroying it, and not seeming to care.

Now it blocked the exit. Then it began to close on them.

Cowboy rushed forward at this point, barking savagely. The Long Legs stopped, as if to recalibrate.

“Any ideas, anyone?” Zhao said.

“Upstairs!” Yvonne said. “Uh, this way!”

She waved them toward the darkest corner of the museum. Zhao realized there was a ramp back there. “Everyone, go!”