—Hello, Carl, —Lani sent.

“Right on time, I see,” Virginia added.

Carl stopped abruptly.

—Virginia ! Are you up here? Well, well, just couldn’t keep away from me, could you?—

He bowed to her mech. —Nice day for a stroll on the surface. You should tell me, next time you plan to come up.—

At last Carl turned and nodded to his teammate.

—Hi, Lani. Careful with that end, it’s drooping.—

—Oh. Sorry, Carl. I’ll get it.—

Actually, Carl should have addressed the living person before speaking to the one who was present only in waldo. Lani Nguyen’s helmet had opaqued under the bright glare of the sun, so Virginia could not make out the girl’s reaction. But she had her suspicions.

“I’ll leave you here with Heaven’s Gift to spacedrift women, Lani,” Virginia sent. “I’m sure he’s capable of doing good work, if watched carefully.”

Carl’s back was to the sun, so his faceplate was clear. Virginia saw him blink and hurry to speak.

—Why don’t you come along, Virginia ? We’ve been running into some interesting sintered and recrystallized formations as we dig deeper into the core. They’re unlike anything we’ve encountered until now.—

Virginia had to admit that, even as she found them overeager and embarrassing, Carl’s attentions nonetheless pleased her. The man was so damned attractive… in the movie hero sort of way.

If that type of hero had been what she was looking for… but no, it wasn’t. Not in this life. Not right now.

She made the mech execute an imitation of a curtsy. “That sounds exciting, Carl. I’ll inform Saul Lintz. He and Joao Quiverian are the cometologists on duty, this watch. I’m sure they’ll be eager to see your pix and get your samples.”

Carl frowned sourly. That obviously wasn’t what he’d had in mind.

“See you around, Carl. Good luck, Lani.”

She engaged the release procedure, allowing the mech’s onboard systems to take over as her own teleoperated presence flowed back into the deeply buried laboratory where her body lay. The images faded, but before they departed completely and the lights came on, she saw that Carl still watched “her”… and Lani Nguyen watched Carl.

Their torches were blue blades of light cutting the seething fog.

“Hold steady. It’ll clear in a minute,” Carl sent.

Lani Nguyen sank a spike into a crusty chunk of water ice for stability. —What an eruption! It must have been bottled up in there a billion years.—

They had been finishing off a fresh tunnel. Mechs had done the initial work a week before, roughing it out, but it was better for humans to do the mop-up; mechs had an odd way of leaving dangerous knife-edged ruts.

The two of them had been using their lasers on low fan mode, trimming and scouring away jutting ice. The occasional boulder they had to chip around, or boil loose with lasers on tightbeam. Then they would nudge it back to the nearest tunnel intersection, where a mech would add it to the dumpster.

Lani had been prying at a chair-sized rock when Carl said laconically, “Remember Umolanda.” She had nodded, moving carefully, tugging—and suddenly it had sprung free, under pressure from behind. Pearly fog spurted forth.

Lani fruitlessly fanned at the vapor. —You figure it’s another aluminum-melt vault?

So far the expedition had found fourteen pockets, each containing vapor and even a little liquid. Carl peered through the hole.

A bubbling pool simmered at the bottom of a wide, spherical room. Fog rose from it in gouts and gusts. Multicolored steam still poured out frothing. “Damn! Looks like soup’s on.”

Lani frowned prettily. —Primordial soup, yeah. Lintz and Malenkov are all ga-ga over it.—

“Keeps em out of, our hair”

—I’ll bet Quiverian’s having nightmares over those two finding all sorts of juicy stuff about his comet.—

As he watched, she brushed at a splotch of gooey purple on her sleeve. —Eccch. God knows what this stuff is.—

Carl grinned. Lani preferred the austere simplicity of space work, the Newtonian mechanics of straight lines and known vectors; of sun-scoured steel and bare, clean surfaces. Not the murk and splatter of tunnel work.

“Isn’t it wonderful, what creation can do with just a few simple molecules?” He kept a poker face. He had been feeling a bit odd ever since meeting Virginia ’s mech on the surface hours ago. The mech and Lani had seemed engrossed in a heart-to-heart and had clammed up right away on his arrival. Maybe he could tease Lani into telling him what was bothering Virginia.

—It’s not funny, Carl. This gunk could get into a joint, stiffen it up.—

“It’ll evaporate.”

—Yeah? So how come it didn’t boil away four billion years back?—

“It’s been under pressure.”

—But everything must’ve frozen down after the early days.—

“Probably. This was just a flying iceberg for billions of years, out beyond Neptune. But back when the solar nebula condensed there was a lot of aluminum 26 in Halley; Chem Section reported finding the decay products, remember?”

—Oh yeah, residue from the same supernova that triggered formation of the solar system.—

“So they say. Anyway, that aluminum-isotope decay melted these chambers. Might’ve kept things percolating long enough to cook up those exotic chemicals and prelife forms Lintz found. I dunno.”

Lani widened the opening with a pick. —Then when Halley got bumped into its present orbit, the sun warmed up these hot spots again? Waves of heat every perihelion summer?—

Carl shrugged. “Must’ve.” He couldn’t think of a way to maneuver this conversation over to Virginia ’s secrets.

—Last year’s heat from the sun—that must still be seeping down through the ice, adding just enough to keep these local hot spots liquid.—

“Right. Malenkov and Vidor measured the temperature wave.”

The fountain sputtered, died. Cottony clouds swirled, thinned, escaped down the corridor behind them and into the oblivion of space.

“Let’s have a look.” Carl knocked a last rock out of the way and wriggled into the chamber beyond. He fanned his torch around—and gasped.

Crystalline facets sprouted everywhere. Points gleamed ruby red, emerald, burnt orange. Wherever he turned his helmet lamps, refracted light came back in brilliant splinters.

—A crystal palace,—Lani said softly as she followed. —How lovely.—

“The colors!”

—Concentrations of metals? Magnesium? Platinum nodules? Cobalt? The pinks, the purples!—

“Here, take some pictures. Our suit heat alone might melt it.”

—Think so?—Lani handed him her torch and moved away, unhooking her camera. —Look, I can see images of myself in the big crystals. They must be a meter across easy.—

Carl picked his way gingerly, walking lightly on his toes. The peaked pyramids of delicate arsene blue looked particularly dangerous. They worked in skinsuits, thin and flexible enough for difficult jobs, derived from the same woven chain molecules as the corridor liner. Still, a really sharp edge could slice through.

Carl peered ahead, squinting against the rainbow ribbons of light that seemed to focus on him. He remembered an optics problem from Caltech, over a decade ago. If you were inside a reflecting sphere, what would you see? How many images? The natural impulse was to start adding up reflections of reflections of reflections, ad infinitum. The true answer was that you’d see only one image.

Not here, though. Every refraction fed others, giving a myriad swarm of tiny technicolored Carls. They moved as he did, insects of every color hovering in a cloud beyond reach.

Dizzying. Thousands of Lanis, each earnestly working a camera. Between them was a dark spot. He gave a small push and glided over to it.

“Hey. Some kind of fracture here.”

—Careful of these sharp ones, Carl.—