Because the retreat had been erected in the timeless environment of a sterile moon, it was subject to almost no change. Occasional dust thrown up by a ground tremor, perhaps, or by the arrival in the neighborhood of a meteor. A few particles thrown out by the sun. By cosmic standards, the system in which it existed was unstable, and the platform on which it rode more unstable yet. But nevertheless here it was after almost the whole of human history had passed. The lander still waited for its pilot, and a book lay open all this time on the worktable in the main room.

What had the occupant been reading when he stepped away? Had something unexpected happened that he had not come back?

What was his name?

The party died down. Hutch and Alyx wandered out to the lander, where they’d spend the night. More room that way for everyone. And more privacy.

She was almost asleep before she fell into her chair. Her last conscious thought was that, though the retreat had been here several millennia, this was its first Christmas.

IN THE MORNING, which was of course lit in the same ethereal way as the previous night, they ate in the dome. It was a trifle crowded for five people, but they made do.

Afterward, Hutch prowled through the retreat. George took her aside for pictures. He was taking pictures of everyone, he explained, mementos of the occasion. So he walked her around and she posed in the main room, in the cupola, and in the dining area, standing beside a table that rose past her shoulders. And on the upper deck, looking pensively down at the courtyard. She posed with Tor and Nick, with Alyx, and of course they took several group pictures. And eventually she stood beside George himself.

She returned to the alien lander in the afternoon for a closer look at the power plant, which clearly had a dual capacity. It encompassed a device that appeared to be a fusion reactor, but there was an additional unit that she didn’t recognize, except that it provided a housing for the Gymsum coils that signaled Hazeltine technology. That implied this wasn’t a lander at all, but was instead a self-contained superluminal. The common wisdom was that a Hazeltine engine, necessary for the space-twisting capabilities of interstellar propulsion systems, had certain minimum size constraints, and that no such system could possibly be installed inside a vehicle the size of a lander. Still, one never knew.

Somebody had posted signs on the clothes closets saying PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH. It looked like George’s printing, and she was glad to see he was taking preservation seriously.

She stood looking at the clothing, thinking, there had only been two of them. Did the magnificence of the spectacle create an illusion, suggesting that this had been a retreat, a vacation home? A week at the shore? It was possible, after all, that the occupants had been exiled, marooned out here because they were someone’s political enemies. Or undesirables of another sort. Maybe the ship parked on their front lawn was disabled. Something to remind them of what they’d lost.

Tor came into the room and motioned to the window. “Something you’ll want to see,” he said.

The two planets were rising in the east.

“It happens every night. I was talking to Bill. He says, seen from here, they’ll come up, circle each other, and set at around sunrise.”

THE WONDER OF it all wore off quickly. They couldn’t read the books, couldn’t see the paintings, couldn’t even sit on the furniture. They were beginning to talk about what they should do next when Bill announced a message from Outpost. “Dr. Mogambo,” he said.

She knew what that would be about. Move over, George. “Okay, Bill. Let’s see what he has to say for himself.”

The Academy seal with the Outpost designator blinked on, followed by Mogambo’s serene features. “Hutch.” He flashed a smile, a smile that told her he was pleased with what they’d been doing, that he was in fact delighted, and that he knew an opportunity when he saw one. “You and Gerald have been doing excellent work.”

Gerald? He meant George, knew that George was in charge. But he was sending a message that they were in fact small potatoes, little people of minor consequence. “I’ve forwarded the latest news to the director, and recommended that your efforts on the mission be suitably acknowledged.” He was wearing a light brown jacket, with a mission patch on his left shoulder. She couldn’t quite make it out. “You’ll be happy to know that you won’t be on your own any longer.” Here-arranged himself, slid a hand into the jacket pocket. “Help is on the way.”

“Good,” she said to no one in particular, wishing someone else were coming. Anyone else.

“We’ve commandeered the Longworth, and expect to be there in about seventeen days. Until then, I know you’ll make sure nothing gets manhandled.” Not mishandled. Not dropped. Manhandled. “Hutch, I’m sure you realize that the less amateurs have to do with a find of this nature, the better off we all are.”

He was about to sign off when he remembered something. “By the way, be advised the media are on their way, too. There’s been a UNN ship at Outpost doing a series of some sort. I don’t know what it was about. But when word about the retreat started to spread, they left immediately. Broke a leg getting out of here.” He tried to look annoyed but didn’t quite succeed. “I guess we’ll just have to tolerate them. Anyhow, well done, Hutch.”

And he was gone.

Mogambo was the last guy they needed. Where were the archeologists?

But there was a comic aspect to it. The Longworth was an enormous cargo vessel, used principally to haul supplies and capital equipment for the ongoing construction efforts on Quraqua. It was old, cramped, solid, without the relative opulence that Mogambo would prefer.

“It must have been all they had available,” said Tor, reading her mind.

“WHAT I’D LIKE to do,” George said, on their third day at the retreat, “is to get the energy shield up again. And restore life support. That should be our first priority, to put everything back the way it was.”

“How do you plan to do that?” she asked.

His eyebrows rose. “I assumed you could do it. You can, can’t you?”

She looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. I’m just a little old country girl. “It’s not possible,” she said. “Even if we could figure out how the equipment works, expecting stuff that’s three thousand years old to function is not reasonable.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. Where he came from, nothing was impossible. It was a matter of will and ingenuity. There was no such thing as being unable to accomplish a specific task. George liked Hutch, but she gave up too easily. She’d never have made it, he knew, in the business world.

He went outside, turned his back to the precipice and the sky, and studied the long oval building, its oculus window, its decks, the dish antennas, and he thought nothing in the world would give him more pleasure than seeing the lights come on. He wanted to be able to strip off the e-suit, to wander through the courtyard, to make dinner in the kitchen, to sleep unencumbered in the cupola, to live a few days in the house as it had been. When he expressed those sentiments to Alyx, she was sympathetic, but she, too, thought it could not be done. At least not until a lot of help arrived.

But then it would be too late. There’d be technicians running all over the place, and this Mogambo would be taking charge, and it wouldn’t be at all the way it had been in the old days. “We owe it to the Beings that lived here.”