It was an illusion, of course, but it looked very real.

The windows were broken. But the shards were plastic. They appeared dangerous, but would not have cut anyone.

There was a door on the far side of the room, leading out into the forest. Much of the furniture had been piled against it. A table, wooden chairs.

And oddest of all: “It’s not a real door,” said George, tugging at it. “It’s part of the wall.”

“It looks,” said Tor, “as if there was a fight here.”

THEY WERE HOOKED. Most of the chambers were empty. But one turned on a light when they entered.

The light came from a small chandelier set in a room furnished with lush chairs and an overstuffed, upholstered sofa. There was a wood furnace that also seemed to have activated. Although it was impossible to sense minor temperature changes within the protective field provided by the e-suit, Tor saw that a glimmering light had appeared inside the device, and he suspected that the stove was already beginning to throw off heat.

Several exquisitely carved side tables were placed about the room. There were four electric lamps, equipped with pink and blue shades. George saw that they had switches, turned one, and was delighted to see the light come on.

A desk stood against one wall. Footstools were scattered about, and thick dark blue velvet curtains. Everything was on a scale about a third smaller than humans would have found comfortable. Nevertheless the room had an extraordinarily cozy quality.

There was illusion here, too. No windows stood behind the curtains, and the curtains themselves, despite their appearance, were stiff and fastened in place.

The desk had a speaker and a voice index, and Tor suspected it would have been capable of providing notebook services had he required them.

A coiled journal stood on one side of the desk and a clock on the other. The clock (at least, that’s what it seemed to be) was of an antique variety, with sixteen symbols imprinted around its circular face. Two hands marked the time at—he guessed—three minutes before fourteen. Or ten minutes before midnight, depending on which, if either, was the hour hand.

It was possible to lift the cover of the journal, and they found the pages filled. The characters were smooth, flowing, almost liquid. George stood over it, paging through, unable to bring himself to leave it, muttering over and over, “My God, if we could read it, Tor, what do you think it says?”

They found a framed photo of a creature that looked like a bulldog except that it had luminous eyes and wore a vest. Only the head and shoulders were visible, and one six-fingered hand.

Some pens were scattered about. But nothing, not the pens, nor the notebook, nor the clock, could be moved.

A planetary globe stood on the floor off to one side of the desk. Tor looked at unfamiliar continents, strings of islands, and ice caps that came well down into temperate latitudes.

“It’s like a set for a play,” said Nick. “I mean, that’s what all three of these places feel like.”

“A play?” asked George. “For whom?”

“For whoever runs things. I think this thing goes around and picks up pieces of civilizations. It’s a traveling museum.”

Tor needed a minute to digest the idea. “You’re suggesting this is an archeological mission of some sort.”

“Maybe it’s more than that. But yes, they might be doing some of the same stuff the Academy’s been doing for the last half century.”

“Then you don’t think the crew is going to turn out to look like werewolves?”

“We may have jumped the gun in there,” Hutch said. “I hope so.”

George looked considerably relieved. “Good. That certainly would make things easier.”

Tor felt relieved as well. If they were archeologists, they would necessarily be friendly. Right? Whoever heard of a hostile archeologist? “Maybe it’s time,” he said, “to go find them.”

Before they left the chamber he went back and looked at the clock. It was a few minutes after midnight.

AHEAD OF NICK, the lamps bobbed along. There was a jauntiness to the mission now, a conviction that they were among friends and colleagues. Only Hutch seemed to remain cautious, but that, Nick realized, was her nature.

She had brought sample bags, and periodically they stopped so she could collect filings from the rock and from the metal doors.

The corridor continued to be lined with doors every thirty meters or so, on both sides. If this area was typical of the interior of the chindi, Nick estimated there were thousands of kilometers of passageway with storage facilities. He allowed himself to drift behind a few paces while he considered the implications of what they were seeing. It looked as if the thing might be a vast storehouse of information, artifacts, reproductions, possibly even histories of cultures whose existence until now had been unknown. Instead of the handful of civilizations of which people were aware, the Noks, the Monument-Makers, the mysterious race that had built temples on Pinnacle, the inhabitants of lost Maleiva III, and the mysterious Hawks (known only through their Deepsix intervention), we were about to acquire an encyclopedia of information.

The ability to move quickly among the stars, and the discovery that almost all extraterrestrial worlds were sterile, that almost none of the handful which had given birth to living things had presided over the development of intelligent beings, had led to the illusion that there were desperately few civilizations in existence.

But we tend to forget how big the Milky Way is.

The lamps stopped. There was an intersection of passages.

“Which way?” asked Tor, who was in front.

“Doesn’t seem to make any difference.”

They were passing most of the doors by then, sometimes peeking in on jungle settings, or impossibly exotic laboratories, or scenes where violent conflict had apparently occurred, or on the deck of a ship at sea. But for the most part they just walked, entranced by their surroundings.

“Let’s go right.”

The passageways and the doors were always identical. “Doesn’t look,” Nick said, “as if these folks have much imagination.”

That apparently struck Tor as hysterical. The others laughed, too, and Nick eventually joined in. “Still,” he said, “what belongs to the crew of the chindi? What do we know about them?”

He was worried about leaving Alyx incommunicado all this time. She had to be worried.

“Stay with us, Nick.” Hutch’s voice.

He was looking around, at the lamps of the others, and pointing his own down each of the other three passageways, trying to feel the immensity of it all. And he must have backed up because suddenly there was no floor underfoot and he was off-balance, tottering, flailing his arms. His lamp flashed down and lost itself in the darkness below. His heart stopped and he fell.

HIS SCREAMS ECHOED on the link, and Hutch turned and came back on the run, they all did, moving too fast for the level of gravity. George piled into Tor, and they went down. Hutch kept going, saw no sign of Nick, listened to his fading signal, but failed to see the shaft until it was too late.

She did the only thing she could, picked up a step or two, hit the go-pack, and leaped out over the chasm.

It was a bad moment. But the lamp picked up the floor on the other side and the thrusters gave her some lift and she glided across, crashed down with room to spare, and, while still rolling, got a warning back to Tor and George. “Big pit,” she said. “Look out.”

She scrambled back to the lip and looked down. The beam disappeared into the dark. Nick’s screams echoed back at her.

Tor showed up on the other side. It was about twenty meters across. “How deep?” he asked as he fell to his knees and peered in.

“Can’t see bottom.” I told you guys. I pleaded with you to let the experts do this stuff. But she said nothing. Her eyes squeezed shut in frustration and anger.