Contacts lost their internal lights, too. He took out the case from his pocket, cupped one eye and the other, dropping them into solution. Didn’t take those out on the town, no. And the foot was stillasleep.

He’d been more wound up than he’d thought, so excited about the prospect of that new camera set up for a close-up of the area and taking his notes on the new growth he’d lost track of the weather he was supposed to be monitoring: he was embarrassedabout that, in cold afterthought, ashamedthat he hadn’t tracked that weather change, which was a major part of his job.

He’d gotten lost in his imagination, was what. He had his own curiosity about the land—the Needle River Gorge and the narrowing spine of mudstone and sandstone layered with flood basalt that arced around to the Southern Wall—that actually became the Southern Wall, when it reached the coast. He’d missed giving Marak an earlier warning. Marak had had to tell him. That wasn’t good.

But Marak hadseen it. And they were well set, and prepared for what wouldn’t be a blow of any scale such as in the old days. It was worth embarrassment, was all.

And when he should have been pulling down the weather report, he’d been deep in geology, reading the charts—he hadn’t known what the atmosphere was about to send down, but he had been tracking very, very accurately the stability of the ground on which Marak proposed to camp, and he had sent that over to Drusus, in its entirety.

One scientist said the ridge might be an old crater rim predating the Hammerfall. A more prevailing opinion said it was uplift right along with the Plateau across the gorge, but another said that failed to account for the flood basalts. He’d gotten all but visual impressions through Marak’s intermittent conversation and pored over his own maps of the lava-capped spine of rock that might or might not be Plateau Sandstone, carved to near penetration by the Needle River on one side and deeply faulted on the other. It had become a spired escarpment on the side of the alkali pans to the south, but the core of the spine was an outpouring of what had to be very ancient basalt, on Marak’s side of the Needle. The curving spine where Marak had camped stood a good quarter kilometer above the gorge and nearly that far above the pans, on the other side of the escarpment, strata all tilted toward the south—

All of that spoke of geologic violence, immense geologic force that, in conjunction with those flood basalts, had predated the ondatattack, in a previous period of vulcanism, on a planet whose plates had been locked, immobile. That was very, veryold rock, that spine. It was an access to incredibly old rock. He imagined Geology was in a froth at the moment. He anticipated requestsfor samples, and almost took it on himself to request Marak collect them.

He had notions of a very presumptuous memo, was making notes on every geologic hint Marak gave him about the age and orientation of the strata there, whether the rock that had been eroded off the spine was actually the same as the Plateau Sandstone across the gorge, as most geologists thought, or whether it was more like the floor of the pans, where there was also some suspicion of deep volcanic rock. In either case, the basalt layer was much thinner than they had thought. That meant an exposure of—granted extreme uplift—much older rock below?

And dared he, two years on this job, and with only a recent course in geology of the region, contact Geology with his speculations? If it was not Plateau Sandstone, if the oddly formed spine was actually an exposure of a piece of an older coast that had rammed in here during a previous tectonic activity, they might get something of a magnetic record of prior orientation of the spine. More, in those exposed lower strata of the spine, there might even lurk a fossil record, life predating not only the ondatbut the Ila’s own interference in the ecosystem. That was the Holy Grail of planetary explorations. Fossil records were incredibly scarce, in the one inhabited area of the planet where they could get to them to collect them.

He hoped he was going to get a request from Geology tomorrow, when they’d read Marak’s observations, and more, when the new relay put a camera active on the site, and Geology got a much closer look at the area…he had an idea they would make urgent requests for all kinds of samples.

But, God, when the Wall did break, they might well see the flood penetrate through cracks and fissures right into the Needle Gorge, flooding it all, along with the pans, carrying away the spine, so if there was any older record in the rocks, they would lose it once that happened.

So Marak needed to get those rock samples.

And hismonitors andthe room lights were about to turn off. He had to leave. If he didn’t clear the room before the systems wanted to lock down, the tap supervisor would tell him about an overstay in no uncertain terms.

Morning was soon enough to make a memo to Geology. It had to be. He wanted, tomorrow, to get a library search on southern fossils. He wondered if he dared pursue it all the way to Geology.

Maybe to Chairman Brazis’ office. Hello, sir. I’m Marak’s junior-most watcher, with two years of basic geology. I think I’ve just found prior life.

Ambition had some sensible limits.

“Board, key out. Door open.” The system had a voice lock, and it answered. The screens simultaneously went dark, all around the room. When he came back in the morning, and only in the morning, the door would let him in, at earliest, 0930h. The fact was, he didn’t actually rent this apartment: Planetary Observations owned it. Specifically, the Project did, and had made its own alterations, and he wasn’t allowed down here or onto the downworld tap except at his strictly regulated hours of duty. The Project didn’t want its taps negotiating their own hours or collaborating with each other on their reports.

So his day’s work was done, forcibly so. He let the door lock behind him and took the day’s cup and saucer upstairs to the main floor to put into the kitchen washer, all on autopilot. He was still thinking about that landscape Marak had described, still imagining that river gorge and the strata of the spine as he went upstairs and shed the work sweats.

He took a quick pass through the shower, dry-cycled, and bare-assed it to the closet for a thoughtful change of focus and a major change of clothing—a nice combination of blues and brown, shirt, pants, boots, and jacket. Hair—it was dark brown the last while—in easy short curls, nothing fancy. Eyeliner was permanent. The rest he was vain enough to maintain as nature provided, unimproved, with its few little flaws. He didn’t do seek-and-destroy on fat cells: the gym burned them off. He was actually a kilo light when he consulted the scan, and dessert was consequently an option tonight.

An acceptable, if not a high Trend look. The brown shirt was a pleasure to the skin—and by now he began actually to feel his own skin again, and be sure where his feet were, after the daylong immersion in the tap. The mental solitude of a luxury apartment was delicious, a luxury the Project afforded after a flurry of multitrackingand prolonged deep concentration. But solitude and silence would get truly stale before the evening aged much.

Hell, get the mind off it. He wasn’t supposed tothink about the job after hours. Wasn’t supposed to get together with the other taps and discuss things. His personal speculations—well, the spine had held for ages. It wasn’t going to go tomorrow. He could get office time next downtime, to do his extended reports when Hati’s taps were on and he was off. He could send out a modest note to Geology then, granted only Geology did wake up and ask for samples.

“Sam, I’m going out.”

Sam’s response was a single chime, not a single word from the computer after noon and before 2200h. His choice, that silence. He wasn’t in the mood for a cheeky damn bot if his day was going badly, and he didn’t like inane pleasantries if it was a really good day and his mind was still, as it was now, exploring the planet he’d just left, dancing down the ridges and wondering if that line of mudstone Marak had mentioned was in the sequence he hoped it was, and most of all hoping that there was time to do the work…if they missed getting samples when Marak was going out to the Southern Wall, they might still get some when he came back, which might be along the same route, a few months from now. Those rocks weren’t going anywhere.