"You won't see much. It's foggy."

"I know. We like foggy. It's atmospheric." He laughed at his own joke.

The Academy would love it. The romance of edge-of-the-envelope archeology. She glanced at Nightingale, who nodded his okay. "I'll make a deal with you," she said. "I'll comment occasionally when I think there's something worthwhile to be said. If you can avoid asking me any questions. Just leave me alone to do my work, and I'll try to cooperate."

"Hutch, I'd really like to do the interview."

"I'm busy," she said.

"Well, of course. Sure. We can do what you want. I understand entirely."

"This is a long empty corridor," she said. "It's probably been like this for three thousand years."

"Three thousand years? You really think it's that old?" he asked.

"Augie," she said, "you're incurable."

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay. Must be frustrating for you to be up there out of the action."

Momentarily his tone changed. "You know," he said quietly, "I'd almost accept a chance to go down there with you. It's that big a story."

"Almost," she said.

"Yeah. Almost."

Curiously, she felt sorry for him.

Hutch paid particular attention to the inscriptions. The six languages were always in the same order.

In the areas behind the concourses, among the passageways and cubicles, in what they'd come to think of as back offices, they discovered a seventh alphabet. "I've seen this before," she said, looking at an inscription that hung at the end of a corridor, where it branched off at right angles. Two groups of characters were engraved over symbols that could only be arrows. "They have to be places. Washrooms. Souvenirs here and ice cream over there. Baggage to your left."

Nightingale tapped his lips with an index finger. "I'll tell you where we saw it. At the hovercraft memorial."

At that moment, somewhere ahead, they heard a click.

It was sharp and clear, and it hung in the air.

Hutch's heart stopped. Nightingale caught his breath.

"An animal," she said.

They waited, trying to see into the fog.

There were closed doors along both sides of the passageway. As she watched, one moved. The movement was barely discernible, but it opened a finger's width. And stopped.

They drew close together for mutual support. Hutch produced her cutter. Neither spoke.

When nothing more happened, Hutch walked over to the door.

It closed, and she jumped.

It opened again.

"Maybe we ought to get out of here," whispered Nightingale.

"Wait." She tiptoed closer and tried to look through the opening, but as far as she could see there was nothing inside. Empty room and that was all.

She took a deep breath and tugged on the door. It opened a little wider and she let go and it swung shut. Then it opened again.

"Sensors?" asked Nightingale.

"Apparently. Still working."

She recalled that the building seemed to be equipped with solar collectors.

The door was not quite three meters high, constructed of the same plastic material they'd seen elsewhere in the hexagon. It had no knob and no latch. But she saw a diagonal green strip that might have been the sensor. And another green strip with faded characters that might have indicated who occupied the office, or what function it had performed.

In spite of his assurances, Canyon reentered the conversation: "Hutch, that was a riveting moment. How did you feel when you first heard the sound?"

Her next words would eventually travel around the world. She regretted having agreed to let Augie and his two billion listeners eavesdrop. She would have liked to put on a blase exterior, to behave the way heroes are supposed to, but she couldn't recall whether she'd made frightened sounds. "Terrified," she said.

The door opened again.

The ground shook. Another tremor.

They walked on. The door continued to open and close, the only disruption in the general stillness.

They climbed a ramp into a compartmented section. Eight or nine rooms, several with low ceilings. There were signs at belt level and small benches and knee-high rails around the bulkheads. A cricket-sized staircase went to an upper deck.

Several rooms were fitted with lines of chairs. Very much like the hovercraft cabin. In one the gauge abruptly shifted to their own comfort level.

The complex had no egress save the way they'd come in, down the ramp and back into the concourse.

"I think we just got onto the skyhook," said Hutch.

If so, whatever machinery might have made it work was safely concealed. "You might be right." He looked at the tiny handrails.

"It wasn't an advanced culture," she said. "How do you think the hawks were received when they arrived and told everybody they needed to get out?"

XXXI

It's customary to argue that intelligence grants an evolutionary advantage. But where is the evidence? We are surrounded by believers in psychic healing, astrology, dreams and drugs. Are we to accept the premise that these hordes of unfortunates descended from intelligent forebears?

I'm prepared to concede that stupidity does not help survival. One must after all understand not to poke a tiger with a stick. But intelligence leads to curiosity, and curiosity has never been a quality that helps one pour his or her genes into the pool. The truth must lie somewhere between. Whatever the reason, it is clearly mediocrity, at best, that lives and breeds.

— Gregory MacAllister, Reflections of a Barefoot journalist

Hours to breakup (est): 29

Several hundred people were gathered in the Star's theater, where it was possible to follow the rescue effort on a dozen screens and at the same time down a few drinks with friends. Marcel had been wandering through the giant ship, trying to occupy his mind while events played out, and had stepped into the theater when Beekman called to ask where he was. Moments later they met in a small booth off the observation deck. The project director looked pale.

"What's wrong, Gunther?" he asked.

They were standing near a display exhibiting the construction of the Evening Star. Here was the beginning, Ordway Conover talking to engineers, explaining that he wanted the most spectacular superlu-minal ever built. There was the Star in Earth orbit when it was only a keel. Here were the electronics installations, and there the Delta deck swimming pool. And the celebrities who had come to see it off on its maiden cruise. And its first captain, Bartlett Hollinger, bearded, gray-eyed, silver-haired, looking impossibly competent, and very much like the uncle everybody remembered fondly. "You know," said Beekman, "some of the people on Wendy think we're doing the wrong thing."

The statement initially startled Marcel. He understood Beekman to be suggesting that the rescue effort might be going wrong somewhere, that they'd missed something fundamental, something now irreparable. "In what way?" he asked, his voice little more than a whisper. "What do they think we should be doing?"

"They think we're neglecting the mission."

Marcel felt a surge of relief, and then, as Beekman's meaning became clear, of incredulity. And finally he had to choke down a rising tide of anger. "Is that how you feel?"

Beekman needed a long time to answer. "I'm not sure," he said at last. "We're never going to see anything like this again. Not in the lifetime of anybody here. We stand to learn more about gravity functions and planetary structure than we could pick up in a century of theo-rizing.-Marcel, it is true that we're letting a priceless opportunity get away from us."

"You want to abandon Kellie?"

"Of course not."

"You can't have it both ways, Gunny."

"You asked if I wanted to abandon her. I don't. You know that. But you and I both know that the big stick is probably not going to work. There are too many things that can go wrong. Maybe we'd do better to face that and get back to concentrating on what we came here for."