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"Now there’s a good question" Halsey ru and took out a water bottle Mendez wondered if she’d hidden another sidearive her weapon back to her until he was sure she wasn’t going to pul another stunt like the hijack "This alaxy But they’d stil want to be able to check outside before they opened the door Perhaps even communicate with other shield worlds"
"But who put the Katana and the other guys in the cryo pods?" Mendez asked He wondered why he hadn’t worried about that detail sooner
"Doesn’t that bother anyone?"
"Perhaps we should be asking why they decided to get into them instead," Halsey said
"Sounds like an assumption, Doctor"
Mendez knew she hated that She took a pul fro the bait He stared hard at the leather, looking for an outline of a weapon, but the bulges just looked like woed books or datapads
"So let’s see e find, Chief," she said careful y
Mendez checked his watch, wondering just how much out of sync with real tiave the i able to work out that kind of stuff on a napkin He hoped she could Could any of them real y know if time was suspended in here, like it seemed to be in those cryo pods? What did that feel like?
The crunch of boots on gravel and then on paving heralded Fred’s arrival with Lucy, Linda, Mark, and Ash Fred had so in his hand
Mendez’s reflex reaction was to wonder what the hel he was doing with tennis bal s, but then he realized Fred was clutching three spherical yel ow fruits one-handed He held theht to run tests on these first," Fred said "I’ve logged the location Anyone got an assay pack?"
Mendez sniffed one of the fruits cautiously, picking up a faint smel of cedar wood Its texture was like sticky suede, almost quince-like, but it wasn’t a quince He hadn’t had to do this bushcraft stuff for years
"Over to you, Doctor" He handed the fruits to Halsey, who put thelycosides and alkaloids somewhere in my kit"
"I’l take a look at theet into this tower"
Fred motioned for everyone to move "Okay, people, spread out and take a section of wal each This tower first, then we’l try the other one If anything opens, nobody steps in Just cal it I don’t want anyone stuck on the wrong side of a door we can’t open"
The scale and lateral curve of the tower only sank in when Mendez began inching his way along his section of ashlars He realized that he couldn’t see Mark to one side of him or Linda to the other unless he took a few paces back from the walHe ran his hands over the stone, not sure what he was feeling for but expecting some kind of mechanism to detect him and either open a hatch or at least display soy he’d encountered so far did that kind of thing But the wal remained steadfastly unresponsive
"If you build a boet inside" Halsey walked past hi the paved peris have gone badly wrong, the Flood is overrunning the galaxy, and al the Forerunners in the sector pile in here as fast as they can No matter how advanced they were, they’d have needed to orientate thens near the front door?" Mendez asked "What if they never finished this place? Because they’re not around any but walked on, head down, the soles of her black loafers tapping on the flagstones It was too easy to see the Forerunners as not siodlike, just like the Covenant did But Mendez knew al too wel that bril iant technology didn’t guarantee infal ibility
Even hu perfect, honest, or even competent
"Ah wel …" He proar in two hours The gold wal felt oddly war skin "Maybe we need to go back and check the portal area"
Click … click … click
"Jackpot," Halsey cal ed "Look"
Mendez turned and jogged after her Al the Spartans converged on the saht on one foot, the other held a little off the ground as if she’d been frozen in the a around both shoulders like a satchel, adding to the iirl
"So this is what happens if you tread on the cracks," she said
Mendez stared at the flagstones They’d coht line of Forerunner glyphs, picked out in a soft blue light, led along the paving and curved up the wal to waist height Halsey walked along the line For al Mendez knew, it could have been a warning to keep clear They’d find out the hard way
"Can you read that?" he asked
"It’s a sequence of numbers," Halsey said "But beyond that--no idea"
She reached out and touched the top sy happened for a fewaround ready to open fire as if they’d heard so that Mendez hadn’t He looked back at Halsey just as the wal above hi a neat vertical line and parted al the way down to the ground Nothing actual y moved; the stone blocks just suddenly vanished In his world, doors that suddenly flew open tended to spew smal -arroups without a word and stacked either side of the opening, rifles ready Halsey froze Mendez reive her his pistol
"Steady…" Fred said "Check first Shoot later"
Mendezhead-on He could seeon the trigger Then the ray cylinders like the one that had swooped on them earlier There were six this tied theht Mendez wasn’t sure if they could detect weapons, but they didn’t see any defensive moves
"So what are you?" Halsey murmured One cylinder separated from the rest and came to a halt just in front of her face To her credit, she didn’t even blink "What are you , isn’t it?"
The cylinderso close that he felt it was staring into his eyes even though he couldn’t see a single damned detail on it He held his breath until it moved away, smooth and silent, to hover in front of Kel y’s visor She stood rabbed it, as fast as a cha a fly It was so quick that Mendez didn’t even have ti at it
The cylinder didn’t see The other cylinders drifted away into the trees as if they had better things to do than hang around a humans
"It feels like it’s not here It doesn’t weigh anything" Kel y flexed her gloved fingers around it "Wow This is the strangest thing I’ve ever felt"
Halsey held her hand out and took the cylinder cautiously She drew her chin in, frowning "I see what you mean That’s … wel , extraordinary