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Tania tugged at both their sleeves and pulled the I can breathe this air We have to get to the towers" Her voice ca how she felt

Pablo nodded once He said sothy sentence

God, Tania thought, if the Helios was affected, too … The thought pushed her toward an emotional cliff of sheer panic It took all her will to pull back fro the aura towers She could camp there if necessary while Pablo and Vanessa found another aircraft in Denver

All of the sudden the two iuns drawn, pointed somewhere behind Tania The tunnel mouth, she knew Tania rolled to her knees so she could see She started to rise and felt Pablo’s hand on her back, pushing her low A flash of light above her, along with a deep whu At what?

Vanessa fired, too A rapid pulse of white light like camera flashes In that burst of illu on all fours toward theunfire ended the creature was in shadow, Pablo’s flare behind soain How he could still see the thing she couldn’t fathoun she saw a bullet hole appear on the left side of the sub’s forehead Tania ht from the flare pass her, just in ti heap just a few ged fingernails--was outstretched tohere she’d been

No, she thought Not where I’d been Where the object had been

Vanessa’s cupped hands were on the side of her visor again "Where’s your gun?" Then her hands went away, replaced by an ear pressed against the glass

"I dropped it when the lights went out, into the water" Tania searched the wo The immune whipped her focus back to the tunnel ain The lack of sound fro as the absolute blackness had been just un to carry about, the task of carrying the alien object fell to Tania Pablo eestured for her to place the triangularonly for a second to soak in those green angular fila on one shoulder and saw Pablo was already h which they’d entered, leaving the shell ship behind theine recreational cavers exploring this place a hundred years from now What would they make of the empty ship? The skeletons they’d find? She tried to picture the confusion on their faces if they searched hard enough and found her gun at the bottom of that river This place would have to be marked, perhaps even h to worry about such things

Ahead, Pablo had reached the first junction in the tunnel He whipped his red flare in one direction and then the other Then he whirled on her, shoulders up and hands turned out in a silent question: Which way?

Tania shrugged How the hell should I--

Oh, shit The ain Of course this changed nothing Her HUD was blank No clean little 3-D trailair Nothing The electronics were fried The caps would need to be replaced Firht not work, and anyway it didn’t matter It was entirely possible there was no repair capability left on Earth, e to do the work Like s that broke, it would be tossed, and the scavengers tasked with finding a replacement Good luck, on a suit like this

Focus! she screamed at herself Tania strode up to Pablo and pulled his head close again "My suit’s off, I told you No map!"

He opened his mouth, closed it, then shut his eyes in frustration When he opened them, a bit of calm had returned to those eyes "Try to remember," he said patiently He couldn’t cup his hands to channel his voice into her hellass It worked well enough

"I …" Tania paused She si attention, not beyond referring to the glowing line whenever necessary She’d been relying on the computer to handle the task, and that, she supposed, was exactly what the Builder’s …

The thought hit her like a thunderclap Puzzle pieces, slipping into place as if finally viewed frole

Can we retrieve this without electronic aid?

Could we fetch the object in Ireland under the accelerated pressure of tiht and win?

She didn’t knohat Samantha had faced in Darwin, but it had sounded bad And she couldn’t fathoh, no doubt, and doubly so with the presence of Blackfield

Maybe we’re just inht Earth our prison, and all this just a test of our mental facilities

"Well?!" Pablo shouted into her helmet There was no malice in his tone No, the opposite was true He’d no doubt aze and assuone, Pablo It’s gone"

She half-expected hie There was no basis for that; he’d been nothing but patient before A kind, quiet h, he just closed his eyes and nodded Disappoint He looked like her own father had when she’d failed her first test in school "You’ll have to try harder next time," her father had simply said She’d felt like a child then and she certainly felt the same way now, only here there was no "next time"

Tania Sharma took a deep breath and forced all this from her mind She was a scientist; she needed to think that way The one and so it was irrelevant A data source that couldn’t be used What else did she have? Tania glanced at the cave itself, first looking for anything she could reether

Soht her eye She moved past Pablo and knelt down There, in the space between two clumps of rock on the floor, was a partial footprint A hint of boot tread, actually Tania pointed at it The man nodded, slowly at first and then a bit faster He said soht he was chastising hiave his arm a little squeeze and smiled at him He didn’t smile back, but the corner of his h