In the courtyard, the Pastfinders compared notes about something. Ria rushed back into the Site. The rest of them ran up to the observation deck.
“Two’s company, these Pastfinders are a crowd,” Haze said. The look he gave her was so tender, longing and vulnerable that she didn’t know what to say.
The Pastfinders congregated on the most northerly point of the deck, where it stretched furthest into the Rift. From there you could see all the way to the Rift’s east end.
“It’s showtime,” said Tai.
“What show?” Haze asked Mercury.
“I don’t know.” They joined the crowd of Pastfinders. It was a relief to Mercury to have this distraction from contemplating an unknown future, to have something more immediate and exciting to see.
Mikal was staring into the eastern sky. “There!”
Below the sun, a strange light dribbled down. It stretched out into a line pointing at the horizon in the direction of the distant lake. Now Mercury remembered the plan to break the dam with a meteor from space.
“Why don’t they use dynamite?” Mikal asked.
“TARC likes hitting planets. See the relative motion?” Jud sounded cheerful. From his previous career as a saboteur, he still had a professional interest in burning, breaking, and blowing things up. “Relative motion means it’s not coming our way. Fortunately.”
The line touched the horizon with a flash of light. That brought an ooh from the Pastfinders.
“If it hit, there’ll be a tremor,” said Gerro. “Ria’s waiting for it. Should arrive in five more seconds. Four. Three. Two. One.” Sure enough, the distant impact trembled through the top deck of the station. “Solid hit.”
“Isn’t it the kind of thing your office discourages, Mr. Planetary Protection?” Mikal asked. With silence for an answer, he looked around. So did Mercury.
But Haze was gone.
When the thread of light drew itself down the sky, Haze felt his heart pound like a hammer. Thread is threat.
He remembered a sunny noonday in Strata, the capital city of Faxe. After a field trip to the other green world in the Faxen system, he’d come down the transit tower, descending from space with godlike speed. He’d been space-lagged, though, needed sleep, and intended to go directly to the underground dorm. Then he’d heard Strata come to a shocked halt around him. Vehicles stopped. Voices yelled. People looked up. The transit tower was falling. It turned from a thread in the sky to countless tons of hot, deadly debris raining down on Strata.
Remembering all of that, he went cold with shock. He still knew that he was at a field station on Tellus. But he felt he was back on Strata. Under the falling tower’s terrible threat that day. Terror hijacked his mind and his muscles. He turned and ran down the stairs.
The echo of the impact came in a tremor of the ground. He staggered and ran for his life.
The gate of the field station stood open.
There was no sign of Haze in the courtyard. Mercury found Rusty frantically pawing at the door of the cage, trying to get out.
Quit hurried in through the station gate. He yelled at her, “What happened to Haze? Did that do something to him?” He pointed an accusing finger at Rusty.
“What do you mean?”
“He just ran through the Site—hit his head on the door and didn’t even stop—then ran over our bridge and now he’s underground!”
The world went glassy for a moment. Oh, no!
She ran into the Site with Quit on her heels.
The bridge thrown over the chasm had shifted a few inches either from the tremor or Haze’s run. Mercury didn’t dare follow him. “Are you sure he didn’t slip and fall in?” Mercury asked Quit, her voice ragged.
“No, he grabbed a flashlight and made it over the bridge.”
She called, “Haze! Haze!”
There was no answer, only cold dark silence down there.
The Pastfinders all crowded around her.
“Do I have volunteers to rescue him?” Tai asked.
Her question met with a silence. Only Mercury said, “I will.”
Tai said, “He’s having flashbacks to the Fall on Strata. TARC’s damned dam-breaking meteor triggered him. I should have fluttering well anticipated that.”
“Maybe not with discoveries going on and an epic flood on the way,” said Silk, calmly.
Now everybody volunteered to go rescue Haze.
“It won’t be easy.” Ria pushed her way toward Tai. “The quake sensors here and in the river plain have registered extensive empty spaces underground. It may be a maze.”
Quit hit his forehead with his hand. “He could be anywhere down there. He ran like a man possessed.”
“He was.” Tai briefly clenched her jaws. “OK. Get the drone ready. Ria, map the underground as best you can in short order.”
Mercury ran back to the cage. Rusty was at the door of the cage, sitting on its haunches and working the latch with its forepaws. Rusty almost had the latch open. Her eyes widened. Rusty paused, looking at her solemnly.
She opened the latch the rest of the way and flung the gate to the cage open. “Rusty! Go find Haze!”
7 Underground
Haze shook with the aftermath of the storm of adrenaline in his body. He’d found a place where a passageway ended at a stone wall. He didn’t know how far underground he was, but it felt far enough to be safe.
It also felt cold. Either this was colder than any cave he’d ever been in, or he was in shock, or his reserves of energy were dangerously low. Likely all three factors. He didn’t remember when he’d last eaten and didn’t have a jacket, just a thin shirt. He did have a flashlight casting a pool of light in front of him. He must have snatched it off the Pastfinders’ table in the Site. Even in panic he’d still had some field reflexes. That was good—as far as it went. Which wasn’t far enough.
It began to sink in that his situation was very, very bad. Besides being dangerously cold and exhausted, he was lost. The Pastfinders would look for him but they might not find him before hypothermia killed him. His head hurt. His fingertips found a knot from a blow he didn’t remember getting. He shivered convulsively. He gathered himself into a tight ball, conserving what heat he could still generate.
Appropriately, it was as cold and stony as a tomb down here. Hadn’t Earth’s ancient Egyptians had places like this, built out of blocks of rock or excavated into the ground, where their dead lived on as lifeless mummies? Haze discovered a strange sense of peace about the possibility of dying. Years ago in Strata, under the falling transit tower, he should have died and didn’t, while thousands of citizens did. He’d been astoundingly lucky. He owed the universe his death. At least now he had his memories back, the two-day blank place in his past broken open. He knew the truth—a savage truth that made him whole just in time to die.
Besides tomb-cold, it was tomb-quiet in here. He could hear the blood rushing through the arteries in his ears. Then a faint thread of sound echoed in the passageway. It became recognizable as four quick-running feet that clicked on the stone floor.
Rusty rushed out of the darkness, put both forepaws on Haze’s knees, and looked into Haze’s face. The diamond-shaped pupils of Rusty’s eyes were large in this underground darkness. Compassion seemed to flow through those eyes into Haze’s mind.