Veronica watched him for about two minutes before she apparently had enough. "Oh, sit down, Troy, it's not going anywhere."

"How do you know?" he asked with the bluff humor he ap-parently cultivated. "Aliens put it here. Maybe they're out there taking it away again."

Terry tried folding her arms and found that didn't work. "If they were going to do that, they would have notified me."

"You?" asked Troy, surprised.

"Yeah. I'm a media drone. We're all aliens. Didn't you know that?"

"I had wondered," replied Troy blandly.

A brief collective laugh filtered through the intercoms. Before it died, the light above the outer hatch flashed green, indicating pressurization was complete.

Instantly, everyone was on their feet. Josh worked the lock-ing lever on the outer hatch. With a clank and a thump, the hatch swung inward toreveal the rough, intensely colored world beyond.

"Have a good trip," said Adrian as Josh stepped out. Dust and stone crunched beneath his boot. To the right loomed the cliffs of Beta Regio, with its volcano thrusting up toward the boiling sky and ribbons of lava trailing down its sides. On the edge of his vision, Josh saw Scarab Fourteen creeping down beside a fresh, flowing lava stream, and he wondered how Charlotte Murray and her crew were holding up with their load of tourists.

Then he saw the Discovery's entrance squatting in front of them, and the rest of the world went away. He took three heavy steps forward before he remembered he was supposed to be leading a team out here.

His eyes found the intercom icon and opened the general channel.

"Okay, everybody, try to step where I step. The ground is pretty lumpy out there."

They only needed to cross about ten meters to the hatchway. The hardsuits and the uncertain footing made it slow going, but with every step, the hatchway got a little bigger, a little clearer. He could see the handles on the side of the lid, make out the dim reflections on the curve of its gray ceramic sides, see the little scores and pits that had been made by the burn-ing sand brushing past on the lazy wind.

Then he was standing next to it. It was there, under his glove. He couldn't feel anything, but he could see his hand on the lid.

It was a long moment before he realized the others had ringed the hatch and stood waiting for him.

"I'll open the hatchway now." Josh grasped two of the han-dles, bent his knees, and shoved. The cover swung aside, just as he'd been told it would.

Julia clapped her hands in silent ap-plause. Veronica stooped and ran one gloved finger over the handle he'd just used, and grunted. Peachman tromped for-ward eagerly.

"Hold on," said Terry. "Can we get a shot of the empty shaft?"

"Sure." Josh stepped back and let Terry come forward and point her camera and light down the steep well with its ladder. Just don't take too long. He laughed silently. Get a hold of your-self. Vee was right, it's notgoing anywhere.

"Got it," Terry said, sounding satisfied. She stepped back from the hatch and turned toward him.

"Okay," said Josh, trying to keep his voice calm, as if he had already climbed down into the Discovery a hundred times. "I'll go first and show you how it's done."

Josh planted his boots onto the first rung and, moving care-fully, started climbing down the well. Darkness engulfed him and his suit's lights clicked on, illuminating the black rock with its charcoal veins. He had to keep himself pressed close to the rungs to prevent his backpack from scraping against the shaft wall. His throat tightened. He'd never been inside Venus be-fore, and he could not escape the feeling that he was being swallowed.

Josh's boot touched level stone and his lights showed him the bubble-shaped room dubbed "Chamber One." He moved back from the ladder.

A shiver ran up his spine. This place is not ours. This is other. There is someone else out there, and we know nothing about them. That was too huge and too strange a thought not to merit a moment of sheer wonder.

There wasn't even that much to see here-the base of the ladder, the six holes gaping beside the smooth curving wall. The real prize lay through the narrow tunnel that opened by his right hand. Down there lay Chambers Two and Three and the laser.

"Okay, next," he said into the intercom. "Keep close to the rungs; don't bump your pack if you can help it." They'd all been briefed and run through the simulators, but it wouldn't hurt to remind them.

"Yes, Papa," said Vee. He watched her green form descend-ing carefully, foot searching momentarily for each rung. But she reached the bottom without incident and came to stand be-side him.

"Next," Josh said.

"Here we go," answered Julia. While the archeologist worked her way down, Veronica walked over to look at the inner doorway, if a small,rounded entry to a low tunnel could be called a doorway. Josh was torn between watching Vee and keeping an eye on Julia, who, if anything, was moving less steadily than Vee had, and wishing they would all hurry up.

"Vee, what are you doing?" asked Josh, to distract himself. She was crouched down and running her fingers over the threshold.

"Exploring the secrets of the universe," she answered. Her voice sounded flat, tight.

Troy descended right after Julia, followed closely by Terry. As soon as Terry was down, she whistled softly and began ex-amining the smooth, rounded walls. Julia bent over the six holes laid out in a straight line at the base of the ladder. Josh was willing to bet she was talking animatedly into her log. Veronica stayed where she was, turning from the inner thresh-old to the mouth of the entry shaft and back again. Troy just stood in the middle of it all, a look of sheer delight on his face.

"Incredible. It just feels incredible."

Although part of Josh suspected Troy was, yet again, playing for the cameras, part of him nodded in agreement. He'd run through the videos and holographs a hundred times, but that was nothing compared to standing in the middle of the Dis-covery, feeling the stone surrounding them and wondering, just wondering.

Freed from his initial bout of amazement, Troy started hopping around the chamber like a kid in a candy store. He bent over the six holes with Julia; he ran his hands over the inner threshold with Veronica. He peered eagerly over Wray's shoulders to see whatever it was they were looking at, all the time murmuring, "Incredible, incredible."

"Can we see the rest?" asked Veronica abruptly.

Josh blinked. "Sure." And I thought it was just me who couldn't wait.

"One second," said Terry. "I need a shot of all of you with the light from the shaft coming down." She shuffled closer to the ladder. "Say cheese, but keep on doing what you're doing." Peo-ple bent or walked, stiffly and reluctantly, but Josh supposed that would later be put down to the suits and the pressure. "Okay. All done."Great. "Okay. The main chamber is through here." Josh gestured down the horizontal tunnel. "Again, I'll go first. It's hands and knees. Go slow and try not to bump your packs."

The inner tunnel was even more constricting than the entry shaft. The smooth, narrow way was completely dark except for the small black-and-gray area illuminated by his suit lights. He crawled forward without feeling anything but the insides of his gloves against his hands and the padding of his suit under his knees. There was no sound except his own breathing.

"It makes a slight rise here in the middle," he told the peo-ple behind him, whether they were following or waiting in Chamber One. He couldn't tell. There was no room for him to turn his head to look. His general plate displays told him only that their intercoms were up and running, not where those in-tercoms were.

The tunnel undulated sharply, forcing Josh flat onto his stomach. He shinnied up to the rounded crest and slid back down again. He hoped none of his tourists would find this too much for their dignity. Probably not. Troy seemed the most likely to make a fuss, and he wouldn't do it while there was a risk of being recorded. If they were nervous about the world around them, they seemed to be burying that feeling under the excitement of exploration.

Another two meters and the tunnel opened up into Chamber Two, the main chamber of the Discovery.

Josh got to his feet and turned around in time to see Veron-ica emerge from the tunnel. She stood up and moved back from the tunnel's mouth, turning as she did so she could take absolutely everything in.

Chamber Two was a bubble, like Chamber One, but three times as big and twice as high. Michael Lum had joked that this was obviously an alien church, because it was so hole-y. Cir-cular niches a meter around and ten centimeters deep had been carved into the walls. Small shafts perforated the floor, ranging between one and six centimeters in diameter. Robot surveyors sent down those shafts found they interconnected at different levels underground. Maybe they once held a pipe net-work.

Tiny holes that sank into the walls at regular intervals might have been for staples or brackets of some kind, holding up shelves or wiring orclothes pegs for all they knew. An entire section of floor had been dug away for about a half meter, making a shallow, smooth-walled depression at the eastern curve of the chamber. At the bottom of the depression were still more holes-two ovals of eight holes each were sur-rounded by numerous minute holes drilled at seemingly ran-dom intervals.

Not even the stark evidence of human intervention could dampen Josh's delight at finally standing in the middle of the Discovery. Every last one of the holes now had a cermet tag next to it with a number designation. It had taken almost a week just to get all the holes tagged.

The measurements still weren't finished. Hopefully Julia would be able to make a con-tribution to that effort with the miniature survey drones she carried in her pack.

From the ceiling hung three quartz globes. Inside them, you could see a tangle of filament wires. Big, pressure-tolerant, alien light bulbs. No one had managed to find the power source though, and God, how they'd looked.

A low, round doorway opened across from the tunnel. This one led to another smaller bubble room, almost a closet. Chamber Three. The laser was in there. Josh's curiosity was al-most a physical force pushing him toward that other doorway. He kept still with difficulty while, one at a time, the remainder of the team emerged from the tunnel.

Every last one of them looked up and around, just as Veron-ica had.

Josh had a feeling a number of jaws had dropped open. It even took Terry a moment before she started system-atically aiming her camera again.

After that, it was a replay of the scene in the antechamber, except nine times more intense. Snatches of competing con-versations jammed the radio until everyone remembered about the private channels. Troy and Julia crowded the edge of the pit, pointing and gesturing. Terry tried to record everything at once. Only Veronica didn't move. She stood in the middle of Chamber Two and frowned up at the lights.

In return, Josh frowned at her. He opened a private channel between them. "Vee? We're here to see the laser?"

She focused on him slowly, as if his words reached her from a long way away. "Yes. Right.""This way." He pointed to the low doorway. His hand almost shook with eagerness. Let the other tourists fend for themselves for a while. Let's see what the neighbors left for us.

Josh ducked through the low doorway, for the moment not really caring if Vee followed him. He turned to the right, and there it was.

The laser rig stood next to the far wall of Chamber Three. Whoever hollowed out the chamber had left behind a single wedge of polished rock.

It had been planed off at a forty-five-degree angle and tapered up from the floor until it was about level with Josh's waist. A mechanism fastened to its surface and pointed toward a pair of short, narrow holes let in the ashen light from the surface.

Clumsily, Josh sat down. Now the laser rig was about level with his nose. "We're dealing with little green men all right," he said to Vee. "If this was working height for them, they couldn't be much more than a meter tall."

Vee said nothing. She just sat down beside him.

The laser itself was nothing much to look at right off. Its body was a dull-gray half-pipe about a meter long. Two tubes with roughly triangular cross sections projected out of it and pointed toward the holes to the surface, their flared ends al-most touching the living rock.

"There's a set of staples down here," said Josh, leaning into the base of the half-pipe and pointing to the thick metal fas-teners. "They pull out."

He gripped one carefully in his thick glove fingers and pulled as gently as he could. The staple eased out a little ways, then stopped.

"Anybody analyzed the cover?" asked Vee.

"It's a ceramic. They think it's refined from local earths. Maybe shaped by some kind of laser tomography."

Vee just grunted. Josh pulled out the remaining staples. Then he lifted the cover away to reveal an interior that glittered with black glass, crystal, and gold.

And there it all was-the power points tucked into the two long, black glass (maybe) tubes, with what were unmistakably Brewster windows setinto either end. The tubes themselves contained... what? They didn't know yet. Mirrors of incor-ruptible gold (probably gold. Looked like gold) stood at either end of the tubes. Golden strips had been laid down in neat pat-terns along the tube supports. Pairs of thick lenses had been positioned at the end of each tube that was closest to the wall, with the smaller of the pair on the inside (almost definitely a beam expander), and in front of them was a pinplate to focus the light and send it... where? He looked at the holes to the surface. To do what?

Much of the answer to that question would depend on what was in those black tubes, which would tell them what kind of laser they were dealing with. The presence of the tube told them it was a gas laser, but what kind of gas laser?

When they knew what kind of laser it was, they could work out what it had been used for. And when they knew what it was for, they would know what these people were doing here, and when they knew what these people were doing here... the universe would open up wide.

He wanted to say this to Vee, but he didn't. Something was wrong with her. She seemed closed off, and he couldn't tell why.

Well, you can sort that out later. "Can you get the monochrometer out of my pack?"

"Right." Vee stumped around behind him and he felt the small jostlings as she undid the catches on his pack and pulled out the equipment.

While Vee squatted next to the laser to position the boxy an-alyzer and pump down the suction cup at its base, Josh pulled their portable floodlight out of her pack and lined it up with the monochrometer on the other side of the tubes. When both devices were switched on, pure white light would shine through the tubes into the monochrometer, which would ana-lyze the absorption patterns and report. Then they'd know what lay inside the opaque glass.

Vee jacked the monochrometer into her suit. "Okay. Go."

Josh pressed the power-on switch and the light flashed on, so suddenly and intensely bright his faceplate dimmed. He imagined a faint humming as its beams passed through the tubes. Another shiver of fear and excitement went through him, brought by the awareness that he wasdoing something no one else had ever done before. Even Vee's closed expres-sion softened as she read off the monochrometer's conclusions.

"Okay, we've got hydrogen in there, a little neon, and"-she paused-"carbon dioxide." She stared at the device. "It's a CO2 laser, Josh."

"Makes sense, doesn't it?" Josh was aware he was grinning like an idiot.

"Not only does CO2 make for a versatile, powerful laser, but our aliens have been making heavy use of local materials. If there's one thing Venus has and to spare, it's CO2."

"Right." Vee pulled the monochrometer jack out of her glove's wrist, turned her back, and left.

Josh did not let his jaw drop. Veronica marched through Chamber Two and climbed back into the tunnel toward Cham-ber One.

"What was that?" came Troy's voice.

I have no effing idea, thought Josh.

"Is there a problem?" Julia stood up from her crouch over the carved-out section of floor.

"No, no." Josh waved them back. Both curious and con-fused, he crawled back through the tunnel to Chamber One. He got there just in time to see Vee climb the last rungs of the ladder and disappear over the side of the hatchway.

Josh opened their channel. "Vee? Vee? What are you doing?"

No answer. Josh flicked over to the channel for the scarab. "Adrian?

This is Josh."

"I hear you, Josh, what's up?"

"How's Dr. Hatch's suit doing?"

"She's green and go here. Something wrong?"

I have no effing idea. Josh stared at the ladder. He did not want to chase after her. If she wanted to be a temperamental artiste, that was her business. The laser was waiting for them both. If she didn't care, fine.Except that there were so many ways she could get herself killed out there.

Josh carefully closed down all his com channels except the one to the scarab. When he was sure no one could hear him but Adrian, he started swearing softly, and he climbed the lad-der back to the surface.

As he emerged from the hatch, he saw Vee crouched about ten meters away, apparently staring at one patch of ground.

"Vee? What the hell are you doing?" Josh demanded as he started stumping toward her.

"More holes." She pointed.

"Yes, I know. We found those. They should be tagged." Two squares of four small holes drilled neatly into the earth on the right side of the hole the laser pointed through.

"Yes." She stood up and started walking back toward him. Josh stopped in his tracks.

"You want to tell me what's going on?"

Apparently, she didn't. She said nothing as she passed him and climbed back down the ladder. Josh choked off another set of curses and returned to the hatch. While he watched, she lumbered down the rungs, walked to the center of the cham-ber, and laid down on her back, her faceplate pointing up at the ceiling.

Bewilderment warred with exasperation as Josh climbed down the ladder and stood over her. "Are you okay?"

"Fine, thank you." Her voice was bland, almost bored, and her expression matched.