"Are you going to be able to get up all right?"

"I'll call if I can't."

He paused. "You having an artistic snit of some kind?"

"Probably. You're in my way.""Excuse me." Josh stepped back and wished he could run his hand through his hair. He just watched the still form lying on its back and staring at the ceiling, looking for all the world like an empty suit that had fallen over. Well, so much for the idea that you'd turn out to be the reasonable one.

Seeing nothing else to do, Josh crawled back through the tunnel to Chamber Two.

"Is Veronica all right?" asked Troy.

"She's fine," Josh assured them all as he straightened up. "She's decided to pursue an independent investigation."

Those few words satisfied everyone. Everybody knows how artistes are , thought Josh as he returned to Chamber Three. I wonder how much she trades on that?

He pushed the thought aside. Whatever Veronica wanted to do-as long as it didn't actively involve killing herself, damag-ing equipment, or wrecking the site-didn't really matter. He could still work. Every part of the laser had to be measured, la-beled, gently sampled, and precisely cataloged and videoed. The work and the wonder of it all soon swallowed up thoughts of anything else.

Every so often, movement in Chamber Two caught his eye. Vee went back and forth between the main chamber and the antechamber three separate times. Once, she came into the laser chamber and just sat by the wall for a while. He ignored her. Eventually, she left.

At 14:00, his suit clock chimed. So, he knew, did everyone else's, but he spoke into the intercom anyway. "That's time, folks. We need to head back."

"Another few minutes-" began Troy.

"We've got two weeks," replied Josh. "You don't want to run low on coolant out here, do you?"

That got them. All at once, everyone was ready to go. No doubt Derek had showed them the record of Deborah Pakkala, whose coolant circulation had failed on her, and how she had cooked to death in her suitbefore she reached the scarab, twenty meters away. Josh eyed the radio icons to flip over to the channel for Scarab Five. "Adrian, Kevin, we're coming in."

"Roger that, Josh," came back Adrian's voice. "We'll be ready for you."

Josh took a quick head count. All present, except for Vee.

"Vee?" called Josh over the public channel. "Time."

"I heard." came her voice, clear, tight, and slightly bored, as it had been for the entire afternoon.

Shaking his head yet again, Josh led the way back through the tunnel.

He shinnied over the rise and stopped. Vee's suit, on its back again, blocked the tunnel.

"Vee," he said, refusing to be surprised or angry. She would not take the wonder of this day from him. He would not let her.

"Right." Using the tunnel walls as traction, she turned herself over onto her stomach and crawled out ahead of him.

Josh led the team up the ladder and across the rough, barren ground to the scarab. The airlock hatch stood open, waiting for them. They took their spots on the benches. Josh shut them in-side and signaled Adrian.

The outer hatch's light blinked red as the depressurization started.

"So, Dr. Hatch," began Troy conversationally. "Did you find what you were looking for?"

"Not yet." She gave him a sunny, meaningless smile. "But as Josh said, we've got two whole weeks."

"Two weeks," said Julia less enthusiastically. "If it doesn't kill us. I feel like I've been lifting weights for four solid hours."

"It's the pressure," said Troy. "We'll get used to it, I'm sure. Isn't that right, Josh?"

Josh shrugged but then remembered his suit wouldn't show the movement. "Not really, no, but you learn your limits and how to pace yourself.""Do you think you'll ever get used to the idea you're crawl-ing around inside an alien artifact?" asked Terry.

Josh felt his mouth quirk up. "Is this on or off the record?"

Terry sighed exasperatedly. "Civilians. If the answer's really good, I'll ask to use it."

"My God, an ethical feeder," murmured Josh, and the remark earned him a round of laughter. "The answer is, no, I don't think I'll get used to it, and I don't really want to get used to it. We are in the middle of the most incredible thing that's ever happened and I never want to forget that." He smiled. "Good enough to use?"

"Are you kidding?" said Terry. "The boss willing, I'm going to open with that."

"And what about you, Veronica?" Troy angled himself to face her. "How did you feel inside the Discovery?"

Veronica didn't move. "Oh, I was impressed," she said dis-tantly. "Very impressed. The sheer scale of the undertaking. It's amazing."

The team nodded solemnly.

The depressurization finished, and the green light shone over the inner hatch. Josh worked the hatch and everyone spilled gratefully over into the changing room. Adrian stood ready to help them out of the bulky suits and supplied cold water from the scarab's fridge. Josh glanced down the corri-dor and saw movement through the main window. Team Fourteen was on the ball and heading down for their turn at the Discovery.

By the time Josh looked up from his water bottle again, Vee had vanished. The rest of the team crowded around the kitchen table, eating sandwiches and drinking water and fruit juice in quantity. They all speculated freely and at top volume about what they'd seen, what it meant, and how they were going to frame their findings for Mother Earth.

Vee did not reappear.

Conscience caught up with Josh. He drained the last of his juice and climbed through the side hatch to the sleeping cabin.Veronica sat cross-legged on her coach with her briefcase open in front of her, typing frantically. Her lips moved as the keys clacked, but he couldn't make out what she was saying to herself.

"Are you all right, Vee?"

She looked up, startled, and for a moment he saw naked anger on her face. She wiped it away. "Fine."

What is it? What is the matter with you? He sat on the edge of the floor. "You really should at least have something to drink."

She reached down next to the couch and pulled out a bottle of water.

"I'm fine, really."

"Anything you want to talk about?"

Anger flickered back across her features. "No."

One more try. "You know, this is supposed to be a team ef-fort."

"I'd heard," she replied dryly.

Leave it alone, he told himself. Let her play her game. This is not your business. But there was a challenge in her eyes that grated at him. No, not a challenge, an accusation.

Josh picked his way to her couch. "What have you found?" He crouched down next to her.

With three keystrokes, Veronica blanked her screen. "Noth-ing I'm ready to talk about."

"Listen to me," he whispered fiercely. "You've got an act going, fine.

You can play with Peachman's head, and Wray's. But you play with the Discovery, and so help me, I will make such a stink you will be booted all the way back to Mother Earth without benefit of shuttle. This is not a gallery show. This is so far beyond important we can barely understand its impli-cations. I will not let you screw around with this."

Vee's angry eyes searched his face. Josh did not let his ex-pression waver or soften. At last, Veronica dropped her gaze. Her fingers moved across the command board and typed out one line of text. She turned thescreen toward him. Josh read it and his heart thudded hard in his chest.

It's a fake.

Josh sat back on his heels and met Vee's gaze. "You're out of your mind."

She frowned hard and typed.

Keep it down! We have no idea who's in on this. Go back to dinner.

Tell them I overdid it and am taking a nap. Whatever. Get your briefcase out and mail me. I'll spell it out.

She added her contact code at the bottom.

Josh looked at her again. Vee's face and eyes had hardened. Whatever she'd found, or thought she'd found, she was serious about it, and if she was right...

No. She can't be.

Without another word, Josh returned to the kitchen nook.

"Everything all right?" asked Troy.

"Oh yeah," lied Josh, picking up his empty juice cup and car-rying it to the sonic cleaner so he wouldn't have to stay at the table and look at anybody. "It's easy to overdo it out there if you're not careful. Vee just needs to lie down and get some extra fluids."

And get her head examined. He shut the cup in the cleaner. God, if she's doing this for self-aggrandizement, I'll kill her.

The meal finished, the dishes got cleared, and people spread out as much as the scarab allowed, giving each other the men-tal space necessary for sane and civil interaction in a confined space. Adrian shuffled back to the changing area, probably to run the post-EVA suit checks and recharge batteries and tanks. Kevin was up front in the pilot's seat, running over something on the main displays. Terry commandeered one corner of the kitchen table and downloaded the day's records into her smart cam. She watched the display, apparently oblivious to anything else. Julia retreated to the couch compartment.Josh went into the analysis nook, opened one of the over-head compartments, and retrieved his own briefcase. Perched on the nook's one stool, he jacked it into the counter's power supply and accessed his mail.

He typed, I'm up and open. Connect to this contact, and sent the message across to the code Veronica had shown him.

He waited, trying not to fidget. He wished he'd thought to make a cup of coffee before he started, but now that he had started, he didn't want to leave the case. Anybody could come down the corridor and read the screen. He wanted all this cleared up, now.

Another line of text spelled itself out across the screen.

Up and open. Now, first question. What's anybody going to do with a CO2 laser on Venus?

Josh felt his brows knit together. What?

What's the atmosphere out there made of? CO2. What's going to happen if you fire a CO2 laser into a CO2 atmosphere? The beam is going to be absorbed almost immediately. What good is that going to be? The setup makes no sense!

Josh took a deep breath, steadying himself. A grand outburst was not going to accomplish anything. We are obviously not seeing the whole mechanism. That's clear from the pattern of holes on the outside. There was something else here.

Pause. He lifted his cap up, smoothed down his hair, and re-placed it.

New text appeared.

Dead convenient, isn't it? Anything that couldn't be cobbled together from local materials is conveniently missing from the scene, like a power source for the laser, like any kind of repeater or reflector that you couldn't make out of salt and stone. And what about the lights?

The lights? typed Josh, genuinely mystified.

The lights! There are three lights in the whole place and they're all in one room. Did somebody just climb down into the dark? Crawl through dark tunnels? Send messages in the dark?Josh remembered her lying on her back in the antechamber, staring at the ceiling. Now genuine irritation flared. What did she want, a guidebook? They were supposed to be looking for possible answers for these questions. That was why they were all here. This installation was built by aliens; we can't except to understand their motives.

No. That's the tautology whoever set this up wants us to start using.

Anything that doesn't make sense can be put down to this all being done by aliens. OF COURSE it doesn't make sense to us.

Use Occam's Razor, fosh. What's the simpler explanation? That aliens came, undetected, to Venus and created an outpost, which they left half of in permanent darkness. Then they aban-doned it, leaving just enough clues behind to let us know they were there. Or is the simpler truth that somebody set up a mys-terious looking fake to gain some fame and fortune?

Or funding. Josh thought involuntarily. Oh, Christ. Funding.

His head felt light. The soft, background sounds of move-ment, random clanking, and soft conversation seemed unbear-ably loud. He tugged hard on the brim of his cap and looked over to the kitchen, wishing for coffee.

No. This was not happening. She was reading the data wrong.

More text spilled across the screen. There is nothing in there we don't understand or that we couldn't make, given the proper facilities.

Anything we might not understand is missing. It's a SETUP.

Josh took a deep breath and forced his fingers to type in a reply. His hands had gone cold, he realized. How come after weeks of camera work, measuring, tagging, and analysis, no one else has reached this conclusion?

No one else wanted to, she replied.

Josh suppressed a snort. And you did? Or maybe you just want to get back at Grandma Helen for thinking you're harm-less?

A long pause this time. A blank screen and a strained men-tal silence.

Is that what you think I'm doing?I think it's possible, returned Josh.

Fine, The connection shut down.

Josh sat there, staring at his screen, reading and rereading the words shining on its gray surface.

A fake? Impossible. Ridiculous. The amount of time, money, and material it would take to rig up a fake like this would be incredible.

Nobody on Venera would have access to those kinds of resources.

Except maybe Grandma Helen.

Josh's spine stiffened. No. Now that really was crazy. She'd never do anything like this. No one would.

But, damn, hasn't it brought the money rolling in. Right when Venera needed it.