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the bedrock of herself and found what she needed, a last reservoir of strength.
    Only a few shards left now.  Possibly the beginning of an answer.  Lam said he'd seen enough of the amphibians’ language to try to communicate, but this stretch of carvings was too valuable to abandon.  A sample this large would be priceless in translation efforts, and even if she survived they might never find their way back to this cave.  And if she died... well, if she died, their probes might still find her.  Her suit would transmit her files even if she was buried and lost.
    Vonnie realized she was crying and wasn't angry.  She wasn't ashamed.  She had done her best all the way through and maybe that was enough.  That was good and right. 
    She dropped the rock and pushed over a smaller boulder with only a chipped half-moon of a carving on the underside.  "Got it?" she asked, feeling close to him again, the real him and the ghost.  He was a powerful friend.    
    — Three hundred meters, Von.  We should go .
    "You got it?" she repeated.
    — Yes.  Von, listen.  There are more of them this time, at least ten, moving fast now .
    "Help me with this last big one."
    The truth was that nobody even really knew which questions to ask.  She didn't wonder why there were amphibian hieroglyphs in what was obviously no longer their territory.  The catacombs probably changed hands regularly or were deserted and reclaimed. But why she hadn't seen more carvings?  These hieroglyphs were ancient.  Were the amphibians only coming back now after a long absence?  Even then, why hadn't she seen more signs of activity? 
    Maybe some part of the secret was here, and she was willing to fight for it.  
    Something else, she realized.  The answer might be in their enemies, and Vonnie swung to face the approaching voices with an excavation charge in either hand.

16.
    The first little world in the ice would always be her favorite.  It was peaceful.  The two species of bugs —  closely related to each other but wholly unlike the fat-bodied ants brought up by the ESA rover — seemed to feed solely on the gray, sticky algae that grew alongside the wells of the hot springs, where the melt was thick and ever-changing.
    At one time this chamber must have been part of a larger area, but ice-falls had long since walled it off.  Vonnie only stumbled into this open space when she refused to be deterred and started digging.  Her mind had felt very, very small in those hours, too small for any thought except to get away from the lethal, creaking weight of the collapsed vent above her.
    She wasn't hurt, other than a sprained elbow.  She was alone.  Communication with the outside had already been staticky, despite the relays she'd left along the tunnel.  Maybe those machines were all gone.  Maybe she'd fallen further than she thought.  Obviously she had to find a way back to the surface.  The other ships were still two days out and it might take them another day to gear up and scout for her, even longer to forge their way through the crumbling mass above.
    She regretted not having monitors to leave in this place.  Bauman especially would have been excited, but nearly all of Vonnie’s mecha had been lost in the rock swell.  The two she had left she sent exploring and then sat still, grieving, resting —
    and recording.  Her camera lights were dazzling in the wet ice. 
    The atmosphere here was oxygen-rich, though still nothing that would support a human being, laced with hydrogen chloride.  More interesting, the pressure was three times what she'd seen near the surface, due in part to a lower altitude but mostly because this hollow was self-contained.  
    Neither species had eyes, of course.  They used fan antennae and scent instead.  They were basically helpless.  Droplets fell steadily or in periodic rains, and the chamber floor was pebbled with thousands of specimens who had been caught by the slush and frozen.  Vonnie collected