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mob. ‘Go on, then. Leave. Don’t allow anything as trivial as loyalty to get in your way. Unless one of you has the guts to stay here and finish the job they came to do.’ He looked from face to face, meeting only awkwardly averted gazes. He barely knew any of their names. He recognised them, but only from recent experience; certainly none of them had come on the ship from Yellowstone; certainly none had known anything other than Resurgam, with its handful of human settlements strewn like a few rubies across otherwise total desolation. To them he must have seemed monstrously atavistic.
    ‘Sir,’ one of them said - possibly the one who had first alerted him to the storm. ‘Sir; it’s not that we don’t respect you. But we have to think of ourselves as well. Can’t you understand that? Whatever’s buried here, it isn’t worth this risk.’
    ‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ Sylveste said. ‘It’s worth more risk than you can possibly imagine. Don’t you understand? The Event didn’t happen to the Amarantin. They caused it. They made it happen.’
    Sluka shook her head slowly. ‘They made their sun flare up? Is that what you actually believe?’
    ‘In a word, yes.’
    ‘Then you’re a lot further gone than I feared.’ Sluka turned her back to him to address her mob. ‘Power up the crawlers. We’re leaving now.’
    ‘What about the equipment?’ Sylveste said.
    ‘It can stay here and rust for all I care.’ The mob began to disperse towards the two hulking machines.
    ‘Wait!’ Sylveste shouted. ‘Listen to me! You only need to take one crawler - there’s enough room for all of you in one, if you leave the equipment behind.’
    Sluka faced him again. ‘And you?’
    ‘I’ll stay here - finish the work myself, along with anyone else who wants to stay.’
    She shook her head, snatching off her mask to spit on the ground in disgust. But when she left, she caught up with the rest of her brigade and directed them towards the nearest crawler, leaving the other - the one containing his stateroom - for him alone. Sluka’s mob entered the machine, some of them carrying small items of equipment or boxed artefacts and bones recovered from the dig: scholarly instincts prevailing even in rebellion. He watched the crawler’s ramps and hatches fold shut, then the machine rose on its legs, shuffled around and moved away from the dig. In less than a minute it had passed out of view completely, and the noise of its engines was no longer audible above the roar of the wind.
    He looked around to see who was still with him.
    There was Pascale - but that was almost inevitable; he suspected she would dog him to his grave if there was a good story in it. A handful of students who had resisted Sluka; ashamedly he could not place their names. Perhaps half a dozen more still down in the Wheeler grid, if he was lucky.
    Composing himself, he snapped his fingers towards two of those who had stayed. ‘Start dismantling the imaging gravitometers; we won’t need them again.’ He addressed another pair. ‘Begin at the back of the grid and start collecting all the tools left behind by Sluka’s deserters, together with field notes and any boxed artefacts. When you’re done, you can meet me at the base of the large pit.’
    ‘What are you planning now?’ Pascale said, turning off her camera and allowing it to whisk back into her compad.
    ‘I would have thought it was obvious,’ Sylveste said. ‘I’m going to see what it says on that obelisk.’
     
     
    Chasm City, Yellowstone, Epsilon Eridani system, 2524
     
    The suite console chimed as Ana Khouri was brushing her teeth. She came out of the bathroom, foam on her lips.
    ‘Morning, Case.’
    The hermetic glided into the apartment, his travelling palanquin decorated in ornate scrollwork, with a tiny, dark window in the front side. When the light was right she could just make out K. C. Ng’s deathly pale face bobbing behind an inch of green glass.
    ‘Hey, you look