“He’s already had enough experience for one day.”

“Well, can’t be too careful. Down here all accidents are emergencies. Thought you’d have known that by now, Auger.”

“You should check on the girl,” she said, indicating the crawler.

“She hurt?”

“No.”

“Then she isn’t a priority. Let’s see what you risked these kids’ lives for, shall we?”

Mancuso meant the newspaper.

“It’s in the crawler’s storage shelf,” Auger said, leading him over to the crippled machine. At the front of the crawler, tucked beneath sets of manipulator arms and tools, were a netting pouch and a hatch containing a compartmented storage tray. Auger released the manual catch and slid out the tray. “Look,” she said, taking the newspaper out of its slot with great care.

“Whew!” Mancuso whistled, grudgingly impressed. “Where’d you find it?”

She pointed to a sunken area just ahead of the wrecked machine. “We found a car down there.”

“Anyone inside?”

“Empty. We smashed the sunroof and used the crawler’s manipulators to extract the paper from the rear seat. We had to brace the crawler against the ceiling to prevent it from toppling over. Unfortunately, the ceiling wasn’t structurally sound.”

“That’s because this cavern hasn’t been cleared for human operations yet,” Mancuso told her.

Auger chose her words carefully, mindful that anything she said now might be on the record. “No harm was done. We lost a crawler, but the recovery of a newspaper easily outweighs that.”

“What happened to the boy?”

“He was helping me stabilise the crawler when he ripped his suit. I told him to lie still and wait for the cavalry.”

She put the newspaper back into the tray. The newsprint was still as sharp and legible as when she had retrieved it from the car. The act of picking up the paper—flexing it slightly—had even caused one of the animated adverts to come to life: a girl on a beach throwing a ball towards the camera.