“Pretty good, Auger. Looks like you lucked out this time.”

“Help me remove the tray,” she said, guessing that there was going to be no attempt to recover the entire crawler.

They extracted the sample tray, carried it to the nearest rescue crawler and slid it into a vacant slot.

“Now the film reels,” Mancuso said.

Auger walked around the leaning vehicle, throwing latches and sliding out the heavy black cartridges, clipping them together as she went for ease of transport. Once all twelve of them had been assembled, including those from the cabin monitors, she handed the bulky package to Mancuso. “I want these shot straight to the lab,” she said.

“That’s the lot?” he asked.

“That’s the lot,” Auger replied. “Now can we deal with Cassandra?”

But when she looked back into the glow of the cabin, she saw no sign of the girl. “Cassandra?” she called, hoping that the channel to the crawler was still functioning.

“It’s OK,” the girl said. “I’m right behind you.”

Auger turned around to see Cassandra standing on the ice in the other child-sized environment suit.

“I told you to stay inside,” Auger said.

“It was time to leave,” Cassandra replied. She had, as far as Auger could tell, made an efficient and thorough job of donning her suit. Auger was impressed: it was difficult enough for an adult to put on an environment suit without assistance, let alone a child.

“Did you make sure—” Auger began.

“The suit is fine. I think it’s time we were leaving, don’t you? All this activity may have alerted the furies. We don’t want to be here when they arrive.”

Mancuso touched Auger’s shoulder with a power-amplified glove that could have crushed her in an eyeblink. “Girl’s right. Let’s get the hell out of Paris. Place always gives me the jitters.”