They stood aside for him. Trifon Pavlaevich, a husky Russian with a giant white mustache, bowed slightly; Karl Pickens beamed; and Art Gibbs floated proudly beside Linda.

Linda Thomas was a redheaded dynamo who knew what she was doing and didn't mind sharing credit with her colleagues. As a result, they loved her. She stood over a shaft, waving him forward. When he reached her, she shook his hand, and their fields glimmered. "All right," he said briskly. "Let's see what we've got." Someone pressed a lamp into his hand. He lowered it into the darkness, saw engravings and bas-reliefs, and descended into a chamber whose dimensions reached beyond the limits of the light. The walls were busy, filled with shelves and carvings. There were objects on the shelves. Hard to see precisely what. Maybe local sea life, accumulated before the room was sealed. Maybe artifacts.

His team followed. Trifon warned them not to touch any thin. "Got to make a chart before anything gets moved." We know, Tri.

Lights played across the wall-carvings. He could make out animals, but no likenesses of the Quraquat. Sculptures of the intelligent species were rare, except in holy places. In any age. And among most of their cultures. There seemed to be an imperative that prohibited capturing their own image in stone. There would be a reason, of course, but they had not yet found it.

The floor was covered with a half-meter of silt. Other chambers opened beyond. And voices echoed happily in his phones:

"This used to be a table." "The symbols are Casumel series. Right?" "Art, look at this." "I think there's more in back." "Here. Over here."

And Linda, in the room on the north side, held a lamp up to a relief which depicted three Quraquat figures. Trifon delicately touched the face of one of the images, trailing his fingers across its jaw, along the thrust of its mouth. The Quraquat had been warm-blooded, bipedal, furred creatures with a vaguely reptilian cast. Alligators with faces rather than long jaws and mindless grins. These were robed. A four-legged beast stood with them.