“Possibly. I shouldn’t worry about it. If it can get through these suits we’re already infected anyway.”

Achmed took the case and hurried off, never sure when she was kidding.

Nagel chuckled. “I love it when you’re so fatalistic.”

“He deserved it. His faith says to accept what happens as the will of Allah. It’s one of the most fatalistic religions we have. I’m doing him a favor, allowing him to test his obviously wavering faith.”

“Maybe he’s just worried where he’s going if his fears pan out,” the engineer noted. “That’s why I keep a hard-nosed atheism inside. The alternative is so much worse than obliteration I find a lack of faith one of my dearest comforts.”

They went through a connecting tube, seals pretty well loose from all the wind outside beating against it and the lack of maintenance, but serviceable to get where they needed to go. From this point, the buildings went in three directions, and they’d have to decide on a route.

The eerie light of their personal torches revealed pretty much a carbon copy of the first building, as they expected. This building, however, still had all its panels in place and so was very much the way it would have been abandoned.

It looked as clean, even sterile, as the first would have been without the hole.

Nagel checked his instruments, and sent three small probes down the wide aisles. He checked his screen and saw nothing he didn’t expect. Even as he was recalling the small probes he said, “Nothing at all here. The stuff’s almost too new, even with a lack of power and maintenance. You think they built these but never got to actually use them?”

“That’s been my thought,” she responded. “But, then, what was somebody doing running out through that last one and blowing a hole in it rather than simply exiting via the door? I don’t know. I’d almost prefer the crumbling rot of ancient vegetation and a dead body or two to what we’re finding. Something here just isn’t right.”