The man looked at the rocks, shaking his head as if doubting the evidence of his ears. “Sir, Cuvier only issue an advisory of this severity once every year or two—it’s an order of magnitude above anything we’ve experienced before.”

“Speak for yourself,” Sylveste said, noticing the way the man’s gaze snapped involuntarily to his eyes and then off again, embarrassed. “Listen to me. We cannot afford to abandon this dig. Do you understand?”

The man looked back at the grid. “We can protect what we’ve uncovered with sheeting, sir. Then bury transponders. Even if the dust covers every shaft, we’ll be able to find the site again and get back to where we are now.” Behind his dust goggles, the man’s eyes were wild, beseeching. “When we return, we can put a dome over the whole grid. Wouldn’t that be the best, sir, rather than risk people and equipment out here?”

Sylveste took a step closer to the man, forcing him to step back towards the grid’s closest shaft. “You’re to do the following. Inform all dig teams that they carry on working until I say otherwise, and that there is to be no talk of retreating to Mantell. Meanwhile, I want only the most sensitive instruments taken aboard the crawlers. Is that understood?”

“But what about people, sir?”

“People are to do what they came out here to do. Dig.”

Sylveste stared reproachfully at the man, almost inviting him to question the order, but after a long moment of hesitation the man turned on his heels and scurried across the grid, navigating the tops of the baulks with practised ease. Spaced around the grid like down-pointed cannon, the delicate imaging gravitometers swayed slightly as the wind began to increase.

Sylveste waited, then followed a similar path, deviating when he was a few boxes into the grid. Near the centre of the excavation, four boxes had been enlarged into one single slab-sided pit, thirty metres from side to side and nearly as deep.