Scene 4

Hesper Nakagawa (Human, Survey Lead, Fliade survey)

Time: 2832 UCSD, the survey's second year on the ground, the morning after the third reading was given
Location: Fliade — the station on the roof, the upper junction, the squeeze, and the line in the silt

They had heard it at the junction, Nakagawa and Egede, standing in the fungus-light with the imager still in its case. A shift of rock, down the third passage and through the crack, felt more than heard, the sound the party had logged since its first month.

Nakagawa had known what it was before Egede did, because Nakagawa had been waiting for it, and had not been sure it would come, and had not known what to do if it did not. It had come. Nakagawa stood at the junction and let it go through the floor and into the boots and did not move, and thought: that is an answer. Whatever it means, it is one. We have been answered.

Then Aravena came out of the third passage with the light held low and a face that Nakagawa was going to remember for the rest of the survey, and stopped, and said, in a voice that had not quite come back yet:

"Something happened."

"Yes," said Nakagawa. "I heard. Tell me. In order."

Aravena told it in order. The stone. The squeeze. The one on the line — in the open, large, still, at arm's length of the place they had stopped, and it had not withdrawn; the party had never seen an adult nearer than the bottom of the margin and never one that stayed. The kneeling. The stone set down. The step back. The thing said, which Aravena did not repeat and Nakagawa did not ask for, because it had not been said to the survey lead. The wait. The rock moved. The going.

"Not him," said Egede. "Not Teddy."

"No," said Aravena. "It was big."

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