guess you assessed the damage yesterday, huh?”
“Assessed?” Paplas says, not looking back.
“You know,” Bridge says, and he does sound nervous. “Figured out how bad the damage is, how much work you’ll have, how long it will take?”
I suppress a smile. Bridge has worked with me long enough to learn my work habits. He’s come to expect them from everyone who does work in places that Bridge sees as alien.
“Why would I do that?” Paplas asks.
Bridge looks at me, panic clear on his face. I smile and shrug, expecting this. Paplas has a system. He’s clearly done this before. To him, this is a cleanup task, not an exotic adventure.
I glance at the control panel. On it, Paplas has a map of the corridors, some areas shaded dark. A small red beacon shows where we are.
It takes just a moment to get to the first rock fall. The Bug stops. Paplas grabs something from under his seat, then turns to us.
He’s holding ear protectors.
“I almost forgot,” he says. “Put these on.”
I take mine. They’re a bit greasy, either from being under the seat so long or from the previous user. I wipe the part that will go against my ears, then put on the ear protectors. Instantly, all ambient noise vanishes.
Bridge deliberately widens his eyes as he looks at me, an expression that means You’ve got to be kidding. Fortunately, he doesn’t say that to Paplas.
Instead he wipes off the ear parts and stick them on, then glances at me.
Paplas has put on his own ear protectors. He doesn’t look at us as he moves one of the legs forward.
It feels odd to see the leg move and not hear the attendant sound, almost like we are in space. I’m suddenly more comfortable.
Bridge is not. He squirms in his seat.
I smile reassuringly at him.
The leg jams against a head-sized rock. Instead of picking it up, as I expect, the leg starts vibrating.
It takes a moment, without the sound, to realize what the leg is doing.
It’s pulverizing the rock.
I frown. I thought we were going to lift the rock out of the cave, carrying it in those legs just like Mikk and Roderick had done as they worked to get us out ot one of the corridors.
Instead, Paplas is destroying the rock.
I want to ask what’s going to happen to the dust, but I can’t. Even if he let me talk, he wouldn’t be able to hear my question.
Instead, I sit forward on my seat so that I can see better. Half the legs have moved to the front of the pod and started pulverizing.
I know now why we needed the ear protectors.
The Bug vibrates a little. I want to know why the sound won’t cause the rock walls around us to vibrate and collapse. I want to know if Paplas has done this before (although it seems pretty clear that he has).
Bridge clutches the edge of his seat. I lean as far forward as I possibly can without attracting Paplas’s attention.
The rocks gripped in the legs grow smaller. Dust forms, and so far, none of my questions have been answered.
* * * *
THIRTY-EIGHT
C
oop paced as he waited for the team to arrive in the briefing room. He, Yash, and Dix had places at the head of the table. Lynda’s crew now had control of the bridge, and the rest of Coop’s team had gone to dinner or to their evening recreation.
Anita and Perkins had both protested; they wanted to be part of the meeting. But Coop wanted the briefing to remain as private as possible. After his conversation with Rossetti while she was in the base, he was worried about the information the exploratory team would bring back.
The exploratory team arrived in the briefing room with their handhelds. They all had wet hair and loose-fitting clothes, having cleaned up after their mission. The white environmental suits looked gray upon their return, and they’d peeled them off in the airlock, but some of the particles still stuck to their clothing, which was why Coop had approved real-water showers as well as the standard sonic shower. He also made them change in the decontamination area just in case.
The scientists and engineers moved toward the back of the room. The commanders clustered near Coop, Yash, and Dix. Rossetti had turned on the wall screens when she came in. She had plans for this briefing, then, which was one of the things Coop liked about her.
She thought ahead.
Currently, the screens had no images, just an