She put on her clothes and walked down the chilly corridor past the cabins where the rest of the passengers were sleeping or keeping to themselves. Space travel, she reflected again, was only slightly better than flying on an airplane. Sure, she had a cabin to herself, but the cabin was, at best, a box, and thirty weeks in a box was still thirty weeks in a box. She'd been lucky to get a box of her own with the forty-odd people crammed on board the J. Nessepah. Most of the passengers blended into an uninteresting crowd that shuffled through mealtimes and the ship's cold hallways trailed by the tang of ozone and unwashed socks, and Althea didn't consider herself a social person, but it was impossible not to get to know a few of her neighbors. There were three Fellows in Sociological Studies from Oxford stuffed into the room next to her. The only reason they stood out was because at breakfast on the first day of the trip, one of them found out Althea was going to Candor Chasma and lit up—just for a second.

"I dated Hoshi Noh back at Oxford," he'd said. Given the situation on Mars, this was something that might earn him points, as Hoshi was on the very verge of huge fame.

Althea had smiled and introduced herself, and he'd put his fork down, eyes wide.

"Professor Althea Mendez? You were Hoshi's teacher."

She smiled, showing her teeth. "She mentioned me? Good things, I hope?"

The Fellow slurped his coffee nervously and didn't answer. For Althea, the conversation set the tone for the entire trip. It made her not mind her stay in the box so much, secure in the knowledge that Hoshi hadn't called her to Mars for advice, or to show off her progress. Instead it was a challenge; one final, decisive round in an academic grudge match that had started years ago. And just because the playing field had changed to some other planet didn't mean that Althea intended to lose the upper hand. Just thinking about it lifted her spirits and warmed her in the chilly, recycled air. Althea turned left at the end of the passenger corridor and headed for the mess.

Captain Rowanoake was there, drinking coffee. His body, which had endured years of weightless travel and then centrifugally induced gravities, had compensated for these abuses by dwindling early into an old man's frame. It still housed a middle-aged mind and lingering hormonal compulsions. Rowanoake threw his shoulders back and sat up straight when Althea walked into the small dining area. She couldn't imagine why he was here. His quarters were vast compared to everyone else's. Surely he had coffee of his own.

"Good morning, Professor Mendez," he said.

"Good morning, Captain." She got herself a teabag from the bin and hot water from the udder-like contraption designed for spacecraft, and sat down, not too close to him, not too far.

"We've come about," said Rowanoake. "You should have a terrific view of Mars from your cabin."

"Terrific," said Althea.

"And we've had a communication from your student, Dr. Hoshi Noh."

Althea didn't look up from her teabag. "My former student."

"I was on the bridge when her message came in," he said. "She seems very excited that you're coming." The captain sipped his coffee and eyed her over the rim of the plastic cup. She waited for him to tell her what a stunning young woman Hoshi was, and how impressive her reputation. Everyone did. Instead he said, "I've heard there's been an interesting new find at the Candor site."

Althea made the corner of her mouth scornful. The alleged finds at the site were supposed to be secret, but there weren't that many people on Mars, and rumors probably made the rounds there like gossip in any small town. "You don't look like a man who believes everything he hears."

He gave her a conspiratorial smile. "What do you know about the human remains?"

Althea picked up the hot cup. The real secret, and more genuine, news was from Neznaiyu, the Earth-like planet orbiting Alpha Centauri. Robot drones sent out nearly thirty years ago were sending back pictures of ruins. Buildings. Foundations. She'd seen the footage just before she'd left on this wild-goose chase. Real alien ruins. Not this bullshit Hoshi had come up with. She stood and gave Rowanoake what she hoped was an insider's wink. "Don't be too disappointed when it turns out to be nothing."

Rowanoake hadn't taken his eyes off her. "I hope you'll keep me informed, Professor Mendez."

"Sure," she said and went back to her cabin to see what Hoshi had to say.

I'm glad you could make it, Althea. I know it's a sacrifice for you to come all the way out here. I appreciate it … considering.

Hoshi looked away for a moment, and Althea grinned at the screen. What theater. What a humble role this was compared to those dress-up days at Oxford, back when Hoshi was a pretty little thing in a new blue suit and four-inch heels, defending her dissertation and not-so-secret ambitions in Althea's gloomy, wood-paneled office. Hoshi'd had her hair and nails done that day, mostly to show her sponsoring professor, Elliot Fontaine, how fabulous she'd look as the next Chair of Archaeology. Elliot, full of cancer, had dragged himself out of the hospital and down to Althea's office, nurse and oxygen tank in tow. He was supposed to listen to the dissertation, make a decision about who would succeed him, and fade quietly away, but things were never so straightforward in the battles of academia. His Chair should have been a lock for Althea. She had seniority, experience, and publications in spades. But in four years at Oxford, Hoshi had managed to fortify herself with allies on the faculty, like Elliot, and to Althea's horror, her name began to surface in discussions about who might succeed Elliot when his lymphomas finally killed him. Althea began doing everything she could think of to get Hoshi out of the way. She challenged Hoshi's dissertation—her sources, even the date of her presentation. Outside of Oxford, it wasn't hard to find others who agreed that Hoshi's ideas were too speculative and her sources suspect, but none of that seemed to matter. It only mattered that Elliot thought Hoshi was the most brilliant thing ever to get off a plane in Britain, and he had plans for her.

I just want to make sure the air is clear between us. I took this project so I could prove myself to you and the rest of the academic community. I won't ask you for your blessing until you've seen the site in person, but I think you'll agree that it's more than anyone could have hoped for.

Althea laughed out loud. Just as the fight over Elliot's successor was about to become loud and embarrassing, the archaeological site at Candor was discovered by robots excavating for minerals. Reports of alien walls made of alien bricks had barely been confirmed when Althea arranged for a grant to be issued by the Oxford School of Antiquities and volunteered Hoshi to lead the expedition. Elliot couldn't object. Even he had to admit that Hoshi's field experience was limited. It was the chance of a lifetime for any decent archaeologist, and who but Hoshi deserved it more? Who was more promising? Elliot was furious, sicker even in his fury, but in no shape to go to the mat with Althea, and Hoshi could hardly refuse her own exile. She got her Doctorate the day Elliot was buried and got on a ship to Mars as Althea moved her things into Elliot's old office. Althea sipped her tea. Clear the air with "Dr. Noh"? It was a James Bondian name, with about as much academic respectability. Mars was just where Hoshi belonged, especially if the dig turned up the odd ray gun.

Here's some footage you haven't seen before … we've made a lot of progress.

The image on the screen changed to the pinkish landscape around the dig. Actually, Althea had seen it before. Hoshi'd been sending pictures to Oxford—to the Office of the Chair of Archaeology—on a regular basis ever since she'd arrived. First it was just sand, sand, and more red sand spilling in at the edges of a great big hole in the ground, and then finally the edge of a wall, then another and another until the hole in the ground embraced some kind of structure. From what Althea'd seen so far, whoever had built the thing could barely lay one alien brick on top of another, but it was hard not to be surprised, excited, and awed at the evidence of life somewhere other than Earth, and the fact that Hoshi was out there gamely shoveling away to expose it. Well, that thrill had worn off after a while—particularly when that ridiculous rumor surfaced about human remains. Althea sipped. Hoshi'd had too much time to make plans. Plotting was part of her nature, but this time she wasn't going to take Althea by surprise.

I look forward to seeing you again, Althea, said Hoshi. I'll send someone to meet you at the Western entrance of the ground station. She smiled with terribly chapped lips and turned the recorder off.

Althea smiled back at the dark screen. Those who had the power to exile also had the power to appropriate whatever the exile managed to find. The hand that gives can also take away.

Althea's stomach growled. She shouldered her backpack, stumbling in the light gravity. The station was built with low ceilings and hard angles. It made her feel claustrophobic, and she was afraid if she pushed too hard against the floor she'd soar up and hit her head on the ceiling. The gravity on the J. Nessepah had been reduced over the last few weeks to help the passengers make the adjustment. It gave Althea indigestion while everyone else amused themselves with Galilean experiments with falling objects. She eyed Rowanoake loping along beside her, as graceful as a dancer.

"How're you getting to the dig site?" asked the Captain in a tone that said I could drive you.

"They're sending someone to pick me up." Althea stopped at an intersection of low, unlit hallways. There were signs, but they were impossible to see. She knew if she appeared the least bit indecisive, Rowanoake would start giving her directions and the two of them would end up traveling to the Candor dig site together. The prospect of hours of his company inspired her to make a quick left toward what she hoped was the Western Exit of the station, where Hoshi had told her to go. Rowanoake jogged lightly along beside her.

"I had a question about the other site," he said.

There were no other archaeological sites on Mars. She concentrated on her feet as they slipped on dark tiles.

"I don't mean the Martian site," he said. "I'm talking about the one on Neznaiyu."

She tripped. He caught her arm. She pulled away, spun with the weight of her pack, almost fell, and steadied herself against the freezing concrete wall. She scowled at him to hide her surprise, but he could probably see in this stupid darkness the same way he could keep his balance in this stupid gravity.

"There's no site on Neznaiyu," Althea lied.

"No?" said Rowanoake.

How the hell could he know? There were always rumors about what a probe had found here or there, but the ruins on Neznaiyu were a secret. The government had created a special office for security and oversight of the entire planet. The only reason she and her department had been shown the footage was so they could give their august opinions. Then they'd been sworn to secrecy and warned in no uncertain terms against any slips. She shook her head with all the cynical authority she could muster. "Pretty flowers. Big trees. Waterfalls. It's a biologist's paradise, but that's all."

He gave her a look she couldn't quite interpret in the dimness. "I ran the ship that dropped off the robot probes," he said in a low voice. "I took them to Pluto's apogee and kissed them goodbye. They don't send you that far without a full briefing." He raised an eyebrow. "I still have a level-four clearance. I've seen the footage. There's a village in ruins. I think they must have shown you that. Did they show you the obelisk?"

"Obelisk?"

"It's in the middle of everything, like the town square. It's a big white column."

All she'd been allowed to see were the collapsed walls, the pretty flowers, the trees. Obviously her clearance didn't match his. She didn't say anything.

"The column has writing on it," said Rowanoake.

Her heart made a huge and painful thud. "Writing?"

"Next time we see each other, maybe I'll show you my pictures." He gave her an unmistakable smirk, turned and loped back down the corridor. When he was gone, she turned the other way and blundered down the freezing hallway, searching for the Western Exit.

"I'm Jeff," said the young man. The skin around his nose and mouth was pocked with acne from wearing a rebreather mask all day long. The cold had chapped his cheeks and forehead. "I'm Hoshi's assistant." He took her pack and swung it onto the floor behind the seats. "I've heard so much about you," he said as though he'd rehearsed the line, "it's very exciting to have you here." He opened a cabinet under the dashboard that was actually a tiny fridge. "We've got coffee and protein supplements."

Althea gave him her nicest smile. He gave her a paper bag sealed with a sticker marked The Fourth World.

The drive to Candor Chasma took ten hours. She tried to stay awake for all of it, but Jeff was politely uncommunicative, and the red dust in the tractor's headlights wasn't the part of Mars she'd come to see. When she stared into the starlit dark outside the window, all she could think about was Neznaiyu. She knew she should be grilling Jeff about the details of Hoshi's dig, but instead Althea found herself replaying what she could remember of the footage from Neznaiyu. She and her colleagues at Oxford had oohed and ahhed at the pretty flowers in a night-blooming forest and a sandy brook under a sky the color of turquoise. Althea peered into the Martian night as the tractor shuddered in a sudden wind. The stars vanished behind swirls of black dust. Sand and gravel rattled against the windows. Jeff downshifted with a reassuring smile, lit green under his nose and chin by the glow of the dashboard. She touched the cold window with her fingertips. On Neznaiyu the weather was lovely. On Neznaiyu, the aliens had left behind their written words.

When she was finished with Hoshi, she would find a way to go and read them.

The archaeological camp looked like a trailer park in the driest parts of Arizona, but with much weirder scenery. Candor's cliffs were an asymmetric crumble of disintegrating crimson geology looming over ten white plastic housing units, each the size and general shape of a boxcar. They stood in a row on one side of the dirt road, linked to each other by pressurized tunnels that looked like vacuum-cleaner hoses on a giant scale. Unlike the concrete fortress of the ground station, the buildings at Candor seemed like they could blow away at any time.

"There's the dig," said Jeff, pointing to the other side of the road.

Opposite the housing units, yards of nylon string stretched in meter-square grid lines across the geometric ditches that had replaced Hoshi's great big hole in the ground. Underneath clouds of wafting red dust, Althea caught a glimpse of the walls.

Right-angle corners and openings like doorways. Distinct rooms. Hallways? Jeff turned the tractor, and Althea twisted to watch as the site fell behind them, so alien and still so familiar, like any other dig. Shovels and trowels were arranged in a practical kind of still-life. Rust-colored dirt spilled out of dull metal buckets, waiting to be sifted though the screens stacked in the lee of one wall. The whole thing was familiar from Hoshi's videos, but now, framed by the dusty alien scenery, the dig was bigger, more amazing than she'd let herself imagine. It was a site on Mars. Althea felt a jealous pang in her chest. There had been a moment when she could have been the one to come here, but she had put it aside for practical reasons. Now the dig was Hoshi's, and there was nothing left for her to do but perform an act of dirty work.

"How big is the excavation?" she said to Jeff.

"Four hundred square meters."

"Why don't you cover it? Couldn't you pressurize the site?"

"We tried that in the beginning," said Jeff, "but changing the O₂-CO₂ ratio created too much condensation. The water was destroying the mortar between the stones."

That meant they dug in pressure suits. How much could you actually see in a helmet as you dug with a toothbrush and a dental pick?

Jeff drove the tractor into a corrugated plastic shelter beside the third boxcar. A door slid shut behind them, cutting off the weak daylight and turning the inside of the cab gloomy. The walls of the shelter bulged with the change in air pressure. Jeff tapped a button on the dash and gave Althea a funny smile. "You did bring a heavy coat?"

She nodded. "But it's still packed."

"It's okay," said Jeff. "Here's mine." He reached behind his own seat and hauled out a coat so bulky Althea had mistaken it for a blanket. He handed it to her and waved at the window. Althea turned and looked. It was Hoshi, squinting in at them, her face pinched and thin. Jeff tapped the release for the tractor door, and the rush of freezing air almost sucked the breath right out of Althea's lungs.

Hoshi smiled at Althea without any visible warmth. "Welcome to Mars, Professor Mendez."

"Would you like a cup of coffee?" said Hoshi.

Althea shook her head and tried not to look as cold as she felt, despite Jeff's coat. "Do you know what people are saying about this place?"

"Of course I know."

"What you've supposedly found out here makes this project look like a science fiction adventure."

Hoshi went over to one of the desks, unlocked a drawer and took out a small white cardboard box. "Here," she said, and gave it to Althea.

Althea opened it. The box was filled with tissue paper. She picked at it until she saw what was inside. She felt her mouth twitch into a smirk. She looked up at Hoshi, not bothering to hide her disbelief. "A bone?"

Hoshi nodded with incredible gravity.

"This is a human bone. It's part of a hand." Althea felt her jealousy and any spark of sympathy for Hoshi vanish. She let out a bark of a laugh. "Did you bring it in your luggage?"

"I've had it analyzed by three different labs. You can look at the reports. They all confirm it's human, about four thousand years old."

Althea poked at the finger bone. She'd seen plenty of them, catalogued dozens. It certainly wasn't anything else. It was a pitted little finger bone, smudged here and there with floury reddish dust. "Dug it up with your own fair hands, did you? Right here on good old Mars?"

"Actually, Jeff found it."

"But not the rest of the skeleton. I suppose a lot can happen to the only human on Mars in four thousand years."

"Geologically, yes."

She looked so serious. She must have practiced in a mirror for hours. Althea tried to decide if this moment was worth thirty weeks in a box. "I suppose you had witnesses when you dug it up?"

"It's on video. We tape everything. Like you taught me."

Althea settled herself on the edge of the desk. "If you're so sure about this, you don't need me. You should've announced it. You'd be famous by now."

Hoshi came over to the desk. "I know you think this is a fake. I would never have asked you to travel forty-six million miles for a fake." She looked away, like she had on the video. "I need your support on this, Althea."

"My support?" The urge to have a good sarcastic laugh faded into a strange flutter in Althea's chest. "My support?"

"Obviously I can't announce this to the press or the academic journals on my own. They'd come to you, and you'd give them your opinion of me."

"Please," said Althea. "If Elliot was alive, even he'd have a hard time swallowing this."

Hoshi crossed her arms, not in an obstinate way, but like she was half-frozen. "I know why you came."

"Do you?"

"You're here to make sure I never set foot in Oxford again."

Althea didn't say anything. Neither of them did. For a while the room was silent except for the low wail of the Martian wind at the corners of the boxcar.

"You must be tired," said Hoshi. "I'll show you where you'll be staying."

"Who're they?" whispered Althea.

"They're from CNN. They got in just before you did."

Althea bristled, thinking of Captain Rowanoake. "You told them about that thing?"

Hoshi shook her head. "They're on a year-long assignment. Haven't you seen the series they're doing? Roger Dodd Explores the Red Planet. They come here every three months." She let the curtain fall back into place and motioned Althea to the other side, which was stacked with empty equipment cases at one end. At the other was a single cot, a desk and a chair, and a tiny kitchenette with a mirror over the sink. A thick plastic window looked out over the dig site where red sand rushed to fill in the ditches dug by the sleepers in the other boxcars. Behind the curtain, someone snored deeply.

Hoshi puttered with the coffee pot in the kitchenette. Althea sat on the cot and watched her measure what must have been incredibly precious coffee into the filter basket. From the back, it was obvious what Mars had taken out of her. She'd lost weight. She was stooped in her shoulders, like she didn't quite have what it took to withstand either the physical or emotional environment. The image of her digging for such an unlikely find was laughable, but it occurred to Althea that Hoshi had been punished for her pride and excesses: punished, best of all, by her own hand. And if that was the case, and since she was here anyway, maybe there was an excuse for Althea to humor her.

"I suppose I could look at your videos," said Althea. "And your notes. But it would have to be worth my while."

Hoshi turned and looked her right in the eye. "I think it will be, Professor Mendez."

She left and closed the door softly behind her.

Althea's luggage was by the bed, but she was afraid if she changed into pajamas she would sleep until nightfall. There was too much to do. She crawled under the covers still in her clothes, shut her eyes against the early Martian morning, and found a glimpse of Neznaiyu still floating behind her eyelids.

Althea listened. No snoring. "Anybody over there?"

No answer. She peeked around one end of the dense fabric. The cots were made and vacant. She went to the window. Outside, across the road that cut between the boxcars and the dig site, the site crew was hard at work for the CNN cameras and probably had been for hours. Althea looked for Hoshi among the dusty white pressure suits and helmets. The shortest one. That had to be her.

Althea eyed the last of the pressure suits and its helmet, hanging alone on the rack by the door. Let Hoshi have her moment with the cameras. All that would be over soon enough. Althea poured herself a cup of coffee instead and sat down at the desk.

Inside the red plastic file case was a neatly bound book of field notes and a DVD. The little knot of tissue paper with the finger bone was there, too, ivory-colored and audacious. Althea nudged it onto the desk. Hoshi's nerve was simply amazing. She pulled her laptop out of her bag, slid the DVD into it, and blew on her coffee as the site catalogue menu came up on the screen. One of the video entries was marked with an asterisk. Althea picked that one and opened the book of field notes while it loaded.

In the book, the site's overall layout was marked with a plastic tab, and she turned to that first. The ruins consisted of a large rectangular foundation surrounded on three sides by a total of nine smaller square units, each connected by openings in the wall to the larger space. If the openings were doorways, none of them were intact enough to guess how tall the occupants had been. On Earth, this would probably have been living quarters with storage areas. On Earth, the first things Althea would have looked for were the town dump and the cemetery. The wealth of civilizations eventually ended up in one place or the other. But what about the wealth of Mars?

She glanced at the laptop and tapped the icon to start the video. It started silently with an overhead view of the site, overlaid digitally with a grid. The grid corresponded to the real grid outside, meticulously laid out with nylon string, dividing the site into square meter segments. The graphic on her laptop zoomed in onto grid 34L, which was a corner of the largest structure. The image froze, then cut to the jiggling view from a camera on someone's helmet. Whoever they were, they were down on their knees in the floury red dirt, breathing noisily as they dug into 34L with a toothbrush and a dental pick.

Hoshi's voice came from somewhere to the digger's left. Althea turned up the sound.

"Be careful with the mortar in the wall," she said, muffled by her own rebreather. "I want to see if it's the same in the entire structure."

Jeff's voice answered. "Some of it might have been built at different times." He tapped the wall in front of him—a jumble of stone pasted together with orange mortar, shockingly low-tech. "See how crumbly this is? It's more weathered than the other two."

Althea cringed as a rivulet of orange mortar trickled down to mingle with the rest of the Martian dirt, its virgin, testable elements lost forever. She pushed her fingers into her hair. They should have sealed everything with inert polymers. Hadn't they taken samples? She checked the date. This was almost a year ago.

"Hey," said Jeff. "Does this look organic to you?"

Now Hoshi leaned into the camera's view as it focused on the red ground, unevenly scored by the sharp point of the dental pick, powdered by the toothbrush bristles. Something showed just under the surface. It looked like a pinkish-white twig.

Jeff put the toothbrush to one side and picked up a one-inch-wide camel-hair paintbrush. He whisked at the thing until half of it was exposed. His breathing was deafening, like a diver underwater.

"Uh …," he said.

Hoshi took a sharp breath. Her gloved fingers bumped the camera. "This thing running?" Her voice was suddenly high and nervous.

"Yeah, yeah."

Althea frowned, but it didn't sound rehearsed. He sounded genuinely surprised. She sounded genuinely … what? Scared? Hoshi leaned closer to the hole and lay down so she could reach in over the edge. She produced her own brush and a small flashlight. The two of them brushed furiously, silently. Althea adjusted the sound and realized they were both holding their breath. The bone came free of the red dirt and lay there in the flashlight beam.

"Dammit. Dammit!" whispered Hoshi.

"Jeezus," said Jeff. "That's a bone."

Hoshi panted into her microphone. "Get a bag. Get a marker."

Jeff's camera lurched up and away as he bolted across the gridded site. Anything else that Hoshi had to say was lost to the Martian winds.

Althea shut off her laptop and stared out the window. There were only two things to consider.

One: It was a planted fake. Hoshi'd had access to anthropological museum collections throughout her doctoral studies. If a finger bone was missing from a storage drawer, who was going to notice right away? No one checked anything but the rarest mummies on a regular basis, and some museums—the one in Serbia where Althea had been for six months came to mind—had laughable security.

Two: It was real. And no matter what her suspicious gut told her about Hoshi, only a complete idiot would plant something fake and potentially compromise the most exciting archaeological find of the millennium. Hoshi was many things, but she was no idiot.

Althea picked up the bone and rolled it between her fingertips. She took a deep breath and held it for a long moment, to see how it felt to believe.

The tractor was gone and the doors were wide open to the cutting wind. Even the suit couldn't keep it out. The bright, distant disk of the sun glared down, giving the sand a dull, bloody look, but there was no heat in it. Technically it was summer in this hemisphere, and Candor Chasma wasn't far from the equator, but it was still in the minus 60's Fahrenheit. Althea stumbled through the sand, feeling cheated by the gravity that was still heavy enough to rob her of any possible weightless grace. The cold made her fingers numb and her joints ache. The rebreather felt like it was frozen to her face. Its air tasted of someone else's mouth and smelled of their breath. Hoshi waved to her from across the road and Althea found herself wishing for the azure sky on Neznaiyu. She fumbled with the suit's controls, and the heat came on abruptly, a relief at first, then overwhelming. Hoshi's voice came through the speaker in her helmet.

"Roger, that's Professor Althea Mendez. I studied under her at Oxford."

"Althea Mendez?" Roger Dodd spun around as Althea blundered toward them, sweating now, up to her ankles in ruddy dust. He trotted over, grabbed her hand, and shook it energetically—even so, it was a thick, uncommunicative process in a pressure suit—and gave her a sly, full-facial-view grin brimming with hidden knowledge.

Oh God, thought Althea. Hoshi told him about the bone.

But instead he said, "I'll bet you've seen the footage from Neznaiyu."

Althea braced herself to be evasive, but then, everyone on Mars seemed to know more about Neznaiyu than she did. "What about it?"

Roger lowered his voice, as though this would make a difference on an open radio channel. "I have what you might call an exclusive," he said. "They found a column sort of thing, like an obelisk in the middle of a town sort of thing."

Althea gave Hoshi a sidewise glance. Hoshi just blinked inside her helmet. Did everyone know? "Oh. That."

"The International Science Foundation's sending a research team to Neznaiyu in three months," said Roger. "Mostly biologists, but they've put a call out for archaeological applicants." He raised an eyebrow at Althea.

Althea laughed, but she felt her heart speed up. "Wouldn't they have to freeze you for twenty-five years? Last I heard they were still putting rats in cryosleep—not people."

"You're way behind!" said Roger. "Didn't you see my report? They've been done with the rats for months. I even let them put me under for a couple of weeks. A little chilly to begin with, but it was fine once I lost consciousness." He winked at Hoshi. "It was supposed to be my vacation time, but I convinced the network execs to call it research." Hoshi laughed, but Roger gave Althea another sly grin. "Would you rather be here, or on an exotic planet with pretty scenery? I'd go." He winked at her and bounded off to join the rest of his crew.

Althea angled her head at Hoshi. "Does he know anything about …?" She tapped one finger with the other to indicate the bone.

"No," said Hoshi. "Did you get a chance to look through the notes?"

"Show me 34L."

"It's this way."

Hoshi led her along one side of the excavation. Every trench was sheeted in thin plastic, neatly gridded with nylon cord. On Earth the trenches would have been bridged by wooden planks. Here there were lightweight aluminum catwalks that looked more like ladders, light enough to quiver in the wind. Hoshi stepped onto one, surefooted and confident. Althea hesitated and shuffled after her. The catwalks had no railings and were coated with red dust. They felt slippery and about as stable as a tightrope. Althea could see herself falling into a meter-deep hole. She tottered after Hoshi, fists clenched, jaw tight, trying not to windmill for balance. She was sweating even more by the time she stepped off the other end.

"You haven't found any machinery?" Althea panted.

"We haven't even found a spoon," said Hoshi. "It's like this place was stripped." She pointed down to the bottom of the next trench. "That's 34L."

The plastic drapery in 34L had been removed, revealing more sloppy piles of stone pasted together with mortar. Walls from two other grids joined there to create a corner. To the left, 33L had a door-like opening. To the right, the wall in 35L meandered in crooked clumps until it reached the 40's.

Althea twisted as well as she could to find the reporters. "Can anyone hear us?"

Hoshi checked something on the side of her helmet. "No."

"Then tell me what you think this was."

Hoshi let her breath out through her teeth. "An outpost? A place where they sent exiles? A prison? Maybe the people who built this weren't even native. They certainly weren't expert masons. Maybe they were sent here, or trapped here, or just dropped off as punishment, and this was the best they could do to survive. Like Robinson Crusoe on Mars."

She smiled, or at least her eyes smiled over the apparatus of the rebreather.

"And what about the bone?"

"It was in the corner like a piece of trash."

Althea huddled on the edge of the catwalk. "It's definitely human."

"Definitely."

There was simply nothing in the lab reports that could be faked about the bone's age or composition or DNA. Four different labs agreed. Althea shaded her eyes at the pinkish horizon. Hoshi was nothing if not thorough. "Why isn't there a midden? Didn't these people have trash? And what about the rest of the body? It's not like there're scavengers to drag off the remains." Wind rushed past them, scattering sand. "Have you found anything else?"

"Nothing. We've done subsurface scans in a three-hundred-kilometer radius. It's like all this just dropped out of the sky."

Althea straightened up carefully. "How long are the reporters staying?"

"They leave tonight."

"I'll need a place I can have to myself for the next few weeks. Maybe longer."

Inside the helmet, Hoshi's expression was hard to read. To Althea, she seemed relieved.

Althea leaned back in her chair, alone in the chilly boxcar. She blew on her hands and watched the screen as her instructions shot homeward. There was no shortage of work while she was waiting for Murphy. She toggled to her to-do list, titled in Latin—facere—a habit left over from her undergrad days. She already had a dozen jobs for Hoshi; widen the survey, broaden the parameters for finding a midden. At the bottom she added, dig deeper.

Althea stood by the window, watching the afternoon crew. Roger Dodd was back early, in spite of the fact that there was nothing to report. There he was, posing on the eastern side of the dig, silhouetted against the crimson horizon, making grand gestures for the camera.

Althea hugged herself in the chilly room. This was the dullest dig she'd ever been on. Even the reply from Murphy was no help. The DNA was of western European origin, most likely from Normandy. No, there didn't seem to be any evidence of pilfered human remains in any of the museums in the area. No, he'd heard no reports of missing bones from any major or minor collection.

His message had been brisk and to the point—so perfunctory that Althea knew Murphy had a pretty good idea of what was going on at Candor Chasma. She could imagine Murphy laughing at her. She could imagine the entire department laughing as they watched Roger Dodd reporting live from the Red Planet.