Three hundred meters due west was easier said than done. The alleys twisted and turned even more, and it seemed like shadows were getting darker and darker, even as the sky seemed to dim. It must be some sort of weird atmospheric inversion.
“Did you hear that?” Narcissa asked.
“What?”
“A fluttering sound. Very faint. To the west.”
We all froze and listened carefully, but all I could hear was the moan of the wind through broken windows and narrow lanes.
“Come on,” I said.
“Has it been an hour?” Chiraine asked.
I called up the chronometer on my Aura.
“Shit.”
We had missed the scheduled communication with Ana-Zhi.
“I need to call her. Hang on.”
I unslung the comm unit and activated it and waited for it to calibrate itself. Sending the pulse alert was fairly quick, but I was encoding location data this time and that took a bit longer.
“Okay, we’re—”
Without warning, a large dark shape swooped down from nowhere, flapping massive leathery wings.
Chiraine screamed and I yelled “Down!” while leaping to tackle her.
The creature angled away before I could get a good look at it. All I could tell was that it was as big as the sled and black as night.
“Everyone okay?” Narcissa said.
“Just startled,” Chiraine said as she entangled herself from my arms. “What was that thing?”
“Baby K’Lortai Dragon?” I said.
“That’s not funny.”
“I didn’t see any feathers,” Narcissa said. “It looked reptilian to me.”
I mentally ran through the list of Yueldian fauna I had been implanted with, but nothing matched. There were hundreds of species of birds, of course, but the largest had a wingspan of just a couple of meters. This thing was twice as big as that.
I helped Chiraine up and we all surveyed the area. The creature was nowhere to be seen.
“Okay, let’s keep on going, but eyes up,” I said. “If that thing body-slams you, it will be painful.”
We moved through the maze, all on high alert. After another hundred meters, we hit another dead end.
“This is getting really old,” I said.
“Tell me about it,” Narcissa said.
“It’s not my fault, guys.” Chiraine said. “I don’t get it. Everything is jumbled around.” She motioned to the wall in front of us, blocking our way. “This shouldn’t be here. It should be a street.”
“Maybe we should head back out into the open area?” Narcissa said. “To the south.”
“No,” I said. “With that creature flying around, the last place we want to be is somewhere open.”
As we backtracked, I wondered again how the topo could be so messed up. Maybe Allegro or Viatani or whoever intentionally messed with the data. But why?
Eventually we found our destination. It was a warehouse-sized building, three stories tall, and its walls were reinforced with buttresses. Compared to most of the other buildings, there wasn’t a lot of ornamentation on this one. It looked blocky and utilitarian.
“Tell me again what this place is,” Narcissa said.
“The Viatani expedition called it the Antrum, but we don’t know much beyond that. Other than it is one of the larger structures in the Coliseum.”
“Well, they called it the Antrum for a reason, right?” I said.
Chiraine said, “Antrum means ‘cavity.’ The notes on this structure are a little sketchy, but they mention that inside the Antrum there’s an entrance to a big cavern right below us. That’s why I thought it might make a good hiding place for the artifacts.”
“Yeah,” I said. “If we can find a more direct way here. Imagine trying to haul multiple sled loads of crates through that maze.”
“Well, we’d have to risk bringing the ship up here—otherwise we’d be unloading forever,” Narcissa said.
“Guys?” Chiraine had wandered to the corner of the structure. “I’m not seeing any doors on this side. Let’s do a perimeter check.”
We walked around the Antrum, but didn’t see any doors—or windows for that matter. It was like a big stone cube, fifteen meters on every side.
“The door must have been bricked up or something,” I said. “I’m going around again.”
We all did another pass around the Antrum, taking our time, checking for discolored wall sections, but there was nothing.
“This place is freaky,” Narcissa said.
“That’s an understatement,” I said. “Could one of the later expeditions have sealed it somehow?”
“Either that or there’s another entrance,” Narcissa said. “Maybe a tunnel in from another building.”
I looked up towards the top of the Antrum’s flat roof. “I wouldn’t mind getting on top of it. Maybe there’s a hatch or something.”
“Not a bad idea,” Narcissa said. “You have a drone?”
“No, we didn’t have time to reprogram them. I’ll have to climb.”
The problem was that I didn’t bring any climbing gear or a jet pack. I would have to use a rope and grapple and do it the hard way.
“Let’s check the other buildings first,” Chiraine said. “I’m hopeful that there’s a tunnel.”
Unfortunately there wasn’t.
We checked six nearby buildings. They all had normal doors and windows. Some were storehouses. Others were for accommodating Yueldians. We saw the remains of dozens of long cots for sleeping—or maybe they were hospital beds. In other buildings there were rows of stone benches such as might be found in a church or meeting hall. And there were some buildings that were completely empty save for a thick layer of dust. But none of the structures had any obvious tunnels or passages.
“Okay, I’m losing patience,” I said. “I’m going up.”
“You sure, Jannigan?” Chiraine asked. “That looks like a tough climb.”
“I’ve climbed much higher than that,” I bragged. I wasn’t sure that it was completely true, but I had made up my mind—and I was a Beck, damn it. This was what we did.
Narcissa loaded a grapple bolt unit into her Benham. Thank Dynark she thought to bring some utility bolts. The grapple was a small expanding anchor with fifteen meters of carbon nanotube line.
“Where do you want it?” She sighted along the top edge of the building.
“As close to the top as you can get it.”
“I can put it within seven or eight centimeters from the edge.”
“That’s just showing off,”
