WITH THE LIGHTNINGS(49)

The steps had been formed by drilling a line of vertical holes to the desired depth, then cracking the overburden away. The treads themselves hadn't been leveled, but passing feet had worn them smooth. Given that this islet must always have been remote from major traffic, Candace was right about the construction being very old.

Bet paused at the head of the stairway, turned her face up unexpectedly to kiss Daniel, and skipped down the steps giggling. The glasses winked in the sunlight.

Daniel followed at a more leisurely pace. In part that was the caution of a man who rigged antennae in sponge space, where a misstep could mean not only death but separation from the sidereal universe. In addition he was intrigued by thimble-sized cones of lichen growing out from the rock. They showed narrow bands of bright color, one laid over the other all the way from peak to base. He'd never seen anything like them before.

Bet stuck her head back around the curve of the cliff. "Are you coming, Daniel?" she called. She hadn't used his first name before. Daniel stepped more quickly.

The steps wound clockwise down the cliff face. Midway they crossed a counterclockwise path. It was a ramp and had been melted, not cut, into the rock. Above the intersection the second path had been blasted away when the staircase was created. What remained, weathered but not especially worn, was a left-hand branch to the steps below the junction.

The remnant of the older path was almost level; at no time had it continued down to sea level. Unless sea level had dropped ten feet since the path was made . . .

"See?" Bet called, standing on the other side of a giant version of the lichens Daniel had been noticing. The cones were more frequent here than nearer the top, but this one was almost a meter high. "It's just this way."

Then she added, "Ooh!" and batted at the insect that had hopped onto her thigh. It was only the size of a fingernail, but its black and blue stripes were in sharp contrast with the fire-hot fabric of her dress.

"Coming, love," Daniel said absently. "But we don't want to lose this, do we?"

He waggled the rolled mattress. There were quite a lot of similar insects here. They were flightless and appeared to browse the lichen.

"We could make do," Bet called with a giggle.

Daniel stepped over the giant cone. Bet vanished into the cliff face just ahead. A tunnel had been burned into the rock. The surface was vitrified like that of the ramp. Daniel walked inside and pulled down his goggles to get a better view of the interior.

Bet had gone to the end, thirty feet or so from the opening. There were niches about five feet long and a foot or so deep burned into the sidewalls all the way to the back. He, Bet, and a slight scattering of dead leaves from the vegetation above were the only other contents of the tunnel.

Bet had set the wine on the end niche. She swayed her dress from side to side, lifting it slowly. "Come on, Daniel," she said insistently. As he'd suspected, she wore nothing whatever beneath the clinging folds.

"Just savoring the moment, love," Daniel lied. He pulled the inflation mechanism of the pad, then lifted off his cap and goggles.

He had quite a lot of questions about this location, but first things first. The questions could wait.

If he was right, they'd waited for a very long time already.

* * *

Adele rose from the data console and noticed the bustle of construction around her for the first time in several hours. The Cinnabar sailors used adhesive guns which spit glue with a high whine that Adele found more irritating than the bang of a hammer—when she was aware of it. She wasn't aware of that or much of anything else when she was working.

Compiling the rosters had taken longer than she expected. The people in charge of the palace guard seemed to have entered only fragments of the data necessary to see that their personnel were fed and paid on time. By cross-checking Adele had become certain that about thirty percent of even what was in the various databases was wrong.

The fault was hers. She should have allowed for the guard officers being semiliterate incompetents. God knew they weren't alone in that, on Kostroma or in the wider universe either.

"Looking pretty well, don't you think?" somebody said behind her. Adele whirled.

Bosun's Mate Woetjans's smile became neutral when she saw Adele's expression. "Coming along, at any rate," the sailor said. "In my opinion."

"It's looking wonderful, Woetjans," Adele said with real enthusiasm. She was embarrassed at her seeming harsh response to the petty officer's friendly sally. "If there was one other part of my life that was looking as good, I'd be the Elector of Kostroma."

Woetjans's smile returned. "I guess a citizen of Cinnabar is better than any wog from around here, mistress," she said, apparently oblivious of the library assistants who might be in earshot. "Even the chief wog. Mind, they're fine as spacers. But I'm glad my crew's a bright spot, yeah."