“What?” Ana’s question silenced the room. “Tomorrow?”

He tried to take her hand and she snatched it back. “Ana, listen. There’s no time to waste—”

“I just got you back, and now you think you’re going to leave me alone again? For months?”

“There’s no other way.” He could hear the impotency in his words and tried feebly to say the rest with his eyes.

Ana glared at him. Defiant at first, then simply cold. “There is another way,” Ana said. “I’m coming with you.”

Vanessa nodded agreement. “Me, too.”

Skyler raised his hands in protest. “Look, I appreciate the enthusiasm, but you’re forgetting that the dome prevented anyone else from entering last time. Only one of us can go.”

“We can try,” Ana said emphatically. “There’s no harm in it.”

Pablo leaned his chair back on two legs and shook his head. “Skyler’s right,” he said. “But either way, I’m staying. Someone should. Guard the Magpie, keep in contact with the colony.”

“It could be months,” Skyler said.

The man shrugged. “Farm life suits me, not giant alien domes.…”

“Vanessa and I are coming with you, Skyler,” Ana said. She hadn’t stopped looking at him while Pablo spoke. “We can all try going in at the same time, and see what happens.”

Skyler started to protest, but the women’s combined gaze felt like having laser beams focused on his forehead, burning into his skull. “Okay,” he said. “We’ll try.”

After the others fell asleep, Skyler pulled a blanket around his shoulders and took the pilot’s seat in the Magpie.

He switched on the comm. The link parameters were still set from the transmissions Ana had listened to, and within a second the headset crackled to life and a voice came across, in midsentence.

“… until our demands are met, and Skyler Luiken is delivered to us—”

“In a pink dress.”

“Yes, in a pink dress with a little bow across the chest.”

“That’s a sash.”

“What?”

“A sash goes across the chest. A bow goes in your hair.”

“My svelte ass it does. Go look it up.”

“You go look it up, and look up ‘fashion sense’ while you’re at it. No one wears a sash.”

Skyler fought to hold in laughter. He decided to let them go on a bit longer.

A few seconds of silence passed.

“I wore a sash once, actually,” the first speaker said.

“Did you?”

“Yes.”

“Did it have words printed on it? Like, maybe, Princess of Anchor Station?”

“It had words, yes. Not those.”

“What then?”

“It said ‘Marcus is an insufferable prick.’ ”

Skyler cleared his throat. “Come in, Black Level. This is La Gaza Ladra.”

A commotion came through the headset. A drink spilled, someone cursed.

“Skyler, hello!” one of them finally said. “This is Marcus.”

“And Greg.”

“Greg’s here, too. Damn, it’s great to hear from you.”

Skyler smiled to himself. “Thanks. Do, uh, you broadcast like this twenty-four/seven?”

“Three hours every night,” Greg said. “I daresay it’s become performance art. Half of Black Level and most of Melville Station are probably listening. Hello, everyone.”

“I see,” Skyler said. “Well, sorry to drop in on your show, but maybe someone can go rouse Tania and switch this to a private channel? It’s urgent.”

“Sure thing,” Marcus said. “Give us a few minutes. Nice to hear from you; we’ve been … well, losing steam.”

A series of clicks followed. Five minutes passed and then Tania’s voice came through.

“My God, Skyler,” she said. “I … we’d almost given up hope.”

A familiar warmth coursed through him with the sound of her voice. Warmth he hadn’t expected, nor the sense of guilt that followed. He suppressed the urge to look over his shoulder, that he might find Ana standing there, as if he were cheating on her. The call could have been made with everyone present, but Skyler had deliberately snuck off after the others slept to make it. For no reason he could put his finger on, he’d decided to keep his tenuous friendship with Tania separate from his relationship with Ana.

“Are you there?” she asked.

“I’m here. Sorry. It’s good to hear your voice.”

“Yours, too,” she said, a note of genuine sadness in her voice. He heard her let out a long breath. “Where are you? Is everyone okay?”

“We’re fine. We’re in Ireland, and we’ve found one of the tower groups. I’m sending the coordinates.”

The link went quiet, and he knew she was struggling to find a way to ask the next question without it being an accusation.

“Let me explain before you say anything,” he said. “The towers surround a dome. A … blister on the earth. Strangest thing I’ve ever seen. It’s huge, Tania, and you’ll never believe this, but time works differently inside it.”

“You went in?”

“We did,” he said. He saw no reason to tell her that the rest of the crew had waited outside and ignored the comm for more than a month. “Ten minutes in there and when we came back out six weeks had passed.”

“Six,” she paused. “Skyler, no offense, but time manipulation is the stuff of fiction. What you’re talking about is impossible.”

“Well, it happened. I think,” he said, working it out as he spoke, “I think it’s like the aura. Except instead of putting SUBS into stasis it puts everything into stasis, or nearly so. The air in there, it’s humid and has a strange odor. I think there’s a chemical component.”

“That’s … Coming from anyone else I’d assume this was a joke. Skyler, you’re lucky the air was even breathable. It was suicidal to go in without precautions.”

“Chastise me another time. There’s more, Tania. Inside there’s a, sort of an earthen pinnacle. It’s tall and sheer. We had no climbing gear, so we’re going back inside tomorrow properly equipped.”

“Why? Let’s get an observation team up there, study it—”

“Because something must be up there, Tania, and if for some reason it’s important there’s not a second to lose. Compared to the hell that awaits us within that circle in Belém, this is a much safer crash site to explore. Our only battle here is against the clock.”

“I don’t like this, Skyler.”

“I figured you wouldn’t, but we’re going. I figure we have an hour to scale it, see what’s there, and come back out.”

“Why an hour?” she asked. Then, “Oh, I see. Of course.”

“We want to be back outside before the Builders return. If they do, I mean.”

“There’s news on that front,” Tania said. Her voice shifted, the tone of sadness and relief replaced by urgency, business. “We’ve spotted the next ship.”

“Already? Did we screw up the date?”

“No,” she said. “The date is accurate. March seventh, or thereabouts.”

“Then how …”

“The ship is massive, Skyler.”

Chapter 42

Cappagh, Ireland

7.SEP.2284

AT THE EDGE of the murky purple dome, the strategy seemed comical.

Skyler’s breath fogged in the crisp morning air, and dark clouds overhead threatened another bout of rain. The two women stood on either side of him. They each held one of his hands, the idea being that if they were physically connected together, it might somehow trick the dome into allowing all three to pass through. Not a bad idea, in Skyler’s opinion, but it didn’t change the fact that they looked ridiculous.

Luckily only Pablo was there to see them attempt the entry.

“See you in a few months, Pablo,” Skyler said over his shoulder.

“Good luck,” the tall man said. “I’ll be at the farm, napping in a hammock.”

“Count of three?” Skyler said to the women. “If only one or two of us get in, turn around and come right back out.”

Ana nodded. Vanessa said, “Agreed.”

They each wore climbing harnesses and carried gear from the kits Vanessa had so wisely packed before they’d left Belém: climbing rope, crampons, a grappling hook, and even a frog-style ascender. “I grabbed them from that survival store,” she’d said. “I thought we might need to scale a building sometime. I never imagined anything like this.”

Though worried about the extra weight, Skyler and Ana also carried small hand axes made for hacking into ice, in case the earthen pillar proved to be more solid than it looked. Only Vanessa, who would spot their climb from the dome floor, carried a gun, on the off chance a subhuman came sniffing after them.

Skyler counted down, and on “three” they stepped forward in unison.

With the benefit of hindsight, he understood now at a basic level what the passage through the dome’s wall was doing to his mind. At some point during the transition, part of his mind worked at one time scale, and the rest at a much more accelerated pace. During that brief instant when the bubble enveloped and then closed around his body, every cell, every atom inside him would experience the shift at slightly different moments. That’s how he imagined it, anyway. The most impressive aspect to him was the simple fact that the shift didn’t tear his body to pieces.

He wondered during the moment of passage what would happen if they spent a year inside the dome. Ten years, even. Would they emerge to a future tens or hundreds of years later? A thousand? He wondered if the Builders could control the time scale within. Crank a dial, have tea inside, and emerge a million years later. The possibilities flittered through his brain like butterflies as he crossed over.

He felt a tug on his left arm and looked that way in a panic, expecting to see only air where Ana had been a second earlier.

She was inside, still next to him, but doubled over and heaving.

Vanessa still held his right hand. He could hear her drawing short, deep breaths. “We made it,” she said between gasps.

“Ana,” Skyler said, “are you okay?”

The young woman managed to nod and hold a hand up, begging for a few seconds to recover. After a moment she stood and offered him a wan smile.

“Really messes with you, doesn’t it?” Skyler asked.

“Even weirder,” Vanessa replied from over his shoulder, “is the thought that a few hours have already passed outside.”

“That is a good point,” Ana said. She shuddered and closed her eyes for a moment. When they opened, they were clear and bright. “No time to waste. Vámonos!”

Skyler gave her a quick kiss on the forehead and turned to face the pinnacle in the center of the domed area. Around them came a flash of sound, like ten thousand fingers tapping against glass.

“What was that?” Vanessa asked.

“I think that was a rainstorm,” Skyler said. “Soon you’ll notice the dome pulses, dark to light and back. I didn’t understand before, but it’s days passing outside.” Even as he said the words the entire space grew slightly dimmer. They all stood still for a minute, gathering their wits and watching the dome shift in brightness, down and up, down and up. “We’ve already been in here half a week. C’mon.”

He led the way toward the dome’s center. The ground curved ever upward, and he had to navigate his way around some of the deeper ravines formed where portions of the uplifted earth had collapsed. All the while the dome pulsed. Dark, then light. Dark, then light. Random phantom noises startled him every few steps. At one point a sound like machine-gun fire made him dive to the ground on instinct, made Vanessa yelp. Ana began to laugh. “Thunderstorm, I’ll bet,” she said.

Soon the ground became steep enough that Skyler had to lean forward and use his hands for support. The landscape consisted of hard-packed brown dirt and chunks of gray rock, dotted in places with clumps of emerald-green grass. He saw an earthworm wiggle within a centimeter-deep crevice. Above, a pair of magpies wheeled about and called to each other.

When the ground became too steep, Skyler called a halt and let his companions catch their breath. The air inside the dome carried the same ozone smell it had on his last trip. It felt slightly cooler, though, but still warm and humid compared to the cool, crisp morning they’d left outside.

“I’ll go first,” Skyler said, reiterating the plan they’d agreed to the night before. It had been seven or eight years since he’d scaled a rock, as part of his regular air force combat-readiness training. Rock climbing had been an elective option, and he’d enjoyed the challenge as much as the exercise. The training made him the most experienced of the three. Ana had some skill earned in a summer athletics program, while Vanessa had only tried climbing a few times in the controlled confines of a gym. “It’s a lot more fun in the sensory chamber,” she’d said with a shrug.

The spire’s mass seemed to be formed from the earth itself, as if some force had simply pinched the land here and tugged it straight upward. The material consisted of hard-packed dirt interwoven with decaying roots and other biomass. Strewn throughout were rocks, from scant pebbles to boulders as large as an automobile. Moss grew on everything, and he dreaded the idea of trying to get a solid handhold on the slick growth.