There was a delay before he received an answer from Hubris. The screen flicked on to reveal the view seen from something moving slowly down a smooth-sided shaft.

Hubris said, ‘Deep scan has revealed a black spot underneath Samarkand’s surface. This shaft leads to it. It is two kilometres under the ground. I initiated a probe.’

Black spot?

Then he remembered: a black spot was something the various radiations of scan bounced back from without the usual spectroscopic information; or something from which they did not return, like a black hole.

‘Did you get a bounce?’ he asked.

‘Total reflection. There is a lenticular object of an as yet unidentified material. It is five metres wide by two metres thick.’

‘What materials give that kind of reflection?’

‘There are one hundred and fifty-six recorded—’

‘OK, don’t list them.’ He continued to watch the screen. Then something more occurred to him. ‘Hang on, will that probe be all right down there? What about the mycelium?’

‘All the ceramal in this probe’s construction has been replaced by chainglass.’

Remembering what Jane had said, Cormac snorted and returned his attention to his food. The picture was uninteresting and he gave it only cursory attention. He finished his meal and poured out the last of his wine. As he sipped, Hubris spoke again.

‘Further information indicates that the shaft is too narrow for the object to have passed down it in its present form.’

‘How do we know it did?’ asked Cormac.

‘We do not, but it does seem likely.’

‘Then there would be a crater. Signs from when it struck.’

‘Not necessarily. Samarkand has had recent volcanic activity.’

‘What exactly do you mean by recent?’

‘Two hundred thousand years ago,’ Hubris replied.

Cormac let that sink in. He also equated it with a claim Dragon had made about his age and wondered just what the hell he was dealing with here. He got back to the central issue.

‘It might be that the shaft was cut by people on Samarkand. Perhaps they were digging this thing up,’ he said.

The picture from the probe changed as it slowed and turned. What he was seeing now was frosted black glass. He doubted the crystals were from water-ice, though.

‘The walls of the shaft are made of compression glass,’ Hubris told him. ‘This indicates the rock was melted and compressed. The usual method of tunnel digging is to either cut or vaporize the rock. Here, on a cold world with an energy surplus from the runcible, it would have been the latter method. There are no records of either being used. No records of any such excavation.’

‘They would have been destroyed with the runcible, wouldn’t they?’

‘The discovery and subsequent excavation of such an object would have been of interest to all Polity AIs and many human experts. The Samarkand AI would not have kept the news to itself.’