After he finished unloading the cargo transport, he parked the crawler in the town square and tried to blend in with the eager explorers. With a hidden imager, he moved from building to building, studying what remained, photographing the architecture from all angles. Visitors to the Ildiran Empire had already seen the basics of the alien buildings, but Davlin was most interested in the private details.

He moved inside the communal dwellings that had not been burned to the ground. He opened storage racks and studied what the aliens considered necessary for their daily lives.

The apparently guileless Ildirans did not seem to be hiding information from the Hanseatic League. In fact, they presented themselves as allies and friends. But Davlin suspected otherwise—as did Basil Wenceslas. Their openness might be merely a cover to hide information they did not wish the human race to discover.

Chairman Wenceslas had once told him during his infiltration briefing, “Know your enemy.” Here on Crenna, Davlin Lotze intended to take advantage of the Ildiran tragedy. If this abandoned place held any secrets, Davlin would be the one to uncover them.

40: MARGARET COLICOS

40MARGARET COLICOS

The diurnal cycle on Rheindic Co was twenty-eight hours long, but even with the extra four hours Margaret and Louis Colicos never felt as if they had enough time out in the Klikiss ruins.

In a sheer box canyon near their encampment, the two xeno-archaeologists climbed into a section of abandoned buildings, curved structures and free-form facades set back beneath a cliff overhang. Tunnels at the rear of the empty dwellings continued deep into the mountain.

Either the canyon itself had been cut deeper in the millennia since the Klikiss disappearance, or the aliens’ ramps or footholds on the cliff wall had eroded away. DD and the three black Klikiss robots had assisted in erecting ladders and temporary sectional staircases, taking advantage of ledges and dodging cliff bands so the team could have easier access to the lost city. They went to work every day in the first light of desert dawn.

Neither she nor Louis had been able to find any shafts, pulleys, ladders, or more sophisticated transportation systems for access from ground level. Louis was certain that the high strategic position of their dwellings had something to do with a defensive arrangement. “Or, maybe the Klikiss were just incredibly tall,” he suggested facetiously. “We’ve never seen what they looked like.”

The large black robots standing in the dry wash at the bottom of the canyon could offer no suggestions. “We remember nothing,” Sirix said.

Louis grinned in response, as if the alien robot could understand a human expression. “We’ll do our best to find out, then. For you and for us.”