Orla gave him a look. “More to the point, if we destroy something that turns out to be a containment system for the dark side, we wind up setting the darkness loose. So I vote for the first option.”

Dez frowned. “There’s another possibility, one we haven’t even investigated properly yet. What if the darkness that’s confusing our minds is linked to whatever’s protected by the energy field in the station’s lower rings?”

They all exchanged glances. Everyone had thought about this, but apparently with varied conclusions: Reath appeared deeply doubtful, while Cohmac had the look of someone relieved to hear sense for a change. Orla considered herself open to whatever possibility, but not to endless debate. Time to do something.

“Then we test that hypothesis, too,” she said. “But first you have to figure out how to get down there without being scraped by poisonous vines, and without Aytees…pruning you to death.”

That made everyone chuckle, as Orla had intended. Good. Laughter made people relax and smile. It cast the dark side away and brought them closer to the light.

Reath could hardly have blamed Affie, Nan, and the Mizi if they refused to have anything else to do with the station’s lower rings—even if they had managed to pull up the poisonous vines (gently, so as not to disturb the 8-Ts) and cast them harmlessly to the side. However, all three of them rejoined the group to make the next attempt.

“There’s got to be something good down there,” Nan reasoned as she rechecked her field utility belt, glancing up just once to smile at Reath. “No way I’m letting you guys have it all.”

The Mizi nodded in agreement—the difference being, in Reath’s opinion, that Nan was joking with him but the Mizi was completely serious.

Affie was harder to get a read on. Her attention seemed only half-focused on the task at hand. “So what’s our plan? We have a plan, right? Better than the last one?”

“Let’s say we have a plan to make a plan,” Dez began. “Specifically, let’s do recon. Do a more thorough survey of this level and see if we can find any potential points of entry besides the main tunnel, and so on—without setting off the Aytees this time.”

“That would be preferable,” said the Mizi, straight-faced.

It was really the only next step. But Reath couldn’t stop himself from wondering whether they couldn’t take what they’d learned last time and use it tactically. Master Jora always said, “If you use your defeat to learn the path to victory, it was no defeat at all.”

Everyone shifted, about to disperse. Before they’d begun, though, Reath blurted out, “I have an idea. It’s either really good or completely ludicrous.”