There were more desks, chairs, sofas, tables, and lamps, and occasional plumbing as they moved down the face of the building and settled finally on a flat stretch of frozen ground. Time to go inside. They put on their helmets and ran a radio check. Then Derek and Hutch attached laser cutters to their belts. She depressurized the lander and opened the airlock, prompting a report from Tasha. “Gravity is approximately eighteen percent higher than standard. Caution is advised.” Especially since they were accustomed to the artificial gravity on the ship, which was only slightly over fifty percent of Earth normal.

They went outside, climbed down onto the ice, and stood a few moments in overwhelming silence. “Spooky,” said Beth.

No light. No hint of a breeze. No movement of any kind.

•  •  •

They stood in front of the building, taking pictures, walking from window to window and peering inside. They saw more furniture. And display screens and equipment they couldn’t identify. “Everything’s kind of large,” said Ken. “Whoever lived here, they were big.”

Hutch frowned at the missing windows. They provided an easy entrance. But she didn’t like the idea. “Not sure we want to go in there. This thing’s probably a skyscraper. And this might be the twentieth floor. Something gives way and it could be a long way down.”

“It’s all right.” Derek placed a hand on the frame. “I’ve got it.”

“Be careful,” said Beth. “There may still be sharp fragments in the frame. Cut your suit and you’ll have a different problem.” The interior was full of ice.

Derek brushed his gloved fingertips lightly along the rim of the window, decided it was safe, and sat down on it.

They all turned on their wristlamps.

Derek moved one foot over the windowsill, set it on the floor, and pushed down. Nothing gave way, so he swung the other leg in and eased into a standing position. “It feels okay.”

Chairs and a desk and a broken metal base that might once have been part of a watercooler had turned dark, probably from long-gone mold. There was little more than a grotesque pile of rubble spread across the floor. Every flat surface was covered with a frozen layer of smudge. All four of the desk’s legs were broken. There were drawers on both sides but they were frozen shut. Derek used the cutter to get through one of them. They found a package inside, but it couldn’t be freed from the drawer. “Looks like sheets of paper,” Ken said. “We’d never be able to separate these.”

There was printing on the top sheet. Derek took a picture and, just in case, Ken put the package in his backpack.

“Careful,” Hutch said. Ken had been about to trip over a wire connecting a device on a side table to an outlet in the wall.