She tucked the rock into a sample pouch and gave the formation one last look-over.

A silvery flash, several meters off the ground, caught her eye.

Kira paused, studying it.

A crack had split open one of the columns to reveal a jagged white seam within. She checked her overlays: the seam was too deep within the crack to get a good reading. The only thing the scanner could tell her for sure was that it wasn’t radioactive.

The comm crackled, and Neghar said, *How ya doing, Kira?*

“Almost done.”

*’K. Hurry up, would you?*

“Yeah, yeah,” Kira muttered to herself.

She eyed the crack, trying to decide if it was worth the effort to climb up and examine. She nearly contacted Alan to ask but then decided not to bother him. If she didn’t find out what the seam was, she knew the question would annoy him until they, hopefully, returned to Adra and he got a chance to examine it himself.

Kira couldn’t do that to him. She’d seen him stay up late far too many times, poring over blurred footage from a drone.

Besides, the crack wasn’t that hard to reach. If she started there and went over to that, then maybe … Kira smiled. The challenge appealed to her. The skinsuit didn’t have gecko pads installed, but it shouldn’t matter, not for an easy climb like this.

She walked to a slanted column that ended only a meter above her head. Sucking in a quick breath, she dipped her knees and jumped.

The rough edge of the stone dug into her fingers as she caught hold of it. She swung a leg over the top of the column and then, with a grunt, pulled herself up.

Kira stayed on all fours, clutching the uneven stone while she waited for her heart to slow. Then she carefully got to her feet atop the column.

From there it was relatively easy. She jumped across to another angled column, which allowed her to scramble up several more, like climbing a giant staircase, aged and crumbling.

The last meter was a bit tricky; Kira had to wedge her fingers between two pillars in order to support herself as she swung from one foothold to another. Fortunately, there was a broad ledge beneath the crack she was trying to reach—broad enough that she had room to stand and move about.

She shook her hands to get the blood back into her fingers and walked over to the fissure, curious what she would find.

Up close, the gleaming white seam looked metallic and ductile, as if it were a vein of pure silver. Only it couldn’t be; it wasn’t tarnished.

She targeted the seam with her overlays.

Terbium?

Kira barely recognized the name. One of the elements in the platinum group, she thought. She didn’t bother looking it up, but she knew it was odd for a metal like that to appear in such a pure form.

She leaned forward, peering deeper into the crack as she tried to get a better angle for the scanner.…