Kendra leaned against the lab bench near the tangled mess of cords and adapters. She sipped her drink. Across from her, Antony stared blearily into his coffee.

“You and Seph are looking for a route into the lower levels of the caverns, yeah?” she asked.

“Yep. Taking the drone to find the tunnels the machines have closed off.”

Seph entered the room, suited up and carrying a large black canvas bag. He nodded to Kendra and then Antony. “Hey. You still good to go today?”

“Yeah, I’ll be ready in a few.”

He hoisted his bag up higher on his shoulder. “Sounds good. I’ll be out in the garage.”

Antony drained the rest of his coffee. “I think he wants to get out of here without getting cornered by her this morning,” he said in a low voice, eying the door to the computer room.

“Fair enough,” she said, waving to him as he strode away.

Bria’s voice carried from the adjacent computer room, muffled by the door. “I realize the tenure clock extension should be accounted for under the other provisions. I’m saying that it needs to be codified specifically under—uh-huh. Alright. Let me call them when I get a chance, then.”

Kendra rolled her eyes. Worrying about her tenure clock, now? She didn’t understand.

Bria entered the room, clutching her tablet. She silently inclined her head toward Kendra and approached the equipment on the opposite side of the room. Kendra sat in the old office chair, wheeling herself from one piece of equipment to the next, collecting diagnostics data.

Plastic creaked as Bria moved a small laboratory balance, lifting it off the bench and muttering to herself. She jabbed the plug of an adapter at it. Then she swore under her breath and returned to the pile of cords to hunt for a different adapter, her shoulders hunched.

“The other balance used one of the light gray adapters, if that helps,” Kendra said, leaning back in the chair.

“Ah. Right.”

Bria dug through the cords, her agitation obvious. Kendra weighed the risk of initiating a conversation with her. They did still have to work together, after all. The chair squeaked as she stood, stepping toward Bria.

“Is everything okay back home? In your lab, I mean,” Kendra asked, her tone carefully neutral.

“Is it that obvious?” She turned to her, eyes red rimmed and wide. “I’m trying to coordinate some things back home. I realize it isn’t ideal, but there’s little I can do about the timing.”

Bria swept her auburn hair back behind her ear. “That’s why I would prefer to finish diagnostics for good. It’s just another thing on my list right now, and I want to fulfill our commitment to the company.”

“I get wanting to check it off the list. Lowering the cognitive load and all that,” Kendra said.

“Even here, I have to think about my lab. Consider what research and partnerships will help garner funding in the future.”

What about your colleagues here? Kendra thought. Instead, she asked, “But you like it, right? Leading a lab, mentoring and all of that?”

“I can’t see myself doing anything else,” Bria said. “My mom and grandfather were both professors, and I know they enjoyed seeing me grow up to be a researcher, too. My grandfather only stepped away from teaching a few years ago.”

“Long career. What kind of research did he do?”

“Bacterial genetics. Ran his lab for one hundred and twenty years.” Bria smiled. “I take it having your own lab has never appealed to you?”

Kendra shrugged, crossing one leg over the other as she sat back against the bench. “I prefer the pace of expeditions. Especially those with shorter commitments. That way, I can balance them with my own travels.”

“Ah. So you value the adventure of it. And the freedom from certain constraints, I suppose.”

There was no judgment in her voice, only a hint of resignation. The tension from earlier dissipated, and Bria’s apparent exhaustion had lowered her walls by a fraction.

“I do. In academia and in many planet-side research environments, you wear a lot of other hats. I want to spend my time on research,” Kendra said.

Bria huffed, sagging against the bench. “Certainly. Academia can be a hard road to take if you don’t enjoy being tied down.”

“I liked putting roots down at one point,” Kendra said. “My husband and I had a home on one planet for a few years. He worked in agricultural research. I loved our house in the woods, but I didn’t want to stay there after he passed away.”

“I’m sorry,” Bria said, her brow wrinkling. “I didn’t know you lost your husband.”

Kendra looked down at her hands. “Yeah. He had a congenital heart condition. Treatment helped, but eventually stopped working. After that, I didn’t have one place I wanted to stay. Expeditions got a lot more appealing.”

Bria nodded quietly. “Have you given thought to what you’ll do after this expedition? I’ve heard about positions opening up on some of the large research ships. Some have short contracts.”

Kendra let out a low laugh. “Yeah, I’m not sure about those. I don’t love the bureaucracy.”

“Seph did that for a while. I think he enjoyed the research environment on them,” Bria said with a shrug.

“To be fair, it takes a specific personality to enjoy working there. I don’t like the long commitments and red tape.” She drew in a breath and let it out slowly. Never mind that even he got tired of working on research vessels, she thought, recalling their earlier conversation.

“I don’t disagree about the bureaucracy, but still. I’ve known a few researchers who couldn’t get tenure track jobs who worked on research vessels for a few years. It was a good stepping stone for them,” Bria said. Her eyes were wide, voice earnest. Kendra felt like a grad student on the receiving end of unwanted career advice.

“Yeah, those roles just aren’t for me. I don’t have time to spend doing something I don’t like,” Kendra said. She dropped her shoulders to relax, unsure if the irritation had crept into her voice.

“I’ve known people who’ve found those experiences worthwhile. Of course, I’m not suggesting you work somewhere that’s not suited to you. But I think sometimes it’s good to keep an open mind,” Bria said.

Kendra shook her head. “I’ve interviewed for positions there. Gotten them even, and turned them down. I find the work culture on those vessels insufferable. I’m not willing to put up with it.”

Bria gasped and turned her gaze to her hands. “Well, I’m not trying to recruit for any of them.” She cleared her throat, setting down her tablet as an alert popped up on her wearable. “Oh, that’s a call from my lab. I need to take this.”

“We’re almost done. I can finish up,” Kendra said.

“That sounds good. Thank you, Kendra.”

Kendra spent the drive across the desert replaying her conversation with Bria. It helped none that her colleague followed close behind her, though they didn’t speak. As the cliffs rose in the distance, her comms beeped.

Seph’s voice was in her ears. “We’ve got something to show you—found another cavern with ruins. I knew there had to be more!”

“Just a minute, Seph. We’re almost there,” she said.

“Okay, okay. Great!”

She smiled—he was in a better mood, and his enthusiasm was infectious.

Inside the cavern, voices accompanied the quiet hum of Antony’s drone. She followed the sounds to the far end of the cavern, away from the ruins. Antony’s voice echoed.

“Okay, now tilt it. You need to build up a little momentum first.”

The drone sped up and went into a complete, if jerky, barrel roll.

“Oh my god!”

“Hey, nice!”

Seph was controlling the drone as it flew high above their heads. It circled back down and hovered near them. He waved to Kendra and Bria as they arrived. Antony nodded to them.

“You know the vents those machines use? We found some that were plastered over with fake rock. Opened it up and flew the drone into one of the lower caves,” Antony said. “There are more ruins down there.”

“Did you find a way we can reach them?” Bria asked.

“Yeah,” Seph said. He pulled up a hologram of the area and pointed at it. “See these tunnels we thought were dead ends? This one may have a sealed passage.”

The tunnel led away from the main cavern to a small, empty cave. Seph shined his flashlight on a patch of wall that was smoother and more reflective than the surrounding stone.

“Here we are,” he said, pulling out a laser from his pack. It cut through the material, which crumbled to the floor like clay.

Kendra kicked at the clay and grayish-brown plaster on the floor. “If the machines can repair the stone of the buildings, why can’t they replicate the walls of the cavern?”

“Could be their repairs aren’t as good as they look,” Seph said, stashing his laser tool on his belt. “They might be more cosmetic than functional.”

“I know you think the machines are bad at their jobs and all, but remember that we’ve found evidence of repair on load-bearing columns and walls,” Antony said as he guided the drone into the passage.

Pursing his lips, Seph followed Antony. “Right, fair enough. Perhaps they use this material for less important repairs.”

They walked for several minutes, following the drone. Then, in the distance, dim light marked the end of the tunnel. The passage narrowed right before opening up to a stone platform. It overlooked a cavern. Cracks in the ceiling let in enough light to illuminate the silhouettes of stone buildings, casting a purple glow over the space.

Bria hurried down the path to the cavern floor. “My goodness, look at these!”

The cavern was expansive, though smaller than the massive cave they explored earlier. This cave held a handful of buildings, some multiple stories tall.

Seph followed Bria as she approached a nearby building. “Beautiful,” he said, gently brushing dust off the stone, revealing carvings of swirling stems and leaves. He traced his finger over the long petals of a flower.

Antony came up behind him, clapping a hand on his shoulder. “Good call, Seph. This is a fantastic find.”

“Couldn’t have done it without you. Gosh, look at all these carvings, Antony. They’re gorgeous.”

“We’ve got more inscriptions, too,” Kendra said as she rounded the corner. Flowers swirled around characters inscribed into the stone over the entrance. There was something familiar about the layout; it could have been a quote, like the one over the library in her home town.

“All are welcome in this place of discovery,” it had proclaimed. Kendra remembered staring up at it every time she entered the library as a child. She gazed up at the crumbling ruin, her eyes drawn to the cracks in the stone.

“I can get preliminary scans with the drone, unless you feel like doing it, Seph,” Antony said. “Wanna keep expanding your newfound drone skills?”

“No, no, you’re much better at it than I am,” he said.

Bria caught up to Kendra, nodding to her. They headed to the right side of the cave, boots crunching on the stone and grit on the floor. Broken columns lay in heaps. They climbed over them into a building with cracks running through its walls. Carvings of flowers and leaves adorned a broken hearth.

“These buildings are in disrepair compared to the ones in the main cavern,” Bria noted.

“Those machines didn’t just stop taking care of these buildings, they sealed them off. Why?” Kendra asked as she shined her flashlight into the corner. The light cast strange shapes onto the wall. “There are more of those crystals.”

“How many?”

“A few clusters. They’re small, maybe four or five inches long.”

The drone whirred outside the building. An alert on her wearable informed her that Antony was sharing the drone’s holographic scans with her. She poked her head out of the building and he waved.

“Found something interesting near the far wall. Got an ornate building with tons of inscriptions,” he said.

Climbing over rubble, they reached the structure. The building possessed the remnants of a dome and several towers decorated in carvings that spanned the walls. Half the ceiling lay in layers of stone on the ground. Pillars decorated with intricate carvings of flowers supported the walls, and an immense hearth consumed the far wall. Recessed stone shelves flanked the hearth.

A small stone tablet lay flat on one shelf. Bria lifted it carefully. Three lines of inscriptions were etched into the thin stone. Below them was a delicate carving of a flower. An aster.

“We should take this back for analysis,” Bria said.

“It’s beautiful. What’s that on the hearth?” Kendra asked. Her flashlight illuminated a cluster of small crystals. They formed a trail up and out through the broken ceiling. Beyond the top of the building, the crystals grew longer, traveling up the wall in a dark line.

Seph shined his light up and inhaled sharply. Out of the darkness, crystals littered the cavern’s ceiling, massive shards hanging down at improbable angles. The light glinted off them, and the dust in the air gave the appearance of swirls of gas and stars inside the glassy stone.

“Maybe that’s why those machines closed off this area,” Kendra said. As the tiny dust motes floated in and out of the light, anxiety rose in her chest. Beneath her suit, the hair on her arms stood on end and her neck prickled and burned. For a moment, it felt as if they weren’t alone. Like something had reached out toward them and stopped.

Seph raised his glove to a small crystal on the wall of the cave. It crumbled into dust, leaving only a smooth wall behind. He stepped back, bumping into Antony, who reached an arm around his waist to steady him.

“T-thanks,” Seph said.

“Sure,” he said. Abruptly, he glanced at the ceiling. “I’m getting some weird interference. Through my hearing aids, I mean.”

A vibration ran through the chamber, shaking the crystals high on the walls. Kendra shined her flashlight at them and it lit up a flash of purple within them. The light shifted, as though the crystals had turned toward them. The burning on her neck intensified.

Strange noises echoed in the room from elsewhere in the ruins. There was that sound of grinding stone and a loud thump, like an enormous piece of stone had fallen. The room shook again, sending dust down from the ceiling, and the floor vibrated.

“What is that? Is that a cave-in or the machines renovating something?” Antony asked.

Kendra stepped over the rubble, finding better footing as the room shook. A crystal in the ceiling cracked, tumbling down the wall and shattering into dust. “I don’t know, but it isn’t safe in here now,” she said. “Let’s get out first and reevaluate later.”

It was evening. The last hints of pink and orange were gone from the horizon, and innumerable stars dotted the sky. Kendra sat near Antony on the roof of the research station.

The rumbling and shaking in the caves had continued as they rode away from the cliffs. They had seen no damage in the main cavern, but even now, the wind carried strange sounds back to the research station.

Antony rested his head on his hands. The wind tousled his hair. He ran his fingers through it, smoothing it up off his forehead.

“I’ve been thinking it wasn’t a good idea to go on another expedition so soon,” he said. “Think I’ve been in denial about how hard my last expedition hit me. I’m not sure I know how to be around people.”

Kendra put her hand on his shoulder. “For what it’s worth, I’m glad you’re here. And hey, you and Seph were on a roll today.”

Antony smiled, laughing quietly. “Yeah, he gets really excited. It’s nice.”

“But seriously, Antony. I’m glad to be working with you on this expedition. And it feels like we’ve found something important here. Something meaningful.”

“Yeah, I hear you. Nothing worse than going somewhere amazing and being stuck in a room picking through sensor data,” Antony said, a bitter expression on his face.

Kendra let out a sound of disgust. “I know. That’s what my previous expedition was. Picking through other people’s data. No real exploration, no discovery. I don’t have time for that.”

“I get it,” Antony said. “At least there are always more expeditions. You can switch gears. Heck, you could go for tenure. I know you’d be great at leading a lab, if you wanted that.”

Kendra took a long sip from her mug. “Part of me wants that. But there’s so much in academia besides the research itself, and I don’t have the time.”

Antony frowned, his brows furrowing. “What do you mean? Like, you can’t tolerate doing something you don’t like?”

“It’s—well, it’s me. I don’t have many good years left for expeditions,” she said.

“Wait, why not?”

Kendra sighed, swirling her drink. “I have a genetic resistance to lifespan extension. It’s bad luck. I don’t have the right alleles for the treatments to work.”

His eyes widened. “Really? I had no idea. They’re always finding new gene targets, though. Maybe something will come out.”

“I know. I check them occasionally. But I can’t just sit around hoping something will work out,” Kendra said.

Antony let out a puff of breath. “Yeah, that’s a quick way to drive yourself up the wall. Sorry, that wasn’t helpful.”

“It’s alright. You aren’t wrong, but whenever I look into that research, I feel like I’m in limbo,” she said. “I get stuck searching for anything that might help. Heck, I’ve even considered joining a lab that studies lifespan extension. But I can’t deal with being stuck in one place.”

She crossed her arms tightly. “In theory, I should have a few good decades left. But you know how the treatments work—they start to stick somewhere in your thirties or forties, and add another hundred, hundred and fifty years from there. Sooner or later, my age will show. People will look at me, look at my career and do the math. And they’ll find reasons I’m not the best candidate for an expedition anymore.”

“God, Kendra, I’m sorry,” he said.

“I want to keep doing this,” she said, gesturing around her. “Seeing places, discovering new things. I’d do this for years, and then maybe, maybe, I would start a lab. If only I had enough time to do it.”

The hatch creaked as it opened, and Seph peeked his head up.

“Shoot, sorry, didn’t realize the roof was occupied.”

Antony glanced at Kendra, and she nodded to him. He looked back at Seph. “It’s cool. There’s room here.”

“You sure? I don’t want to kill the mood.”

Antony snorted. “You’re fine.”

“Come, sit,” Kendra said. “What’s on your mind?”

Seph tucked his robe underneath him and sat between them, near Antony. His baggy pajamas billowed as the wind picked up. He smoothed his hand over the fabric.

“I’ve been picking up vibrations from the ruins,” Seph said. “I don’t know what to make of it—it doesn’t look like a typical earthquake, and it’s difficult to tell the cause.”

Kendra tilted her head toward Antony. “You’ve mapped out the caverns we’ve explored. What do you think?”

“Well, the stone in this region is delicate. Full of holes. And I saw fractures when I scanned the rock under the sand,” he said. “There could be invisible fractures in the caverns. Especially since our conventional scanners can’t see through that plaster the machines use.”

“I believe that,” Seph said. “We don’t understand how the machines operate. What their logic is. Rather, we found another massive cavern with a bit of digging. If they’re working in some other area we haven’t accessed, who knows what they could be disturbing?”

He picked at his pajamas and sighed, his shoulders drooping. “The thought bothers me. And I feel anxious here,” Seph said. “Maybe that’s obvious. But I dislike the remoteness and the endless sand and cliffs.” His fingers clawed at the fabric over his knee. “I don’t know that I’m cut out for being this far away from … everything.”

He reached out again to worry at the fabric, but Antony placed his hand on Seph’s knee and squeezed it.

“I get it,” Antony said. “Remote expeditions are rough. For me, well, this brings up some not-so-great memories.”

“From your last expedition?” Seph asked hesitantly.

“Yeah.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Antony was quiet for a long moment. “It was up in mountains. Snowy, y’know? So much snowfall it was hard to see outside the research station. Just a mass of snow and mountains. And I was alone.”

Antony looked absently into the desert. “Sometimes I heard things out there in the snow. Real things—not my tinnitus.” He scoffed. “Things that showed up on the audio sensors even though no one was there. And sometimes it didn’t feel like I was alone.”

He was quiet again, his eyes unfocused.

“Is it strange to say that I feel that way here?” Seph asked. “That I feel things that don’t make sense. Have seen things I don’t know how to explain.”

“No, it isn’t strange.” Antony ran his fingers through his beard. “I thought it was my imagination at first. But when I fell, when Kendra and I fell into that pit, I saw it in the crystals. A city built among nebulae.”

“Right, some sort of city. Buildings and towers and enormous clouds,” Seph said, outlining a skyline with his hands. “Nebulae of different colors. I thought I imagined it. After all, I saw it when we were on the cliffs, and I panicked.” He turned to Kendra. “Did you see anything up there? Or in that pit?”

Kendra glanced between the two men, who both watched her intently. She cupped her cheek. “I have felt something out there. A presence, I suppose. It isn’t the machines. I mean, they’re odd, but they don’t have the same presence.”

Anxiety fluttered in her chest as she continued. “It’s something different. To me, it feels like being in a room with someone sleeping. And then, you hear them turn in their sleep and for a moment, they wake up.”

The other two stared at her with something between recognition and apprehension.

“I think I understand,” Seph said.

“Yeah, I hadn’t quite thought about it like that, but I know what you mean,” Antony replied, consternation on his face.

Kendra chewed her lip, glancing between the other two and the open desert. “I feel like I may have made things worse,” she said.

Antony followed her gaze across the desert and then up at the stars in the sky. “Oh no, I think we’ve all mutually terrified each other. Maybe it’s better if we call it a night.”

“You know what? That’s probably a good idea,” Seph said.

They stood, climbing down the ladder into the research station. Rather than disperse, the three of them stood in the hallway. The lights were bright and harsh against the white walls, and Kendra felt an odd detachment pass through her. A sense of limbo. It was like being in a hospital waiting room, or in the boarding area waiting for a ship.

Seph broke the silence. “Well, much as I’m not sure I’ll be able to sleep, I’m glad we talked about this. Makes me feel both a bit better and a bit more terrified at the same time.”

Antony swayed toward him, wrapping an arm around the man’s shoulders and grinning. “Well, at least we’re all terrified together.”

“Mm-hm. Yep, I’ll console myself with that knowledge,” Seph said, a small smile on his face.

He pulled back, waving good night as Seph headed to his own room. Antony winced, rubbing his elbow.

“You okay?” Kendra asked as she opened the door to their room.

“Yeah, my arm’s a little stiff,” Antony said. “Just need to rest it, I guess.”

She nodded to him. He didn’t sound convinced.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “I’m glad you told me about your lifespan. But I understand if it isn’t easy to talk about.”

“Yeah, I’m okay,” she said. “I’m glad we talked too, but I’ve had a lot of time to think about it. And I want to keep making the most of things. To see and do as much as I can.”

He swayed where he stood, inclining his head toward her. “Can I hug you?”

Kendra wrapped her arms around him, resting her head against his shoulder. He squeezed her tightly, sighing. Antony was warm, and the anxious tension in her back eased away.

She pulled back, smiling at him. “Thank you, Antony.”

He patted her shoulder. “Of course.”