"Did you miss us?" Aziri swatted the back of Lio's head as he passed with a lunch plate. Lio only smiled in reply, because he was quite sure the answer of, "Could you all please leave for another couple of weeks, months, or years," wouldn't go over well. At the very least, it would require an explanation. Or perhaps he wouldn't have to explain himself because it would be obvious that he wanted Ravi all alone. Teres was already eying him beadily beside the steamer, assessing his good mood. He needed to talk to Ravi about that, because she was sharp enough to figure things out even if he didn't tell her. He wanted to tell her. He wanted to tell the whole crew, and leap around on the mess hall tables singing, and carve Ravi's name all over the deserts the Mastali had walked.

The crew had only been back for half a day, and already Lio missed being able to touch him. It was going to be more difficult than he'd predicted. But undoubtedly worth the wait, however long it was.

"I wish I'd stayed here," Duhar said gloomily, finishing his second bowl of whatever gloppy stew Yorune had conjured on mess hall duty. "Dispensation was boring."

"Agreed." Rosareen sighed. "Never thought I'd say it, but it's more fun being here."

Lio nodded. "So true."

Teres turned from scraping off the rest of the dishes to arch an eyebrow at him. "Really? What exactly did you do that was so fun, Lio?"

Fortunate that he'd already thought of an excellent misdirection. "I made a great discovery." He nodded down the table at Orvaska. "Thanks to Orvaska and Aziri, actually. I realized something about the Mastali text. When it says—"

Jossen stuck his head into the hall and bellowed, "Main entry in ten, we've got a supply delivery coming in!"

Everyone started wolfing down their last bites, piling their dishes and streaming to the door. Lio glared around at them. "What, no one is interested in my discovery?"

"Tell us while we walk." Aziri swooped out into the tunnel, and Lio scrambled after him. Enthusiasm about supply delivery was a first for the Opalina crew. They must have truly missed the place. And really, part of him was glad to see them all, noisy and teasing and jostling each other. If the world were perfect, he could have this forever and kiss his com forever, and he might be the happiest person in all the land.

While hauling fresh supplies up to the storerooms, he told Aziri and Teres about the Amphitheater, with Orvaska listening in. They weren't quite as ecstatic as he anticipated.

"Well," Aziri said, when he pointed that out, "It's exciting to think that the Mastali made it, but why? What'd they do with all that rock? What's the purpose of creating a—"

"Yes, yes, more to be discovered, but come on! We were sitting around on top of something Mastali-made every time we chucked rocks at cans. It's marvelous."

He had to wait until free hours before he could continue his discovery. Three days of inspecting and searching the Amphitheater for fresh clues had turned up nothing. He ought to bring the Mastali alloy wand with him. Maybe it wasn't faulty if used precisely where the Mastali had been.

It took him a moment to remember where he'd squirreled it away. Shoveling through one of the trunks where he kept junk unworthy of his shelves, he realized he hadn't been back to his own room in days. For a moment, he sat back on his heels, eyes closed, head tipped back, submerged in the feeling he'd tried to stave away all day. He missed Ravi. He'd seen him of course, greeting the crew, hiking back and forth with supplies, managing the hectic storage room with unflappable calm, disappearing with Jossen into the muster room to plan. Getting accustomed to watching him be a com again filled Lio with a strange combination of pride and yearning.

He shook his head and delved back into the trunk, finally finding the locator wand. Tentatively, he turned it back on. It didn't start immediately beeping, which he took to be a good sign, and he dashed back into the tunnel with it. Nearly flew right into the man he'd been daydreaming about.

Ravi steadied him with a hand on his arm, and then relinquished his grip slowly, smiling. "You okay?"

If he swooned to the ground, perhaps Ravi would be forced to perform mouth to mouth resuscitation to save him. He settled for returning the smile. "Yes. I was just going to test this at the Amphitheater. See if any interesting readings turn up."

"I thought you said that tool didn't work?" Ravi glanced down at the spidery metal legs flopping near his feet.

"Worth trying again, I think. Would you...would you like to come with me?"

Ravi's smile softened. "I would love to, but I can't. I have to submit a report to Archcom Huseda tonight. But"—His voice dropped to a murmur—"just so you know, I still like you."

He shoved Ravi lightly because they were the only ones in the tunnel, and then fell into step with him toward the muster room. It was the long way around to the main entrance from his room, but even a few extra seconds with Ravi was a gift.

Of course, as soon as he opened his mouth to say something, the damn spider went off, beeping like an alarm. He looked up at Ravi in chagrin, Ravi looked down at him, and then they both started laughing. "Well." Lio nudged the wand with his foot and the sound faded. "That wasn't promising."

"You should get your slate and check the coding on it. I bet Aziri could help hack you in if you needed," Ravi said.

"Good idea." Except that it meant he had to go back to his room for his slate, which meant walking away from Ravi. A helpless smile on his face, he edged reluctantly back in the direction of his quarters. Ravi stood at the muster room door grinning at him, neither one of them looking away.

And then the wand went off again. "First Goddess," Lio yelped, nearly swinging it into the wall. Ravi leaned against the door, laughing.

"I swear it's trying to humiliate me! Every time I go past this spot it—" He stopped.

Ravi raised his eyebrows. "What?"

"That's an extra storeroom, isn't it?" Lio asked.

Ravi glanced at the door he indicated. "It's the entrance to an old one, yeah. But Jossen said it's been cut off since there was a cave-in. They never bothered to clear it. The outpost doesn't need more storage. Why?"

Lio walked right up to the door, and the locator wand blared. He put his hand to the door and wrenched it open. A cool breath of stagnant air hit him, and the lights from the tunnel illuminated shallow steps, descending into earthy darkness. Breathless, he inched forward.

He was immediately hauled backward by a hand at his collar. "Lio, what the fuck," Ravi barked, holding him away from the door. "Did you not hear me when I said cave-in?"

"But it's working!" He shook free and brandished the shivering locator wand at Ravi. "Look! I walk away from the door, nothing." He demonstrated as he spoke. "I go back to the door—" The wand piped up right on cue. He beamed at Ravi. "There's something down there! Some Mastali artifact! We have to go down there and—"

"I'm not letting you walk into a structurally unstable tunnel."

"How can that tunnel be structurally unstable and the one we're in right now be fine?"

Ravi blinked. "I don't know. But...look, I can't let you go down there. You could get hurt. At least let me figure out how to scan it for signs of collapse, and then we'll decide what to do from there."

He tried to compel his pulse to slow. Ravi was right to be cautious, but his intuition was going off like the spider wand. There could be something hidden in the mountain depths beneath Opalina, waiting for him. Demanding they prioritize it was perhaps unwise, given that Ravi likely already had a list of things to do the length of his arm. The desperation surging in his chest forced him to ask. "Tomorrow?"

Ravi pressed his lips together, but then he sighed. "Yeah. Tomorrow."

Lio barely slept. He told the entire crew over breakfast, several times, but no one else seemed to share his faith in the locator. Teres kept pointing out that they'd scanned Duhar with it as a joke, and the thing went off then, too. "And to my knowledge," she said, "Duhar is not an ancient Mastali artifact."

No matter how much he seethed at them through the rest of the day, not even Aziri or Teres seemed to believe him. It stung. They were his friends, and they'd always listened when he talked about his Mastali theories before. Perhaps they'd just been humoring him. Tolerating it better than everyone outside Opalina, but not really believing it, just like the others.

The moment Jossen dismissed them to free hours, he bolted to his room to retrieve the locator wand and galloped to the muster room. Ravi wasn't there. He paced a whole loop around the tunnel before he spotted him, dragging something covered by an enormous tarp.

Lio dashed to catch up to him, and Ravi glanced over the top of it. "Good, you can help me move this fucking thing."

"What is it?" Lio asked, doing a fairly useless job of pushing the tarp-blanketed square. It was a solid cube, and very heavy.

"Microseismic detector," grunted Ravi. "Supposed to identify possible cavern collapse." He hauled it around the curving tunnel and Lio was startled to see the crew sitting and leaning against the opposite wall from the old storeroom door. Orvaska jogged down the tunnel to help Ravi with the detector machine, and they set it in position at the top of the open door. Ravi removed the tarp, attached a series of clamps to the walls and roof of the old storeroom passage, and stepped back, dusting his hands.

"Okay. We have to wait a second for it to scan." He shook his head. "They had this shit on standby for Opalina for years, and nobody bothered to come run the machine before assigning new recruits to live here. Unbelievable."

Lio turned to face the rest of the crew. "What are you all doing here?"

Aziri laughed. Then he blinked at Lio's expression. "Wait, are you...you're serious. Lio, of course we came to help!" He held up a dangling lantern like it was irrefutable evidence.

There was suddenly a lump in his throat, and it made his voice raspy. "I thought you all decided it was foolish and unlikely."

"Unlikely, yes," Onfenka said. "Foolish, maybe. Intriguing, definitely. I would like to see something the Mastali made. If we find it." She looked back at him, no trace of laughter in her expression. Onfenka never made fun of anyone. Lio gulped for air, trying and failing to find a way to express his gratitude. They were truly here to help.

His floundering was salvaged by a low hum from the box at his back. Ravi wiped off the crusty screen and read aloud, "Minimal activity, collapse unlikely. Major obstruction. Major echo space. Possible invalid read." He cleared his throat and shot Lio a worried look. "That doesn't sound...great."

"It's inconclusive," Yorune said. "But it did say collapse was unlikely."

Lio heaved a breath. "I'm just going to go down a few stairs. Just a little ways."

"Lio—"

"It said collapse unlikely. It'll be fine." And for some reason, he felt certain of it. The crew lit the lanterns. Lio took a deep breath and turned to the stairs, while they clustered at his back. Stronger light from above spilled further in, and he blinked. His promise to Ravi of only going down a few steps was ironclad in a way he hadn't expected. There was a startled silence from everyone staring at the enormous pile of rocks that swallowed the rest of the steps and blocked his path.

"Well, there's the majorobstruction," Yorune chirped.