The light from the quartz-iodide lamps cut through three thousand five hundred feet of black Atlantic water, lighting up a world that had not seen the sun since the cataclysms of the Founding Age.
Inside The Nautilus, nobody spoke.
Foreman Corbin Cross had his face pressed flat against the six-inch quartz viewport, his breath misting the glass until he wiped it away with the palm of his wool mitten.
His eyes were wide, wet with tears he didn’t try to brush aside.
“The City of the Gods,” Corbin whispered. His voice shook with a miner’s respect for impossible stonecraft.
“Look at the columns, Master Giles. They aren’t carved. They don’t have mortar seams.
They grew out of the living bedrock like trees made of polished silver.”
Giles Croft was not looking at the columns.
