The raised stone road ended at the threshold of a cavernous chamber that swallowed the light of the central star.
It was the Hall of Ten Thousand Stelae—the main storage vault of the Primordial Hardware Core. Entering through the thirty-pace archway of dark Precursor composite, Lin Tao and his companions found themselves walking down a central nave flanked on both sides by towering giant pillars of man-made black sapphire. Each stela rose four hundred feet toward the vaulted ceiling, perfectly box-shaped, its polished faces carved with tiny channels of glowing amber circuitry that pulsed with ceaseless internal activity.
There were not merely ten thousand stelae. There were millions, arranged in endless, sharp-angled rows of stone pillars that stretched beyond the horizon into the dim, climate-controlled gloom of the work-yard.
The air inside the hall was dry, sterile, and cold, kept at exactly four degrees. A faint static-electric charge prickled the hair on the backs of Lin Tao’s hands. It smelled of ozone and spark-charged quartz. High above, self-running overhead frame tracks crossed the ceiling in silent glide paths. He carried test sensor pods that flickered with faint red indicator lights as they monitored the strength of the storage arrays.
Old Man Geng and the quarry masters halted in the center of the aisle. Their eyes were wide as they stared up at the towering sapphire giant pillars.
