Chapter Thirty-Three
The high gravity, the strength-sapping heat and humidity, and the boggy ground—which did indeed cling to their feet like the lead boots Tevera had predicted, although she’d been talking about the gravity, not the mire—seemed to stretch the three kilometres from the landing field to the fortress into a light-year, but at last, the towering, vine-draped trees thinned, and the survey party stepped out into the clearing that surrounded the alien structure.
Kriss had seen his father’s pictures of the fortress, but even so, he was unprepared for its astonishing bulk. He stopped dead, along with everyone else, at his first glimpse of the endless, unbroken wall of grey-green stone, flecked with white, like white-caps on the ocean. Above the wall soared the graceful, needle-t
