There was a moment of calm during which neither of them moved and nothing happened. She held out a hand to haul Ondo to his feet.
He spoke out loud. “We can"t go back.”
“No. Not now, anyway. Perhaps not ever. But you were right about this place, your golden age and your trail through the stars. Coronade and our forgotten history. It"s all real.”
“The question is, what lies at the other end of this tunnel?”
“Only one way to find out.”
They walked slowly, warily. The portal behind them did not open again. Concordance, it seemed, did not possess a metakey of their own, did not know the secret of the archways.
Or, she thought, maybe they did, and were happy for her and Ondo to take the walk they were taking.
One hundred metres along, equidistant between the two archways, she paus
