Perhaps it was his movements that activated it, for a long panel suddenly lit up in the dark along the wall closest to him, and he was moving to examine it when he heard a digging and a shuffling, and looked up to see a white ignudi emerge from a debris-choked pipe placed just above the door he had swam under.
It was Milkweed, of course, and as they were familiar with each other from the times he had called on Shekalane, he whistled after her and she flew to his shoulder without hesitation. They stared up at the long panel together as Valdus tried to make sense of it, but as most of it was written in an alien language, he could only surmise that it was some sort of guide—and this only because he recognized the name of the capitol, Novum Venum.
He looked sidelong at Milkweed as she gazed
