If at first you don't succeed...

4. Filthy empiricist

On the short way to the hole, Riccardo stopped to inspect the dome. He put a gloved hand on it and looked closely, then knocked on it. Tap tap tap.

"It sure looks like glass to me."

"I wouldn't do that," said Maya. "This material's weird. It's holding a whole lot of rock and dirt along this side like it's nothing, but collapsed under me because I leaned on my elbow."

"You don't know that. Even so, it could have very little resistance to concentrated pressure. It might be some kind of alien crystal," mused Riccardo, "with strange and eerie properties. Who knows."

"I'd like to."

He shrugged.

"Maybe we will. Now let's get organized."

As they carefully descended, walking on the steep but providential pile of dirt and rocks, Maya observed the edge of the hole. The "glass" was maybe two fingers thick, something like two or three centimeters. The fraying was made up of thick, bent filaments of the stuff. She grabbed one, and, to her surprise, it was relatively soft, even if it looked like glass. She tapped in a nearby area: tap tap tap. Solid.

Riccardo saw what she was doing and imitated her. They were able to rip away several pieces of it with little effort, twisting and breaking the filaments with their hands. Once frayed, the "glass" behaved like really tough taffy. They pocketed some and resumed walking down.

"We could put forward a claim to name this... whatever it is... taffy glass," said Maya. "What do you say? Markus'll love it."

"Markus'll rip your arms off if you try that," answered Riccardo.

"Aw, no way, he's a sweetie."

"So why d'you wanna be cruel to him?"

"I don't!"

"You do! I-" he stopped. He was looking down. Maya looked down too.

"Well, that's no natural formation," she said.

It was a floor. A real floor. A level, dull, tiled floor. The tiles looked like dark gray rock and were hexagonal, broader than she was tall. One of them could have easily accommodated her along a diagonal. When she'd fallen on it she had been too focused on everything else to notice the slightly brighter, thin, straight lines.

"Oh boy," she murmured. "Not a cave, then."

"What the fuck?"

"Indeed."

They crouched and touched the floor. It was smooth under their gloved fingers.

"It could still be some weird natural phenomenon with the trappings of artificiality," mused Maya. "Like the Caves of Rainbow on Scorpius Central, or the Death Valley's sailing stones on Earth."

"Aren't you the one with respect for empirical data? I can't think of anything natural that would produce a glass dome, or whatever it is, and a tiled floor underneath. And on a planet that never knew intelligent life," said Riccardo. "This is crazy. If this is what it is, we're the first one to find signs of civilization outside the solar system."

"I am a filthy empiricist, as you so affectionately noted earlier, so I don't jump to conclusions," she opined. "It could be any number of things. An old Jovian base, for example. They started colonizing early."

"That looks like denial to me. I think we should explore a bit."

"No," she answered.

"What?" interjected a suddenly irritated Riccardo. "What do you mean by "no", Maya? You don't want to go see for yourself if we've stumbled upon alien ruins?" he said, pointing with a thumb at the cavernous dark surrounding them.