As L.B. slid the uninflated buoyancy bands up her arms, Gus gazed out over the endless lake. “You’re on.” He squinted to reduce the sun’s metallic silver glare as it chopped up the water into a billion blinding fragments. Between the Altimere hub and the lighthouse tower were three concentric rings, each intersecting the giant radial spines. The resulting four stretches of water between the rings grew progressively narrower the nearer one got to the lighthouse, but also more volatile, the unfathomable alien currents forged by the dish’s unyielding gravitational design creating a kind of maelstrom at its center. Few had ever reached the lighthouse by swimming. Most considered it an achievement to cross three bands of water. But legend had it that Cardie and Brink had habitually climbed the tower before each mission, having swum the four bands to prove to each other they had no fear of death, that they were still fit to lead Fifth Condor. Such recklessness.
