Timory drags the comb-rake along behind her, backpack spewing carbon to force them both down another row of the ship’s ablative fur. Can’t trap hypertrash at full accel if it’s matted with junk already, but she still resents the chore: a Roomba could do this. Instead she’s using her spacewalk time to dig out burrs.
It’s not a pretty beast; impacts have manged its coat, solar orbit bleached it. The fur will burn off on entry anyway, and Timory swears it makes the whole trip hotter. She’d give a great deal for a razor and a fixed point in space.
At the bottom of the stair is a dome with a dozen corridors leading out. Of course.
“I can’t see very far down any of them,” says Yael, who’s too busy glancing at the candle to really look.
“This is the first test.”
“Oh,” says Yael, “right, the tests.”
“Graverobber prevention,” says Silhouine, with an odd confidence. “The gods would have known which path is the true one, you see?”
“So we just have outsmart the gods.”
“And that can’t be too hard,” Silhouine smirks, and leans on a giveaway piece of masonry, which embeds an obliging dart in her head.