The ladder creaked as Sam climbed, but it felt solid enough under his feet, and it reached high enough that there were still plenty of rungs above him when he reached the sprinkler control panel.

It was every bit as old as it had looked from the floor. In fact, Sam had never seen anything that old. Not in his quarters, not elsewhere in Old Golden Heights, not even in Albert Powell’s antique electronics collection.

It took him twenty queasy minutes to get his armband talking to the panel and another fifteen to figure out how to read the output.

Eleanor asked him once or twice if he was all right, and he snapped out something about not breaking his concentration. He felt a bit bad about that, but he was, after all, swaying near the top of a low-grade wooden ladder, trying to figu...

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