The floating debris had begun to fall, but nobody at the command station mistook it for the end of the danger. Beyond the evacuation perimeter, broken stone continued rising and dropping in irregular pulses.
Adam watched the readings on the nearest monitor. Three separate instruments agreed that the gravitational pressure was decreasing, but none of them could determine whether the Sin had departed or merely withdrawn beyond their range. A team sent into the ruins might find Marcus, or walk straight into the creature that had destroyed everything around him.
"How long until the route is stable?" Adam asked.
The operator rubbed his forehead. He had been sitting at the console long enough for the skin around his eyes to turn red. "Stable? I wouldn't promise you that. The western approach has fewer fluctuations, but we're still losing contact with anything that travels too far into the center. Two unmanned scouts went down before they reached the halfway point."
