It was supposed to be a routine look after a small earthquake. The tremor had opened passages in a cave system people had been mapping for years. Nothing about that was strange.
Behind the fallen face of rock: a sealed chamber. Metal walls, too smooth, cut into bedrock that had not been disturbed for geological time. Inside it, an escape pod. Military, and not from any yard Earth has. Dust on it so fine it behaved like a gas.
Inside the pod, a capsule, cracked. Whatever had slept there was a thin layer of gray powder. A million years of failed keeping, reduced to that. Beside it, a control surface, pulsing a dim amber, waiting for a hand.