Vor'gath tried first the only way he knew how, which was the way that worked at the third Keystone: a disruption aimed at a point, timed to a rhythm.
There was no point here. There was no rhythm he could find, not at first, the pressure broad and even, like leaning on a door rather than picking a lock.
His first attempt produced nothing measurable. The sixth Keystone's reading kept climbing at the same rate, unaffected, as if Vor'gath were not there.
"It is not responding to me," he said. "Not resisting, not adjusting. It does not know I am here, because there is nothing here for it to know about."
"It is a pressure, applied from somewhere I cannot locate, distributed across a surface I cannot narrow, which is a description and not yet a plan."
Rakh'ash'tha, at the housing's far side, had her hands flat against the stone.
"I can feel something," she said. "Not a point. You are right that there is no point."
