Kio's soil sample turned gray in his palm before he reached the ladder. Two hours ago it was dark and alive. Now it crumbled to dead dust, and the seed data he'd fought to collect died with it. He wanted a place on the United Alliance's research teams. To earn it, he had to prove that ridge soil could grow crops the flatlands couldn't. But every sample rotted the moment open air touched it, and worthless dust never made anyone a scientist. He climbed the ladder into the tower's glass upper level. Sunlight flooded the observation deck. Below, in the sheltered lab, jars of soil lined the shelves in neat rows. He'd filled a hundred of them. Ninety had already gone gray. A voice clicked on behind him. "Your sample is oxidizing. Again." Kio didn't turn. Lexon rolled to the workbench, white lab coat spotless, cyan eyes glowing in a smooth face. The android had watched him fail all week without lifting a finger. Kio had stopped expecting help. "I know it's oxidizing," Kio said. "Tell me something useful." "The open air is the problem," Lexon said. "Not the soil." Kio dropped the dead sample on the bench. "I can't collect soil without air. That's not a solution." Lexon picked up an empty jar. It tapped the glass rim with one finger. "You seal it too late. By the time the lid closes, the reaction has started." It set the jar down. "You need to seal at the moment of collection. Underground. Where there is no air." Kio stared at the jar. All week he'd carried samples up the ridge in open trays, then jarred them here. Minutes passed each time. Minutes were enough to kill them. "I need a container that closes in the ground," he said slowly. "Yes," Lexon said. "A vacuum seal that triggers on the trowel." Kio grabbed a jar and a strip of rubber gasket from the drawer. He worked through the afternoon. Lexon watched, correcting his angles, handing him tools before he asked. By dusk Kio had rigged a jar with a spring lid that snapped shut the instant it left the dirt. He carried it up the ridge in the last light. He drove it into the soil, pulled, and the lid clapped closed with a hiss. Air never touched the sample inside. Back in the lab, he opened the jar under his scope. The soil was dark. Alive. He counted the seed spores. They moved. "It held," Kio breathed. "It held," Lexon agreed. Then it turned its glowing eyes to the shelves. "But you have one jar. The Alliance wants a full survey. Two hundred samples, from the far side of the ridge." Kio's grin faded. The far side lay past the fence line, in ground no one was allowed to cross. He looked at his single sealed jar, then at the dark ridge beyond the glass. One jar worked. Now he needed two hundred more, from land he wasn't permitted to enter.

Kio stood at the fence line in the gray morning. Beyond it lay the far side of the ridge, the forbidden ground where his two hundred samples waited. But he had never crossed it. He didn't know where the soil was alive and where it was dead. Each sealed jar took work to build. If he drove one into dead ground, he wasted it. He needed a map, and he had none. He carried a single jar up to the tower's glass deck and set it down. "I can't just walk out there," he told Lexon. "Half that land could be dead dust. I'd burn through jars finding out." Lexon rolled to the workbench. Its cyan eyes brightened. "Then you send something that cannot waste a jar," it said. It bent under the bench and pulled out a shape wrapped in cloth. It peeled the cloth back. A metal dog lay there, legs folded, panels dull with dust. Kio knelt beside it. "What is it?" "A survey unit. Old, but it walks." Lexon pressed a panel on the dog's flank. Purple lights ran along its spine. "I can fit its nose with a soil probe. It reads moisture and spore life through the ground. It maps the living soil without opening a single jar." Kio's chest tightened. All week Lexon had watched him fail before it helped. Now it moved fast, hands sure on the wires. "You had this the whole time," Kio said. "You needed the jar first," Lexon said. "A map is useless if the sample dies in your hand." It didn't look up. "Now you have both problems solved. Hold the probe." They worked through the morning. Kio wired the probe to the dog's snout while Lexon set the reader code. By noon the metal dog stood on all four legs. Its head turned. Its eyes glowed amber. Kio carried it to the fence and set it in the grass. He tapped its back. "Go on. Find live ground." The dog stepped over the fence line onto the far side. Its legs moved smooth and quiet. It lowered its snout to the dirt, paused, lifted, walked on. A green dot bloomed on Kio's screen. Then another. A third dot flashed red where the soil ran dead. Kio watched the map fill. Live ground and dead ground, marked apart, each step the dog took. He could see now exactly where to drive his jars. "It's working," he breathed. "It is," Lexon said behind him. The dog trotted deeper into the forbidden land. Then it stopped. Its head snapped up toward a ridge of rock. A shape stood there, watching. A person, past the fence, where no one was allowed. The dog's amber eyes locked on them, and a warning tone rose from its throat. Kio froze. He was not alone on the far side.