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Robert Langdon searches the archive labels outside Vault 9 and finds major scientists such as Brahe, Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton, but no Galileo. The absence unsettles Langdon because Galileo is central to his theory about the Path of Illumination.

Vittoria Vetra discovers the reason: Galileo is not missing but housed separately in Vault 10. The vault is entirely devoted to Il Processo Galileo, the Galileo Affair, whose vast legal records reflect the scale of the Vatican’s historical prosecution of Galileo.

Langdon activates the vault lights, revealing a red-lit, enclosed maze of shelves. Langdon explains that the lighting protects parchment and vellum, and warns Vittoria that the hermetic vault has very low oxygen and humidity to preserve the documents.

Langdon enters first through the electronic revolving door and experiences the physical shock of the thin air. Vittoria follows, struggles briefly to breathe, then acclimates enough to continue. Langdon gives Vittoria cotton gloves so they can handle archival materials without damaging them.

Vittoria asks how much time remains, and Langdon notes that it is just past seven. Although the larger crisis leaves them less than an hour, Langdon reveals a more immediate danger: because the curator has not activated the reoxygenation system, they may have only about twenty minutes before the low-oxygen conditions become debilitating.