He caught a glimpse through one of the holes as they passed another large room, empty as the one they had been in blocks back. Through another hole he could see that the room’s ceiling had collapsed, filling the space with rubble. So far, besides the city itself, there was no sign of alien technology or culture. Not a stick of furniture or a piece of refuse on the street. Nothing.
And no sign that anyone, or anything, had been there since the city was abandoned.
Seemingly completely empty.
And silent.
“I can understand no windows,” Stephanie said, her voice firm. “But the fact that there are no doors is starting to bother me.”
“I’ve been thinking the same thing,” Bogle said, glancing back at the building they had just passed.
It bothered Hank, too. The fact of no obvious doors or windows had been eating at him since they first landed. Why build tall buildings if you couldn’t see out of them? And they all had to have some way in and out.
“There has to be some hidden access in the walls somewhere,” Stanton said.
“Sure,” Stephanie said, “but how is it possible that not one of those access doors was left open when this place was abandoned? That seems to make no sense.”
“And not one is visible from aging,” Bogle added. “At least that I’ve seen.”
Stephanie nodded.
“I grant you that it makes no sense to us humans,” Stanton said. “But it’s alien. It doesn’t have to make sense to us. Just to the builders of this place.”
Stanton was right, Hank thought. Nothing they’d seen so far made any sense. There was nothing here but silence and crumbling buildings. And that by itself felt alien.
Malone herded the group to the right side of the street and against one wall, then had Waters unpack the equipment.
Hank stood next to Stephanie, their backs against the wall as they watched. After about a minute the young soldier glanced up at Malone. “Energy source slightly stronger. Still a good three-quarters of a kilometer ahead, I would guess.”
“Good, Private,” she said. “Pack it back up and get ready to move again.”
Hank glanced down the street that seemed to vanish into the dark shadows of the skyscrapers. The buildings near the water had been two and three stories. The ones around them were holding at around ten stories tall. But a short distance ahead the monster skyscrapers started. The energy source they had spotted was somewhere in there, among those monsters. But without doors in the buildings, how would they get to it?
Or escape if something was guarding it and came out after them?
He knew the door question had to be answered immediately, before they took one more step.
“Hang on, Sergeant,” Hank said. “We need to get a couple questions answered before we get too deep into those larger buildings.”
“Go ahead,” she said.
He slipped his rifle over his shoulder and pointed at the rubble of a wall that had fallen, opening a path inside. “I think we should do a little digging through that rubble, see if we can find traces of how their doors worked. Or even if they had doors.”
“Good idea,” Stanton said, but he was moving his hands strangely almost as if he wasn’t aware of it. The farther they had gotten into the city, the more nervous Stanton seemed to become.
Malone nodded, then spoke into her commlink. “Take up perimeter positions. Jenkins, Waters, make sure the insides of that building are clear.”
She pointed at the building Hank had singled out, and the two soldiers nearest them headed toward it. First they took up positions on either side of the hole, then went in quickly, low and guns ready.
Hank was almost holding his breath. He didn’t know what he expected. He just hoped he didn’t hear the sound of gunfire.
A long ten seconds later Malone nodded as she listened over her commlink, then said, “All clear.”
That was the signal for the rest of them to pass through the opening. Inside, in the shadowed interior, was another large, high-ceilinged, empty room, with no indication at all of what it might have been used for.
Hank thought maybe it hadn’t been used for anything. Maybe the aliens never came down to the street level. That was possible. But the only way to find out was to find doors.
Or ramps, or staircases, inside. There had been a ramp in the building near the ocean, but none that he could see in any of the bigger buildings they’d been passing in the last few blocks.
“Ask your men inside if they see any way to get up to the next floor.”
Malone nodded and did as Hank had asked. In the meantime, Bogle, Edaro, Lee, and Stanton had all started to clear away some of the white wall material, kicking up a very light cloud of white dust as they worked.
“Nothing obvious,” Malone said after a moment.
Stephanie shook her head. “There has to be a way up. In that building near the ocean the ramps were in the corner, moving up toward the center of the room. Right?”
“True,” Hank said. “But I don’t think that helps here.”
Stephanie said nothing, clearly deep in thought.
“There’s nothing in this stuff,” Bogle said, standing back and slapping his hands together to remove the dust.
“Okay, so where are the access points?” Stephanie asked. “Whoever built these buildings must have had a way in and out.”
“Don’t assume anything,” Stanton said, brushing off his hands on his pants as if trying to wipe off blood. “You’re still laying human concepts on an alien culture. Trust me, I’ve run into this roadblock a hundred times over the last two years.”
“Doing what?” Bogle asked.
“Later,” Stanton said, waving off the question.
“So,” Stephanie said, “you think they just built the buildings around themselves like tombs?”
“Possible,” Stanton said.
“Wonderful,” Bogle said. “We’re exploring the equivalent of the Egyptian pyramids.”
“It would be a true city of the dead,” Lee said, smiling.
Stephanie smacked him on the arm. The rest only shook their heads at Lee’s lame joke.
Hank, meanwhile, decided to go back out into the street. Malone stayed close to him, keeping her eye out around them.
He looked at the building. The idea that the ramps in the smaller structures were in the corners had him fascinated. Yet in the larger buildings like this one, there were no ramps. “Weird. Very weird.”
Sergeant Malone stayed close, but said nothing.
“What are you looking for?” Stephanie asked, coming up beside him.
“Not sure,” he said.
He forced himself to really look at what was different on the walls of the buildings. What appeared to be a clean, uniform surface along the side of the street actually had indicators where one building stopped and the next one started. Each roof was slightly higher or lower than the next. And many of the buildings filled a small alien city block from one side to the other. Hank thought it was possible that in some far distant past, these buildings had all been painted different colors. But now they were all worn down to their base material.
Yet every corner of every building was clearly marked. And just like humans putting arches over doors to mark where the entrances were, if the aliens put their entrances in the corners of the buildings, that would be the same idea.
Then he looked toward the center of the island and up at the edifices towering into the sky. Each sky bridge that connected two buildings always went from the corner of one structure to the corner of the other.
“Got it,” he said.
“Got what?” Stephanie asked, following his gaze upward.
“The sky bridges,” he said. “They’re the answer.”
Stephanie only looked more puzzled, staring up at the towers.
“Hey, everyone!” he called out to the others. “Take a look at those sky bridges. Notice where they start on every building.”
They all turned to look as he moved tw
enty steps back to the corner of the building, Malone and Stephanie following him. The sergeant also moved two of her men into a better position. She wasn’t going to let any of her civilian chicks go unguarded for even a second. And that was fine by him.
Slowly, Hank ran his hand along what looked to be nothing more than a corner crack in the building’s surface. But the crack didn’t go any higher than three meters.
He tried to put his fingers into the crack to pry it open, but it was clear almost instantly that wasn’t going to work.
“You think the doors might be on the corners?” Stephanie asked, as the other four scientists joined them.
In the background three of Malone’s men moved into better cover positions while Malone herself stayed with the group of civilians.
“I’m convinced of it,” Hank said. “How else would they know, on seemingly featureless buildings, where to go to enter or leave?”
“So how do we open one?” Lee asked.
“More than likely they were automatic,” Bogle said. “And I doubt if there’s energy running.”
“Maybe,” Stanton said. “Maybe not.”
But Hank could tell Stanton didn’t think much more of that idea than he did. Hank studied the wall up and down the crack, then down at the ground on the street. Of course a door wouldn’t open out onto a street area. Bad design. So it had to open inward somehow.
“You know,” Stephanie said, standing beside him, “we may be making this much harder than it really is. It’s just a door after all.”
“Be my guest,” Hank said, smiling and stepping back out of her way.
Stephanie walked forward and simply pushed on the corner, directly inward.
Silently, both corner walls moved inward from three meters down, sliding back and open, exposing the empty room inside and one very startled soldier crouched against one wall, weapon ready.
Both doors seemed to be almost a meter thick, yet they moved as if they weighed nothing at all. Nor was there any sound of a motor or electrical device. More than likely they were just very well balanced doors.
Hank and the others applauded as Stephanie turned and smiled.
“Great thinking,” Bogle said.
“Okay, one problem solved,” Hank said. “How do you get out once you’re inside?”
“Stay here,” Stephanie said, then glanced at Sergeant Malone. “All right if I go in?”
Malone nodded. “Dr. Peters coming in,” she said into her commlink. “Cover her.”
Stephanie pulled a small flashlight out of her pocket and moved through the open doors.
As she cleared them, the two doors slowly closed behind her. Silently, seeming to glide on air, leaving only the faint crack in the edge of the building to show that the wall had ever moved.
“Amazing,” Edaro said, staring at the door, holding his golf ball.
Hank instantly wanted to go after her, but then he remembered that two soldiers were in that large, empty room, and there was a hole in the wall about twenty paces away. But it still felt odd for her to disappear inside an alien door like that.
Odd and very dangerous.
“Stay with her, Jenkins,” Malone said calmly into her commlink. Clearly she had felt the same thing.
A moment later the two doors swung inward, and Stephanie walked out, smiling at them, turning off the flashlight as she came.
“How the hell did you do that?” Bogle asked as the doors moved silently back into position as soon as Stephanie cleared them.
“Simple,” she said. “There are indentations in the walls on either side with just enough of a lip to grab ahold of. Just pull slightly on one and they open right up. Come on, I’ll show you.”
Hank was impressed she had figured it out so fast.
“We’re coming in, Jenkins,” Malone said into her commlink, as Stephanie again turned and pushed on the door. “Everyone hold positions.”
They all got out their flashlights and went through the door, which then closed behind them. Quickly Stephanie showed them where, on both sides of the corner, there were small indentations in the wall. Hank put his hand in one and could feel that what looked like an indentation was actually a lipped handle clearly meant to be grasped and pulled.
“Two problems down,” Hank said. “One last one.”
“Upstairs,” Stanton said. “How do we get to the floors above this one?”
“Exactly,” Hank said.
“Following the logic of the doors,” Stanton said, “the stairs would also be in the corners in some fashion or another.”
“Makes sense,” Bogle said. “Same logic as putting the doors on the corners. Everyone always knows where they are.”
“But why wouldn’t ramps and stairs be built in permanently?” Stephanie asked, pointing her flashlight up at the top corners of the large space. “Doing anything else makes no sense.”
“Thinking like a human instead of an alien again,” Stanton said.
Stephanie shrugged.
Along with Lee and Edaro, Hank moved toward the center of the room, shining his light along the ceiling as he went, then ahead at the open space.
Sergeant Malone had four of her men scattered around the room, keeping a very close eye on them all.
As he walked he tried to imagine the room full of “stuff.” Alien stuff, but the only image that kept coming to his mind was a department store. This space was big enough to house one, that was for sure.
“Hank, look at this,” Lee said, pointing down with his beam of light.
Under the thin layer of dust that covered the floor were very faint lines, patterns, almost worn away by time. They were so faint, Hank was amazed that Lee had even noticed them in the dim light.
But now that he saw them, they were obvious. The line seemed to come from the corner with the door and go straight to the center of the room. Hank and Lee both followed the faint line, leaving footprints where no human had ever walked before across the vast area.
Just as they reached a certain point, the line split and turned and flowed into lines coming from both the left and the right. It seemed that the very center of the room had a circle on the floor.
Hank guessed that four lines on the floor led from the four corners to this circle.
Lee started to step over that line into the circle, but Hank instantly knew that he shouldn’t do that. Not until they were ready.
“Wait,” he said, holding Lee’s arm.
The two of them took a few steps back and stopped.
Hank turned to where Sergeant Malone stood near the opening in the wall, watching them intently. The other four scientists were in one corner, talking about something on the wall and shining their lights at the ceiling.
“Sergeant, I think we might need a little extra cover here,” Hank said.
Malone nodded. “Jenkins, Waters, join me. Cort, Marva, come inside and cover the opening in the wall. Everyone else hold positions.”
All of them moved quickly to where Hank and Dr. Lee stood. Stephanie and the others moved to join them also.
“What did you find?” Stanton asked.
Hank pointed at the very faint line in the dust on the floor with his light.
“What?” Stanton asked, looking down.
“I’ll be go to hell,” Bogle said. “Never would have seen it.”
“What?” Stanton asked, still not seeing the line.
Bogle pointed along the line with his flashlight beam until Stanton suddenly grunted.
Hank looked at Malone. “Ready?”
“For what exactly?” the sergeant asked.
“More than likely nothing,” Hank said.
“Or maybe a ramp,” Lee said. Then, smiling at Hank, Lee stepped slowly over the center of the line into the faint circle and stopped.
Hank didn’t know what he was expecting, but he knew instinctively that something was going to happen.
And it did.
The moment Lee’s foot touched the floor on the other side of the line, the ceiling
above him moved, rotating silently like a top as it came down. After a very long second that seemed to drag on and on, the bottom of a ramp extended and stopped right at Dr. Lee’s feet.
Now filling the center of the room was a spiral ramp winding its way gently to the next floor.
Hank had no doubt that if Lee had stepped over that line at any point around that circle, that ramp would still have stopped right at his feet.
“Flat amazing,” Lee said, shaking his head.
“This place is really starting to get eerie,” Edaro said, the golf ball vanished into a pocket.
Hank knew how he felt. It was as if the city was just waiting to do what they wanted, waiting to open up to them. And now that they knew how to get inside, there was no telling what would happen.
No telling at all what this very alien city hid.
8
Time: 11:23 A . M . Pacific Time
9 hours, 52 minutes after Arrival
Stephanie was glad they’d decided not to go up that ramp to that dark second floor. The air coming from above smelled stale and very old. Both Hank and Sergeant Malone suggested there would be no point. They had other buildings to explore and a power source to find, one buried somewhere in the middle of all those skyscrapers ahead.
And who knew how much time they had to find it.
So they had all gone back out into the shadows of the street and continued on their way, the four soldiers moving ahead of the main group, leapfrogging along both walls, investigating any hole in the wall and all side streets.
Nothing moved except them.
The silence felt almost oppressive, as if she were standing at a funeral and no one had anything good to say.
The deeper they got into the city, the more she began to dread what was coming, even though she had no idea what it might be. The street was getting darker and darker as the buildings around them got higher, blocking out more and more of the light from the Maw. She guessed that by regular human standards, the structures lining the street were twenty to twenty-five stories tall, all touching except where the cross streets broke the walls.
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