The Reticuli Deception (Adventures of Hannibal Carson Book 2)

by Alastair Mayer

  But first things first.

  “Our first priority now is to survive,” he said to Quetz. “Inventory what we have, determine what we need and how much of our mission we can complete, and plan a course of action.”

  Quetz, who had been pacing, turned back to him. “You’re right. Let’s get to it.”

  They’d managed to salvage little from the ship. The emergency pack held a few days worth of ration bars, some cylinders of drinking water and a filtration system, basic tools, radio, flares, first aid kit, a reader, and a collapsed tent. Quetz had grabbed a case with some portable survey instruments. They also had a radio. Nothing, alas, to build a starship with. Even the radio couldn’t be used without bringing the priest-observers down on them.

  “What can we eat on this planet?” asked Quetz. The Kesh were omnivores.

  “The animals should be edible,” Kukul said. “I’m less certain of the plants; some will be, some won’t. We’ll have to test those.”

  “Oh? We have a test kit?”

  “Well, there is you. If you eat anything that kills you, I will know to avoid it.”

  “Forgive my lack of enthusiasm at that plan.”

  “Where’s your sense of adventure?” Kukul rippled his crest feathers in amusement. “Anyway, there are things we can do to help avoid toxic plants, but in the mean time we’ll stick to ration bars and whatever animals we can catch. Animals are rarely poisonous, just venomous. Don’t let them bite or sting you while you’re eating them.”

  “I am glad one of us is having a good time.”

  “Hardly that,” Kukul said. “But we’re alive, we have a reasonable climate and food, and we managed to retrieve some of our equipment. We can perform some of the geological and biological surveys we came here to do.”

  “Why bother? Are you expecting rescue?”

  “And if we are rescued and we haven’t tried to find out what’s special about this planet? Why it’s off-limits to all but the Priests? It would be that much longer before we leave if our rescuers have to do that investigation themselves. If they even deign to rescue such laggards at all.”

  Quetzal’s display feathers rippled with agitation. “You’re right, and it will give us something to do.” He started to collect up their gear. “Come on, let’s get off the beach and find somewhere to set up camp before it gets completely dark.”

  Kukul moved to assist him.

  19: On to the Pyramid

  The jungle, planet Verdigris

  “Up ahead there, is that it?” Carson heard Marten call from ahead of him. He pushed through the undergrowth to the angled stone wall, Jackie close behind him. It was a grayish pink, like a fine-grained granite, very distinct from the usual coarser-grained gray rock of the native tombs, and similar to the pyramid they’d found on Chara III.

  “This is it, all right,” he said. “But it’s a lot shorter than the Chara pyramid. If Marten’s theory of it being buried in an ancient dune is correct, it may take a major excavation to find the entrance.”

  “Or another application of high explosives?” Jackie said. “Too bad we don’t have the disintegrator.”

  “Perhaps there’s another entrance at a higher level,” said Marten. “We never did get a chance to explore what was above ground level on the Chara pyramid.”

  “Speaking of the Chara pyramid,” said Jackie, “how come that one was built on a mountain and this one on a plain in the jungle?”

  “This may not have been a jungle when it was built. There was desert here before that, and it might have been grassland further back, but that's a fair question.” Carson considered it. On Chara there had been terraced fields lower on the mountain, and a surprising lack of evidence of anything further out into the nearby plains. He shrugged. “I guess they just build them near where the local inhabitants are. The real question is why the Charans settled where they did.”

  “Oh. Sure.”

  Carson looked up at the side of the pyramid. It was smooth, with no evident seams and certainly no carvings or indications of an entrance. There had been carvings on the Chara pyramid representing an astronomical puzzle, but they had been at ground level. The ground here was atop an ancient dune, although that had built up around the pyramid. He looked about. To his left the ground sloped up very slightly before being hidden in the underbrush. To the right was a slight downslope, and if anything the vegetation thinned.

  “All right,” he said, “let’s check out the perimeter. This way looks easiest, so counter-clockwise.” He led off down the slope, keeping the pyramid wall on his left.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  The vegetation thinned after they rounded the second corner. The ground had leveled out, and Carson estimated they were perhaps ten meters lower here than on the far side of the pyramid. He waved away a cloud of small flying insects, then cursed and slapped at one which had settled on his bare forearm. “Damn it, now I remember what I don’t like about this planet. It has mosquitoes!” Not for the first time, Carson muttered a curse at the long-gone Terraformers who had seeded these planets with too much of Earth’s native life.

  He swung his laser machete hard at a heavy clump of vines, which parted with a hiss and crackle under the onslaught. In another few steps he found himself at a clearing.

  The ground sloped away steeply before him, the edge of a broad trench whose sides had slumped over the years. Vegetation grew up from the slope, and the forest canopy overhead was beginning to fill the gap that had clearly been there before. Carson noted several tree stumps, their tops sheer and showing evidence of scorching. They’d been felled with a laser.

  “Someone has beaten us to it,” Carson said, appraising the signs. “Three or four years ago by the looks of it.”

  Marten stepped forward cautiously, keeping back from the edge of the steep drop, and looked around. “Yes, you’re right.” He pointed to where the trench met the side of the pyramid. The slanted wall showed carvings, and the outline of a doorway. “Do you suppose they got it open?”

  “They must have. Either they solved the entrance puzzle or had a key to activate the door.”

  “But we have the key.”

  “There could be more than one. Maynard certainly seemed to know what he was looking for; he had a picture of a talisman. Anyway, if they went to the trouble to dig this, they wouldn’t have let a door stop them, not if they were tomb raiders. They’d have blasted, or used a laser.”

  “Carson,” Roberts asked, “how did they know where to dig? It’s not like they excavated the whole side of the pyramid—and how would they even know which side?”

  The trench did seem a bit too convenient, but if the original finders had been more than just the usual opportunistic tomb raiders, it was no great mystery. “Standard archeological tools. Ground penetrating radar, sonic imaging, and so forth. They’d have picked up the relief carvings on the wall, maybe even the door outline.”

  “With the right instruments,” Marten added, “they might have picked up some kind of electromagnetic signature from the door mechanism. There was still power in the Chara III pyramid, but we didn’t have the right instruments to detect it.”

  “Good point, although that would imply they knew what they were looking for.”

  “I think this excavation is a pretty good sign of that.”

  Carson nodded. That was disturbing. The Velkaryans had clearly known of the existence, and perhaps the special qualities, of the talismans before he had discovered their technological origin. Just how much did they know about the Spacefarers? And if they knew, why were they so xenophobic? “Yeah. It makes you wonder, doesn’t it?” He shook his head. “Let’s see if we can get that door open. The trench slopes up over that way.” He pointed to a spot through the trees about ten meters away. “Come on, let’s get down there.”

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  The main level of the pyramid had been cleaned out, if it had ever contained anything. The pyramid on Chara III had appeared to be some kind of teaching museum, with the main level devot
ed to basic machines like the lever and inclined plane. Probably not so much for teaching—it would take some sophistication to gain entrance in the first place—but to establish the pattern that had extended to lower levels beneath the Chara pyramid.

  “I suppose it’s not surprising that there’s nothing left,” said Marten, “although I can’t imagine that stuff being worth much in the artifact trade. Nobody would believe it was either a primitive alien artifact or advanced tech.”

  “It wouldn’t have been,” Carson said.

  “Exactly. Do you suppose they found their way to the lower levels?”

  “Perhaps, but I’m more interested to see if we can find the ‘janitor closet’.”

  “Think you’ll find another disintegrator?” Jackie said.

  “It can’t hurt to look,” said Carson. “Would the Velkaryans have cared about ours if they’d already found one here?”

  Marten had been looking around, but he turned back and said: “Assuming it was the Velkaryans who cleaned this place out.”

  “Word would have gotten out if it had been anyone else.”

  “Anyway, they might have wanted another,” Jackie said. “Collect the whole set, that sort of thing,”

  Carson just scowled at her, saying nothing.

  “The entrance is rather damaged; they clearly blasted their way in. The door to our janitor closet was near the main entrance.”

  “Also, we came in through it in the other direction.”

  Jackie was right. “That’s true,” Carson said. “We don’t know what it looked like from the main gallery, especially closed.”

  Marten had been examining the wall of the entrance passageway. “If it’s here I’m not seeing it. No convenient talisman-shaped recesses either, to try it as a key.”

  “No?” asked Jackie, shining her light at the ceiling of the passage. “Then what’s that?”

  Marten and Carson both looked up to see where her light pointed. It shone on a rounded square depression in the stone.

  “That,” said Carson, “would be—”

  “—a talisman-shaped recess,” finished Marten.

  20: Rico Goes Shopping

  Denver, Earth

  “It’s done,” Brown told Rico. “The file boxes are on a Steel Mesa truck on their way to archival storage in Pennsylvania.”

  “Perfect. It’s too bad that those files are going to have to be retrieved from long term storage so soon, but people change their minds all the time. So they will be there tomorrow?”

  “That’s right. I don’t know how long it takes to get the various packages off the truck and into their designated locations.”

  Rico shook his head. “I’ll give it a day, it’s not that urgent. I need to do a little shopping first anyway, then recon.”

  “Shopping?”

  “Just a few odds and ends.” Rico grinned. “A couple of shirts, a camera or a spare omni—”

  “You're playing tourist all of a sudden?”

  “That too, in a couple of days. Meanwhile there are some things I need that’ll be faster for me to make myself than to try to find on the local black market, and less likely to call attention to me. You’ll see.”

  21: Within the Pyramid

  In the pyramid, Veridgris.

  “But why on the ceiling?” asked Marten, balancing himself on Carson’s shoulders as he reached up with the talisman to insert it into the recess. “And just how tall were these Spacefarers anyway?”

  “I don’t know, and I don’t know. Just hurry up, would you?” said Carson.

  “It’s there. It’s not doing anything.” On Chara III it had acted as a key to activate a door.

  “Try turning it around.”

  “I already did. Nothing.” He jumped down from Carson’s shoulders. “Could be the power’s dead, could be this talisman’s broken. Or there could be some other explanation.”

  “Might there be another way up?” asked Jackie. “There’s a lot of pyramid above us, clearly there’s something other than rock, or whatever it is, up there.”

  “Maybe this does call for an application of high explosives.” Carson’s tone was grim.

  “Tell me you’re joking.”

  “All right, I’m joking,” Carson deadpanned.

  “You’re not convincing me, Carson,” Jackie said. “Anyway, where would you blast? The ceiling? For all we know the doorway, or stairway, or whatever is somewhere else. There’s nothing that looks like the outline of a door up there.”

  Carson raised his light to examine the ceiling again, scanning back and forth across the tunnel. “You’re right.”

  “Carson,” Roberts said, “do we have any other talismans with us?”

  “What? You know I do. You were there when I argued Ducayne out of them.” That had been no easy feat. “They’re back at the ship. I only brought the Pavonis talisman with me here. Why?”

  “What if Marten’s right? What if it’s just a broken talisman? Maybe one of the others would work.”

  “But this is the only one with Delta Pavonis indicated by its star pattern.”

  “So? Who says that keys can’t fit more than one lock? Why not just code them all the same?”

  “It’s not likely an indigenous Charan would be visiting Delta Pavonis,” Carson objected.

  “These aren’t for the natives, are they?”

  “No. But if you put it like that, why the star diagram at all? Why distinguish them?”

  “How should I know, Carson? Alien reasons. But we’re following the star charts, aren’t we? Maybe it’s a second level puzzle for someone who already has star travel. But let’s go get the others from the ship and give them a try.”

  Carson took a step back and jerked his head almost as though he’d been slapped. “A second level puzzle?” he murmured, half to himself. “You’re right,” he said to Jackie. “I should have thought of that. Let’s go get them.”

  “I’ll go,” said Marten, “I’m fastest.”

  Carson doubted that. Timoan reflexes were unquestionably faster, but Marten’s legs were shorter. Not that it mattered. “I won’t argue. I’ll stay in here away from the mosquitoes.”

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Marten was back in a few minutes with the other talismans. “We may be having company,” he said. “I heard a vehicle overhead. Couldn’t tell if it was an aircraft or spacecraft, I only caught a glimpse through a break in the skyweed. That’s getting thicker by the way, Jackie.”

  “Great. Anyway if they’re coming here it will take them a while,” Jackie said. “There isn’t enough space in the clearing where I parked Sophie for another ship to land. Or aircraft.”

  “Sounds like a good reason not to dally, though,” said Carson. “Marten, let’s give a different talisman a try. The Chara one, we know it worked there.”

  Whatever had been the problem with the Delta Pavonis talisman, it didn’t affect this one. When Marten, again perched on Carson’s shoulders, put the Chara talisman into place, there was a click and a hum, and a section of the passage wall, not the ceiling, slid open. Revealed behind it was a vertical passageway leading upwards, with a ladder attached to the wall.

  “Well,” Marten said, “that’s different.”

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  The upper chamber was devoid of the wall-engravings they’d seen in the lower chambers, and in the Chara pyramid. It was also devoid of pretty much anything else.

  “It’s been cleaned out,” said Carson as he shone a light around the room. A slab-like table stood against the wall opposite the hole in the floor where they’d entered, with a pair of lower platforms on either side of it. The latter were positioned as though they might be simple rectangular bench seats, but he didn’t want to make any assumptions.

  “Whatever they took was too big to move down the ladder shaft,” Marten said. “Look, they blasted a hole in the wall.” He pointed his light to a side wall which showed a ragged hole, now choked with rubble, about ten feet in diameter.

  “We didn’t se
e any sign of that from outside,” said Jackie.

  Carson shook his head. “That’s the north wall. We came around the south side. I wonder what it was.”

  Jackie had been looking over the table. “Whatever it was, it had power connections.”

  “What?” There’d been nothing externally powered in the Chara pyramid, the disintegrator had been self-contained and the lighting, as in the gallery below, was built into the walls. Carson examined the table where Jackie pointed. He saw a hole about five centimeters in diameter in the surface, which appeared to line up with the vertical slab supporting the left side. He peered into the hole and could make out the apparently-sheared end of a cable, with several conductors glinting in the beam of his flashlight. “Do you suppose there’s still power?”

  “It wouldn’t have been very bright to cut the cable if it were live, but I can check.” Jackie pulled out her omni and touched a sequence on it. “Multimeter,” she said by way of explanation. “I have better back on the ship, but this should do.” She held her omni over the hole, then made a few gestures on its screen and extruded a pair of rods from the omni which she gingerly lowered into the hole, touching the metallic ends of the cable.

  “Nothing,” she said, straightening up and reconfiguring her omni. “Of course the far end might be smart enough not to supply power without a proper handshake.”

  “You sure it was power and not signal?”

  “It could have been both, but I can’t imagine using conductors that thick for just signal. Or conductors at all; they could have used fiber.”

  Carson considered that and flipped out his own omni. One argument against fiber was that over time, radiation could darken it, although it would take a lot of radiation or a lot of time. A check confirmed that radiation levels here were, if anything, lower than outside. Although Delta Pavonis was an older system, the rocks still held more natural radioactivity than was typical of Earth. So conductors probably did mean power, then.

  “So, I wonder what it was.”

  “Hannibal, I was thinking,” said Marten. “Remember on Chara III, the vehicle we saw just after Hopkins’ ship crashed?”