"But sir, with all due respect, is it worth endangering the mission, Babylon 5, and all those on-station in order to send a message?"
"No, it's not. And that's why I expect your crew to be in exemplary form before I have to send you out. So get to work, Captain."
John let out a breath.
"Yes, sir."
The general terminated the communication. It was time to show Earthforce that their faith in him wasn't misplaced. Hundreds of thousands of lives depended on it. As John stumbled into the vibe shower, the memory of his dream returned. It was past midnight now; their anniversary was over. John felt horrible that he hadn't had the chance to see Anna, or even call her. She loved going on digs, but he'd gotten the impression from their talks over the last few months that she needed a break from IPX, and he feared she'd only gone on the expedition out of loneliness. Now another six months would slip away from them.
He'd let so many days of drilling, inspections, and battle simulations go by without making the time to contact her. Then when he'd finally sat down to do it, he'd realized he didn't even know where she was. He'd tried her apartment in Geneva, getting a prerecorded message explaining she was on a dig. Finally, last night, he'd looked through the expedition specs she'd sent him and discovered that she was shipping out from Station Prime, not Earth as he'd assumed. And she'd shipped out yesterday. She'd probably been staying at the Imperial Hotel all this time, wai ting to hear back from him. He'd tried to contact her on the ship, only to be routed to IPX headquarters in Geneva, where they informed him all personal messages had to be prerecorded and cleared.
He'd be damned if he was going to let some IPX flunky listen to his private communication. So the anniversary had come and gone, Anna's ship slipping away from his, gliding out into the vacuum of space.
CHAPTER 8
DR. Chang climbed out of the probe control module.
"It's all yours," he said to Anna.
"Just make sure you don't get a scratch on it."
Anna smiled.
"Thanks, Dad."
She stooped to climb through the small hatchway, and Chang closed the door behind her. The control module was self-contained so that it could be moved from ship to ship or to various IPX office buildings. It was designed, she supposed, to take up the least amount of space on a ship. But that didn't stop her from believing that whoever had designed this thing had been a sadist. One small hatchway provided the only opening. Once inside, she could not straighten up. She had to squeeze into the control chair-how she could have done it if she were Churlstein's size she didn't know-then fit her legs into the two hollows nearly straight in front of her and bend her arms up at an awkward angle to reach the keypad and other controls.
Once she was in contact with the probe, she had to put on a helmet to get the full holographic visual the probe was transmitting, and when she wanted to use any of the tester arms, she had to wriggle her hands into the thick moisture-retentive gloves whose movement controlled them. Once she was controlling the probe, caught up in its movements and perceptions, the claustrophobia faded away. But before and after, her skin crawled with the closeness of the module.
She noticed that Chang hadn't bothered to close down his session, so she could just operate the probe under his access code. She fitted on the snug helmet, found herself in the landscape she'd been observing down in the conference room with the rest of the team, jagged, harsh, the dust and the distance of the sun making the light appear dusky, even in the midday. The lights on the probe gave her a visibility of perhaps fifty to seventy feet. She and the rest of the team had observed as Chang ran the probe through its paces, making sure all the manual systems were operational and getting a sense for the slight time delay remaining between the issuing of an order and the executing of it. He'd run a few new tests on the egg, then turned the probe over to her.
"Plot a course to cave 3A, sector 3," Anna ordered the probe.
A visual of the projected course appeared below the landscape. The probe had discovered the first cave almost a week ago, and since then several others had turned up in the black igneous rock that made up the more mountainous areas of the landscape. The extent of the caves was still unclear. They seemed natural elements of the landscape; no evidence of artificial alterations or improvements had been discovered so far.
Cave 3A was the largest cave they'd found so far, in a rocky outcropping near the foothills of one of the smaller mountain ranges. Her instinct told her the caves were important. In general, caves provided less disturbed, better preserved artifacts-if they had been occupied, that was. With advanced civilizations like this one, it was unlikely this cave had been occupied for thousands and thousands of years, unless by animals.
Yet Anna had noticed an odd lack of organic remains or personal possessions among the stone blocks that had made up some of the major structures of this civilization. If these buildings had been destroyed in a war, skeletons and possessions should have been among the ruins. Archaeologists loved catastrophic destruction, since it often left a perfect record of a moment frozen in time, the moment at which the civilization had been destroyed. Pompeii was the classic example.
Admittedly, some artifacts would not have lasted as long as the stone, and some may have been buried in the deposits of sand and dust, but the dry atmosphere should have worked to desiccate and preserve remains. The probe had found nothing. The lack of organic remains and personal possessions could be explained if the residents had outlived the buildings. But then where had they moved? Anna wondered if it might have been to the caves.
"Time to destination," she requested.
"Twenty-four minutes," the probe responded.
The cave was only a little over a mile away, but the probe had to move slowly over the rocky terrain or risk serious damage.
"Execute," Anna said.
As the probe moved ahead, the holographic display showed the rocks moving behind her, new landscape coming into view. The illusion of movement always made her feel like a ghost floating over the landscape. It was a lonely, vulnerable feeing. Anna's choice of destination sparked a lot of speculation from the team, who were watching the probe's readouts from the conference room and conversing with Anna though a corn link into the module. Donne's tight voice came through the link.
"Why aren't you investigating the egg?"
Anna could visualize her clenched jaw.
"The probe has done several preliminary tests on the egg. The purpose of the probe is not to do in-depth testing-that's what we're for. It's for advance scouting work. We haven't gotten any data from the caves yet."
"The egg is an incredible find," Donne persisted.
Anna didn't know what had gotten into Donne's shorts, but she found herself losing patience. Hadn't Chang gotten down to the conference room yet, and couldn't he get her away from the link?
"Basic archaeological practice teaches that an initial, thorough examination of the site is the most effective way to prepare for an excavation."
"You're wasting valuable time and resources."
"Excuse me for saying so, Ms. Donne, but I think you've lost it."
* * *
There was silence from the link for several minutes after that, and Anna berated herself for losing her temper. Hardly professional behavior for the second in command. John would have loved to see this; she was always telling him to use more tact. As time passed, the other team members got on and off the link, speculating about whether she would find anything in the caves.
Within a few minutes Favorito had established odds and was taking bets. The team was excited about the results they might get now that they were close enough to manually control the probe, and there was a generally festive atmosphere.
Anna supposed Donne must have left the room. That morning they'd left the De Soto behind. After a series of jumps that had brought them as close to the rim as jump gates could, they'd rendezvoused a few days ago with the De Soto, an explorer ship that could form its own jump point. The Icarus had
hitched a ride with the De Soto, which had dropped them out of hyperspace as close to their destination as was convenient.
Although they had twenty days to go, with civilization behind them and nothing but open space between them and Alpha Omega 3, an atmosphere of expectation and excitement had begun to build. Anna was glad that the probe seemed fully operational. Probes never lasted long. They were not going to be the artifacts to survive the Twenty-third Century to be dug up by future archaeologists. They were finicky devices, intricate and prone to accidents in the hazardous landscapes they roamed.
While the body was a simple six-wheeled multiterrain vehicle, the technicians couldn't help adding bells and whistles until something was bound to break down. She and Chang had worried that the dust in the air might work its way into the probe's mechanisms, or that the rocky terrain might cause the vehicle to overturn. But so far all systems were in the green. The transmissions being sent by the probe were coming through fairly clearly today, with only occasional surges of static, the dust storms granting a rare reprieve. The probe sent its transmissions up to the orbiter that had accompanied it, which then relayed the signals to the Icarus. The orbiter was basically a jump engine with scanners and a series of probes attached to it.
When it found a planet that conformed to its preprogrammed guidelines, it sent down a probe and acted as a relay station for communications between the probe and Earth. The orbiter often recorded useful information of its own about the planet below, though in this case the constant dust storms prevented the orbiter from gathering much significant data. The orbiter was programmed to abandon the probe and move on after one month if no findings that satisfied its guidelines were reported by the probe. In this case, the findings had been plentiful, and the orbiter had been ordered by IPX to remain until further notice. Chang's voice interrupted her thoughts.
"How are you doing in there?"
"Fine. I hate it, but I'm fine."
Between the uncomfortable position and the claustrophobic surroundings, the module was suggested for use for only six hours at a time. Some people couldn't stand it for nearly that long.
"Tell Sheridan I bet ten credits against her," Razor called.
"Tell Razor I'm returning his Christmas present," Anna responded.
You'd think they'd been in space ten years instead of ten days.
"Destination acquired," the probe said.
In her helmet the image of the cave mouth waited, the probe's headlights sending the jagged edges of the rocks into high relief. The cave mouth opened like a dark scream. Anna looked down, the probe's cameras mirroring the tilt of her head. She examined the talus, the sloping mass of rock fragments outside the mouth of the cave. Often the talus revealed signs of habitation within the cave. Items such as bones, stones, or pottery were often thrown out of the cave or eroded out onto the talus. But she saw nothing except jagged black fragments of rock. The surface did seem smooth enough for the probe to proceed without difficulty. To cover uneven or mountainous terrain, a section of the probe with spider -like legs could detach, but Anna preferred not to use it. Just something else to go wrong.
"Ahead with caution," Anna ordered.
As the probe moved forward, the darkness of the cave enveloped her.
"Lights on high," Anna said.
The darkness around her lessened somewhat. She could see hints of cave walls, barely visible, to her sides. The lights of the probe seemed dulled, as if the rock absorbed rather than reflected them. The cave appeared perhaps twelve feet wide here.
"Safety lock engaged," the probe said, and its forward progress stopped.
An alarm began sounding inside the module.
"Communication endangered."
Inside the confined space, the alarm was enough to give her an instant migraine.
"Cause of danger," Anna said.
"Increased depth of rock causing contact failure."
"Reverse to safe distance."
Her ghost drifted back several feet; it was hard to say how much in the darkness. The alarm stopped.
"Maximum safe distance acquired."
"Shit," Anna said.
Not only was the dust causing communications interference; now the rock was too. Which made sense, since the dust was made up of particles of worn rock. But that didn't mean she had to like it.
"No cave-trolling for you, Sheridan," Razor's voice said over the link.
"We'll see about that," Anna muttered to herself.
If the probe went any deeper into the cave, it would lose touch with her and the orbiter. The safety lock had engaged to prevent that. Anna scanned the probe's position. It had stopped about ten yards into the cave. She decided to make full use of every inch of that ten yards. She'd run every scan in this tricked-up probe's menu. If there was something to find, she'd find it.
Sheeting joints and fractures ran through the walls of the cave. Cracks up to several inches wide painted a darker web against the darkness. When she got up close enough to see detail, she found the walls jagged and sharp with differential etching. The floor was covered with a mix of dark, sharp, ragged fragments and larger stones. Underneath, slabs of rock had been differentially lifted, creating a cracked, uneven surface almost like old rural roads broken by frost heaves back home.
She was no geologist, but all indications were that the caves had been formed through dissolution, when water or some other liquid worked its way into the rock and selectively dissolved those sections of the rock made up of a certain chemical, such as in the limestone caves back on Earth. That dissolution-of both tiny veins of the chemical and larger deposits- would account for the jagged, etched look to the walls, the fractures, and the caves themselves. What she wouldn't give for some sign of previous habitation right now. She ran through the menu of scanning options on her helmet viewer, thinking she'd tried every one likely to show something and even some that weren't.
"Run thermal scan," Anna directed.
"Time to pack it in, Sheridan," Razor said.
"I have a bet to collect on."
"Was that the one where you said you could find the Centauri lost colony?"
"Oh Sheridan, you're cruel."
"And you love it."
The results of the thermal scan came up, and Anna jumped, banging her helmet against the top of the module.
"There's a slight heat source..."
They could see it on their screen.
"A foot below the surface, beside the cave wall."
They were all quiet now, as she narrowed the scan and clarified the dimensions of the heat source. It occupied about a cubic foot. Normally she would have hesitated to dig even a foot below the surface with the probe. No digging should have been done until complete measurements and records had been made. And then the digging should have been done in person, one thin layer at a time, with painstaking care and attention to any changes in the makeup of the deposits. But if she didn't find anything of significance within the cave, Anna knew Chang wouldn't choose it as one of their two initial excavation sites. And they might not have the chance to get back to the caves at all.
Giving them four months to excavate an entire planetary culture was a joke, but then IPX wasn't interested in the whole culture. Only those pieces of it that might prove profitable. They had the mentality of treasure hunters -the enemies of every archaeologist. And Chang, though he would do his best to find out all he could about this culture, would run the dig according to IPX protocol.
Anna felt blindly in front of her, pulled on the thick gloves. She did the digging manually, a necessary precaution to preserve whatever was below. As she moved her arms, the probe's metal arms moved, the flat spatulate hand reaching down, scraping away a thin layer of rock fragments. The resistance of the rock against her hand registered as a dull pressure. It was an odd sensation, as if her body had been replaced by a machine body. She took care to record what she found at different depths, though the jagged fragments appeared fairly uniform.
Occasionally the shifting
rocks surrounding the hole ran down inside, contaminating her data, making her wince at the poor procedure. As time wore on, the betting began again, with the most money predicting she would uncover the largest and ugliest bug on the planet. When she had dug down to a depth of one foot, Anna realized the source was actually within the cave wall, rather than beside it. One of the larger rocks, when she moved it away, covered a cavity in the stone. The opening was barely six inches across, the size of the interior irregular and unclear.
She extended her left arm-now a camera/light combination-into the cavity, and as she switched to the new feed let out a whoop as she saw the husk-like objects within. Chang's voice came over the speaker.
"I always said you left no stone unturned."
A chorus of groans accompanied hers. She switched back to the main feed. Her right arm now a metallic claw, she reached into the hole. Even though it wasn't her hand, even though they were still twenty days away, she shivered as she reached out, feeling the darkness close around her. She retrieved each of the two cocoons fairly easily, and they were narrow enough to fit through the hole. She set them down on the cave floor, her heart pounding. The husks appeared in good condition. Perhaps the closed confines and the dry conditions had put them into a suspended state. The husks were similar enough in configuration to the mouse that these either were mice or were very closely related devices.
This confirmed that the mouse had indeed come from this culture. She ran a resonance scan. On the monitors, faint but steady, pulsed two heartbeats. A variety of exclamations sounded through the link, and then money began to change hands. Anna felt she'd been given a second chance. She could understand these devices, could learn how they were controlled, could learn who had created them and why. She'd go slower this time, be more careful.
Babylon 5 07 - The Shadow Within (Cavelos, Jeanne) Page 9