There was no sign of the building, but something appeared to be suspended in the air approximately three kilometres away. Hendry peered, then remembered the magnification and adjusted the screen. The image expanded, and Hendry sat back and whistled.
A long grey filament or column rose vertically into the air, arcing in a graceful parabola and disappearing from sight high above.
He got through to Olembe. “Any ideas?”
“Beats me,” Olembe replied. “It’s some feat of engineering, whatever it is.”
Hendry returned the screen to normal view and the filament dwindled. Kaluchek accelerated, drawing alongside Olembe and Carrelli. Ahead, the building from which the column rose was coming into view, at first a dark irregularity on the horizon, but growing rapidly as they approached.
It was vast. Hendry had not known what to expect, going by the blurred aerial shots Carrelli had produced—but it was not this awesome edifice.
It was a ziggurat, a series of ever-smaller blocks set atop each other and rising hundreds of metres into the air. At its summit, a complicated construction—which looked at this distance to be a baroque metal framework—anchored the end of the filament to the uppermost block.
Hendry tried to crane his neck in order to chart the filament’s destination, but it dwindled to a vanishing point long before it reached the tier above—if it ever did so.
The first truck pulled ahead and raced down a kind of approach boulevard demarcated by a series of regularly placed blocks to right and left. Kaluchek followed, and a minute later they drew into the shadow of the ziggurat, the trucks made insignificant by comparison to the base block of the construction, like beetles at the foot of a pyramid. They drew alongside Olembe’s truck and cut the engine.
They had halted before what appeared to be the ziggurat’s entrance. A long, recessed slab of what Hendry thought might be brass, set into the metal from which the ziggurat was constructed. Even at this distance he could make out rococo scrollwork etched into the door panels. The whole effect, he thought, was eerily alien.
He glanced across at Olembe, who signalled ahead and started the engine. Kaluchek followed at a crawl and approached the looming entrance.
The trucks halted again, side by side. Hendry pulled on his faceplate, upped the temperature control of his atmosphere suit and swung himself down from the cab. Olembe and Carrelli were already standing before the imposing doorway, looking up. Hendry followed their gaze. Overhead, the filament whipped vertiginously into the sky. He became aware of the cold wind, whining around the ziggurat.
Kaluchek joined them. “What I don’t understand,” she said, “is why we didn’t see the filament in the aerial pix. I mean, it would have been big enough to be visible.”
Olembe looked at her. “Perhaps we didn’t see it because it wasn’t there.”
“What the hell do you mean by that?”
“Think about it, Sis.”
“I am thinking,” she snapped, “but it still doesn’t make sense.”
Hendry said, “You mean, it connected since the shot was taken?”
Olembe nodded and pointed at Hendry. “That’s what I mean, Joe.”
Carrelli was inspecting the carved fascia of the vast doorway. “Here. There’s a viewplate.”
They hurried over to her, standing on tiptoe and pressing their faces into the misted transparency of a horizontal viewplate. Hendry made out a great hallway, diminishing in perspective, its walls sloping to form a wide aisle at the end of which stood a tall oval plate the same bronze shade as the doorway.
Carrelli was already searching for some means of entry. Olembe joined her, scanning the pillars that stood on either side of the doorway.
Beside him, Kaluchek whispered, “What the hell is it, Joe?”
He shook his head. He had a wild idea, but he didn’t want to raise her hopes.
He was returning to the truck for his softscreen, intending to record images of the ziggurat to its memory, when he stopped and stared out over the plain of ice they had crossed just minutes before.
“Friday!” he yelled.
The African came running. “Great,” he said, following Hendry’s gaze. He turned to Carrelli and Kaluchek. “If you can find a way inside, girls, and pretty damned quick, I’d appreciate it.”
Hendry found himself raising his laser at the phalanx of extraterrestrials approaching across the ice. They were perhaps half a kilometre away, fleeting silver forms coruscating in the sunlight as they advanced like a plague of silver-grey, upright locusts. There could be no doubt, he thought, that they were heading for the ziggurat.
“I estimate we have three, maybe four minutes,” Olembe said.
Hendry glanced back at the doorway. The women were frantically searching the portal for a means of entry.
“You think we’ll be safe in the trucks?”
Olembe glanced at him. “You saw what the fucker did to Lisa. What do you think?”
The aliens were closer now. Hendry could make out individual blades, glinting as they came.
“Carrelli! What gives?” Olembe yelled. He hoisted his rifle and levelled it at the approaching horde.
Hendry glanced over his shoulder. Carrelli and Kaluchek were standing beside the doorway, slapping a series of engraved panels. As he watched, Kaluchek made a stirrup with her hands and Carrelli stepped into it, reaching up the side of the pillar to slap a high panel.
A sound from the ice plains made him turn. The aliens were much closer, and perhaps more disturbing than the sight of them was the sound that accompanied their advance: the thin high keening of chitinous blades and pincers, as if stropping each other in anticipation of the imminent slaughter.
“Joe!” Kaluchek called, and when Hendry spun round he saw, with a kick of joy, that the doorway was sliding slowly open.
Olembe was already in the truck. “Get up here!” he yelled.
Hendry dived into the cab and Olembe revved the engine, speeding towards the gap created by the slowly sliding panel. Hendry thought they were sure to scrape the sides as they sped through. They made it with centimetres to spare.
The women were already inside, inspecting the pillars for the device that might close the doors behind them. Hendry screwed around in his seat. The aliens had reached the far end of the approach avenue and were swarming up it, silver pincers semaphoring a fair imitation of hostility.
The first alien was ten metres from the doorway when the thick bronze slab began, with grinding slowness, to roll shut.
Seconds later, with the creature a metre away, the gap narrowed to nothing.
Kaluchek rushed to the door panel and peered through the viewscreen. “Take a look at this, Joe.”
He joined her. The remaining truck was surrounded by a hundred skittering aliens, hacking into its coachwork with claws and pincers. Perhaps a minute after the attack began, the truck was a skeletal framework and the area around it strewn with a mess of wiring and sectioned panels.
An alien turned. Hendry made out waving eye-stalks beneath a bony ridge like an ossified mushroom cup. In the blink of an eye the thing sprang, covering the distance between the truck and the viewplate in a fraction of a second. It hit the door with a thud, followed by a raging rattle of chitinous pincers. Its eye-stalks waved dementedly, peering at them through the viewplate.
Hendry backed off, sweating, and looked in sudden alarm for the others. Olembe and Carrelli were slowly walking along the length of the chamber, approaching the tall oval plate at the far end, like supplicants in a cathedral.
He turned to the viewplate. The sound from outside was growing louder, a frantic scrabbling and scraping as more aliens joined the first and sought to force their way inside.
“Oh, Christ. Let’s just hope the doors hold,” Kaluchek said. He took her arm and they hurried up the aisle towards Olembe and Carrelli.
“Our friends still trying to get intimate?” Olembe asked.
“Christ knows how long that thing’ll hold,” Hendry said.
Hendry gazed up at the portal set into the stonework. The bronze oval was perhaps ten metres tall, with a pattern of arabesques decorating its surface.
“Maybe,” he found himself saying, “it’s the entrance to some kind of transporter.” He wondered if he was making wild assumptions again. “That’s why the filament wasn’t in the aerial image: it connects briefly when the station on the facing tier is geo-synchronous.”
Olembe said, “You’re reading my mind, Joe. Question is, how brief is briefly? My guess is very brief. Presuming this thing’s connected to the world at the other end, and both worlds are turning, then the period of connection can’t be that long. I reckon we don’t have much time before disconnection.”
Carrelli said, “Then it would be another day— however long a day is on this world—before it reconnects.”
Olembe smiled. “And I don’t want to spend a day locked in this place with those critters baying for our blood.”
Carrelli stepped forward, almost hesitantly, and laid a palm on a patterned section of portal. Instantly the oval panel began to slide open, surprising Carrelli who stepped back with a gasp.
“How the hell did you do that?” Olembe said.
Carrelli shook her head. “That symbol,” she said, pointing to a vaguely fish-shaped hieroglyph. “It was similar to the one that opened the outer door.”
They stared into the revealed chamber, awed and silent. Hendry made out a vast space, dimly lit.
At last Olembe said, “Okay, get the truck.”
Hendry hurried back to the truck with Kaluchek and hauled himself aboard. Outside, the aliens were still scraping at the doorway. He glanced at the viewplate, and wished he hadn’t. Frantic claws had excavated a deep gouge in the material.
Kaluchek revved the engine and steered towards the chamber. She braked before the entrance while Olembe and Carrelli climbed aboard.
They stared into the chamber.
“Okay, let’s do it,” Olembe said at last.
She started up the truck. It rolled slowly forward, crossing the threshold. A second later the portal eased shut behind them and Kaluchek cut the engine. All was silent for a second or two, and then Hendry became aware of a faint but definite vibration, as if the vehicle was still in motion.
Olembe opened the door and swung from the cab, climbing down onto the deck and laughing. “We’re going up,” he said.
Hendry joined him, followed by the others. He stood very still, feeling the vibration that ran through the soles of his feet and up his legs. At the same time, his stomach seemed to be floating. He recalled the sensation from elevators back home, but found it hard to believe that he was really riding some kind of transportation system between the tiers.
“The air’s breathable in here,” Olembe said, looking up from his softscreen.
Hendry pulled off his faceplate, breathing in warm air tinged with a sharp, metallic note. He moved to the edge of the floor, where scrollwork tiles segued seamlessly into an identically patterned wall. The chamber was oval, like the inside of an egg, one with the colour and design of the ziggurat’s interior panelling.
He reached out and touched the warm metal, and felt a distinct thrumming beneath his fingertips.
Kaluchek said, “Do you think the same beings built the elevator and the helix?”
“It’d make sense,” Olembe said, “to have a transport system between the tiers. The alternative would be some form of space flight, which might be costly, or else it’s the long haul up the spiral.”
“There was no sign down there of the beings who built this,” Hendry said. “Unless those aliens are the devolved ancestors of the original builders.”
“What a terrible thought.” Kaluchek shivered.
“The builders must exist somewhere,” Carrelli said, smiling at the notion. “I imagine them as an incredibly ancient, wise race. Anyone who had the capability of constructing the helix must have been around for a long, long time.”
“How romantic,” Olembe said. “And what if your wise ones turned out to be ichor-dripping fascist lizards?”
Carrelli chose to ignore him. They returned to the truck and shared out the rations.
As they ate, Carrelli said, “I’ve been thinking. This can’t be the only elevator on the helix. There must be others, no?”
“Don’t see why not,” Olembe grunted.
“So maybe there will be a series of elevators, connecting each tier of the spiral at certain intervals.”
Hendry said, “Well, that’d make the task of finding a habitable world a little easier.”
“If you’re right, Gina,” Kaluchek said, “then we might find somewhere in a matter of days. Imagine the reaction of the colonists when we wake them with the good news.”
Olembe pointed at her. “Always assuming, Sis, that the worlds we find aren’t already inhabited.”
Hendry was considering this when the chamber seemed to bob. He rocked in his seat, his stomach flipping. The sensation was as if he’d been spun quickly head-over-heels and returned to his original position.
Kaluchek said, “Midpoint, right? We turned in the tube, and now we’re heading down to the next tier, the one above the first?”
Carrelli looked up from her sectioned plate and nodded. “My guess too, Sissy. We should be reaching the next tier in about ninety minutes.”
They wondered aloud at what they might find on the next tier, and whether it might be warmer than the last, and habitable—or inhabited.
Hendry imagined finding some temperate, habitable and vacant world, and then returning to the Lovelock and leading the colonists, via the filament, to their destination. Surely the colonisation of the helix would not prove to be that simple?
Or perhaps they had experienced the worst of the mission so far, and the rest would be plain sailing.
He climbed from the cab. He wanted to be on the deck when they touched down, not confined in the truck. He crossed to the wall and touched the scrolled patterning of the bronze tiles, wondering if the design was merely aesthetic or possessed some inherent meaning. Lost in thought, he moved slowly around the chamber.
He recalled the last time he had seen Chrissie, at the starship graveyard in Melbourne. They had held each other as they said goodbye. She had been so real in his arms, so solid and vital—and if he closed his eyes he could feel her again.
Kaluchek said, “You’re miles away.”
He opened his eyes. “I was thinking... weeks ago, subjectively, I was facing a future on Earth without Chrissie.” The instant he said it, he wished he hadn’t. It had sounded so self-piteous.
She looked at him. “Joe, I’m sorry...”
They were silent for a time, staring at the curlicues and whorls that adorned the tiles. Kaluchek glanced back at the truck.
Hendry said, “Why the downer on Friday, Sissy? You said—”
She wrinkled her nose. “Because the guy’s a shit,” she said.
He shrugged. “He seems to have done a decent job so far, taking charge and all.”
She looked at him. “I know you’re going through hell with what happened back there, but don’t let it blind you to what Olembe’s doing.”
“He’s doing his best to lead us to safety.” He hesitated, then said, “Back in the truck, you said something about Olembe’s past.”
“Yeah...” Unexpectedly, she took his hand and said, “Joe, listen—back in Berne, while I had some free time, I did some research on the folks I’d be living with for God knew how long.”
“And?”
She asked, “What did he tell you about himself?”
“Not much, just that he had a wife, kids.”
“He didn’t tell you what he did for a living?”
“I assumed he was a nuclear engineer.”
“He was. He worked at the big N’gombe plant near Abuja. But
before that he was a colonel in the West African Army.”
Hendry shook his head, at a loss to see where this was leading. “So?”
“He was in charge of the unit that took five hundred hostages in the war with Morocco six years ago. Five hundred men, women and children. They were held for ransom. The WEA wanted a mass release of its prisoners from jails in Rabat and Casablanca. They threatened to kill the hostages— women and children first.”
Hendry looked back at the truck. Olembe and Carrelli were in the cab, sitting side by side without speaking.
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