Jack Mcdeviit - Deepsix (v1)

by Emily

  "This is our second day."

  "Do we know anything at all about the natives, the creatures, who built it? Other than the blowguns?"

  Hutchins told him what they had learned: The natives were of course preindustrial, fought organized wars, and had a form of writing. She offered to take him to the top of the tower. "Tell me what's up there, and I'll decide," he said.

  She described the chamber and the levered ceiling which apparently had opened up. And she added their idea that the natives might have owned a telescope.

  "Optics?" he said. "That doesn't seem to fit with blowguns."

  "That's our feeling. I hope we'll get some answers during the course of the day."

  MacAllister saw no point making the climb. Instead they descended into the lower chambers, and Hutchins showed him a fireplace and some chair fragments.

  Near the bottom of the tower they looked into a tunnel. "This is where we're working now," she said.

  The tunnel was too small to accommodate him. Even had it not been, he would have stayed out of it. "So what's back there?" he asked.

  "It's where we found the blowguns. It looks as if there was an armory. But what we're really interested in is finding writing samples and maybe some engraved pictures. Or possibly sculpture. Something that'll tell us what they looked like. We'd like to answer your question, Mr. MacAllister."

  "Of course." MacAllister looked around at the blank walls. "We must have some idea of their appearance. For example, surely the staircase is designed for a bipedal creature?"

  "Surely," she said. "We're pretty sure they had four limbs. Walked upright. That's about the extent of what we know."

  "When do you expect to be able to determine the age of this place?"

  "After we get some of the pieces back to a lab. Until then everything is guesswork."

  Wetheral was still standing by the chair fragments, trying to catch Hutchins's attention. "Yes?" she said.

  "May I ask whether you're finished with these?"

  "Yes," she said. "We've already stowed a complete armchair in the lander."

  "Good." He looked pleased. "Thank you." And while she watched, clearly surprised, he gathered the fragments, a beam, and a piece of material that might once have been drapery. And he carried everything up the staircase.

  "The ship hopes to salvage a few pieces," MacAllister explained. His back was beginning to hurt from all the bending. "Anything that might interest the more historically minded passengers."

  She showed no reaction. "I can't see that it'll do any harm." "Thank you," said MacAllister. "And if there's nothing we missed"—he turned to Casey—"this might be a good time to go outside and, if the weather will allow, do our interview."

  VIII

  The results of archeologcal enterprise at home are predictable within a set of parameters, because we know the general course of history. Its off-world cousin is a different breed of cat altogether. Anybody who's going to dig up furniture on Sinus II or Rigel XVII better leave his assumptions at the door.

  —Gregory MacAllister, "Sites and Sounds," The Grand Tour

  It was the first time in his adult life that Nightingale had seriously considered assaulting someone. That he had resisted the impulse, that he had not taken a swing at the smirking, self-satisfied son of a bitch, was a result not of Hutch's restraining hand or of any reluctance over attacking somebody considerably more than twice his size. It had been rather his sense of the impropriety of violence that had shut him down.

  Nightingale had grown up with a code. One did not make a scene. One retained dignity under all circumstances. If an opponent was to be attacked, it was done with a smile and a cutting phrase. Unfortunately, he hadn't been able to come up with the cutting phrase.

  Now, working in the tunnel with Toni and Chiang, he was embarrassed by his outburst. He had not gotten it right had not come dose to getting it right. But he had, by God, confronted MacAllister, and that at least had relieved part of the burden he'd been carrying all these years.

  MacAllister had written an account of the original expedition, titled "Straight and Narrow," as the lead editorial for Premier. It had appeared shortly after Nightingale's return, when the investigation was still going on, and it had laid the blame for failure at his door, had charged him with mismanaging the landings, and had concluded by branding him as a helpless coward because he'd fainted after being wounded. The article in fact made light of his wounds. "Scratches," MacAllister had remonstrated, as though he'd been there.

  It had branded him publicly and, in his view, had caused the examining board to render a verdict against him, and to shut down plans for future expeditions. We need to put Maleiva III behind us, one of the commissioner's reps had told him after the commissioner herself had cut off all contact. Didn't want to be seen with him.

  "Straight and Narrow" had appeared again, six years ago, in a collection of MacAllister's memoirs. A fresh attack. And the man had pretended not to know him.

  "You okay?" asked Chiang.

  They were working to clear the chamber where they'd found the blowguns, the area they now called the armory. But he realized he had stopped in the middle of the effort and was staring off somewhere. "Yeah," he said. "I'm fine."

  Toni and Chiang were both watching him. They'd asked on the way down what had caused his outburst, and he'd put them off. How could he possibly tell them? But it galled him that MacAllister, glib, irresponsible, that judge of all mankind, had been within reach, and that he had been impotent. What a pathetic creature he must have appeared.

  John Drummond had made his reputation within a year of receiving his doctorate by devising the equations named for him, which had provided a major step forward in understanding galactic evolution. But he'd done nothing of note during the decade that had passed since that time. Now, at thirty-five, he was approaching the age at which he could be expected to begin tottering. Physicists and mathematicians traditionally make their mark early on. Genius is limited to the very young.

  He'd adjusted to the realities, and had been prepared to spend the balance of his career on the periphery, criticizing the results of his betters. His reputation was secure, and even if he did nothing else notable, he still had the satisfaction of knowing that, during his early twenties, he'd outpaced damned near everybody else on the planet.

  Despite that sense of his own contributions, he could not help feeling overawed in the presence of people like Beekman and al-Kabhar, who were known and respected everywhere they went. Drum-mond inevitably detected a note of condescension in his treatment by his peers. He suspected they perceived him as someone who, in the end, had to be regarded as a disappointment, who had not quite lived up to the promise of the early years.

  He had consequently become somewhat defensive. His profession had passed him by, and he suspected that his selection to join the Deepsix mission had been a political choice. He had been simply too big a name to leave off the invitation list. It would have been better, he sometimes thought, to have been a mediocrity from the start, to have been perceived as a man of limited promise, than to have raised such hopes in others and in himself, and gone on to disappoint them all.

  Like Chiang, he was also attracted to Kellie Collier, although he'd never made any sort of advance. He drank coffee with her when the opportunity permitted, spent what time with her that he could. But he feared rejection, and he detected in her manner that she would not take him seriously as a desirable male.

  He was not entirely surprised when Beekman invited him into his office to ask whether he wanted to join the team that would inspect the artifact they'd found orbiting Maleiva HI. It was an offer most of his colleagues would have coveted, and his reputation may have left the project director with little choice. But Drummond wasn't anxious to embrace the honor, because it seemed to mean he would have to leave the ship. And the idea of going outside frankly scared him.

  "That's very good of you, Gunther." He loved using the great man's first name.

  "Think nothing
of it. You deserve the honor."

  "But the others—"

  "—will understand. You've earned this assignment, John. Congratulations."

  Drummond was thinking about the void.

  "You do want to participate, don't you?"

  "Yes. Of course I do. I just thought that the more senior members should have the privilege." His heart had begun to pound. He knew spacewalking was supposed to be simple. You just wore air tanks and a belt and magnetic shoes. And comfortable clothing. They emphasized comfortable clothing. He didn't like heights, but everything he'd read about work in the vacuum indicated that wasn't a problem either.

  Before the offer had come, before he'd thought it out, he'd made the mistake of telling several of his colleagues how he'd like to cross to the assembly, to touch it and walk on it. He knew that if he refused the offer, no matter what reason he gave, it would get out.

  "Do you know how to use a cutter?" Beekman asked.

  "Of course." Punch the stud and don't point it at your foot.

  "Okay. Good. We'll be leaving in two hours. Meet in front of the cargo bay airlock. On C Deck."

  "Gunther," he said, "I've never worn an e-suit."

  "Neither have I." Beekman laughed. "I suspect we'll be learning together." Then, abruptly, the conversation was over. The office door opened. Beekman had picked up a pen. "Oh, by the way," he said without looking up, "the captain says if you want to eat, you should do it now, and keep it light. Best not to have a fresh meal in your stomach when we go out."

  Drummond closed his eyes and wondered whether he could get away with claiming to be ill.

  Marcel regretted having allowed Kellie to travel down to the surface. Had she been available, she would have accompanied the inspection team over to the assembly, and he could have held himself in reserve for an emergency. Or for a less arduous afternoon.

  He didn't like taking Beekman's people outside. None of them had ever before gone through an airlock in flight. There was in fact little that could go wrong. The Flickinger field was quite safe. But it still made him uncomfortable.

  At Beekman's request, Marcel had brought Wendy to the Maleiva HI end of the assembly, the section most distant from the asteroid and closest to the planet. There, they could see quite clearly that it had been detached from a larger construct. The terminal ends of the shafts had latches and connectors.

  He matched course, speed, and alignment so they maintained a constant relative position. That was crucial, not only because having the airlock within a couple of meters of the assembly was convenient, but because the sight of the two objects moving in relation to one another would almost certainly sicken his embryo spacewalkers. The only problem was that the two globes currently in the sky, Deepsix and the sun, would be in apparent motion. Enough to make you dizzy if you weren't used to it.

  "Don't look at them," he advised his team. "You've got a bona fide alien artifact out there, unlike anything we've ever seen before. Concentrate on that."

  Beekman had chosen two people, a man and a woman, to go out with him. Both were young, and both were celebrated members of his science team. The woman, Carla Stepan, had done some pioneering work in light propagation. Appropriate, Marcel thought. She was herself a luminous creature.

  Drummond's reputation was known to all. But the man himself was something of a mystery. Quiet, reserved, a bit bashful. An odd choice, the captain thought.

  He demonstrated how to use the e-suit. The Flickinger field had several advantages over the pressure suits of the previous century, principal among them being that it couldn't be punctured.

  But someone could get so caught up in the drama of the moment that he accidentally released his tether. And the field itself wasn't entirely foolproof. It was possible with a little imagination to screw up the antiradiation shielding and fry. Or make adjustments to the oxygen-nitrogen mix and thereby render oneself incompetent or maybe dead. Consequently, Marcel insisted they were all to keep their fingers off the control unit once it had been set.

  Marcel had suggested to Beekman that he, Beekman, not go. The planetologist had told him he worried too much.

  Theoretically, his medical record was fine, or he wouldn't be on board. But he never really looked well. His pale complexion might have been emphasized by the black beard. But he seemed to get out of breath easily, he wheezed occasionally, and the slightest exertion brought color to his cheeks. Marcel had the authority to prevent his going, but this was Gunther's show, and the captain couldn't bring himself to deny the man an experience that promised to be the supreme moment of his professional career.

  "Everybody ready?" Marcel asked. They were all standing by the airlock, Beekman and Carla obviously anxious to get started, John Drummond looking reluctant. He checked their breathers and activated their suits. Carla had some experience with cutters, so he'd assigned one to her, and he took one himself. They strapped on wristlamps. He handed out vests and waited while they put them on.

  Each vest was equipped with a springlock so that a tether could be connected.

  Marcel also strapped on a go-pack.

  They did a radio check and went into the airlock. Marcel initiated the cycle. The inner hatch closed, and the lock began to depressurize. Beekman and Carla seemed fine. But Drummond began breathing more deeply than normal.

  "Relax, John," Marcel told him on a private channel. "There's nothing to this."

  "It might be the wrong time to bring this up," Drummond said, "but I have this thing about heights."

  "Everybody has a thing about heights. Don't worry about it. I know this is hard to believe, but you won't notice it at all."

  Carla saw what was happening and flashed an encouraging smile. She spoke to Drummond, but Marcel couldn't hear what she said. Drummond nodded and looked better. Not much, but a little.

  The go lamps went on, and the outer hatch irised open. They looked across a couple of meters of empty space at the cluster of parallel shafts. They were lunar gray, gritty, occasionally pocked. As thick individually, thought Marcel, as an elephant's leg. From the perspective of the airlock, they might have been fifteen entirely separate pipes, water pipes perhaps, coming to an abrupt end a few meters to their right; but on the left they stretched into infinity. And somehow they were perfectly equidistant, apparently separated and maintained by an invisible force.

  "Incredible," said Drummond, leaning forward slightly and looking both ways.

  There were no markings, no decoration, no bolts or sheaths or ridges. Simply fifteen tubes, arranged symmetrically, eight on the outer perimeter, six midway, and the single central shaft.

  Marcel attached a flex tether to a clip on the hull and motioned the project director forward. "All yours, Gunther," he said.

  Beekman advanced to the hatch, never taking his eyes off the long gray shafts. He put his head out and drew in his breath. "My God," he said.

  Marcel clipped the tether to his vest. "It'll pay out as you go, or retract as you need."

  "How long is it?"

  "Twenty meters."

  "I meant, to the brace."

  There were braces along the entire length of the assembly. The nearest was— "Almost fifty kilometers away."

  Beekman shook his head. "If someone else had reported such a thing," he said, "I would have refused to believe it." He put his feet on the outer lip of the airlock. "I think I'm ready."

  "Okay. Be careful. When I tell you, just push off. Don't try to jump, or I'll have to come after you." Marcel looked back at the others. "If anybody does contrive to drift away, I'll take care of the rescue. In the meantime, everyone else is to stay put. Okay?"

  Okay.

  "Go," he told Beekman.

  Beekman hunched his shoulders. He was wearing a pair of white slacks and a green sweatshirt with the name of his university, Berlin, stenciled on it. He looked, Marcel thought, appropriately dashing. And quite happy. Ecstatic, in fact.

  He leaned forward, gave himself a slight push, and cried out in sheer joy as he launche
d. They watched him drift awkwardly across the narrow space, one leg straight, one bent at the knee, rather like a runner caught in midstride.

  Marcel stood in the hatch, letting the tether slide across his palm until he was sure Beekman wasn't traveling too fast. The project director reached out for the nearest shaft, collided with it, wrapped his arms around it, and shouted something in German. "Marcel," he continued, "I owe you a dinner."

  "I want it in writing," Marcel said.

  Beekman loosened his grip, found another shaft for his feet, settled down, and waved.

  Carla moved up to take her turn.

  Beekman and his team clambered around on the assembly while Marcel stood guard. Carla took pictures and Drummond collected sensor readings. Beekman was talking, describing what he was seeing, and taking various gauges and sensors out of his vest to answer questions for the people inside. Yes, it was magnetic. No, it did not seem to vibrate when low-frequency sound waves were applied.

  Carla produced the cutter and conferred with Beekman. Marcel couldn't overhear the conversation, but they were obviously looking for the right place from which to remove a sample. The surface had

  no features. The only distinguishing marks that they'd been able to see, either from the scanners or up close, were the encircling bands. And none of those was visible from here.

  They made up their minds, and Carla steadied herself, took aim at one of the shafts, and brought the laser to bear.

  "Careful," Marcel advised her. The field wouldn't protect her if she made a mistake.

  "I will be," she said.

  She switched on the cutter, the beam flashed, and the view fields in all four suits darkened.

  She began to work. They were going to take off the last two meters of one of the outside shafts.

  Drummond had put his instruments away and was simply holding on. He appeared to be examining the assembly very carefully, keeping his eyes away from the void. Marcel left the airlock, went over, and joined him. "How you doing?" he asked privately.

  "I guess I'm a little wobbly."