The Ninth Science Fiction Megapack

by Arthur C. Clarke

  He tapped his head—he couldn’t hear her or communicate with her. He had to be trying, just like she was.

  They both grabbed the sides of the passageway, just like she had before, feeling for something, anything, that would make the barrier rise again.

  Only she hadn’t pressed her hands flat against anything. She had grabbed the curve in the doorway, the wall itself, separating the passage from the cavern.

  She had activated something.

  And now she had to shut it off.

  She held up a finger, then swam back to the caverns they had explored before.

  The first cavern looked no different, except that there might have been more sediment floating in the water.

  She had to force herself to breathe slowly, to calm herself, so that she didn’t swim through the caverns and out.

  She swam back into the passageway, even though it made her cringe.

  Roye was still trying to figure out how to open the damn thing. He didn’t look panicked, not like she felt.

  But how could she tell? She could only see his eyes, through the clear part of his suit and even that was through this weird milky barrier.

  She resumed touching the sides as well. If only she could remember exactly where she had put her hand, she might be able to touch the edge of whatever it was.

  Her heart was racing and she was breathing too rapidly. Her suit would shut her down soon if she wasn’t careful. It would start regulating her air.

  She concentrated on touching the wall. One hand overlapping the other, moving slowly.

  Moving deliberately.

  Trying to find a way to get Roye out.

  28

  The sirens stopped. Meklos’s ears rang.

  He looked down. The light remained, the line glowing, the cavern glowing, and a smaller blackish silvery light threading out of the little area between them.

  “Did we have a groundquake?” Dr. Reese asked.

  He frowned. He hadn’t noticed, with the light and the sound and the Spires glowing above them.

  “Was that real vibration or was it caused by the sound?” she asked.

  Her words still sounded tinny and far away. Those sirens had been loud. He looked up. The ceiling was still porous. The light was still flowing down, and he could almost see that silvery blackness in the center of it.

  She shook her head at him in exasperation, then staggered away from him, toward the back. He had a hunch she was talking, but he had no idea what she was saying.

  He didn’t care.

  If this was some kind of defense system, then the divers had set it off.

  And if they had set it off, then they were in trouble.

  He left the temple at full run.

  29

  The little vase had shattered. It had vibrated off her work table and landed on the newly installed floor. Gabrielle knelt, removing tiny slivers of glass, her heart aching.

  If she had left the vase in the niche near the door of the house she had chosen to live in, the vase would be fine now. It wouldn’t have fallen.

  It wouldn’t have broken.

  All those centuries, only to have her carelessness destroy it.

  But, as she held the larger shards in the palm of her hand, she realized she could test it now. She could see if the glass had truly been made from the white dirt near the Spires.

  The Spires. What had Meklos said? That they were a defense system? Which meant that they made that noise.

  Impossible.

  She cupped the shards in her hand, grabbed a small box that still remained on her worktable, and poured the shards into the box. Then she used a cloth to gently wipe off her palm.

  Her ears rang.

  Maybe the fall hadn’t broken the vase. Maybe the sound had shattered it.

  Just like it would have shattered the Spires.

  Her breath caught.

  She set the cloth down. Shattered the Spires and sent them tumbling to the ground, causing the quake.

  She was probably lucky nothing had hit the temple. Even though she really didn’t recognize this place, with the debris on the floor, the light emanating from one small part of the painting, and the open ceiling, which was letting the light through.

  She had panicked and now she wasn’t. Now she was thinking clearly.

  She made herself walk out of the temple, avoiding the artwork on the floor just because it made her nervous.

  The whole thing made her nervous.

  She had never experienced anything like this, not in all her years as an archeologist and leader of expeditions.

  The sunlight blinded her. She blinked away tears, then wiped her eyes. Finally she looked at the area around her.

  Even after the quake, it looked the same. Nothing had fallen here. Nothing had broken.

  She expected to see bits of the Spires all over the city, crushing buildings, ruining all her hard work.

  But she saw nothing different.

  Except a small amount of dust floating in the air, as if it had been dislodged from the dust piles.

  She steeled herself, straightening her shoulders, stiffening her back.

  Then she looked up.

  The Spires were so bright that they hurt her eyes. Light flowed from them to the temple itself.

  But the Spires hadn’t crumbled. They hadn’t fallen apart. All that worry about sound and vibration and powerful equipment had been completely wrong.

  The Spires were sturdy.

  They were sending light to the temple, through the open ceiling, and onto that little two dimensional drawing on the floor. White light threaded with black.

  Like the drawing.

  Meklos had said it was a map.

  And if it was a map, then something had just triggered it. Something had turned it on.

  The light had appeared in the area where the divers were.

  She cursed.

  How was she supposed to deal with the fact that the security guard—a lowly security guard—had seen something she and her team had missed for years?

  She shook her head. She couldn’t think about that now. She needed to figure out what to do next.

  30

  Roye had brought a scanner. He held it up against the barrier. The scanner was small, barely the size of his fingers, and if Navi hadn’t known what it was, she wouldn’t have recognized it.

  He ran it along the edge of the barrier.

  She hadn’t brought any equipment, not like that. She had believed Dr. Reese’s experts—that this place was incredibly fragile, and needed protection from all sorts of equipment.

  If this place was fragile, then it should have fallen apart from the vibration as the barrier came down.

  It hadn’t.

  Still, she was here with only her suit’s sensors.

  They would have to do.

  She opened the palm of her right hand and surveyed the wall holding the barrier in place. Equipment yes, but no controls. The controls, so far as her small scanner could tell, had to be somewhere else.

  She methodically moved her hand along the edge, searching for some kind of device, any kind, to release the barrier.

  After all, she had triggered it from here. She had to be able to release it from here as well.

  Roye ran his scan along his side. He finished before she did, then started all over again.

  When she was finally done, she looked at him through the barrier. His face was distorted by the water and the glass-like material. His eyes looked too big in their clear protective area.

  He shook his head.

  So did she.

  What had she triggered?

  She put her palm on the side again and this time, got a small hit.

  This part of the wall was touch-sensitive. She had triggered something, but nothing in the wall itself. The touch system had sent a signal elsewhere and that signal told the system to lower the barrier.

  Then she frowned. Slowly she raised her hand to her mouth.

  Her teeth didn’t ache any
more. Neither did her head.

  She had been feeling some kind of energy field. Either the barrier had cut the field off, or the field had shut off when she touched the wall.

  She couldn’t remember when her teeth stopped aching. It was hard to notice an absence of pain.

  She tapped the barrier. Roye looked at her, startled.

  She put a finger to her cheek and hoped he could understand what she meant since they could no longer communicate. She couldn’t mouth anything at him, and she couldn’t point to her own teeth.

  She tapped her cheek again, then held out her hands in a question.

  He stared at her for a moment, then he seemed to understand. He ran a hand along his chin, then stopped. He shook his head. Then he shrugged.

  She wasn’t sure what that meant. Was the pain still there? Or was it gone?

  She shrugged.

  He made a circle with his fist. Zero. He didn’t feel anything.

  Neither did she.

  She nodded.

  So the barrier hadn’t broken the field, leaving it working on his side and off on hers. The field had just gone away.

  Maybe she hadn’t triggered it when she touched the wall. Maybe Roye had when he swam through the opening.

  Or maybe the only part of the field that still worked was the wall area. The water might have damaged the rest.

  She pointed at her finger, as if she held the small scanner he had brought. It took him a moment, but he finally held it up.

  She nodded.

  Then she pointed behind him.

  It took a few more gestures before he realized what she wanted.

  She wanted him to scan the passages behind him, see if there were more barriers. He held up a finger and swam away from her.

  The water swirled where he had been. There was definitely more sediment in it now, and that intrigued her. It meant something, although she wasn’t sure what.

  She waited, holding her breath until she realized what she was doing. When she finally released it, she saw him swimming back toward her.

  He was nodding. It looked like his eyes were crinkling in the corners. Did that mean he was grinning?

  He mimed swimming, then pointed behind him. Then he pointed behind her. She nodded.

  They were each going to swim away from the barrier. Obviously as far as he could scan, there were no obvious barriers.

  She doubted there were any on her side either.

  But if there were, she would wait near one of them for him to come get her. Because once they got out of this godforsaken underground lair, they’d communicate with each other, Spires be damned.

  And then they’d get the hell out of here.

  He waved at her. She waved back.

  Then he whirled and swam away from the barrier.

  After a moment, she did the same thing, swimming back the way they came.

  31

  Meklos went down the ancient steps five at a time, until he slipped and had to catch himself with a hand on the ice-cold wall. The steps were covered with white dust, which was as slick as water.

  He made his way down the remaining steps carefully until he reached the cavern where Yusef was waiting for the divers to return.

  For a moment, Meklos didn’t see Yusef. He didn’t see the packs either, and thought he was in the wrong place.

  Then he realized they were all covered in dust.

  He hurried across the floor. Yusef leaned against the wall, his heavy coat white, his face so dust-covered it looked like it was coated in ice.

  “You all right?” Meklos asked.

  Yusef opened his eyes. He focused on Meklos and then his eyes filled with tears.

  “My ears,” Yusef said too loudly. He reached toward them with his uncovered hand. The fingertips were black. Why wasn’t he wearing gloves?

  Meklos turned Yusef’s head. Blood had oozed out of his ears and frozen onto the side of his head. His fingertips were probably not frostbitten; they were probably covered in blood.

  “Can’t stand,” Yusef said, again speaking much too loud. “I’m so dizzy.”

  The siren must have been particularly loud in here. Whether the cavern was the source or whether the sound had just echoed off the enclosed space—and the water—Meklos didn’t know.

  “I’ll get you out,” Meklos said.

  He didn’t want to. He wanted to make sure the divers were all right. But he had to take care of this man first.

  “Can you stand?” Meklos asked.

  Yusef put a finger up toward his ear again. “I can’t hear you.”

  His eardrums must have ruptured. Meklos didn’t even want to about that kind of pain.

  “Can you stand?” Meklos asked slowly, making sure his mouth formed each word carefully.

  “I think so,” Yusef said. He struggled to his feet, using the wall to brace himself.

  Meklos slipped his arm around Yusef’s back and half-carried him toward the stairs.

  The slippery stairs.

  This would take longer than he wanted it to. But he had to do it.

  Then he would come back for the divers.

  If it wasn’t too late.

  32

  Navi swam into the larger cavern, happy to be out of the passageways. She didn’t try to walk this time. She wasn’t moving slowly. She was swimming as hard as she could.

  The cavern looked bigger than it had on the way in, but that was probably because Roye wasn’t with her. His presence had put the place into perspective, giving her something to concentrate on besides the snowy water and the curving walls.

  She had nothing to concentrate on now except getting the hell out of here.

  She slowed as she reached the first archway, and gingerly extended her hand toward it.

  They had both touched the walls in here, looking for niches or anything that could be valuable, and they hadn’t set anything off.

  So either that other cavern had been more valuable or the barriers didn’t exist this far in.

  She made herself concentrate on her fingers, reaching, reaching—

  —and finding nothing. They slipped into the next cavern, just like they had on the way in.

  She swam through, her heart pounding.

  Why have barriers on that side? Why not here?

  She couldn’t figure it out.

  But it kept her brain busy while she swam to the next cavern.

  It kept her busy while she did her best to get out.

  33

  “We have to figure out how to shut this off,” Gabrielle said. She was standing on the temple steps. Most of her team had gathered here, apparently looking for instruction.

  If they wanted instruction, she’d give it to them.

  She waved her hand at the wave of light. “This thing could be dangerous.”

  The light bath that she enjoyed every day hadn’t been a brighter moment in the sun. The system had run some kind of program, one she was too stupid to understand.

  She’d never been inside the temple when it ran. She had always come outside to bath in the light.

  If she had been inside, would she have seen that the temple’s ceiling grew clear, and the light illuminated parts of the drawing below?

  She had no idea, and she couldn’t think about it now.

  “There’s a silvery black thread running through the light,” she said. “I don’t like it. I’ve never seen it before.”

  She didn’t tell them that the light illuminated the drawing inside or that the drawing was really a map. Nor did she tell them Meklos’s theory that the entire thing—the Spires, the map, the temple—was some kind of defense system.

  “I’m convinced though,” she said, “that this is all manmade. If there’s a way to turn it on—and something clearly did—then there’s a way to turn it off. We have to find it.”

  “The light is focused on the temple,” said one of the graduate students. “Does that mean the controls are inside?’

  How am I supposed to know, you ass? she nearly snapp
ed, but she caught herself just in time.

  “Maybe,” she said. “Or maybe there’s something near the Spires. Spread out and look. Those of you with engineering experience, look around here first. Use scanners and communicators. If the Spires can survive that loud siren, they can survive anything.”

  She hoped.

  It was all a guess now.

  And so far, at least when it came to the Spires of Denon, all of her previous guesses had been wrong.

  34

  By the time they reached the ground floor of the building that hid the cavern’s entrance, Meklos was carrying Yusef. The man had fainted halfway up, which was probably a blessing.

  Meklos carried him through the door and into the street. Several members of Dr. Reese’s team were running by.

  “Hey! Hey!” he shouted. “I need help here.”

  Chavo stopped. So did two others.

  “He needs a doctor,” Meklos said. “Get him to the doctor. And send my people here. They need to go to the caves.”

  “Caves?” Chavo asked.

  So Dr. Reese hadn’t told the rest of her team.

  “Caves,” Meklos said. “Through this door is an entrance leading down. I need at least three of my people, preferably the ones who can dive.”

  “Dive?” Chavo asked.

  “Just tell Phin that,” Meklos said, realizing he had no time to explain. “He’ll understand.”

  Meklos passed Yusef off to two of the students, then ran back into the building. He heard steps behind him, turned, and saw Chavo.

  “I gave you instructions,” Meklos snapped.

  “I just didn’t believe it. Do you think the controls are in here?”

  “What controls?” Meklos asked.

  “For the light,” Chavo said.

  “I don’t care,” Meklos said. “Go get Phin. I need help here—experienced help—and I need it now. You got that? You can search for whatever it is you’re searching for after you get me some assistance.”

  “Yes, sir,” Chavo said and sprinted for the door.

  Meklos was halfway down the stairs before he realized what Chavo was talking about.

  The controls for the defense system. Dr. Reese must have sent them in search of the controls.

  Stupid woman. Didn’t she realize that a group of dirt scientists wouldn’t know anything about ancient technology?

  If they found controls, they might make things worse.

  But he kept going down into the cold.