Edward spread the blankets under the rope harness at the back of the chariot to create a “passenger area.” Most of the gelatin coating had already been scraped away. The blankets were to prevent any further contact with the goop. Getting three people to cooperate in the driving was tough enough. They didn’t need six people steering.
“Hop on,” Reg told Edward. He did, and the chariot jogged forward to where Ali was standing guard over the opening. Sutton ran up behind them before they went inside. ‘Tye,” he whisper-shouted, “leave us one of those disk things of yours. And don’t you people be in there forever. Remi and I can’t sit around picking our noses out here past sunup.” Tye tossed him one of the medallions. “And one more thing,” Sutton called. “Good luck.”
Ali and Fadeela stepped through the opening, made a quick inspection, and waved for the chariot to follow them.
Inside, the team found themselves facing a tangle of collapsed walls. What had once been a series of rooms and passageways was now utterly smashed to pieces. They quickly found a path through the charred, broken debris and arrived at the sidewall of the tower, which extended deep into the body of the ship. This wall was made of a different material and had sustained no visible damage.
“Wait here,” Ali told the men in the chariot as he moved to inspect the wall. “You too,” he told Fadeela when she followed him. She ignored him and accompanied him into the long, partially collapsed corridor that ran along the edge of the wall.
“It’s thin,” Ali said, rapping his knuckles against the wall.
Fadeela pushed against it. It didn’t give. It felt like a razor-thin sheet of rough-cut glass. She told Ali to shoot his way through it, and both of them backed away. Ali fired a single shot and, when the wall held, went to inspect the damage. Not even a nick. He and Fadeela waded a few paces into the darkness of the corridor, trying to find the end of it with their flashlights, but it was too long. They ran back to the chariot, jumped on the back, and took hold of the harness ropes like bull riders at a rodeo.
“Straight ahead,” Reg commanded, and the chariot bolted forward, carrying the six heavily armed humans with ease. They set out at a cautious trot, but soon increased their speed by urging the chariot to move faster. The trip over the uneven floor felt like riding a rickety roller coaster. They were tossed one way, then the other, straining the whole while to spot signs of danger. They sped forward for a long time until they reached the end of the tower and turned the corner.
“Stop!”
The chariot legs went stiff and stopped short. Ahead, dim round lights glowed out of the jet blackness, weakly illuminating the floor and walls.
“Back up,” someone hissed. The chariot shuddered but stayed put.
“No, don’t,” Reg countered. “They’re not moving.”
“What is it?” Tye whispered, extending his arm over the front rail of the chariot so Yossi could help him fire the alien pulse weapon if need be.
“They’re not moving,” Reg said again. “Let’s go for a look.” After a moment of hesitation, the stick legs began moving forward again, but slowly and reluctantly now. As they came closer, it became apparent that they were not the first humans to enter the tower. The lights were coming from a cluster of Saudi jeeps that must have been parked there since the alien ambush almost twenty-four hours earlier. There must have been fresh batteries to keep the headlights lit up for all that time. A ghostly rustle of static came from the radio of the closest vehicle. There was no trace of any soldiers, but they could see where the last man had been and what he’d been doing. His rifle was leaning against the inside of the open door and his water bottle was balanced on the narrow dashboard. He’d been talking on the radio and writing something down when the trouble began, probably very suddenly. His clipboard lay nearby on the ground. Edward picked it up and began studying it. There were no signs of the physical struggle everyone knew must have taken place.
The jeeps were parked outside the opening to the tower. Where once there had been a great, towering wall, there was now only a confusion of bent structural bars and shreds of fire-blackened sheeting. The first several stories of the tower were exposed to view where the wall had torn away. They were ruined completely, blasted to pieces by explosions and the crash. The rear cargo areas of the jeeps were loaded with recovered artifacts, most of them tagged and labeled. Mostly, they were pieces of shattered machinery, and all were composed of organic matter.
“You still think we’re going to find that silver case?” Reg asked Fadeela.
“Or die trying,” she said, lifting her gaze and flashlight up to explore the massive, shredded wall of the tower. “If it’s here, that’s where we’ll find it.”
Edward found something that helped confirm her suspicions.
“This is not good news.” He came toward them, reading from the clipboard. “The men in these jeeps were climbing the tower and searching for survivors. Then, on the level thirteen, something happened.”
Reg and Fadeela spoke at the same time. “What does it say?”
Edward shook his head. “That something grabbed them. Then it says control room.”
Reg arched an eyebrow. “Control room? On the thirteenth floor?”
Edward took the report off the clipboard and stuffed it in his pocket. “That’s what it says.”
“Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s go have a look around.” Reg had already estimated that the height of each of the exposed floors was sixty feet. Getting to the thirteenth floor would be the equivalent of climbing a fifty-story building.
“Check this out,” Tye called softly. He’d found a platter-sized object in one of the jeeps. “It’s the granddaddy of all medallions.” It was the color of liquid amber and had the same hair-thin veins running through it as the disks he’d been carrying with him. “Watch. It lights up when you touch it.” Tye rested his palm on it and a fuzzy, fast-moving image formed on the surface. The image was too indistinct to recognize, but it seemed to be shifting and changing at a chaotic speed.
Reg leaned in for a better look. “What’s it doing?”
“Beats me,” Tye said, “but it looks like a broadcast, doesn’t it?”
“Check your medallions. See if we’re still alone in here.”
When Tye pulled them out of his pocket, he got two surprises. First, the complex, shifting pattern of diamonds was gone and in its place was a flower design that covered the entire face of the disk. It was the same rigidly symmetrical “daisy” pattern found on the bottom of the city destroyer. Second, he could feel the small medallion drawn to the larger slab like a magnet. It gave him an idea. “These two pieces are attracting one another,” he told Reg. “That must be the basis of their tracking system.”
“That’s fascinating,” Reg said impatiently. “Are there any aliens around?”
“That I can’t tell you,” Tye admitted. “But if I see any, you’ll be the first to know.”
Reg whistled through his teeth and waved everyone toward the tower. Seeing that the lower floors had been decimated beyond use, he moved directly to one of the X-shaped structural beams and began to climb. Each girder was as tall as he was, and there were about ten of them between floors. They were made of bone, or something very similar to it, and were encrusted with a brittle moss that flaked apart under their hands. As they climbed the first several stories of the mile-high tower, they saw that the floors were made of the same razor-thin material as the exterior walls. The loose edges fluttered like pieces of tissue paper in the breeze Reg made as he climbed past. Despite its seeming fragility, the material was strong enough to withstand the powerful explosions that had obliterated most of the ship.
They continued to climb up the girders until they were dripping with sweat, and their arms began to tire. Young, lanky, and unencumbered by heavy weaponry, Tye scaled the support beams more easily than the others. Still, he was the first to suggest looking for a different way up. “This is taking too long,” he called down to the others. “There must be a be
tter way to the top.”
“Keep moving,” Ali grunted from below, and the team continued to climb, painfully, floor by floor, up the stack of X-shaped girders. Eventually, they reached a place where the damage was less severe. A ceiling of the ultrathin material prevented them from climbing higher. They left the girders and moved deeper into the tower.
With Reg in the lead, they moved at a fast march through the piles of twisted debris. The enormous room had been turned into an empty box by the force of the explosions. They walked uphill through the leaning skyscraper, then broke into a jog until the front wall of the tower came into view. The destruction was less complete here, and it was possible to imagine what the interior must have looked like before the crash.
Sections of transparent wall still stood in places, or hung from the ceiling like ragged sheets of ice. They had once divided the floor into smaller rooms, workstations of some kind. When Ali rapped on one of the walls with his knuckles, the vibrations caused it to make a humming noise.
“Look at this,” Tye called from the far side of the glassy barrier. He’d found a room that was only slightly damaged. It was the size of a small auditorium, and there were low black benches arranged in rows. Hanging on the forward wall was a flat, squared-off sheet of material that looked like a modified tortoiseshell. “Looks like a really uncomfortable movie theater,” he mused, sitting down on one of the benches. The seat of his pants was still wet with the thick gel that lined the floor of the chariot. It made a rude noise as he sat down. “Aaagh!” Tye jumped up immediately when the bench moved beneath him. “What in the—”
He reached down and touched it again, with his hand this time. The surface of the bench was as hard and as smooth as polished marble. But when activated by the galvanic charge coursing through his fingertips, it bubbled to life, its surface rising into a series of inch-tall welts. Struggling against the impulse to tear his hand away, Tye held it in place and watched in horrified fascination as the transformation of the stonelike material continued. Tiny lines of light appeared in the surface, first as a dull glow, but then brightening to form a complex grid. Within moments, the entire length of the bench lit up with a visual display, showing an unintelligible, highly complicated blueprint: half anatomical drawing and half engineering schematic. They realized it wasn’t a bench but a table designed to be used by a creature half his size.
Reg had forged ahead to the front wall of the tower. When the others followed him, they saw bands of blotchy light leaking through a network of narrow “windows.” A series of thin geometric lines ran the entire height and length of the huge wall, each one emitting an uneven greenish glow. Reg stared up at the strange green lines, trying to understand the significance of the pattern they made. When he brought his face close to one of them, he saw that the large plates covering the outside of the tower were connected to one another by some sort of dense, stringy ligament. In some places, all that stood between Reg and the outside world was the same ultrathin material that was used in the construction of the rest of the tower. This time it was more than semitransparent. Reg could see through it to the desert outside, which was brightly lit in a sickly, green-tinted glare.
“What is it?” hadeela asked.
“They’re windows,” Reg said. “They seem to be amplifying the light outside. Take a look.” The others pressed close to the spy holes and stared through them.
“Fantastic!” Tye said.
“It’s like looking through night-vision goggles,” Edward said.
“And a magnifying glass.”
The scene was almost too bright for their eyes. The rocky hills and wadis of the desert floor were illuminated in a harsh glare, as if enclosed in a giant copying machine. At the same time that it amplified the light, the material acted as a telescope. When Edward spotted a shape moving across a dune top far in the distance, the image quickly focused and enlarged until he could see that it was a lone alien soldier out on patrol in a chariot. The magnification continued until he could make out the individual tentacles on the armored creature’s shoulder blades and the glowing three-inch medallion on the back of his bony hand. He stepped back, blinked his eyes, and his vision returned to normal.
“Very strange,” he said. “Someday I’m going to build a house with windows like this.”
“I can see Sutton and Remi,” Yossi said, pressing his forehead against the surface and looking straight down. “They look nervous.”
“Now we understand why we are losing so many planes when we try to attack them here,” Ali said, pondering the windows. “They can see us coming from a great distance.”
“Which means,” said Edward, pointing out the obvious, “that if there are any survivors in this tower, they probably watched us drive up.”
“Doesn’t matter now,” Reg said, checking his watch under the beam of his flashlight. “We’re not climbing fast enough. We’ve been inside almost an hour and we’re just past halfway up. We’ve got to find a faster route.”
“Yeah, but where?” They scanned the ruined monumental space with their flashlights but saw nothing that looked remotely like a staircase. In the distance, near the center of the tower, rubble was piled high around a set of columns that reached to the ceiling. They headed in that direction.
Along the way, they passed an overturned set of the black worktables. When they came close to them, Yossi stopped short, froze in his tracks, and swung his machine gun into position. Holding his flashlight steady, he stared straight ahead with all the concentration of a bird dog, while the others fanned out to surround the spot. When he gave the signal, they began closing in from all sides, aware that if it was an alien they’d cornered, a telepathic attack was imminent.
Everyone held their breath and stepped closer, their weapons trained where Yossi was pointing. There was a rustling sound and then a flash of movement as a small gray body leapt from its hiding place and darted in one direction, then another, looking for a way past the humans.
Ali and Yossi both shot at the thing, but missed. Their bullets ricocheted into the distance. With surprising speed and agility, the creature bolted forward and would have gotten away if Reg hadn’t pounced and knocked it to the floor. He grabbed it around the neck and felt his fingers sink into the spongy flesh.
When the shock wave of pain tore through his body, Reg was ready. He lifted the creature off the ground and slammed it against one of the touch-activated tabletops.
The pain’s not real, he told himself. You can resist it.
Once more, Reg lifted the homuncular body with his half-paralyzed arm and brought it crashing down against the stone-solid surface of the table, sending a telepathic message of his own: Obey or die. But the alien continued to resist. Reg continued to pound it against the tabletop until its body went as limp as a rag doll and it fell into a stunned submission. Then he leaned over it and saw himself reflected in the surface of the alien’s silvery eyes. Reg had been waiting for a moment like this: He tried to read the alien’s mind. He conjured up the image of the silver box from his memory and attempted to “send” the image to the alien.
“Where is it?” he demanded loudly. “Where’s the box?”
When he received no answer, Reg fed the creature another mouthful of tabletop.
“It’s dead,” Edward told him.
“No,” Reg said. He could feel the thing’s consciousness. It was monitoring him, playing possum. But he didn’t know how to access its thoughts. Telepathy was, after all, an alien skill, not a human one.
“What should we do with it?” Fadeela asked.
“Kill it,” Reg said, searching the bulging silvery eyes for signs of fear. The only thing he felt in return was a hateful defiance. Ali stepped up to the table, lifted the butt end of his heavy, five-foot-long gun, and held it over the alien’s enlarged brainpan.
“Should I?”
Last chance, Reg warned the creature. Its eyes closed calmly a moment before Ali slammed his weapon down and split open its skull. Reg felt the life slip ou
t of the little body in his grip. He backed away, wiping his hands clean on his uniform and breathing hard.
“I really hate those little bastards,” he said.
The team regrouped and continued the search, marching quickly through the monumental darkness. They had only gone a short distance when they saw the flash of an alien pulse weapon and heard a startled scream that sounded like Tye. The others hit the deck and prepared to fire in the direction of the noise, assuming the bioarmored aliens had finally shown up to defend the tower.
“Sorry!” Tye called through the darkness. “That was only us.” He and Yossi had gone ahead of the others and found something that had startled them.
“Come this way,” Yossi called, signaling with his flashlight. “We found something.” The others raced forward and saw the two men investigating a deep recess in the wall.
“What is it? What did you find?”
Tye was down on his knees leaning into an opening, shining his light straight down. “It’s a shaft of some kind.”
“Ugh! What are those things on the walls?” Fadeela asked, disgusted by what she saw. The inside of the shaft was lined with sickly-looking white strands.
“I don’t know, but I just lost my appetite,” Ali said. The vertical tube seemed to travel the entire height of the tower, and its walls were overgrown with slender white tendrils that hung limply in tangled masses. Reg thought the tendrils looked like relatives of the vines he’d seen growing in other parts of the ship.
“There’s that horrible smell again,” Edward said, backing away. “Ammonia.”
Tye turned to face the group. “That smell could be a good thing. Think about it. The pulse gun, the chariot, their bioarmor.”
Reg understood instantly. “Of course. This is another one of their machines. But what?”
“I think it’s a lift,” Tye said. “It’s got to be.” He cautiously leaned over the edge and peered once more into the bottomless pit. “All of their technology is basically ripped off from other species or cultures. They must be zipping around the universe, conquering one planet after another and adapting the technologies and life-forms they find to serve their own purposes. You know what I think this shaft must have been?”
Complete Independence Day Omnibus, The Page 78