There was something Greek in its lines. Its exterior possessed no decorative parts, no raised bridge or swept-back after-section or anything else intended to draw attention. Rather it was a model of simplicity and perfection. Tor knew that some quick-witted vendor would convert it into a sales property, that eventually the chindi would show up in cut glass and on decanters and in pewter.
Nick pointed at the frame. A small oval stud was set into the rock. They looked at one another, and George touched it, pressed it, mashed the heel of his hand against it.
Something clicked. George pushed on the ring, and the door swung open.
Tor was ready to bolt. Silly, considering the fact they were in a vacuum. Nobody could be hiding in there. He glanced over at Hutch, lovely in the lamplight. She had, probably without realizing it, retrieved her cutter, and was holding it in her right hand.
They looked into the interior, and their lamps illuminated a large empty chamber. The walls curved into the overhead, which itself was slightly concave.
“We’ve lost contact with Alyx,” said Hutch. “There’s a dampening effect in here.”
Tor tried to call Bill, but got only static.
George stood looking around the room. “Not much to see,” he said.
Hutch squeezed Tor’s arm. “Lights out,” she said. “Quick.”
The lamps all went off. “What is it?” asked Tor.
“Somebody’s coming,” she said.
Chapter 23
I wandered through the wrecks of days departed.
— PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, THE REVOLT OF ISLAM, II
“HOW CAN SOMEBODY be coming?” Tor asked. “We’re in a vacuum.”
“Something then,” Hutch said. And, to George: “Still want to say hello?”
He didn’t respond. Hutch’s own heart was racing. She could feel a vibration through the floor. Something was out there, out in the passageway. Her fingers closed on the grip of the cutter and she instinctively pushed up against a wall.
“What are you going to do?” asked George. Despite the fact that he was talking over a radio link and couldn’t be overheard, he whispered.
That was a pretty good question. She wondered why suddenly she was in charge. “Depends what happens,” she said.
They moved to either side of the door. Gradually, the corridor brightened.
“Everybody keep back,” said Hutch, her own voice a whisper.
The vibrations stopped.
A beam of light flashed into the chamber. It arced around the room.
First contact between an advanced civilization and a group of intrepid explorers.
She could hear them all breathing.
“Maybe,” began George, “we should—”
“No,” said Hutch. “Stay put.”
The light seemed to squeeze down, then it blinked out, leaving them in absolute darkness.
The door closed and it was gone.
“That was our chance,” said George.
Hutch pressed her palms against the wall. The thing was moving away.
George’s light blinked back on. He was in front of the door, looking for a way to open it.
“We can burn our way through if we have to,” she said. “But I think we should just stay put for a few more minutes. Give the whatzis time to get clear.”
“And then,” said Tor, “we might want to get back to the lander and skedaddle.”
Nick was silent, and Hutch suspected he agreed. But she heard George draw a long breath and knew what was coming. “Hutch can take you back if you want to go, Tor.”
Tor hadn’t yet moved. “I think,” he said, “maybe we should all go back.”
George was rising up in righteous outrage. George, who had hidden with the rest of them while the whatzis at the door looked into the chamber. “We haven’t seen anything yet,” he said. “What do we do? Go back and tell everyone how we were inside an alien ship and saw an empty room?”
Hutch found the manual, which was another oval stud, and opened the door, simultaneously dousing her light. The conversation died while she stepped outside. “I don’t see it,” she said.
“I’ll make a deal,” said George. “Let’s continue the way we’ve been going, and check down the corridor a little bit. If we don’t find anything, then we go back.”
Hutch smiled in the dark. George was every bit as scared as the rest of them.
They joined her in the passageway. “Your show,” said Hutch, and she waited for him to lead the way.
They opened several more doors, and found several more empty chambers, and George pressed on. Just a few steps farther. Look at one more room. Hutch held her peace, leaving it to Nick or Tor to raise a complaint. But they, too, were reluctant.
THE SIXTH ROOM contained the werewolf.
It was standing in the dark when George’s light, or someone’s light, swept across it. Tor heard someone yowp, and they scattered back the way they’d come. It was strictly gangway from that moment, and they were well down the passage before they realized the thing wasn’t pursuing them. Tor took a long look back before coming to a tentative halt.
The corridor was empty.
The door stood open. He played his light across it, waiting.
The others continued on another ten or fifteen meters before slowing down enough to look behind them.
“Where is it?” demanded Nick.
“I don’t think it was real,” said Hutch, smothering an impulse to laugh.
“Why’d you run?”
“Reflex.”
Tor returned toward the doorway. He kept the beam from his lamp aimed squarely at it, watched the circle of light shrink as he approached. The others waited at a respectful distance while he leaned around the edge and looked in.
The werewolf hadn’t moved.
There were voices on the circuit. “What is it, Tor?”
“What’s going on?”
“Is it alive?”
“No,” he said. “It’s an idol.”
It was half again as tall as Tor. It had red eyes, long vertical slices of cool ferocity that blazed when the light hit them. And a snout that looked more reptilian than vulpine. But it was covered with fur.
It stood erect, gazing across the room with malicious intelligence, fangs just visible in a cool smirk.
The others had moved in behind him, but nobody had much to say.
“It looks like wood,” Tor said, casually, enjoying his moment.
“Nice Fido,” Hutch whispered.
He advanced into the chamber, flashed his lamp around quickly to make sure there were no surprises, and gazed up at it.
It stood behind a table.
The table was made of stone. Six carved legs ended in clawfeet. Vines and leaves were sculpted into its skirts. Neatly laid out on it were a bowl, a cup, and a dagger.
George, maybe still unsure, nevertheless came forward. Hutch put the cutter away, and Tor realized he’d forgotten he had one. Lot of help he’d have been if the thing had been alive.
It was like no creature he’d seen before. It was lean, well muscled, with an expression that was pure venom. Its skull was flattened, covered by a wedge of black fur, thick in back, narrowing almost to a spike in front. Its irises were red against white pupils.
All that would have been sufficiently unnerving on its own. But the thing wore a white dinner jacket, a fluffy blue shirt, and a pair of pressed gray slacks. It was the clothing that had touched a primal nerve somewhere, and even now kept Tor thinking werewolf.
This was not a plain chamber carved out of rock, like the others. The walls appeared to be wooden, were partially covered with canvas, and were decorated with drums, flutes, stringed instruments, an array of spears, tridents, daggers, and slings, and plates and necklaces and masks. Everything was scaled for the creature.
The plates were stenciled with flowers. “They’re quite pretty,” said Hutch.
A red cloth had been arranged atop the table.
Hutch stood a minute or two e
xamining it, then leaned across it and touched the werewolf. Tugged gently on its slacks. “It’s stuffed,” she said.
George was looking around the room. “That was a bit of a scare,” he said, trying a laugh that came out sounding like a cackle.
Hutch held part of the slacks out so everyone could see they were real. Then she tested one of the arms. The claws. “Razors,” she said. “You wouldn’t want to stumble around here in the dark.”
“What is this place?” demanded Nick.
The cup and the bowl on the tabletop were ceramic. The dagger appeared to be iron. Several other weapons had silver hilts and all were quite large. They would have fit nicely in the werewolf’s hand.
George approached the creature and stood mesmerized by it. “You don’t think this is what they look like, do you?”
“Probably,” said Nick.
“My God.”
Hutch played her light across the overhead. It also was made of wood. There were beams, and it was lower than in the other chambers. “The place might be a chapel,” she said. “Although I can’t imagine what it would be doing in a remote part of the ship. Where it wouldn’t be readily accessible.”
“What does that have to do with the idea that this is what they look like?” asked George, whose illusions about aliens were apparently well on their way to being shattered.
“If it’s a chapel,” said Hutch, “this is the god. Most intelligent species think of themselves as designed in God’s image.”
“Oh.” George could not break away from the figure. Tor was forced to admire the man, who was clearly terrified. But he refused to give in to his fears. Instead he veered off and began walking slowly around the chamber, making sure he got pictures of everything. “We should take some of these back with us.”
Tor touched the goblet and was surprised to discover it had no give. “It’s attached to the table,” he said.
Hutch tried the plate. It, too, was securely fastened. Even the red cloth turned out to be an illusion: It was as stiff and unyielding as a piece of cardboard.
The objects mounted on the wall were high, almost out of reach. George could just touch some of the masks and weapons. They were also locked down.
“I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise,” said Hutch. “For a while I forgot where we were. But the ship has to maneuver without throwing everything around.”
They went back out into the passageway. George turned to his left, deeper into the ship. Good man, thought Tor. He’s not going to back away. Even though Tor would have preferred going back to the lander.
“One more,” he said.
They stopped before the next door.
THE CHAMBER WAS ruined.
Furniture was smashed; the walls were water-stained on one side of the room and scorched on the other. A large pot had been dropped into a fireplace. Half a dozen windows looked in on the room, through which (when they aimed their lamps) they could see forest, dark-hued trees with bony fingers reaching toward a pair of moons, and large ominous blossoms folded for the night, resting on purple bushes with leaves like scythes.
It was an illusion, of course, but it looked very real.
The windows were broken. But the shards were plastic. They appeared dangerous, but would not have cut anyone.
There was a door on the far side of the room, leading out into the forest. Much of the furniture had been piled against it. A table, wooden chairs.
And oddest of all: “It’s not a real door,” said George, tugging at it. “It’s part of the wall.”
“It looks,” said Tor, “as if there was a fight here.”
THEY WERE HOOKED. Most of the chambers were empty. But one turned on a light when they entered.
The light came from a small chandelier set in a room furnished with lush chairs and an overstuffed, upholstered sofa. There was a wood furnace that also seemed to have activated. Although it was impossible to sense minor temperature changes within the protective field provided by the e-suit, Tor saw that a glimmering light had appeared inside the device, and he suspected that the stove was already beginning to throw off heat.
Several exquisitely carved side tables were placed about the room. There were four electric lamps, equipped with pink and blue shades. George saw that they had switches, turned one, and was delighted to see the light come on.
A desk stood against one wall. Footstools were scattered about, and thick dark blue velvet curtains. Everything was on a scale about a third smaller than humans would have found comfortable. Nevertheless the room had an extraordinarily cozy quality.
There was illusion here, too. No windows stood behind the curtains, and the curtains themselves, despite their appearance, were stiff and fastened in place.
The desk had a speaker and a voice index, and Tor suspected it would have been capable of providing notebook services had he required them.
A coiled journal stood on one side of the desk and a clock on the other. The clock (at least, that’s what it seemed to be) was of an antique variety, with sixteen symbols imprinted around its circular face. Two hands marked the time at—he guessed—three minutes before fourteen. Or ten minutes before midnight, depending on which, if either, was the hour hand.
It was possible to lift the cover of the journal, and they found the pages filled. The characters were smooth, flowing, almost liquid. George stood over it, paging through, unable to bring himself to leave it, muttering over and over, “My God, if we could read it, Tor, what do you think it says?”
They found a framed photo of a creature that looked like a bulldog except that it had luminous eyes and wore a vest. Only the head and shoulders were visible, and one six-fingered hand.
Some pens were scattered about. But nothing, not the pens, nor the notebook, nor the clock, could be moved.
A planetary globe stood on the floor off to one side of the desk. Tor looked at unfamiliar continents, strings of islands, and ice caps that came well down into temperate latitudes.
“It’s like a set for a play,” said Nick. “I mean, that’s what all three of these places feel like.”
“A play?” asked George. “For whom?”
“For whoever runs things. I think this thing goes around and picks up pieces of civilizations. It’s a traveling museum.”
Tor needed a minute to digest the idea. “You’re suggesting this is an archeological mission of some sort.”
“Maybe it’s more than that. But yes, they might be doing some of the same stuff the Academy’s been doing for the last half century.”
“Then you don’t think the crew is going to turn out to look like werewolves?”
“We may have jumped the gun in there,” Hutch said. “I hope so.”
George looked considerably relieved. “Good. That certainly would make things easier.”
Tor felt relieved as well. If they were archeologists, they would necessarily be friendly. Right? Whoever heard of a hostile archeologist? “Maybe it’s time,” he said, “to go find them.”
Before they left the chamber he went back and looked at the clock. It was a few minutes after midnight.
AHEAD OF NICK, the lamps bobbed along. There was a jauntiness to the mission now, a conviction that they were among friends and colleagues. Only Hutch seemed to remain cautious, but that, Nick realized, was her nature.
She had brought sample bags, and periodically they stopped so she could collect filings from the rock and from the metal doors.
The corridor continued to be lined with doors every thirty meters or so, on both sides. If this area was typical of the interior of the chindi, Nick estimated there were thousands of kilometers of passageway with storage facilities. He allowed himself to drift behind a few paces while he considered the implications of what they were seeing. It looked as if the thing might be a vast storehouse of information, artifacts, reproductions, possibly even histories of cultures whose existence until now had been unknown. Instead of the handful of civilizations of which people were aware, the Noks, the Monument-Makers,
the mysterious race that had built temples on Pinnacle, the inhabitants of lost Maleiva III, and the mysterious Hawks (known only through their Deepsix intervention), we were about to acquire an encyclopedia of information.
The ability to move quickly among the stars, and the discovery that almost all extraterrestrial worlds were sterile, that almost none of the handful which had given birth to living things had presided over the development of intelligent beings, had led to the illusion that there were desperately few civilizations in existence.
But we tend to forget how big the Milky Way is.
The lamps stopped. There was an intersection of passages.
“Which way?” asked Tor, who was in front.
“Doesn’t seem to make any difference.”
They were passing most of the doors by then, sometimes peeking in on jungle settings, or impossibly exotic laboratories, or scenes where violent conflict had apparently occurred, or on the deck of a ship at sea. But for the most part they just walked, entranced by their surroundings.
“Let’s go right.”
The passageways and the doors were always identical. “Doesn’t look,” Nick said, “as if these folks have much imagination.”
That apparently struck Tor as hysterical. The others laughed, too, and Nick eventually joined in. “Still,” he said, “what belongs to the crew of the chindi? What do we know about them?”
He was worried about leaving Alyx incommunicado all this time. She had to be worried.
“Stay with us, Nick.” Hutch’s voice.
He was looking around, at the lamps of the others, and pointing his own down each of the other three passageways, trying to feel the immensity of it all. And he must have backed up because suddenly there was no floor underfoot and he was off-balance, tottering, flailing his arms. His lamp flashed down and lost itself in the darkness below. His heart stopped and he fell.
HIS SCREAMS ECHOED on the link, and Hutch turned and came back on the run, they all did, moving too fast for the level of gravity. George piled into Tor, and they went down. Hutch kept going, saw no sign of Nick, listened to his fading signal, but failed to see the shaft until it was too late.
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