Struggling to marshal her thoughts, Liz looked out at the debris drifting off their port bow. It tumbled slowly over itself in the darkness—twisted shards of metal glinting in the orange glow cast up from Slag's surface. There had been other finds, of course—bits and pieces, like crumbs left to guide them along their way—but never anything like this. Admittedly, whole sections of the hull were missing, and much of the internal structure had vaporized when the engines exploded. But the wreckage was the closest thing to a complete Anunnaki ship they'd ever found—even if it had been blown to hell and gone, as Cantrell put it.
"Wait a minute,” she said, looking from Cantrell to Advocate Lassiter and back again. “You know very well that ship wasn't some unmanned probe. It's been out there for more than a thousand years, since before we even reached this sector of the galaxy. It has to be an Anunnaki ship."
"Yeah? Well, it's nothing but scrap metal now,” Cantrell said. “And the fact is, we still have a fleet to supply. Which, in case you've forgotten, is what got us out here in the first place."
"Your Grace,” she said, turning to Advocate Lassiter. “I'll admit we didn't find any Anunnaki glyphs on the wreckage, but the initial survey team found free oxygen in Slag's atmosphere. A moon like this, with no sunlight—it shouldn't have any free oxygen. Someone's been here. They've modified the ecology. Dr. Tobias thinks they may even have reengineered the worms’ DNA. He thinks—"
"Tobias!” Cantrell rocked forward in his chair. “You've got to be kidding me. That washed-up old hack wouldn't know his backside from a hole in the hull. If you think the Consortium's going to put a mining operation like this on hold so you and that bumbling old fool can muck around in a bunch of worm slime, you've got another thing coming!"
"Worm slime!” Liz exclaimed. She brought both hands down flat on the table, lifting herself from her chair. “Is that what you think this is about—worm slime? We have a responsibility, Superintendent. To science, to the Council, to the Anunnaki themselves. You may have sold your principles to the highest bidder, but we have a whole fleet out there counting on us to figure out which way the Anunnaki are headed. And I, for one, am not going to let them down!"
She didn't realize she was on her feet, glaring down at the superintendent, until she felt Advocate Lassiter's hand on her arm. “Now, now, Liz, there's no need for personal aspersions. No one here has sold anything to anyone."
Liz looked down at the advocate's face, at the patronizing smile painted across his features. Nothing she'd said had made the slightest difference to this man. His job, she suddenly realized, wasn't to seek out new knowledge about the Anunnaki, wasn't to help them reestablish their relationship with the race that had lifted humankind to consciousness; it was to keep a leash on her, to make sure she didn't stir up too much trouble, didn't get too much in the way of the Consortium's “mining operation."
"But we can't just abandon our mission . . .” she said. She lifted a hand to her throat. Suddenly the air felt viscous, too thick to breathe. “We can't just give up."
"No, no, of course, we can't,” the advocate said. “And no one's asking you to. We wouldn't think of it.” He turned to Superintendent Cantrell. “I'm sure we can afford Ensign McBride and Dr. Tobias some time on the surface, don't you agree, Superintendent?"
The superintendent tilted his head, eying him askance. “You're not serious . . ."
The advocate's smile tightened. “How long until your ships arrive, Mr. Cantrell?"
Cantrell shrugged. “I don't know. Ninety-six hours, give or take . . ."
"There, you see,” Lassiter said, turning back to Liz. “Four days. That should be more than enough time for you and Dr. Tobias to gather any samples you need."
"That, or get yourselves killed,” Cantrell grumbled.
"Four days . . .” Liz murmured. She allowed herself to drop slowly back into her chair. Her gaze again moved out to the wreckage in the distance. When she'd been selected for this mission, she'd been unable to believe her good fortune. The discovery of the Anunnaki ship had been the talk of the Fleet—the beacon of light they'd been searching for all these generations. She'd never thought to ask herself why the Council had selected a newly commissioned officer like herself for the mission. Why someone with no experience would be chosen to investigate the first real find in decades. But now the truth settled like a numbing cold into her bones. Despite what she'd been taught, despite what everyone wanted to believe, the fact was, no one really cared anymore. All their talk about finding the Anunnaki, about reuniting themselves with the race that had spawned human civilization—it was nothing but empty words.
* * * *
"Hard to believe anything's alive down there, isn't it?” Dr. Tobias mused. Hunched beside Liz at the shuttle's command console, he strained forward, his rheumy gray eyes squinting down through the windscreen at the expanse of dark ice rushing past beneath them.
The shuttle's autopilot had brought them low enough now that Liz could see into the jagged fissures where Slag's crust had split and the ice sheet had melted away to reveal the moon's molten core. Steam rose from the fissures in long winding curtains that caught the light from the magma and surrounded them in a glowing orange mist. As they descended, the mist beaded on the windscreen, forming tiny droplets that bounced erratically before the whistling wind carried them away.
"I don't know why the Council sent us out here in the first place,” she said above the whine of the engines. “They couldn't care less about the Anunnaki.” She gripped the arms of her chair as the autopilot banked around the plume of ash rising from one of the volcanoes that had thrust its dark cone up through the ice.
"They didn't have a choice,” Tobias said. He settled back into his chair, the lines around his eyes and mouth deepening in the shadows cast by the blue and green lights on the console. “Once word of the wreckage leaked out, they had to act like they were launching a full-scale investigation. That's what the Fleet expected, so that's what the Council gave them."
"But if the Anunnaki really did try to modify Slag's ecology, think of what we could learn,” she said. “I mean, if you could prove they manipulated the worms’ DNA, maybe it would help us figure out whether they manipulated ours."
Tobias gave her a skeptical glance, arching one of his bushy gray eyebrows. “I'm not positive anyone has manipulated anyone's DNA,” he said. “At this point, all we can say for sure is that you wouldn't expect a multicellular organism like the worms to have evolved an oxygen-based metabolism in an environment like this one."
Liz forced back a grimace. She knew Tobias thought her beliefs regarding the Anunnaki were nothing but myth, that the mysterious beings had played no role in human history. His lack of faith had, in fact, cost him a promising career. Still, he was a first-rate geneticist. If there was something to learn from the worms’ DNA, she felt sure he would learn it.
"As for the Council,” he continued, “there was probably a time when they wanted to learn all they could about these Anunnaki of yours. They may even have believed we'd catch up with them someday. But now, all they care about is learning as much as they can about the technology of whoever it is we've been tracking. Their FTL drive, their communications, their long-rang sensors—anything that might improve our own capabilities. All of which means that once the initial survey team determined the wreckage held nothing of value, the Council lost interest. They figured anything on the surface would have been swallowed up ages ago, so they were perfectly happy to give Slag to the Consortium. From their point of view, Superintendent Cantrell and his men can cut it up into as many pieces as they want."
The Consortium was the Fleet's commercial arm, the merchant class that had emerged over the generations to keep the ships supplied during their centuries-long journey out from human-occupied space. Like Fleet Command, which had evolved to maintain order and organization, the Consortium operated under the auspices of the Council—the spiritual descendents of those early visionaries who'd first recognized the correlations betwe
en the Nazca drawings from old Earth and the Anunnaki glyphs they'd uncovered on more than a dozen worlds as human civilization expanded out through the galactic arm. It was the courage of these early truth-seekers that had first drawn Liz to her study of Anunnakian archaeology—their determination to reestablish humankind's relationship with Earth's ancient visitors. This, in spite of the ridicule they'd received at the hands of the governments and secular scientists who'd tried to discredit their findings and block the formation of the Fleet in the first place.
"But you think we'll find something, don't you?” she asked Tobias. “I mean, if the Anunnaki really were here, they must have left something behind."
"Oh, I think we'll find something,” he said. “Whether it's evidence that the Anunnaki were ever here remains to be seen. But the fact is, Slag's ecology is unlike anything we've ever encountered. My guess is someone tinkered with it."
* * * *
The shuttle's autopilot set them down at the abandoned ground station the initial survey crew had set up midway between the face of the melting ice sheet and a wide fissure several hundred yards to the south. The station consisted of a molded duroplast igloo approximately thirty feet in diameter and a flat landing surface that had been leveled out of the rock with a high-energy laser.
"Looks like the anteroom to hell . . .” Tobias mused as they stepped out onto the surface. He switched off the shoulder lights on his survival suit and turned his gaze toward the fissure. With no nearby star, the only light was the dull orange glow cast up from the depths. It barely illuminated his features through his transparent faceplate, but there was no mistaking the grim set of his brow.
Liz followed the direction of his gaze, then turned her eyes toward the sky, trying to make out Slag's gas-giant parent against the background of stars. The giant—which had escaped its star system with Slag and its two more distant moons millions of years before—provided the tidal forces that kept Slag's interior molten. The general consensus was that the other two moons, which were mostly rock and ice, had probably formed from the same disk of gas and debris as the giant; while Slag, with its heavy iron core, appeared to have once been a small planet, possibly captured by the giant when it was pulled from its original system by a passing star.
"You'd think we could at least see the lightning storms in the giant's cloud tops,” Liz shouted. Even with their helmet mikes, she had to raise her voice to be heard over a sudden gust of wind that rushed down from the ice sheet behind them. “But from down here, it just looks like a big hole in the sky. Like something ate all the stars."
"You're right,” Tobias shouted back. He stared up at the sky for a moment, then turned back, offering her a wry grin. “Let's just hope it doesn't eat us."
Once they'd restarted the igloo's environmental systems, Liz helped Tobias move his equipment and supplies in from the shuttle's cargo bay. Because the Council didn't think there was anything to be learned on Slag's surface, they'd sent along only a single small shuttle and almost no equipment. Fortunately, Tobias had managed to scrounge up a portable gene analyzer; but aside from the necessary vials and containers to gather samples, they had almost nothing else.
"I guess they didn't want to clutter up the Arrow's hold with a lot of scientific junk,” Tobias said. “Heaven forbid we might actually learn something.” The Arrow was Enlil's Arrow, the Consortium survey ship that had ferried them out from the Fleet.
"At least they sent along a shuttle,” Liz said. “Otherwise, we wouldn't even be here."
Tobias chuckled. “And you think that's a good thing?” he asked, looking out at the algae-covered rock that surrounded them.
Liz restrained a grin. “What?” she said. “You mean you don't?"
"No, no, I think it's great,” he said. “No sunlight, enough hydrogen sulfide to kill us in seconds, and a wind that could blow us halfway back to the Arrow. What more could you ask for?"
"Exactly,” Liz laughed.
Tobias sighed. “My only regret is that Superintendent Cantrell couldn't be here to enjoy it with us."
When they'd finished unloading, Liz pulled up a schematic of the surrounding terrain on her mission assistant and set off toward the nearby fissure, leaving Tobias to finish setting up his equipment on his own. In addition to the flexible smart-screen wrapped around her forearm, her mission assistant—or MA, as it was called—included an onboard processor and communications unit linked to her helmet mike. She would have no trouble maintaining contact with Tobias as she explored, but communication with the Arrow was more problematic. While Slag's parent had almost no magnetic field, the field generated by Slag's molten iron core captured ejecta from the numerous volcanoes, creating storms of ionized particles in the upper atmosphere that could disrupt contact with the ship for hours at a time.
From orbit, the cracks in Slag's surface had appeared to have sheer sides that dropped straight away to the molten magma beneath, but as Liz approached the fissure nearest the ground station, she saw that its edge had been worn away by the constant flow of water from the melting ice sheet. Following a series of crumbling ledges, she made her way down to a wide shelf roughly fifty feet below the surface. Water cascaded down over the lip above her, forming pools that spread along the shelf before the water washed over the edge and dropped into the depths more than half a mile below.
It amazed Liz that life could survive in such a hostile environment, but the truth was, they'd found life on any number of worlds during their generations-long journey out from the settled sectors of the galaxy. In fact, life seemed to thrive anytime it was given the slightest opportunity. Slag, however, was the only world where they'd found significant levels of free oxygen in the absence of sunlight. Which explained why Tobias suspected the worms’ DNA, along with that of the algae that produced the oxygen, might have been modified by some external agency.
"You wouldn't expect a chemotrophic organism like the algae to release free oxygen into the environment,” he'd explained. “Without sunlight to drive photosynthesis, nature just doesn't make the leap to oxygen from nothing but hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide. Not on its own."
"But why bother?” Liz had asked. “Why would anyone want to switch the ecology from hydrogen sulfide to oxygen?"
"Energy,” he explained. “A metabolism based on oxygen produces more energy."
"I hate to sound like Cantrell,” she said, “but what's the point? I mean, what good are a bunch of energetic worms?"
"That, my dear, is what this mission is all about, isn't it?” he said, arching one of his bushy eyebrows. “And if you and I are both very good at our jobs—and very lucky—we just might find out."
One of the things the worms used their energy for was bioluminescence—a fact that Liz remembered from the initial survey report when she noticed the soft blue glow emanating from one of the pools on the shelf. As she approached, the glow brightened as though the organisms in the water had sensed her approach and were rising to the surface to meet her. Kneeling down, she could see dozens of worms swimming over, under, and around each other. They were anywhere from six inches to two feet in length. None was more than an inch in diameter, and each had a pair of long, fluttering membranes running down the sides of its body—like a pair of delicate wings that allowed it to glide almost effortlessly through the water. Aside from their wings, the worms’ unsegmented bodies appeared perfectly smooth, with no sign of external sense organs. Yet they were clearly attracted by her presence, as evidenced by the way they followed her as she moved along the edge of the pool.
Using a pair of forceps that she'd brought from the shuttle, she reached into the water and picked up one of the worms. Its two ends twisted slowly from side to side, but it made no effort to escape, which was only logical, given that the worms had no natural predators.
As she examined the worm, she noticed that it didn't simply glow; it seemed to pulse with light. Waves of pastel green and blue flowed back and forth along its glistening surface as its wings slowly undulated in the air.
Liz frowned. “Why glow?” she asked as she turned the worm from one side to the other. “What's in it for you?"
Glowing took energy at the metabolic level. So why would the worms evolve bioluminescence? To attract food? To confuse some predator she hadn't yet identified? To catch the attention of the opposite sex? There had to be a reason. The capability was too expensive metabolically not to have some significant survival benefit.
She looked back down at the water. The worms directly in front of her had come together, weaving themselves into a loose bundle that pulsed with the same light as the worm she held with her forceps. The waves of light moved over the surface of the bundle, gliding smoothly from one worm to the next in an unbroken pattern that appeared to maintain itself even as the worms themselves slid over and under each other.
Moving along the edge of the pool, Liz collected additional worms, depositing them in the specimen case she carried over her shoulder. All the while, she kept up a running conversation with her delicate captives. In a way, she felt as though she were talking to the Anunnaki themselves—talking back through time, back through the worms to the beings who had created them. At least, she wanted to believe it was the Anunnaki who had created them—or, more correctly, who had modified them—though that too would require a lot more analysis. Probably more than she and Tobias could accomplish in the four days allotted to them.
It wasn't until Liz reached the second pool, where another bundle formed, that she noticed the waves of light were moving in time with her voice.
"You can hear me, can't you?” she said, kneeling down beside the water.
As she spoke, she saw that the waves appeared to change direction with each word she spoke. “What are you up to?” she asked. “What in your environment could possibly cause you to respond like this?"
Moving around the pool, she watched several more bundles form. The largest one followed her, losing individual worms and picking up new ones as it moved.
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