The Engines of God

by Jack McDevitt

  Hutch went to her compartment to change. She was still uneasy. There was something that shouldn’t be there. Or something missing. It was at the edge of vision, a memory that one can’t quite grasp.

  She switched on her monitor. The orbiter was coming into sunlight. Its twin wheels would once have rotated counter to each other. Now the entire artifact simply rolled slowly over as she watched.

  What might its design reveal about its builders? It was the sort of question Richard would have asked. What do the esthetics tell us? There were symbols on the hull, black, angled strokes and tapered loops. Two groups of characters, she thought. Two words. What had they been?

  Details appeared: blisters and antennas and connecting coils and hatches and maintenance pods (at least she assumed that was what the teardrop bulges above and below the rim, distributed at equal intervals, had to be) and loading bays and equipment whose purpose would have to await closer inspection.

  A long cable trailed behind the thing.

  And hatches were open.

  She wrapped her arms around her knees and stared hard at the object, trying to imagine how it might have been when it was active, and exotic ships circled it. And the antennas received signals from the Great Array.

  How long ago?

  She got up, padded across the floor, and into the washroom. She started the flow of water in the shower, adjusted the temperature of the stream, and stepped in. It was cool and brought a sting of pleasure.

  Gravity was generated on all starships the same way: by rotating the living spaces, whether they were located within a permanent hull, as was the case on Perth, or within the ring-shaped modules of the Winckelmann. Consequently, the shower stream bent slightly counter to the direction of spin. Not enough to be noticeable, but the same crosswise pressure sent the water swirling across her toes and down a drain located at the side of the stall. Hutch enjoyed the sensation; it was one of the many effects of shifting gravities that she relished, that lent her wings and granted a sense of freedom from terrestrial shackles.

  And today, while she closed her eyes and let the cool spray wash over her, it occurred to her that the space station had also been designed to spin. To create the same effects.

  And that was what was wrong.

  She finished quickly, dried off, slipped into a Wink work uniform, and hurried up to the Academy observation lounge. Carson was still there, and Maggie. The others had gone, presumably to prepare for the boarding.

  “Everything okay?” Carson asked as she burst into the room.

  “Why was it built to rotate?” she demanded.

  “Why was what built to rotate?”

  “The space station, damn it.”

  Maggie stared at her, astonished at the question.

  “Why is it so much like our stations, Frank? The Monument-Makers are supposed to have had anti-gravity. So we always assumed they had artificial gravity as well. But then why build rotating wheels?”

  “Maybe we were wrong,” said Maggie. “Either we still haven’t found the Monument-Makers, or—”

  Frank finished her statement. “—this was built before the Monument-Makers came to Iapetus.”

  “That,” said Maggie, “would mean this thing’s been up here more than twenty thousand years. I don’t think that’s possible.”

  Carson did not want to talk about more complications. “Maybe it’s a Monument from their early days. So they kept it in place. Let’s not worry about it now.”

  “Another Monument?” Hutch didn’t believe that for a minute. She opened a channel to the bridge. The captain was not there, but she spoke to the command duty officer. “I wonder if you would do me a favor?”

  “What do you need?” The CDO was a middle-aged, graying, no-nonsense woman.

  “The space station,” she said. “How stable is its orbit? How long would you say it’s been here?”

  The CDO looked uncomfortable. “We’re navigators, Ms. Hutchins. You’d need a physicist to come up with that. I’d like to help, but we just don’t have the expertise.”

  “Do what you can,” said Hutch, using a tone that implied full confidence.

  The CDO allowed herself a pleased smile. “We’ll try.”

  John F. Morris, was a man with narrow shoulders, narrow tastes, and narrow vision. He had achieved the highest position to which he could aspire, and he had done it by unrelenting loyalty to the company, taking care not to offend the wrong people, and good old nose-to-the-grindstone attention to detail. He was not a man to be overwhelmed by other people’s histrionics, but he could recognize a career danger. His great strength, and his great weakness, was an unblinking, clear view of the downside. He knew that Melanie Truscott was in difficulty, and that she was taking liberties with his ship. The fact that she had every right to do so (within certain specifically-provided-for parameters), that she had full authority to direct his movements, might not help him if someone decided to take offense at the misuse of company property. Or if something went seriously awry. It was for these reasons that the captain had remained aloof and cool during the approach to Beta Pac III. He was not prepared to defy Melanie Truscott, because he knew very well that one did not advance one’s career by offending the powerful, even when the powerful were in trouble. People at her level had a way of resurrecting themselves. But he was not a good enough actor to conceal his displeasure.

  He felt compromised, and he resented it. His resentment extended in no small way to the Academy refugees whom he’d pulled from their wreck. Especially Carson, who pretended to know everything.

  Satisfied that the shuttle would be ready for its rendezvous with the station when promised, the captain went looking for Truscott. He found her in the forward lounge, deep in conversation with Sill. She looked up when he entered, noted his grave appearance, and smiled in her most reassuring manner.

  “I’m not comfortable about going any further with this,” he said.

  “Oh?” Truscott’s gaze sharpened. “What is it that bothers you?”

  “Several things.” His voice shook. He did not like opposing a superior, even to the extent of adhering to his duty to provide sound advice. But now that he was fairly begun, he would maintain a steady course. “First, the transfer of personnel to a derelict of unknown nature is a violation of the regs. However you try to cut it. And if there’s any kind of emergency, we aren’t well-equipped to deal with it. Our medical department is limited. We have only one shuttle. If you get into trouble over there, we cannot come to your rescue. At least, not very easily. And certainly not quickly. Furthermore, I have collaborated in this fiction about a maintenance stand-down, but that won’t protect us if we have to answer difficult questions. Should a problem arise, should we sustain any sort of major equipment loss, damage to the ship, or, God forbid, lose someone, I think Corporate would be extremely short with both of us.” He paused to let the seriousness of their situation sink in. “There are other potential problems. For example, the artifact is probably priceless. If we damage it, might we not be held liable?”

  Truscott nodded, in that infuriating manner that suggested she had already considered all these things. “And what do you suggest we do, John?”

  “That’s easy. Set course for home. Report the finding, and let people who are trained in these things, and properly equipped, deal with them.” He straightened his shoulders.

  “You’re probably right,” she said. “But I can no more turn away from this than you could walk out the airlock. John, don’t you have any curiosity? Don’t you want to know what’s over there? Or what’s down on the surface?”

  “Not when it interferes with my duty.”

  “I understand. We’ll have to disagree on this one. Please continue the preparations.”

  He bowed. “As you wish. The shuttle is ready.”

  “Thank you. And, John?”

  He turned, standing in the doorway.

  “Log your objections.”

  “Thank you, Director.”

  He walked ba
ck through the quiet passageways of the Catherine Perth, toward the bridge, and he knew that if things went wrong, she would do what she could for him. But it wouldn’t help much: they’d all go down together.

  The comm watch officer chimed Carson. “Response to your question, sir.”

  Frank was walking with Maggie toward the shuttle bay. “Go ahead.”

  “Telescopic examination of the anomaly on Three-B does reveal charring. Over perhaps thirty percent of the structure.”

  Carson watched his team file into the shuttle ready room. George looked happy and anxious; Maggie was intense and full of electricity. He had grown close to Maggie during this mission, had found her far more human than he would have believed. And less detached than she would have wanted to reveal. Today, standing on the edge of history, she anticipated photos. And had dressed the part.

  Janet was playing her usual casual role, unflappable, talking quietly to Hutch. But she was a little more erect than usual, her eyes brighter, and he sensed her eagerness to get about the day’s business.

  And Hutch herself. He’d learned to read her moods. Today she was distracted, preoccupied, thoughtful. He understood that their objective was more personal for her than for the professionals. The archeologists had uncovered their grail, and maybe far more. But Priscilla Hutchins had never learned to let go; she was carrying a lot of baggage with her to the derelict.

  “Safety first when we get over there,” he said. “Take care of yourself, and don’t break anything.” They would split into three groups: Janet and himself, George and Maggie, and Hutch with Truscott and Sill. “I’d have preferred that we didn’t have to carry Dr. Truscott and her pet bulldog along, but since they own the shuttle, there’s not much we can do. Hutch, I want you to keep an eye on them. Don’t let them get hurt; don’t let them wander off.

  “We’ll keep in contact, check in with each other every ten minutes. Try not to get involved with the details of what we see. We need a map and a general survey. Once we’ve got those, we’ll set up a plan of action and try to go about this systematically.”

  “How long will we be staying?” asked Maggie.

  “Four hours. That allows us a reasonable safety margin. We’ll carry a couple of extra Flickinger harnesses and air tanks on the shuttle. Just in case. Hutch?”

  “Will there be someone with the shuttle throughout the operation?”

  “Jake is our pilot. He’ll stand by. We’re going in through an open hatch. It’s one of several. Apparently, when the owners left, they never bothered to close the doors.”

  Sill came in. “We’ll be ready in a few minutes,” he said.

  George was studying a lightpad. “The station has at least six airlocks,” he said, “or apertures that look like airlocks. The outer hatches on three of them are open.” He looked at the faces around him, inviting an explanation.

  “They left in a hurry,” suggested Janet.

  “Don’t know,” said Sill.

  “I think,” said Maggie, “we’re going to discover the artifact has been stripped of everything valuable. The last visitors were looters. Which would explain why they didn’t bother to close the doors.” She put a finger to her lips. “I wonder why there are no other stations? The later ones? There should be more advanced orbiters.”

  “Who can say?” said Carson. “Maybe they all went down.” He looked at each of them. “Okay, what else? What have we missed?”

  Hutch looked up. “Pulsers?”

  “We’ll have one with each group,” said Carson.

  “Why do we need them?” Maggie asked.

  “To get through doors that won’t open.”

  But Maggie looked uncomfortable. “What’s wrong?” asked Janet. “That’s not unreasonable.”

  “Don’t know,” she said. “The place is a little spooky, and I’m not sure it’s a good idea to be walking around in there with weapons. In case somebody gets nervous.”

  “If nothing else,” said Carson, “we might need it to cut through the inner door of the airlock.”

  Truscott and Sill arrived. “Sorry to be late,” she said. “Our people have been doing a structural analysis of the station.”

  “What have they concluded?” asked Carson.

  Truscott passed to Sill. “Primitive,” he said. “It isn’t up to our technology at all. And by the way, we have an answer to Hutchins’s question about the orbit. As far as we can tell, it’s stable. This thing may have been here a long time. Possibly for thousands of years.”

  “One other thing,” said Truscott. “We’ve found some more ruins. A lot of them.”

  Melanie Truscott, Diary

  “As for man, his days are as grass; as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more.”

  —Psalms 103: 15-16

  April 11, 2203

  22.

  Approaching the space station at Beta Pac HI. Monday, April 11; 2140 hours.

  They looked through large oval windows at long passageways, and wide sunlit rooms filled with oversized chairs and carved tables and broad carpets.

  “They knew how to live,” Hutch told Truscott. The two women had been talking like old school friends. Everyone was a trifle garrulous on this flight, except maybe Sill, who simply stared warily out the window.

  Their pilot, Jake Dickenson, was elaborately uneasy, and full of advice. “Don’t assume there’s no power,” he warned. “Be careful what you touch.” And: “Keep in mind there’s always a chance the thing might be booby-trapped. We don’t know what the circumstances were when these people left.”

  They drew alongside, and the air in the shuttle thickened. The station was brick-red. It looked like a run-down factory, cluttered with struts and joists and supports and turrets. There was no attempt here to create a smooth outer skin: the hull supported a wide array of pods and antennas and beams. There were also parapets, dormers, crests, and brackets whose only raison d’être appeared to be decorative. The turrets might have housed living quarters, with wrap-around windows.

  “Shuttle bay to port,” said Jake. Two cradles were visible through a pair of windows. A small, blunt-winged craft lay in one of them.

  They passed above an antenna field. Sill poked an index finger against the window. “Here’s what I mean about primitive technology. Look at these. These are conical antennas. They are light-years behind the biosystem apparatus they were growing on the Bowl. This station is probably limited to radio. And their technology for that isn’t very good. Look at the antenna booms.”

  “What’s wrong with them?” asked Carson.

  “Ungodly long. We’ve been doing better than that since the twentieth century. And it uses oversized solar panels. They’re inefficient. This thing wasn’t built by the same people who designed the telescope.”

  Hutch described her own conclusion that the shape of the station suggested a technology more primitive than the one associated with the Iapetus visitors.

  “How long ago was that?” asked Sill.

  “Twenty thousand years.”

  “Which means what? That this thing is older than that?” He squinted out the window. “I don’t believe it.”

  “Why not?” said Carson. “You’ve already said this thing is old.”

  “But not that old,” replied Sill.

  Hutch didn’t believe it either. But she was tired thinking about it. They needed to wait until they had more information.

  The shuttle glided past long rows of empty windows. She glanced at George, entranced by the view. “What are you thinking?” she asked.

  He seemed far away. “How lucky I’ve been,” he said. “I got an assignment with Henry right out of the box. Most of the guys in my class wound up working on reclamation projects in Peru and North Africa. But I got to see the Temple. I was there when most of the major discoveries were made. Now I’m here—”

  Jake’s voice broke in: “Coming up on the front door.”

  Truscot
t surveyed her passengers. “Let’s go,” she said.

  They’d picked out an open hatch more or less at random. The station’s red skin moved slowly past the viewpanels. Hutch had just begun to check her equipment when Jake gasped.

  “What’s wrong?” Sill asked.

  “The inner door to the airlock,” he said. “It’s open, too.”

  “No seal,” said Maggie. The station was exposed to vacuum.

  “Can we get a picture?” demanded Sill. “That doesn’t make sense. Airlocks are always designed to prevent anyone from being able to open both doors at once. Because if you do, you die. Maybe everyone dies.”

  “Someone must have overridden the safety mechanism,” said Hutch. She looked toward Carson. “I wonder if all the open hatches are like this?”

  The shuttle nosed into lockdown position. Meter-long extensors, equipped with magnetic couplers, had been added for this flight. Now Jake extended them. When he was satisfied both were in contact, he activated the power. A mild jar ran through the craft. “We’re in business,” he said.

  He sealed off the cockpit while his passengers buckled on Flickinger harnesses, stepped into magnetic boots, and checked breathers. When they were ready, he depressurized their cabin and the cargo bay. Sill opened the door at the rear of the cabin and led the way into the cargo section, where he distributed portable scanners and collected two pulsers.

  He strapped one to his side in an easy, familiar motion, and held the other out to Carson. Carson took it, checked it expertly, and put it on.

  Sill produced about thirty meters of cable. “We’ll string a tether out to the station’s hatch. Lock onto it when you go. Everything’s turning, so if you get thrown off, we might not get you back.” He glanced around to assure himself that energy fields were all active. “Director,” he said, “would you like to do the honors?”

  Truscott declined, and looked at Carson. “Frank—?”

  And Carson, in the spirit of the proceeding, turned it over to Maggie. “She got us here,” he said.

  Maggie nodded appreciatively. “Thanks,” she said. They opened the doors, and the derelict’s surface curved past within arm’s length. It was pocked and scarred. Maggie reached out, and touched it. First contact.