Parker Interstellar Travels 4: The Trilisk Hunt

by Michael McCloskey

  Some kind of door. A large door.

  “What now?” Siobhan asked.

  “We find a way in, or cut our way in,” Magnus said. “Soldier bots first. Then the scout bots. Finally, us. It’s a big station. And we have no way of knowing if the Trilisk is still here. But if it is, this is going to be rough.”

  Maxsym realized he had not seen the robots when they loaded up. He assumed they must have loaded themselves earlier into some other compartment. He caught sight of movement.

  “The door is opening,” Caden said, bringing up his weapon.

  “Shiny is opening the door,” Cilreth said. “He didn’t figure out the code, but he… knows how to create a wire where there is no wire, apparently. Some kind of way to complete a circuit without a solid conductor… he routed energy directly to the opening mechanism, bypassing the lock altogether.”

  Siobhan looked amazed. “He didn’t even have to touch it,” she said. “I need to learn that one.”

  Maxsym started again as he caught movement from the corner of his eye. Four soldier bots unfolded from the wall beside him. They marched forward, jumped out from the shuttle, weightless, and then clambered into the habitat. Two scout machines followed suit. Maxsym half expected something violent to happen, but everything remained quiet. Then he realized he could not hear the clanking of their feet any longer, either. The air exchange barrier blocked any sound from coming into the shuttle.

  Magnus must have noted his behavior. He sent a private message.

  Stay calm and with us, Maxsym. You’ll be okay.

  Maxsym nodded. He took out his air systems and prepared to select one. A scout robot sampled the air. He knew they could not have mixed the atmosphere in the station with the shuttle air yet.

  “Looking at the atmospheric profile, the system says we should take a shot before going in there,” Cilreth said. “Maxsym, does that look sane to you?”

  Maxsym received a pointer to the air analysis. He looked it over for a few seconds.

  “I concur. A bicarbonate blood stabilizer should be sufficient,” he said. “That is injectable BC309 in these standardized kits. Feed your kits the atmosphere profile, and they should formulate that if working properly.”

  Maxsym put the complicated air systems back and grabbed his medical kit. The air was close to breathable for Terrans: all the more convenient for their search. He sent his kit the correct injectable through his link. It emitted a clear plastic ampule for him. He took the light blue vial and connected it to an injection port on his Veer suit underneath his left arm. He felt a light snap and then detached the empty container. The others were busy doing the same.

  “Pressure is matching; give it a second,” Magnus said. They waited in silence for a long minute. Maxsym shuffled his items and decided without the atmosphere packs, he might be able to take only one pack in for now. He sorted what he had, building a pack to discard. Then he finished and looked up. He caught the end of a strange look from Siobhan.

  So they find me odd. Fine.

  The sound changed. It became fuller, with a whisper of wind. Maxsym caught the sound of metal clacking against ceramic.

  Magnus walked through into the habitat. Caden was on his heels. Siobhan followed eagerly. Maxsym and Imanol looked at each other a moment. Telisa tromped past them to go in. Imanol followed her, so Maxsym was the last to walk in.

  Maxsym’s usual calm dissolved as he absorbed the scene from within. He floated weightless through a short tunnel of ceramic. The light grew brighter as he advanced. The tunnel led to an open square area the size of a large house with the bright light of day shining down on it. Once inside, he got pulled to the side by an invisible force. The others had decided that was “down” and started to walk again. Maxsym rolled to his feet.

  The others were moving about. Maxsym’s attention was on the “sky”. It was filled with hundreds of… floating buildings of gray, red, and green. The sky buildings looked jagged, composed of sharp angles. Their surfaces held many round plates Maxsym assumed were windows. It was hard to discern their size, as he had nothing to judge by. The sky was otherwise light bluish-gray. The houses were evenly spaced, seemingly out to infinity, though Maxsym knew the habitat was of limited size.

  This is all real.

  Maxsym felt slightly manic. He looked all around within the cul-de-sac for signs of life. Everywhere he looked he saw only the smooth gray walls of the outer hull of the habitat, devoid of anything that looked natural. Caden scouted the perimeter of the depression. Maxsym did not see the scout robots, though the four soldiers remained nearby. The Blood Glades champion grabbed a rope to scale the wall at the edge of the open area. Maxsym realized the scouts must have sent the ropes up to climb to the top.

  As Caden cleared the top, Maxsym noticed his friend looked very bright. The color of his dark Veer suit suddenly flickered white.

  Magnus seemed alarmed by the change. He trotted over toward Caden. Caden just looked confused.

  “It’s a huge white plain,” Caden said. “Oh. I think I’m sitting on the sky.”

  Caden dropped back down into the depression. Suddenly Maxsym felt pain spike in his ears. The atmosphere in the area popped.

  Vacuum!

  “What’s wrong?” Siobhan transmitted.

  “We’re losing pressure!” Arakaki said simultaneously.

  Maxsym instinctually crouched as if under direct physical attack. He closed his eyes and covered his ears with his hands. Other members of the team expressed their astonishment in link transmissions, but Maxsym stopped listening in a moment of panic. Then his brain started to work again.

  My Veer suit can help. It’s trying to help.

  Maxsym removed his hands. A thin cover slipped over his head and pressurized. Maxsym opened his eyes. At first everything was blurry. Then the cover’s pliable material solidified into a perfect faceplate he could see through. His ears still felt wrong, but he could vaguely hear the sounds of his own movement. He noticed a semitransparent wall had closed over the depression, sealing them in.

  “Everyone okay for the moment?” asked Magnus. Maxsym sent a nonverbal assent code.

  “I’m going to try a grenade. I’ve told it not to detonate toward us, but move back toward the lock anyway,” he said. “If it doesn’t work, we should load back into the shuttle and use the robots to figure this out.”

  Maxsym gladly moved back toward the portal to the shuttle. Magnus finished programming a grenade and let it loose. The device unerringly whizzed up into a corner of the depression under the clear material and attached itself in the silence of the vacuum. Maxsym saw shrapnel fly into the sky on the other side in a silent ballet. Then the atmosphere came back. More sound returned with it.

  “Is the habitat losing pressure?” Telisa asked.

  “No. No, this area was losing pressure when the wall closed over us, but now it has stopped. The opening to space has been closed.”

  Maxsym calmed. Telisa and Magnus were so matter-of-fact about the incident. Not exactly placid, but they were not rattled.

  “Did we screw up the lock seal?” asked Siobhan. “We did force the door, after all.”

  “No, the seal stayed tight here,” Cilreth transmitted. “Some other pathway out was opened for a while.”

  Maxsym looked around and realized Cilreth was not with them. He decided she must be back on the shuttle, or even back on the Clacker.

  “It was a trap,” Caden said. “Something sealed us under that glass and tried to suffocate us.”

  No one replied immediately.

  “I tend to agree,” Arakaki finally said. “The Trilisk got here first. It must have set a trap for us.”

  “How would it know where—oh, or maybe it programmed all the doors to do that,” Imanol said.

  “Let’s move into there,” Telisa said.

  “The grenade made a nice hole for us,” Caden observed. He walked under it. “Wait! The hole is getting smaller.”

  “Self repairing? We’d better hurry, then,�
�� Arakaki said.

  “But then we’ll be trapped on the other side,” Maxsym pointed out.

  “We’ll blow another hole in it if we have to,” Siobhan said. Caden climbed up to the edge as he had before.

  “The light comes from the plain above and all around us,” Caden said. “Is it safe?”

  “The scouts say it is. Not any worse than ordinary starlight,” Magnus answered.

  Caden crawled through the hole. The rest of the team followed.

  When Maxsym climbed to the edge, he told his Veer suit to withdraw his hand coverings. He carefully waved his naked hand out over the edge of their tunnel. The light felt vaguely warm on his skin. He felt the metal of the lip of the tunnel. It felt cool. Below his body temperature.

  “Not too hot, of course. Pretty efficient,” Maxsym said. “I can only assume this is light similar to that of their natural star.” He climbed out and stood upon the lit plain. Looking up, he agreed with the previous assessment: they stood upon the vast lit plain that served as the “sky” of the artificial environ.

  Once the last team member walked onto the lit plain, the covering over the depression below withdrew.

  That was scary. And strange. If that thing set traps for us, it will be hard to identify the dangers in such an unfamiliar place.

  Siobhan stared up at the floating buildings with Caden.

  “How will we get up there?” Siobhan wondered aloud.

  “We could jump,” Caden said jokingly.

  “We’re strong, but… I doubt it,” Telisa said.

  Caden jumped.

  “Noooo!” he exclaimed as he shot away into the air.

  No way! He isn’t that strong!

  Caden kept flying upward rapidly. Maxsym could see the trajectory wasn’t changing.

  “The artificial gravity is localized to the inner surface,” Telisa quickly summarized.

  “Whoa!” Caden said as the distance between them continued to grow.

  Caden slowly tumbled end over end as he flew away. Suddenly a long cable shot out and latched onto one of his legs, sharply stopping him. Maxsym heard Caden’s grunt from the sharp stop.

  “You’re welcome,” Magnus said. The smart rope had been shot from one of the scout robots. It had secured its leg against the hole they left in the pane that snapped shut over the entrance. It started to pull Caden back to the surface of the “sky”.

  “If that happens to any of you, remember the attendants. They might be able to boost you around,” Arakaki suggested.

  “Well, what now?” Telisa asked.

  “We can put a few smart ropes together and shoot them over to check out that one,” Magnus said, pointing at one of the floating buildings. Three scout robots moved over toward the edge. Maxsym assumed the machines acted on Magnus’s link commands. They joined smart ropes together for a minute as Maxsym watched. He kept scanning the air above for any signs of birds or other life. He did not spot anything.

  Caden made it back to the lit plain. He dropped back into the gravity zone on all fours like a cat. Maxsym heard him exhale in relief. Siobhan laughed.

  “Looked like fun,” she said.

  Finally a scout shot a smart rope over to the floating target. The smart rope stuck, and then it moved like a long worm, finding a purchase somewhere on the surface. The robot clasped the rope and headed out. Suddenly it looped out of control, spinning around the rope again and again. The machine slowed its spin by letting one leg entangle to brake against the rope as it got wrapped. Then it released the leg and resumed its progress forward.

  “They can work in zero-g,” Magnus said proudly. “It just took a second to compensate.”

  Maxsym wasn’t impressed. Nature had evolved much more amazing and graceful creatures than this clumsy metal mimic. The robot was just a cheap toy, a convenience.

  The machine reached the far side. It approached the floating island. Suddenly it crashed into a platform. The machine picked itself back up and sat firmly on the flat surface parallel to the platform the Terrans stood upon.

  “Artificial gravity over there as well,” Arakaki noted. “Or at least some kind of attractive mechanism.”

  “So we can just jump over there!” Siobhan realized gleefully.

  She wanted to jump from the moment she saw Caden fly away. Her idea of an extreme sport, I suppose.

  “Whoa, hold on there,” Telisa said. “You realize if you’ve made a bad assumption, you could fly through a gravitized zone and fall… well, all the way to the bottom of the gravitized corridor.”

  “Let’s grab some of the quick chutes from the Clacker, then,” Siobhan suggested. “I know we have some. I’ve been daydreaming about being able to take a sky dive since I learned we had them.”

  Telisa shook her head. “You assume there is air everywhere in here to fill your chute. Shiny could make a vacuum corridor with his fields; maybe the Trilisk can, too. You would still fall and die.”

  Magnus just smiled. “Yes, but that sounds like an unlikely event.”

  “I’ll send a robot to retrieve some chutes from the shuttle,” Arakaki said. “Or it can head back to Clacker to grab them. But let’s assess the lay of the land before we start hopping around like a bunch of flies.”

  Siobhan seemed satisfied. She actually started to hop lightly, as if warming up. Caden grabbed her arm.

  “It’s easier to break free than you might realize. At least with our new bodies it is.”

  Maxsym’s head felt a little weird. He had thought it was his ears, perhaps damage from the drop in pressure. He took a pack off his back and held it up. It felt light. He knelt, feeling the pack grow heavier.

  “Yes,” he said. “The gravity field here isn’t too deep. Our heads are lighter than they should be!”

  Maxsym held the pack up over his head. It became almost weightless. He let his pack float above him while he unzipped it. Imanol laughed as he saw Maxsym working. Maxsym took out a collection of tiny motile spheres with legs.

  “What are those things?” Telisa asked.

  “Insect collectors,” Maxsym told her.

  “Well… okay, I guess. Does it work in a gravity-free environment?”

  “The leg tips are designed to stick so it can climb a wall like an insect,” Maxsym explained. “It was designed for variable gravity environments, but I admit, not really zero-g. Couldn’t hurt to try though. I have several, and we can lose one or two.”

  Magnus nodded. “Give it a toss. You might miss this nearest building, but I guess it would float on until it landed on one.”

  “Oh. I was going to release them here.”

  Siobhan shook her head. “Looks very clean here. I don’t imagine any bugs around. But you never know. They may just be hiding.”

  “What if the bugs here are intelligent? You would be capturing another sentient being,” Caden said. Maxsym analyzed Caden’s tone and decided he was joking.

  “That also seems unlikely,” Magnus said. “Go ahead.”

  Maxsym let one go on the bright ground. Then he looked back toward the houses above. He gave one of the collectors a sharp toss. It hurtled away.

  Everyone else headed for the line. It became clear to Maxsym they were going to climb up.

  “Do you think we will accidentally pull the building down?” Imanol asked.

  That would be crazy. But I guess this place has to break at least a handful of assumptions we’re likely to make.

  “I doubt it. We’ll find out,” Magnus said.

  Siobhan had held back near Maxsym. “They don’t have to do that,” she said. “They can just jump over.”

  Another scout headed over toward the house above. Magnus looked at the scout for a moment as it clambered over on the smart rope.

  He’s conferring with it, Maxsym thought. And he doesn’t like what he sees.

  “Hrm,” he mused. “Uhm, I’m going to have to alter some programming. I didn’t foresee this kind of gravitational mix. The transition is confusing for them.”

  Maxs
ym noticed the others were quiet.

  Of course. They must be looking at the building.

  Maxsym brought up a pane in his personal view and selected the feed from the scout they had sent over. The machine had somehow found its way inside. The directions were confusing. The crazy architecture was not helping, either. The machine stumbled here and there. The artificial gravity pulled it in different directions as it moved about.

  The inside of the building was filled with a stunning array of items. Maxsym could not identify a single thing. Junk of all shapes and sizes lay about, pieces as small as insects and devices the size of small cars. Maxsym could not even tell “up” from “down”, and judging from the scout’s clumsy movements, it could not either. It was like the lair of a mad scientist, except Maxsym felt at least he would recognize half the equipment of a Terran mad scientist.

  “The gravity actually shifts in there,” Magnus said. “It’s causing some problems.”

  “What a collection of stuff. Can we actually figure out what all those things do?” asked Siobhan.

  “A fun part of the job,” Telisa said.

  The scout’s view focused on a large black plant. Maxsym was immediately fascinated. It did have certain similarities to a Terran plant on the surface, but he saw it was in fact very different. He did not see any single stem or root. Instead, several thick stalks radiated outward from a central mass. The “leaves” were small but thick, like a Terran succulent.

  “This is an interesting plant,” Telisa said. “It looks familiar.”

  “It looks something like a dense black vine, but I assure you it is something else entirely,” Maxsym said.

  “Blackvines?” Arakaki said over her link. “Yes, I know those! Blackvines, from Chigran Callnir Four.”

  “Where?” asked Maxsym.

  “A planet from a previous expedition. I don’t remember seeing any,” Magnus said.

  “They were hard to spot,” Arakaki said. “Usually out of the light. It’s definitely the same thing!”