“Do a quick survey. Don’t let the analyzer do more than take visual, IR and UV shots. We’ll be more thorough later.” Ralston left Leonore and went back down the corridor to the juncture. As he’d guessed, bits of mud marked where his assailant had moved down the other corridor. Ralston itched to do a full, immediate investigation of this wondrous find. Never had an intact museum been found, much less one depicting scenes of everyday life.
The scientific papers he’d get out of this would turn Velasquez green with envy!
“How many of these scenes do you want done?” Leonore asked, her voice distracted. She walked slowly down the center of the corridor, shining her hand flash into each tiny diorama to study it visually before using the analyzer.
“Let’s break now. We can spend years giving this the study it deserves.”
“Each one is more intricate than the prior one,” she said, her mind obviously working over the ramifications of what they’d found. “Might give a complete picture of Alpha 3. A complete history!”
“They were definitely of avian ancestry,” Ralston said. Then he tugged on Leonore’s arm. “Come on. Let’s seal up the door again to keep the water out. We’ll want to build an entry portal, a small office to store our equipment and clean our boots. The last thing we want is to contaminate a major find.”
“They’re statues,” Leonore said. Then she understood what Ralston had said. “Sorry. Just getting too involved.”
“I know the feeling.” He ushered her out, almost having to shove the graduate student ahead of him. They managed to get the copper-clad door pulled shut, but didn’t allow the locking mechanism to operate. Ralston crammed his dirty jacket in the small crack to keep most of the moisture out. Loss of the jacket seemed a minuscule price to pay for such a tremendous find.
He tapped his wristcom, set the inertial mark so he could return directly to this spot, then started back to the primary camp site. With cold rainwater drenching him, the hammering storm isolating him with his own thoughts, he wondered why he’d been attacked.
“Leonore?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t mention this to anyone else. Not yet. I want it to be a surprise.”
She peered at him questioningly through the driving rain, but bobbed her head in agreement. The longer they kept this to themselves, the longer she had to think and formulate her own theories.
* * *
The rain slamming incessantly into the plastic roof of his shelter threatened Ralston’s sanity. He had almost enjoyed the long, boring trip to Alpha 3 because of the isolation it afforded. He had always wondered about this seeming anomaly. The cramped conditions aboard a starship—any starship, not just the tiny bucket the University used—did not promote friendships. Rather, crew and passengers withdrew into themselves.
He’d heard it said that there were more mystics among starship crews than in any other segment of human population. That might not be so, but all the Buddhists he knew were spacers. They’d spend long hours in deep meditation rather than speak to one another.
Ralston wished for time and quiet and isolation for that kind of inner looking, for self-examination.
Perhaps he held within him the clue to the person who had assaulted him. Yago de la Cruz kept rising to the top of the possible list, but Ralston couldn’t definitely eliminate Asan and Lantalman, both hypno-burned and drugged to eliminate their violent tendencies. He had no respect for the rehab psychologists and their always-changing techniques. A new grant sent them off meddling and hypothesizing into different corridors of a person’s mind. During the war, he’d seen how the P’torra turned captives into mindless, drooling beasts before reimprinting them into loyal soldiers.
Ralston shuddered. He had to admit that he feared the mind tinkerings as much as he disapproved of removing a personality and remolding it, even for the dubious benefit it afforded society. And he had no idea how to judge if either Asan or Lantalman had managed to slip out of the bonds of their rehabilitation.
Ralston began to pace furiously like a caged animal. The sound of rain added a frenzied quality to his movements. Why did it have to be de la Cruz or either of the two rehabs? The remaining three—he still discounted Leonore—might have a grudge against him. He’d made it clear that none of them would be handed their degrees, that they’d have to work hard for them, that he expected only the highest quality work. The University of Ilium had a reputation as being the school for the indolent rich. Ralston equated this with laziness, both physical and mental. It still surprised him that none of the students had approached him with a bribe.
A lavish grant, from a parent’s company, in exchange for favorable treatment. He knew it happened all the time. Ralston’s anger mounted. He had been cheated out of the Proteus 4 expedition because of such underhanded dealings.
He snorted in disgust. Proteus 4 would be nothing compared to this find. Nothing!
Ralston began viewing the photos taken by the analyzer using IR. He had tramped through mud and rain, been hit on the head and it had been a full planetary day—seventeen and a half standard hours—since he’d slept. Ralston ought to have been dead on his feet.
He wasn’t. His eyes shone as he studied the photos. Adrenaline pumped through his veins, and he knew he could go another planetary day before he slowed and his mind dulled with fatigue. The excitement of this find was worth that much.
At least.
Leonore Disa peered out into the storm raging across the plains. Jagged bolts of vivid green lightning leaped from cloud to cloud to produce a constant rolling of thunder. The rain drove down so hard that it caused mud to splash up waist high.
She pulled her poncho closer and stepped into the full force of the wind blowing in from the distant ocean. The only redeeming quality, as Leonore saw it, was the new warmth of changing seasons. They had landed on Muckup during early spring. The early rains after they had landed had been frigid, but no longer. The temperature hovered at a very warm 305 degrees K.
Leonore tightened the headband on her IR goggles and peered myopically into the storm. What had been the road to the main excavation site had vanished in the torrential downpour, but wavering red lines shown through the goggles gave her some idea where the road had been. She doggedly walked until she reached the spot where the ultrasonic digger continued on, oblivious to the weather.
Instinctively, Leonore checked it and made certain it functioned properly. Then she kept walking, past the ancient center of government, past the boundaries of the city, and farther into the muddy countryside. Only when she saw the heat shimmers of an approaching ground crawler did she stop.
She knew Nels drove using IR, too. The low-slung, track-driven transport ground to a noisy halt just a few meters away. The hatch opened, and she saw Nels Bernssen waving. Leonore hurried inside the vehicle, slamming the heavy metal door behind.
“Stop dripping on the rug,” the big-boned, blond man said jokingly. Oblivious to her soaked clothing or his own injunction against getting the interior wet, he took her in his arms and kissed her.
“Whew,” Leonore said, finally breaking off for air. “You’d think we hadn’t seen each other in four months.”
“Four months, three weeks, four days, and a few assorted seconds, each longer than a century.”
Leonore held back a girlish giggle. She leaned over and kissed Nels Bernssen again.
“Stop that,” she said, batting away his thick-fingered hand as it worked on her clothing fasteners. He stepped back and stared at her in surprise. “Unless you mean it.”
“The crawler’s got living quarters,” Nels said. “Nice for one person, a bit cramped for two.”
“How cramped?”
Nels guided Leonore around until they landed on the bed. He showed her how nice it could be in the compact machine.
Afterward, Leonore half lay atop Nels. She kissed him, then said, “I couldn’t get away any sooner.”
“A likely story. I know you, girl. The only woman in a camp of men. Horny
graduate assistants. A lusty professor. You just couldn’t find time for a poor, lonely post-doc trapped on the barren plains, staring forlornly at the stars, pining away for the woman he loves.”
“Nels!”
“Sounded good while I was saying it,” the man said, smiling broadly. They kissed again. “But I did miss you. You don’t know how glad I was when you managed to get assigned here to Muckup instead of with—what was his name?”
“Velasquez,” she said, sighing. “That was a hard decision for me, too.”
“I know. He’s supposed to be archaeology’s shining star, isn’t he? Turning down a spot with his expedition to come to a nothing planet like this had to be a disaster for your career.” Nels stared into her brown eyes. Softly, he said, “Thank you.”
“I love you,” Leonore said.
Nels heaved a sigh and sat up in the tiny bunk. “We’ve got to get moving. I promised the boss lady I’d check up on the latest data collection. Supposed to be beamed down in less than an hour.”
“In this weather?”
“Why not? We’ve got the antenna array working just fine. Outer ring of sleeve monopoles, inner ring of folded monopoles with a low band reflector screen.”
“I’m sure you’ve got a nice antenna,” Leonore said, “but I meant that the rain would kill your signal from the satellite.”
“That’s why we used an omnidirectional antenna array. The damned absorption from the water is too much for us around 14 gigahertz without a lot of fancy massaging.”
Leonore nodded. “We use a hand-held transceiver and have to wait for clear nights.”
“Nights,” mumbled Nels. “Radiation is too much in the day and the rain kills the signal most other times. Hell of a planet.” Nels Bernssen smiled and pulled Leonore close once more. “But even hell looks more bearable with you in it.”
“Thanks a lot,” Leonore said sarcastically. “This is the first time anyone’s ever told me I’d decorate even a miserable place like Muckup.” She tipped her head to one side and studied the physicist. “I guess that’s as much of a compliment as I’m going to get from you.”
“You know how us post-doc types are. All the time with our head in the clouds.”
“Everyone’s in the clouds here.” The rain’s hammering against the outside of the crawler didn’t diminish its tempo. If anything, the storm worsened. The teravolt discharges of lightning cast an eerie light throughout the crawler’s interior.
“And Justine will have my ass for lunch if I don’t get moving. Got to collect. But you know I love it. Otherwise, why come to such a wonderful vacation spot?”
“Dr. Ralston met her when we landed. I don’t think he likes her.”
“Who does? But from what Justine said about your prof, he’s the one with his head in the clouds. Or his nose is going that way. Is he always such a snob or was it Justine’s charmingly obnoxious manner that burned him off?”
“He wasn’t mad at her,” Leonore said. “He’s just not an easy man to know.”
“Can’t be much of a researcher,” said Nels, getting dressed in the cramped space. “He wouldn’t have been sent to Muckup if he was. This is Satan’s left asscheek for an archaeologist.”
“That’s not so!” Leonore flared, surprising herself. She had no real feeling for Michael Ralston, one way or the other. He tended to be aloof, churlish, self-centered and, even worse, self-pitying. But, dammit, he was her churlish advisor. She had seen flashes of true dedication to archaeology. Maybe even brilliance. The way he had been unable to restrain his enthusiasm over entering the vaults definitely showed more fire burned under his cold exterior than anyone thought.
“This isn’t such a bad place,” Leonore went on. “We’ve made what might be a major find.”
“Sure. I saw the imaging radar pix. We took detailed shots before picking the spot for our base.” Bernssen got the crawler in gear. They lurched off, mud flying in all directions. He flipped on the electrostatic shield to keep the worst off the forward window. When that didn’t work, he cursed and started the mechanical wipers, which were only slightly more effective. The IR was good for finding warm bodies—like Leonore’s—but impossible for driving in a storm. Bernssen preferred visual.
“You did? You should have offered them to us. It’d’ve saved us putting up our own satellites. The University has really slashed our budget to the bone. One landing pod—and the starship we came out in was ancient twenty years ago.”
“It’s a matter of funding. We’ve got a good chance at something important,” Bernssen said. “The physics department had to fight off sponsors for us.”
“Is that your antenna?” In spite of herself, Leonore felt anger rising. She was happy that Nels and the solar physics researchers got adequate funding. At the same time, it annoyed her that the archaeology department was tossed only well-gnawed bones for its projects, especially one as exciting as Ralston’s find.
The omnidirectional antenna spread out over a full sixty meters of the muddy terrain. Leonore knew only the rudiments of com theory, but guessed that this array would pick up a dozen satellites simultaneously and multiplex the data into a station better equipped than anything her expedition had been offered.
She held back cold anger. They hadn’t even been given some of the rudimentary devices like a proton magnetometer or a supervisor.
“Nice, isn’t it?” Bernssen said proudly. He helped her from the crawler. Together, sharing her poncho, they rushed to the door of the computer station. Once inside, Leonore’s suspicions were realized. More had been spent on this single setup than for Ralston’s entire expedition. Everywhere she looked rose large banks of state-of-the-art field computer gear.
“The room’s air-conditioned,” she said.
“Has to be. For the computers. We took the biggest available.” Nels didn’t seem to realize that all the University had provided Ralston were plastic huts and a single sanitary station. No heat, no air-conditioning, barely watertight shelters.
Leonore also saw that she’d lost Nels. His eyes locked on one terminal and he homed in as if on inertial guidance. He dropped heavily into a chair and began working on the data coming in from seven different satellites.
“We’ve got four in polar orbits, ten others in a variety of west-to-east configurations and three in geosynch orbits,” he explained as he checked the flashing figures spit out by the computer. “The primary’s never out of sight for us.”
“Why so many satellites? The cost…”
“Cost doesn’t count. I told you sponsors were tripping over each other’s asses to fund us. We need all this and more if we want to monitor continuously.”
Nels Bernssen’s voice trailed off as another satellite spat out its data in a quick burst; the screen flashed and his attention centered on the work. Feeling neglected, but understanding his need to follow the experiments, Leonore wandered about. Most of the equipment performed functions totally alien to her. She’d never been especially good at physics, which was how she’d met Nels. He had offered to tutor her until she passed her basic courses in the subject.
She had passed, and his tutoring had turned to other, more intimate subjects.
“Glad you arranged to come out to Alpha, Leonore,” the man said, not looking up from the terminal. “Not many women’d do that just to be with me.”
“I’m glad now. More than just being with you, Nels. I thought I’d passed by a real chance on Proteus 4, but now I’m not so sure. We’ve got a big find. Maybe the biggest ever. It’ll make a great dissertation. If I do it right, it’ll establish me up there with Velasquez and maybe even Griegos.”
“Damn!” Bernssen exclaimed, rocking back in his chair.
“What’s wrong?”
“Things are moving faster than Justine expected. When was the starship supposed to be back for you?”
“Not for five months local.”
“Damn,” Nels repeated. He reached over and thumbed the communications unit mounted on the wall. “Justine,
you there?”
“What is it, Nels?” came the project leader’s voice.
“Just harvested the current crop from on high. Rayleigh-Taylor instability detected on the solar surface. Alternating hot and cold spots. Coronal activity mounting. The whole ball of wax. The computer’s still working on it, but I’d say less than a hundred planetary days before burn-off.”
Garbled static came from the speaker.
“Been talking to one of the grave robbers from over at the city,” Nels went on. “Their relief’s not due for a half year standard. Better send out a message packet to Novo Terra asking for an evac ship and get them the hell off before then.”
“What!” cried Leonore. Bernssen motioned her to silence.
“…damn radiation levels are rising, too. Cutting apart communication,” came Justine’s voice.
“You’ll have to ask Rodrigo about that. He’s the rad-man. All I do is solar hydrofluidics.”
“Document everything. I’ll get the packet starred off immediately, and I’ll tell Stoneface he’s got to vacate.” Justine chuckled. “It’s going to be fun kicking Ralston off planet. Teach him to be civil to his betters in the future.”
“Nels, what’s going on? We can’t leave. We… we just found a site that’ll turn the archaeology department around. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime find!”
“Sorry, darling. Justine’ll send the message back to the University. Ought to arrive in, oh, a week.”
“A week!”
“Superdrive. Damned near nothing but stardrive engine, a tad of fuel, and a marble-sized compartment for the message. Doesn’t take much to tell what’s happening since the powers that be already know. Anyway, they’ll dispatch another star-ship for you, and you’ll be off planet in about two months.” Bernssen’s expression turned grim. “Even that might be cutting it fine.”
[Weapons of Chaos 01] - Echoes of Chaos Page 6