by Allen Steele
“Give me the transceiver,” he said to Kyra. “I’ll call the ship and see if they can patch me through to my mother.”
Kyra opened her pack, removed the transceiver, and brought it over to him. Slinging it over his right shoulder, Sean switched it on, then unfolded its antenna and pointed it toward the sky. “Survey team to Montero,” he said into its hand mike. “Survey team to Montero, do you copy? Please respond.”
He had to repeat himself a few times before Anne Smith’s voice came through the transceiver’s speaker. “We copy, survey team.” She interrupted herself with a yawn. “Sorry for the delay. I was catching a few winks.”
It seemed like days since the last time Sean had slept; he was envious of the communications officer for having that luxury. “Would you please patch me through to Captain Carson?”
Another yawn. “Sure . . . Hold on.”
A long delay, as much as a minute or more, during which he heard nothing but static. Then a brief crackle, followed by his mother’s voice. “Sean, is that you?”
Who else would it be? he almost asked, until he realized how tired she sounded. “I’m here,” he said instead. “Sounds like you’re asleep.”
“I was. It’s night here. We’ve set up camp in the biopod . . . we’re calling it Nueva Italia, by the way . . . and just about everyone is sacked out. Where are you now?”
“It’s night here, too . . . or at least what passes for night. We’ve made it to the tram station. I flew the gyro, but had to abandon it at the bottom of the escalator. No room for it on the lift, and it’s pretty much a loss anyway.” He paused, then added, “There’s no tram here. Just an empty tunnel.”
“Don’t worry about the gyro,” Andromeda said. “You won’t need it if you can get a tram to come to you, and we think we’ve figured out how to do that.” A short pause—it seemed as if she’d muted her headset to speak with someone else—then her voice returned. “Tom D’Anguilo is on watch. He wants to know if you’ve taken any pictures or gathered any specimens.”
Sean nearly laughed out loud. “Tell him that I’m sorry, but I’ve had other things on my mind.”
A dry chuckle. “That’s what I thought. All right, have you found the control panel? There should be one there.”
“I’m looking at it now.”
“Good. Okay, there should be two rows of figures . . . dots, squares, triangles, diamonds, and so forth . . . on it. Do you see that?”
“I see it.”
“Good. Tom thinks the bottom row are danui numbers, zero through six, and the top row are the coordinates for the biopod you’re in. So if you want to reach another biopod, you have to use that bottom row to plug in the numbers for the top row. Understand?”
“Uh-huh. How do I do that?”
Another pause, then D’Anguilo’s voice came over the comlink. “Sean, we’ve never done this before, but I think that if you push the digits on the bottom row, it’ll change the coordinates on the top row. Your mother . . . Captain Carson, I mean . . . copied down our coordinates, so she’s ready to repeat them to you whenever you’re ready.”
“Hang on a sec.” Sean clumsily shifted the transceiver’s carrystrap from his right shoulder to his left. Once its mike was in his left hand, he was able to use his right to operate the control panel. “All right, I’m ready.”
“Okay, here goes,” Andromeda said. “Two dots joined by a vertical line . . . That’s two.”
Sean found a figure on the bottom row that matched this description. He carefully pressed it with his forefinger. Nothing happened; the digit didn’t give way beneath his fingertip, and the top row remained the same.
“Nope,” he said. “No change. Are you sure you . . . ?”
“Wait a minute.” Sandy was standing behind him; like Kyra, she was watching over Sean’s shoulder. “If the bottom row is a keypad that’s sensitive to body heat instead of pressure, wouldn’t it make sense to take off your gloves first?”
Sean muttered an obscenity under his breath. He hadn’t thought of that. Handing the mike to Sandy for a moment, he peeled off his gloves, then took the mike back from her and tried again. This time it worked; the top row vanished, then the danui numeral appeared on the screen.
“That did it,” he said. “All right, go on.”
An audible sigh of relief, then his mother continued. “Next is an open diamond. That’s four . . .”
It took a while for Sean to enter all nineteen digits into the keypad. His mother had to describe them to him, and there were great similarities between the diamond-shaped figures that corresponded with four, five, and six. One by one, the danui numerals gradually appeared, and when the sequence was complete, he was rewarded by seeing them flash twice before disappearing, to be replaced an instant later by the original sequence.
Sean let out his breath. “I guess that means . . .”
Just then, a brilliant shaft of light came down from the ceiling above him and the two women, capturing them within its radiance. Startled, Sean nearly jumped an inch. “What the . . . ?”
“Did a light come on above you?” Tom asked. “If it did, just hold still. That’s a scanner checking you out.”
“Same thing happened to Mel and Jason when they used the tram to return to the ship,” his mother added. “It identifies which race you belong to, so it’ll know what sort of environment your tram will need. Or at least that’s what we think it does.”
A glowing circular band moved down the sides of the shaft until it reached the floor, then it rose to the ceiling again, whereupon the light vanished. Sean blinked against the retinal afterimage left upon his eyes. “Now what?”
“Now you wait. The tram should arrive any minute.”
Sean peered down the tunnel. He didn’t see anything coming. “How long do you think it’ll take for us to get there?”
“I don’t know. Probably a while. Mel thinks you’re a long way from here. Perhaps as much as forty thousand miles.”
Sean glanced at Kyra and Sandy. Their expressions were stunned; until then, none of them had had any idea they were so distant from the Montero. On the other hand, forty thousand miles—if that figure was correct—was barely an inch compared to Hex’s total circumference. “Practically in the neighborhood,” he said. “Want me to fetch some ice cream on the way home?”
His mother laughed. “Thanks, but I may not be around when you arrive. Long story, but I’m going to be doing some exploring of my own. But there will be someone here to meet you, and Anne will continue to relay any transmissions we send to each other.”
“Good excuse,” Sean muttered.
“What?”
“Never mind.”
As Andromeda predicted, before long a cylindrical vehicle appeared from the tunnel. With little more than a whisper, it glided to a halt in front of the platform. Windows revealed a lighted interior, and Sean saw that the tram was vacant.
“It’s here,” he said into the mike. “Signing off now.”
“Good luck,” his mother said. “Over and out.”
Sean switched off the transceiver, then bent down to pick up his pack. Kyra and Sandy did the same, but as they approached the tram, they noticed that its door remained shut. He was wondering why when he heard a sound behind him, and turned to see a transparent barrier slide down from the ceiling, sealing off the platform from the rest of the station.
“What’s going on?” Kyra’s eyes widened in alarm. “Why . . . ?”
A moment later, there was the sound of rushing air as vents opened within the ceiling. Sean suddenly understood; the tram didn’t have its own airlock, so this part of the station had become one; the vents were flooding the platform with an oxygen-nitrogen mix while removing the ammonia-rich atmosphere of the arsashi habitat. As if to confirm this, he felt his ears pop as the pressure decreased slightly.
“Nice arrangement,” he said. “They think of everything, don’t they?”
Kyra nodded but didn’t speak. She seemed apprehensive about boarding th
e tram. Stepping closer to her, Sean took her hand, gave it a reassuring squeeze. As before, he couldn’t see her expression through her airmask, but she gripped his fingers tightly within her own.
The rush of air slowly faded, then the tram’s doors slid open. They carried their packs inside, dropped them in a vacant area in front of the doors. The benches looked rather uncomfortable, but at least they were padded.
“Whoa. What is this?” Sandy jumped up from the bench she had just attempted to sit upon. “This thing just grabbed me!”
Kyra was a little more brave. She tentatively rested her rump upon another bench, and watched with interest as it re-formed itself around her body, gradually transforming itself into a comfortable chair complete with a backrest. “Not bad,” she said to Sandy. “Try it.”
“Like hell . . . !”
“Do it.” Sean nodded toward the doors; they remained open, and the tram was still at the platform. “I don’t think this thing is going anywhere until we’re seated.” Sandy scowled, then tentatively sat down beside Kyra, making a face when the bench flowed up around her.
They’d barely taken their seats when the doors shut, and the tram started moving. It didn’t reenter the tunnel, though, but instead continued on its way through the biopod. Through the windows on the right side of the car, Sean saw the dark landscape they had just crossed. Clusters of light glimmered here and there upon the terrain; judging from their distance, it appeared that the monorail led across the top of the biopod’s southern mountain range, just below the lower edge of the ceiling.
“Can we take these off now?” Sandy asked.
Sean didn’t reply, but instead carefully pulled down his mask. He hesitated, then took a shallow breath. He didn’t start choking; the air was cool and breathable. He grinned and nodded, and the two women gratefully removed their own masks.
“Thank God.” Kyra pushed back her parka hood and pulled off her goggles. “I was getting really tired of that.”
“You and me both.” Sandy unzipped the front of her parka and shrugged out of it. “It’s warm in here, too.” She chuckled. “All we need is a hot shower and a cold brew, and we’re set.”
Sean had been wearing his goggles for so long that they were stuck to his face; he winced as he peeled them off. Standing up to remove his parka, he noticed for the first time another control panel, this one on the tram wall opposite the door they’d come through. It was identical to one they’d found on the station platform, only this time a tiny yellow light slowly traveled across the upper-left edge of the hexagon.
It was impossible to tell how fast the tram was going. With the windows showing little but the darkness outside, he couldn’t even guess at their rate of speed. But if the biopod was a thousand miles long, and if the tram was traveling at—say, three hundred miles per hour, the average rate of a maglev train—it would take a little more than three hours for them to reach the other end of just this one biopod. No telling how long it would take for them to get to Nueva Italia.
“I wouldn’t count on getting a shower anytime soon.” Reaching for his pack, he unstrapped his sleeping bag and dropped it on the floor. “Might as well make ourselves comfortable. I think we’re in for a long ride.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
BY THE TIME ANDROMEDA, D’ANGUILO, AND ZEUS REACHED the tram station, morning—or at least something that resembled morning—had dawned within Nueva Italia.
“I don’t think I’m ever going to get used to this.” Andromeda gazed down upon the biopod as the lift approached the top of the escalator. As the artificial sky gradually depolarized, sunlight filtered in through the ceiling, erasing the darkness that had lain across the rolling terrain. “I like it when the sun actually comes up, not . . . well, this.”
D’Anguilo gave a wry smile but said nothing. He was bent over his backpack, nervously checking it again—as he’d already done twice already—to make sure that he hadn’t left anything behind. By contrast, Zeus was stifling a yawn; he hadn’t removed his pack since they’d boarded the lift, and it looked as if he was ready for a hike.
“I’m sure you’re not the only one, skipper,” the chief petty officer said. “Isn’t it the soranta who have some elaborate religious ceremony every morning?”
“That was before they adopted Sa’Tong.” D’Anguilo zipped shut a side pocket of his backpack, then opened another to peek inside. “Most of them ceased their sun rituals a long time ago.” He glanced up at the ceiling, beyond which countless other hexagons were beginning to make their appearance. “That’s assuming, of course, that they have their own habitat.”
Andromeda followed his gaze. Again, she was reminded of the fact that humans were far from alone on Hex. Elsewhere in the vast Dyson sphere were other races: not just danui and arsashi, but also hjadd, kua’tah, nord, and no telling how many more. So far, humankind had met only a handful of other Talus races; there were dozens more yet to be encountered. Was it possible that they were all there? Only the danui knew . . . and they weren’t telling.
“I’m sure we’ll soon find out,” she murmured. “If all goes well, I mean.”
D’Anguilo straightened up from his pack. “I wouldn’t worry, Captain. The danui asked you to come meet them. It wouldn’t make sense for them to extend an invitation if they didn’t—”
He was interrupted by a soft chime from the control panel, signaling that the lift had reached the top of the escalator. It slipped into a broad slot within the station veranda and came to a halt. Andromeda reached down to pick up her pack; without a word, she hefted it over her shoulder, then led the others off the lift and across the veranda to the platform.
As expected, the tunnel was empty. “Guess they want us to enter those coordinates before they send a tram,” Andromeda said. Putting down her pack, she reached into a side pocket for the scroll that Zeus had brought her, then walked over to the station control panel. The same message that she’d read yesterday was still there when she unrolled the scroll, its long string of danui numbers unchanged.
She was about to enter the first digit into the panel’s top row when D’Anguilo reached forward to stop her. “Wait a minute,” he said, blocking her hand with his own. “You’re getting it wrong.”
Andromeda frowned at him. “What do you mean?”
“Look at the bottom row.” He pointed to the seven digits at the bottom of the screen. “If we’re right, and that square is their version of a zero and the crosshatched diamond is their six, then they read from right to left, not left to right.” He moved his finger to the scroll. “You were about to start with the figure on the far left, when you should start with the one on the far right.”
“That makes sense, yeah.” Zeus was peering over their shoulders. “If the bottom row is their way of showing us their numerical system, the top row would be entered the same way.”
Andromeda nodded. Once again, she found herself being forced to admit that, however irritating Tom D’Anguilo might occasionally be, the expedition couldn’t have gotten as far as it had without his intuition. Yet as she started over again, carefully entering the coordinates the way he’d indicated, she couldn’t help but feel that something was wrong. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but . . .
Never mind. She forced herself to concentrate on entering the nineteen-digit string in proper sequence. Whatever it is, it can’t be important.
Andromeda entered the final digit, and the top row flashed in acknowledgment as, once again, a circular panel in the platform ceiling lit to capture the three of them in a shaft of light. They stood patiently while the station scanned them. A couple of minutes went by, then there was a rush of air from the tunnel as a tram appeared. It coasted to a stop at the platform, and its forward door cycled open, a silent invitation to board the vehicle.
Zeus started to step forward, but Andromeda raised a hand to stop him. “Just a sec,” she said, then she touched the headset of the long-range transceiver slung beneath her left arm. “Team Two to Nueva Italia. Com check. Do y
ou copy?”
“We copy, Team Two. Over.” Jason Ressler’s voice was clear in her earpiece; if she’d wanted to, Andromeda could have walked to the veranda railing and waved to her first officer in the base camp far below.
“Affirmative, Nueva Italia. Over.” Andromeda switched to a different channel. “Survey Two to Montero. Com check. Do you copy? Over.”
A few seconds passed, then she heard Anne’s voice, a little less clear than Jason’s. “Montero to Survey Two. Roger that. Good luck, Captain. Over.”
“Thank you, Montero. Over and out.” Satisfied that their radio lifeline was operational—at least for the time being—Andromeda switched off the transceiver, then bent over to pick up her backpack. “All right, then . . . let’s go.”
The tram was identical to the ones that Montero’s crew had ridden before; Andromeda suspected that it might even be the same vehicle. As soon as she stepped aboard, though, she realized that it was different. Her nose caught the faint aroma of ocean surf; the windows had water on them, and the benches were slightly moist. It appeared that the interior been soaked recently and hadn’t completely dried.
“What gives?” Zeus asked. “Did they hose down this thing before they sent it to us?”
D’Anguilo noticed a small puddle on the floor. He knelt beside it and, before Andromeda could stop him, dipped a fingertip into the puddle and laid it on the tip of his tongue.
“Salt water,” he said. “What do you want to bet that the last habitat this thing visited has an aquatic environment?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.” Andromeda set down her pack. The doors shut behind them, but the tram didn’t move. Perhaps it was waiting until they were all safely seated. She picked a bench near the windows that looked a little drier than the others; as before, the memory-material of its pad began conforming to her body as soon as she sat down. D’Anguilo and Zeus dropped their packs in the cargo space and took seats beside her, and without any further the delay, the tram started forward.