by Allen Steele
“Nothing.” Then he laughed out loud. “No…it’s everything. Jared was right. This isn’t a natural vent, it’s…it’s…”
“A radiator shaft.” Ramirez was oddly detached, almost as if he was describing a normal architectural feature found on any high-rise building. “The CO2exhaust vent should be somewhere nearby, but…”
His voice trailed off. “But what?” Cruz demanded. “Do you realize what we’ve found?”
“Of course I do.” Distracted, Ramirez regarded the vent for another moment. Then he turned toward Harker. “When you came over here, you almost fell over. Like you slipped on something.”
“Yeah, sure.” Harker finished clearing his faceplate. “I hit some ice beneath the snow…”
“Uh-huh…but I don’t think it was just ice.” Stepping away from the vent, Ramirez followed Harker’s tracks to the place where he’d slipped. Stopping there, he spread his arms wide. “All right, now, everyone fan out. Use the shovels, your hands and feet, whatever. Dig out as much snow as you can. It must be here somewhere.”
“It?” Harker stared at him. “What are you looking for? The carbon-dioxide vent?”
“Forget the vent,” he said. “We’re looking for an airlock.”
Moving in a circular pattern that gradually expanded away from where he’d almost fallen, Harker and Ramirez used shovels and the snow-blower to clear away as much particulate as they could, while Cruz used the spectrometer to search for more metallic traces hidden beneath the dry ice. Their method soon paid off, for it wasn’t long before they located the carbon-dioxide vent.
As Ramirez predicted, the vent was shut, sealed by a pie-wedged hatch nearly two meters in diameter. Although they dug out the snow around it, there seemed to be no way to open it from the outside. Cruz took photos of the vent cover, which he transmitted back to the shuttle, then they continued to search for an airlock.
Although Harker had come to realize that Ramirez’s theory was correct, he remained unpersuaded that they would find an entrance to Spindrift’s interior in the same place where they’d found exhaust ports. Yet Ramirez insisted that this was the most logical place to look. “Look at it from an engineering point of view,” he said while they took a break from searching and digging. “If you’ve built vents for carbon dioxide and radiators for excess heat, wouldn’t it make sense to provide service hatches to maintain them from the surface? Especially when they’re spread so far apart?”
“Then why haven’t they been used?” Cruz was skeptical. “The snow is more than a meter thick. There’s no sign that anyone…or anything, whatever…has come out here in ages.”
“I don’t know…I mean, I can’t answer that.” Ramirez let out his breath. “But that’s not to say that it isn’t here.”
“Well, if they’re aliens, then why should we assume that they’d do things we do?”
“Why assume that they wouldn’t?”
While the two scientists continued to argue, Harker checked his chronometer. They’d been on EVA for four and a half hours already. Their rebreather units were good for eight hours; he estimated that it would take an hour for them to return to the Maria Celeste. An hour and a half if he included a safety factor. That, along with the fact that they were hungry and tired, meant that they couldn’t stay outside very much longer.
“All right, okay,” he said. “That’s all well and good, but we’ve got to head back soon.”
“Second that.” Emily came over the comlink. “You guys need to wrap this up.”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” Ramirez was clearly irritated. “We’re on the verge of one of the greatest discoveries ever made…”
“That’s right, and I think we need to sleep on it.” Harker grunted as he bent down to pick up the blower. His back was sore, his eyes itched from reading the heads-up display, and he desperately wanted to scratch his nose. “We’ve made good progress, but…”
“Give us another two hours.” Ramirez’s tone became pleading. “An extra hour, that’s all. Then we can set up markers, go back to the shuttle, and return tomorrow to pick up where we left off. Is that too much to ask?”
Harker was already inclined to order an end to the sortie and return to the shuttle. But if he did that, he’d hear no end of grief from Ramirez. “I can work for another two hours.” Cruz sounded just as tired as he was, yet was willing to suck it in. “I think…I mean, we’ve got enough air left, don’t we?”
Before Harker could answer, Emily stepped in. “Go ahead, guys. I can hold it down for a while longer.” She’d been watching the clock just as much as he had. “Your call, Ted.”
Harker sighed, then nodded within his helmet. “All right, then…two hours, then we head back.”
In times to come, Harker would reflect upon that fateful decision and wonder whether it had been fortunate or fortuitous. Had he saved lives, or cost them? Had he changed history for better or for worse? If he’d ordered the exploration party to return to the Maria Celeste, would all of them have survived, or would they have perished on Spindrift, their demise a mystery to the rest of the human race? Or had this one small, seemingly trivial choice opened the doors to the cosmos?
He could only second-guess the outcome, for the fact remained that, less than a half hour later, they discovered the very thing for which Ramirez had been searching.
“Holy crap!” Cruz yelped. “Hey, guys…I think I’ve found a hatch!”
By then, Cruz had taken his turn at the snow-blower, and had been using it to clear away a patch of ground at the third point of a triangle whose legs were formed by the locations of the carbon-dioxide vent and the radiator shaft. Even though they were down to the last tank of halon, Harker hadn’t cared very much by that point who used the snow-blower; all he really wanted to do was make the long hike back to the shuttle, where he could peel off his skinsuit, have a cup of coffee, and fall out in his hammock for a few hours.
Yet it’d become clear, judging from the readings of Cruz’s spectrometer, that they were standing on top of a metallic plate about twenty meters in diameter. If Ramirez’s hypothesis was correct, then a service hatch should be located somewhere within the proximity.
And so it was. Dropping his shovel, Harker bounded away from the area where he’d been digging to the place that Cruz had used the blower to remove the dry ice. Before he got there, though, Ramirez took the blower away from Cruz. Aiming it at a patch of ground, he blasted away the particulate. A thin white fog rose, then slowly settled, and now they were looking at…
“Oh, good heavens,” he murmured.
“What’s there?” Emily’s voice came over the comlink. “What did you find?”
Beneath a thin layer of frozen carbon dioxide lay a low, hemispherical bulge, perfectly circular and almost two meters in diameter. Like the vent cover, it had a pie-shape configuration—four triangular segments, sealed together at the apex—except that this one was raised slightly above ground, like a metallic blister.
But that wasn’t all. Within each segment, evenly spaced apart from one another, was a small, round plate, no larger than a salad dish. And within each plate, three recessed holes, the two at the top slightly farther apart from the one at the bottom, each no more than a few centimeters deep.
Harker stared at the hatch for a few moments, feeling the last vestiges of skepticism evaporate along with his fatigue. Looking up at Ramirez, he saw the victorious smile upon the scientist’s face. Vindication at last…and despite himself, Harker felt a surge of wonder.
“Break out the laser,” he said. “Let’s see where this takes us.”
TWELVE
JANUARY 8, 2291—SPINDRIFT
Ramirez helped Harker and Cruz unpack the laser and set it up on its tripod, then stepped back to watch while Harker, who was the only one authorized to use it, adjusted the instrument to low-power level. Once Harker switched on the laser, he carefully guided its ruby beam across the hatch, cutting through the centimeter-thick layer of dry ice that encrusted it.
Even so, breaking through the ice was tough work. Although it melted as soon as the laser touched it, the carbon dioxide refroze almost immediately, making it necessary for Harker to shut down the laser every few minutes so that Ramirez and Cruz could move in with their shovels, digging up fractured slabs of ice and tossing them aside. It took nearly an hour of backbreaking labor, but they finally managed to clear the hatch enough for Ramirez to examine it more closely.
As he’d seen before, the hatch was approximately two meters in diameter, its blisterlike dome rising about twenty-five centimeters above the ground. It was split into four wedge-shaped segments closely joined at the center; the grooves between the segments were only a few millimeters wide. Within each segment, spaced less than fifty centimeters apart from one another, was a circular plate no more than a hand’s width in diameter, in which three small holes had been bored. The top two holes were about nine centimeters apart, while the third was centered about seven centimeters below the other two. All four plates had the same pattern, with the top two holes neatly aligned with the center of the hatch.
“We’re running down the clock, gents.” Harker had moved aside the tripod and was disconnecting the power cable. “Two and a half hours of air left in our packs. We need to head back soon.”
“It took us only an hour to get here. We’ve got enough time.” Ramirez got down on one knee to examine the hatch more closely. Beneath the glare of his helmet lamps, he noticed that the holes weren’t perfectly circular, but instead were oval grooves. Extending his right hand, he was able to insert his forefinger within one of them.
“Maybe so, but we still have to…”
“Will you please…?” Ramirez used his gloves to brush away small chips of ice from the remaining holes. “We’ve found the first alien starship, or whatever this thing is, and you’re fretting like a little girl.”
“C’mon, Jared.” Cruz’s voice was as easygoing as always. “We’ve got time to come back here. Let’s head back to the shuttle, get some rest. It’s not going anywhere.”
“What if the exhaust vent opens again? You want to spend another hour breaking ice?” Settling back on his haunches, he looked up at the other two. “And what if the captain gets the notion to issue a recall order? Ever think about that?”
“He wouldn’t…” Harker began.
“Yes, he would. You should know that better than anyone.” Ramirez jabbed a finger at the hatch. “This is important. More important than playing it safe. If having a cup of coffee and a nice little nap is your highest priority, then go on back. I’ve got work to do.”
For a few moments, Harker didn’t respond. “Emcee?” he said at last. “You copy?”
“Right here, Ted.”
“Think you can move Maria a little closer? I mean, is it possible for you to lift off again, then put down near the crater? That way we don’t have such a far hike to get to…”
A short laugh. “I can park her right on top of you, if that’s what you want.”
“Not that close, thank you,” Harker replied. “We just spent the last two hours clearing the site. I don’t want to have to shovel aside any snow the thrusters might displace. Home in on the LRC and put it down there; that should be near enough.”
“Affirmative. Give me…” A short pause. “Thirty, forty-five minutes. I’ll be there.”
“Roger that. Over and out.” Harker looked back at Ramirez. “All right, I’ve just shortened our return trip. That should buy you another hour.” A pause. “You can say, ‘Thank you, Commander Harker. You won’t regret this, and I won’t give you any more crap.’”
“Thank you, Commander Harker.” Ramirez’s faceplate fogged for a moment as he let out his breath. “You won’t regret this, and I won’t give you any more crap.”
“Better not. I was looking forward to that nap.” Harker stepped a little closer, bent down to study the hatch. “Right. Now show me what you think is so interesting.”
Little more than a half hour later, the Maria Celeste touched down just outside the crater. Emily had homed in on the LRC’s transponder, so she was able to pinpoint her landing within a hundred meters of where the three men had climbed over the rim. By then, Harker had reactivated the laser and used it to evaporate the ice within the hatch panels, including the four round plates that Ramirez had found. The astrobiologist wanted to continue working, but the commander put his foot down. They needed to return to the shuttle, if only to replenish their rebreather packs. So they left the equipment in place and followed the path they’d made through the ice pack until they reached the ropes and used them to climb out of the crater.
Although he’d been reluctant to leave the site, Ramirez had to admit that it felt good to remove his overgarment, helmet, and gloves. They didn’t take off their skinsuits, though; by then, everyone had agreed that all they really needed was a breather. So he sat on the armrest of one of the seats and warmed his hands with cup of coffee while Emily hooked up their packs to hoses that flushed out the filtration systems and refilled the oxygen tanks.
“The clue is the location of those plates,” Ramirez said, continuing the discussion he’d begun with Harker at the site. “There’s one on each flange, right? And the holes in each one…”
“All right. You’ve convinced me.” Harker walked over to the galley to pour coffee for himself. “They serve some sort of purpose. No argument there. So what makes you think they’re meant as handholds?”
“He’s got a point.” Cruz sorted through the selection of food tubes, apparently trying to decide which flavor of paste he wanted to inflict upon himself. “A lever of some sort, sure. But three little holes…I dunno.”
“That’s because you’re still thinking in human terms.” Shifting his coffee cup to his left hand, Ramirez held up his right hand, palm outward. “See how evolution has shaped your hands…four fingers, with a thumb opposing the others. Look around you, and you can see how nearly everything here is designed to accommodate this arrangement. The control panels, the cabinet doors, the lockwheels…”
“I had biology in school, thank you,” Cruz murmured.
“So you know what I’m talking about. Form follows function. Now imagine…” Ramirez folded his little and index fingers into his palm, leaving his ring and middle fingers raised along with his thumb. “A hand that looks like this, only with the two top fingers spread more widely apart and the thumb placed in the center.”
“That’s not a hand,” Emily said. “That’s a claw.”
“Perhaps…but capable of manipulation all the same. So wouldn’t it follow that a hatch meant to be opened by such a hand…or claw, if you will…would be shaped to…”
“All right, you’ve got me there.” Harker leaned against a suit locker as he sipped his coffee. “But there’s four plates, one for each flange, each with their holes facing in the same direction.”
“Uh-huh.” Ramirez dropped his hand. “With the top two oriented toward the center of the hatch and the third facing away. Go on.”
“So…” Harker thought about it a moment. “If all four plates were meant to be turned in order to open the hatch, wouldn’t that…?” He shook his head. “No. That’s impossible.”
“Yes, it would be.” Now it was Ramirez’s turn to smile. “If the beings who designed it had only two arms.”
Harker and Cruz glanced at each other, while Emily turned away from her work to gaze at him. Cruz let out a low whistle. “Y’know, I’m not sure if I want to meet…”
“Hush!” All of a sudden, Emily raised a hand to her headset. She listened intently for a moment, then prodded her mike wand. “Roger that, Galileo, we copy.”
Harker brushed past Ramirez as he hurried into the cockpit. Picking up his headset from where he’d left it in the copilot seat, he pulled it on. Looking around, Ramirez spotted his own headset. He put it on, then found Cruz’s headset and tossed it across the cabin to him.
“…establishing rendezvous orbit one hundred kilometers from primary objective,” Ar
kady was saying, his voice a static-laced crackle. “Do you copy?”
“We read you, Galileo. Thanks for the update.” Harker took a deep breath. “Not sure if the starbridge is still the primary objective, though. We’ve located the crater vent, and found something quite interesting.”
Ramirez felt his heart freeze. Not now, you idiot! He tried to motion to Harker, telling him to be quiet, but the first officer turned his back to him. So he had to sit and listen while Harker delivered a rundown of all that they’d discovered within the crater, up to the point that they came across the hatch leading to Spindrift’s interior.
By then, Emily had come forward. While Harker spoke, she reached past him to activate a screen below the com panel. Gazing over her shoulder, Ramirez saw that it displayed an image of Galileo’s command center. Although Arkady occasionally glanced up at the camera, no one else seemed to be aware that they were being observed. Lawrence was seated in his chair, with Cole standing beside him, but their attention was focused away from them, upon the forward windows and the screens above them.
Emily looked at Ramirez, silently pointed to the screen, then smiled and touched a finger to her lips. Now he understood. They were spying upon the Galileo from the point of view of Arkady’s station; so far as everyone else aboard was concerned, they had only voice contact with the Maria Celeste team. Ramirez grinned. It wasn’t much of an ace, but nonetheless they had it up their sleeve.
Harker was finishing his report when they saw Cole bend down to Lawrence to whisper something in his ear. They couldn’t hear what he said, but the captain listened closely; he nodded a couple of times, then he reached up to touch his mike wand.
“Well done, Mr. Harker. Pleased to learn that you’ve made such progress. Your team should be commended for its efforts.”
“Thank you, sir.” Harker gazed at the spy view of the command center. “I hope Sir Peter is satisfied as well.”