by Sarah Zettel
“Vee, what are you doing?” asked Josh, to distract himself. She was crouched down and running her fingers over the threshold.
“Exploring the secrets of the universe,” she answered. Her voice sounded flat, tight.
Troy descended right after Julia, followed closely by Terry. As soon as Terry was down, she whistled softly and began examining the smooth, rounded walls. Julia bent over the six holes laid out in a straight line at the base of the ladder. Josh was willing to bet she was talking animatedly into her log. Veronica stayed where she was, turning from the inner threshold to the mouth of the entry shaft and back again. Troy just stood in the middle of it all, a look of sheer delight on his face.
“Incredible. It just feels incredible.”
Although part of Josh suspected Troy was, yet again, playing for the cameras, part of him nodded in agreement. He’d run through the videos and holographs a hundred times, but that was nothing compared to standing in the middle of the Discovery, feeling the stone surrounding them and wondering, just wondering.
Freed from his initial bout of amazement, Troy started hopping around the chamber like a kid in a candy store. He bent over the six holes with Julia; he ran his hands over the inner threshold with Veronica. He peered eagerly over Wray’s shoulders to see whatever it was they were looking at, all the time murmuring, “Incredible, incredible.”
“Can we see the rest?” asked Veronica abruptly.
Josh blinked. “Sure.” And I thought it was just me who couldn’t wait.
“One second,” said Terry. “I need a shot of all of you with the light from the shaft coming down.” She shuffled closer to the ladder. “Say cheese, but keep on doing what you’re doing.” People bent or walked, stiffly and reluctantly, but Josh supposed that would later be put down to the suits and the pressure. “Okay. All done.”
Great. “Okay. The main chamber is through here.” Josh gestured down the horizontal tunnel. “Again, I’ll go first. It’s hands and knees. Go slow and try not to bump your packs.”
The inner tunnel was even more constricting than the entry shaft. The smooth, narrow way was completely dark except for the small black-and-gray area illuminated by his suit lights. He crawled forward without feeling anything but the insides of his gloves against his hands and the padding of his suit under his knees. There was no sound except his own breathing.
“It makes a slight rise here in the middle,” he told the people behind him, whether they were following or waiting in Chamber One. He couldn’t tell. There was no room for him to turn his head to look. His general plate displays told him only that their intercoms were up and running, not where those intercoms were.
The tunnel undulated sharply, forcing Josh flat onto his stomach. He shinnied up to the rounded crest and slid back down again. He hoped none of his tourists would find this too much for their dignity. Probably not. Troy seemed the most likely to make a fuss, and he wouldn’t do it while there was a risk of being recorded. If they were nervous about the world around them, they seemed to be burying that feeling under the excitement of exploration.
Another two meters and the tunnel opened up into Chamber Two, the main chamber of the Discovery.
Josh got to his feet and turned around in time to see Veronica emerge from the tunnel. She stood up and moved back from the tunnel’s mouth, turning as she did so she could take absolutely everything in.
Chamber Two was a bubble, like Chamber One, but three times as big and twice as high. Michael Lum had joked that this was obviously an alien church, because it was so hole-y. Circular niches a meter around and ten centimeters deep had been carved into the walls. Small shafts perforated the floor, ranging between one and six centimeters in diameter. Robot surveyors sent down those shafts found they interconnected at different levels underground. Maybe they once held a pipe network.
Tiny holes that sank into the walls at regular intervals might have been for staples or brackets of some kind, holding up shelves or wiring or domes pegs for all they knew. An entire section of floor had been dug away for about a half meter, making a shallow, smooth-walled depression at the eastern curve of the chamber. At the bottom of the depression were still more holes—two ovals of eight holes each were surrounded by numerous minute holes drilled at seemingly random intervals.
Not even the stark evidence of human intervention could dampen Josh’s delight at finally standing in the middle of the Discovery. Every last one of the holes now had a cermet tag next to it with a number designation. It had taken almost a week just to get all the holes tagged. The measurements still weren’t finished. Hopefully Julia would be able to make a contribution to that effort with the miniature survey drones she carried in her pack.
From the ceiling hung three quartz globes. Inside them, you could see a tangle of filament wires. Big, pressure-tolerant, alien light bulbs. No one had managed to find the power source though, and God, how they’d looked.
A low, round doorway opened across from the tunnel. This one led to another smaller bubble room, almost a closet. Chamber Three. The laser was in there. Josh’s curiosity was almost a physical force pushing him toward that other doorway. He kept still with difficulty while, one at a time, the remainder of the team emerged from the tunnel.
Every last one of them looked up and around, just as Veronica had. Josh had a feeling a number of jaws had dropped open. It even took Terry a moment before she started systematically aiming her camera again.
After that, it was a replay of the scene in the antechamber, except nine times more intense. Snatches of competing conversations jammed the radio until everyone remembered about the private channels. Troy and Julia crowded the edge of the pit, pointing and gesturing. Terry tried to record everything at once. Only Veronica didn’t move. She stood in the middle of Chamber Two and frowned up at the lights.
In return, Josh frowned at her. He opened a private channel between them. “Vee? We’re here to see the laser?”
She focused on him slowly, as if his words reached her from a long way away. “Yes. Right.”
“This way.” He pointed to the low doorway. His hand almost shook with eagerness. Let the other tourists fend for themselves for a while. Let’s see what the neighbors left for us.
Josh ducked through the low doorway, for the moment not really caring if Vee followed him. He turned to the right, and there it was.
The laser rig stood next to the far wall of Chamber Three. Whoever hollowed out the chamber had left behind a single wedge of polished rock. It had been planed off at a forty-five-degree angle and tapered up from the floor until it was about level with Josh’s waist. A mechanism fastened to its surface and pointed toward a pair of short, narrow holes let in the ashen light from the surface.
Clumsily, Josh sat down. Now the laser rig was about level with his nose. “We’re dealing with little green men all right,” he said to Vee. “If this was working height for them, they couldn’t be much more than a meter tall.”
Vee said nothing. She just sat down beside him.
The laser itself was nothing much to look at right off. Its body was a dull-gray half-pipe about a meter long. Two tubes with roughly triangular cross sections projected out of it and pointed toward the holes to the surface, their flared ends almost touching the living rock.
“There’s a set of staples down here,” said Josh, leaning into the base of the half-pipe and pointing to the thick metal fasteners. “They pull out.” He gripped one carefully in his thick glove fingers and pulled as gently as he could. The staple eased out a little ways, then stopped.
“Anybody analyzed the cover?” asked Vee.
“It’s a ceramic. They think it’s refined from local earths. Maybe shaped by some kind of laser tomography.”
Vee just grunted. Josh pulled out the remaining staples. Then he lifted the cover away to reveal an interior that guttered with black glass, crystal, and gold.
And there it all was—the power points tucked into the two long, black glass (maybe) tubes, with what were
unmistakably Brewster windows set into either end. The tubes themselves contained…what? They didn’t know yet. Mirrors of incorruptible gold (probably gold. Looked like gold) stood at either end of the tubes. Golden strips had been laid down in neat patterns along the tube supports. Pairs of thick lenses had been positioned at the end of each tube that was closest to the wall, with the smaller of the pair on the inside (almost definitely a beam expander), and in front of them was a pinplate to focus the light and send it…where? He looked at the holes to the surface. To do what?
Much of the answer to that question would depend on what was in those black tubes, which would tell them what kind of laser they were dealing with. The presence of the tube told them it was a gas laser, but what kind of gas laser?
When they knew what kind of laser it was, they could work out what it had been used for. And when they knew what it was for, they would know what these people were doing here, and when they knew what these people were doing here…the universe would open up wide.
He wanted to say this to Vee, but he didn’t. Something was wrong with her. She seemed closed off, and he couldn’t tell why.
Well, you can sort that out later. “Can you get the monochrometer out of my pack?”
“Right.” Vee stumped around behind him and he felt the small jostlings as she undid the catches on his pack and pulled out the equipment.
While Vee squatted next to the laser to position the boxy analyzer and pump down the suction cup at its base, Josh pulled their portable floodlight out of her pack and lined it up with the monochrometer on the other side of the tubes. When both devices were switched on, pure white light would shine through the tubes into the monochrometer, which would analyze the absorption patterns and report. Then they’d know what lay inside the opaque glass.
Vee jacked the monochrometer into her suit. “Okay. Go.”
Josh pressed the power-on switch and the light flashed on, so suddenly and intensely bright his faceplate dimmed. He imagined a faint humming as its beams passed through the tubes. Another shiver of fear and excitement went through him, brought by the awareness that he was doing something no one else had ever done before. Even Vee’s closed expression softened as she read off the monochrometer’s conclusions. “Okay, we’ve got hydrogen in there, a little neon, and”—she paused—“carbon dioxide.” She stared at the device. “It’s a CO2 laser, Josh.”
“Makes sense, doesn’t it?” Josh was aware he was grinning like an idiot. “Not only does CO2 make for a versatile, powerful laser, but our aliens have been making heavy use of local materials. If there’s one thing Venus has and to spare, it’s CO2.”
“Right.” Vee pulled the monochrometer jack out of her glove’s wrist, turned her back, and left.
Josh did not let his jaw drop. Veronica marched through Chamber Two and climbed back into the tunnel toward Chamber One.
“What was that?” came Troy’s voice.
I have no effing idea, thought Josh.
“Is there a problem?” Julia stood up from her crouch over the carved-out section of floor.
“No, no.” Josh waved them back. Both curious and confused, he crawled back through the tunnel to Chamber One. He got there just in time to see Vee climb the last rungs of the ladder and disappear over the side of the hatchway.
Josh opened their channel. “Vee? Vee? What are you doing?”
No answer. Josh flicked over to the channel for the scarab. “Adrian? This is Josh.”
“I hear you, Josh, what’s up?”
“How’s Dr. Hatch’s suit doing?”
“She’s green and go here. Something wrong?”
I have no effing idea. Josh stared at the ladder. He did not want to chase after her. If she wanted to be a temperamental artiste, that was her business. The laser was waiting for them both. If she didn’t care, fine.
Except that there were so many ways she could get herself killed out there.
Josh carefully closed down all his com channels except the one to the scarab. When he was sure no one could hear him but Adrian, he started swearing softly, and he climbed the ladder back to the surface.
As he emerged from the hatch, he saw Vee crouched about ten meters away, apparently staring at one patch of ground.
“Vee? What the hell are you doing?” Josh demanded as he started stumping toward her.
“More holes.” She pointed.
“Yes, I know. We found those. They should be tagged.” Two squares of four small holes drilled neatly into the earth on the right side of the hole the laser pointed through.
“Yes.” She stood up and started walking back toward him. Josh stopped in his tracks.
“You want to tell me what’s going on?”
Apparently, she didn’t. She said nothing as she passed him and climbed back down the ladder. Josh choked off another set of curses and returned to the hatch. While he watched, she lumbered down the rungs, walked to the center of the chamber, and laid down on her back, her faceplate pointing up at the ceiling.
Bewilderment warred with exasperation as Josh climbed down the ladder and stood over her. “Are you okay?”
“Fine, thank you.” Her voice was bland, almost bored, and her expression matched.
“Are you going to be able to get up all right?”
“I’ll call if I can’t.”
He paused. “You having an artistic snit of some kind?”
“Probably. You’re in my way.”
“Excuse me.” Josh stepped back and wished he could run his hand through his hair. He just watched the still form lying on its back and staring at the ceiling, looking for all the world like an empty suit that had fallen over. Well, so much for the idea that you’d turn out to be the reasonable one.
Seeing nothing else to do, Josh crawled back through the tunnel to Chamber Two.
“Is Veronica all right?” asked Troy.
“She’s fine,” Josh assured them all as he straightened up. “She’s decided to pursue an independent investigation.”
Those few words satisfied everyone. Everybody knows how artistes are, thought Josh as he returned to Chamber Three. I wonder how much she trades on that?
He pushed the thought aside. Whatever Veronica wanted to do—as long as it didn’t actively involve killing herself, damaging equipment, or wrecking the site—didn’t really matter. He could still work. Every part of the laser had to be measured, labeled, gently sampled, and precisely cataloged and videoed. The work and the wonder of it all soon swallowed up thoughts of anything else.
Every so often, movement in Chamber Two caught his eye. Vee went back and forth between the main chamber and the antechamber three separate times. Once, she came into the laser chamber and just sat by the wall for a while. He ignored her. Eventually, she left.
At 14:00, his suit clock chimed. So, he knew, did everyone else’s, but he spoke into the intercom anyway. “That’s time, folks. We need to head back.”
“Another few minutes—” began Troy.
“We’ve got two weeks,” replied Josh. “You don’t want to run low on coolant out here, do you?”
That got them. All at once, everyone was ready to go. No doubt Derek had showed them the record of Deborah Pakkala, whose coolant circulation had failed on her, and how she had cooked to death in her suit before she reached the scarab, twenty meters away. Josh eyed the radio icons to flip over to the channel for Scarab Five. “Adrian, Kevin, we’re coming in.”
“Roger that, Josh,” came back Adrian’s voice. “We’ll be ready for you.”
Josh took a quick head count. All present, except for Vee.
“Vee?” called Josh over the public channel. “Time.”
“I heard” came her voice, clear, tight, and slightly bored, as it had been for the entire afternoon.
Shaking his head yet again, Josh led the way back through the tunnel. He shinnied over the rise and stopped. Vee’s suit, on its back again, blocked the tunnel.
“Vee,” he said, refusing to be surprised or angry. She woul
d not take the wonder of this day from him. He would not let her.
“Right.” Using the tunnel walls as traction, she turned herself over onto her stomach and crawled out ahead of him.
Josh led the team up the ladder and across the rough, barren ground to the scarab. The airlock hatch stood open, waiting for them. They took their spots on the benches. Josh shut them inside and signaled Adrian. The outer hatch’s light blinked red as the depressurization started.
“So, Dr. Hatch,” began Troy conversationally. “Did you find what you were looking for?”
“Not yet.” She gave him a sunny, meaningless smile. “But as Josh said, we’ve got two whole weeks.”
“Two weeks,” said Julia less enthusiastically. “If it doesn’t kill us. I feel like I’ve been lifting weights for four solid hours.”
“It’s the pressure,” said Troy. “We’ll get used to it, I’m sure. Isn’t that right, Josh?”
Josh shrugged but then remembered his suit wouldn’t show the movement. “Not really, no, but you learn your limits and how to pace yourself.”
“Do you think you’ll ever get used to the idea you’re crawling around inside an alien artifact?” asked Terry.
Josh felt his mouth quirk up. “Is this on or off the record?”
Terry sighed exasperatedly. “Civilians. If the answer’s really good, I’ll ask to use it.”
“My God, an ethical feeder,” murmured Josh, and the remark earned him a round of laughter. “The answer is, no, I don’t think I’ll get used to it, and I don’t really want to get used to it. We are in the middle of the most incredible thing that’s ever happened and I never want to forget that.” He smiled. “Good enough to use?”
“Are you kidding?” said Terry. “The boss willing, I’m going to open with that.”
“And what about you, Veronica?” Troy angled himself to face her. “How did you feel inside the Discovery?”
Veronica didn’t move. “Oh, I was impressed,” she said distantly. “Very impressed. The sheer scale of the undertaking. It’s amazing.”