The field they landed on was so flat you'd think it was graded. The soil was blinding white to where you needed to turn you faceplate very dark. There were flakes and grains of something in the ground that returned tiny specular reflections, but it was hard packed almost like paving. Their exhaust hardly raised any dust.
The Caterpillars let them land first but showed up before everybody was out of the shuttles.
"Show-offs!" Thor accused as they floated down with no exhaust.
"If they can get lift with no jet why don't they do that with the big ships?" Lee asked.
"One more thing to ask," Gordon said. "Maybe it only works well in a high gravitational gradient?"
The superior technology was somewhat wasted on the chassis. Their landers looked more like a double cab pickup with no wheels than any sleek futuristic vehicle. The plain box rears with rails and tie-down cleats were probably very practical. But utilitarian. To make them feel even more primitive the Caterpillar vehicles didn't really land. They remained hovering a hand's breadth above the ground.
"We know they have a fast courier not much bigger than our shuttles," Thor reminded them, "but I'd love to have the franchise to sell these babies. Put a little style on them and a Lemon metal flake paint job with purple flames on the front and I can ask anything I want for them."
"You are already so rich you won't have any idea how to spend it," Lee accused him.
"As always, you sorely under estimate me," Thor said.
The buildings were about a half kilometer away. Gordon was worried about blowing dust on them and shaking them if they were in delicate condition. The Caterpillars obviously didn't have to worry about that but sat down beside them. It was a nice indication they had some social graces since they just copied what the others were doing.
Lee was hoping to see what sort of a gait they used in those suits with the bunched legs, but she saw very little as they unloaded what looked like surfboards from the back of one lander and rode them along floating instead of walking like the others. The ground was so hard they didn't leave a footprint.
"We are just so outclassed," Thor groused.
"It looks like they poke two of those mechanical tentacles down into a slot on the board for controls," Lee said. "Are they short rounded sections or is that a spiral in the metal?"
"I don't see an angle to the crease," Talker said. “I think they each have a little ball joint of sorts."
"At least they don't just think where they want to go," Thor said.
"They undoubtedly could control them from within the suit by radio, but it's worth noting they still go with hard wired controls and some sort of manual input rather than trust a radio link in the various hazardous environments they'd encounter," Ernie Goddard said. It was the engineer talking.
Shuttle crew remained in the two vehicles, and their ground party was organized. The Caterpillars had only two representatives and Gordon wondered why two landers? The vehicles looked like they could carry two. Maybe they wanted the extra lift capacity for artifacts?
The first building they came to looked pretty much whole. That wasn't to say it looked good. The outer walls were leaning off vertical on an east-west line. It was one of the smaller ones on the edge of the complex. Only about four meters high, it was a hex about fifty meters along each flat. It was so low and small it hadn't even shown clearly on the original image Ernie had examined. Those building were higher to cast a much bigger shadow and a couple hundred meters on a side. They started a slow circuit of the building.
"Are you still doing OK?" Lee asked Ernie.
"OK for what?" he seemed confused.
"It seems like you were hurt so recently. Are you still sore or stiff?" Lee wondered.
"No, they wouldn't have released me to duty if I wasn't 100%. This isn't exactly a grueling hike, and it's a really light suit. I've worn heavier winter clothing before. But thanks for your concern," Ernie said.
"When my foot was hurt on Earth it took me a couple months to heal," Lee remembered.
"I got all kinds of healing accelerants and my bad break was put in an electric field that shifts frequency and moves things right along. Is the medical care that bad on Earth now?" Ernie asked.
"They didn't treat it. When I was arrested I kept asking, but they never let me see a nurse. I finally stopped asking," Lee explained. "By the time I was released to my cousin it was pretty well healed. The swelling was all gone and it just kind of ached late in the day for a while. When I got to Fargone I saw a doc and he scanned it and said – 'Yes, it had a couple small fractures'. Nothing mended crooked so there was really nothing to fix."
Ernie surprised her with the anger on his face. "Refusing to treat a wounded prisoner is torture. It's a war crime."
"We weren't at war, yet. It was just a criminal matter," Lee said. "But Gordon gave them their war."
"I know. And now I'm understanding why," Ernie said. He was still frowning.
"Look at this," Gordon said ahead of them. Lee realized she was lost in conversation with Ernie and hadn't been examining the building or their surroundings.
Gordon was peering in a crack where the flat sides of the building met in an apex. The panel to their left they'd just marched past was still pretty straight, but the next one was leaning out a good twenty degrees. Gordon played a powerful light through the crack, but declared nothing was visible.
"Since we have a crack here how about getting a sample of the material?" Thor asked.
"As long as you don't make sparks. For all we know this is a storage magazine where they kept explosives," Gordon warned.
"I've got it," Ernie said. He pulled a handsaw out of a leg holster. It was about a half meter long with a coarse diamond grit edge. It cut the material fairly easily, and he made two angle cuts from a little over waist high. That gave him a triangular piece of the wall for a sample about two hundred millimeter on a side. Ernie flipped it looking at both sides, tried it over his knee, and handed it to Gordon. The Caterpillars came up close and looked interested, so Gordon passed it to them and asked Ernie to get another piece.
"Roger," he agreed. He was cutting a much bigger notch. Big enough to see better, and big enough to go inside if they thought it safe. When he had his long cut made he went back to the start and got another small sample, then continued making a bigger opening.
"I don't know if I want to go in there," Gordon worried. "The whole thing looks like it is ready to come down."
"Maybe with our common building materials," Ernie said. "But this is about five millimeters thick. Try to bend it," he invited, with a grin.
Gordon's suit had adjustable grippers on his heavy middle arms that could be locked. He grabbed opposite corners and closed the jaws, then applied the locking levers. Putting some muscle into it he got less than a centimeter deflection.
"Some kind of composite," Gordon decided. "Probably a carbon compound, graphene matrix or bucky tangle, and a really good binder, because it has a lot of UV exposure."
"Yeah, have Thor pull on the edge of the crooked wall when I'm done cutting. If he can't get it to move I'll gladly go in and trust the roof not to fall on me," Ernie volunteered
Thor couldn't budge it.
"OK then, just stick your head in with a light and see if we want to investigate further," Gordon allowed.
Ernie did lean in, head and shoulders. They could see the bright light flashing around past him although he pretty well filled the hole. When he turned off the light and withdrew he looked horribly embarrassed.
"What do you think?" Gordon asked.
"I think we should have walked all the way around first," Ernie said. "There's an open doorway in the next section down. Oh, and a pile of junk on the other side."
After everybody stopped laughing enough to see straight they started walking for the entry. Lee wondered what the Caterpillars made of them all cracking up. Did they laugh? Everybody they'd met laughed, except maybe the Biters. She wasn't sure they had a laugh in them.
&nbs
p; The door was intact. It was just laying on the ground well away from the opening. For the first time they saw signs of how old the ruin was. There was a line of fine dust built up along one edge and drifted over the face a bit.
"Well we know which way the prevailing wind is now, such as it is," Thor said.
"Something has to raise the dust I'd think," Ernie said. "Either an earthquake or a meteor strike, and then the thin atmosphere carries it as it falls."
"I'm not sure. There may occasionally be a huge storm. Relatively speaking. What would be a slight breeze we'd never notice standing here," Gordon speculated. He leaned over and drew a finger through the fine dust. It was only the thickness of the door, about five millimeters just like the wall.
"I think maybe the pressure inside the building went up sharply and it simply blew the door off," Ernie said. "See how it is some distance from the opening? I saw something similar once with an old house. It had a gas leak and had an explosion inside. It blew glass window panes out but didn't break them. They were just laying there on the lawn whole."
Gordon walked to the opening and examined it. "There is a sort of channel with the outer lip ripped a few places. If the pressure went up inside sharply enough to make the whole building expand then it would have increased the opening and made it easier to fail."
"I can picture that," Lee said, "but what I can't picture is how the pressure went up. Just being jerked back and forth in an earthquake wouldn't change the volume that much. Why the pressure rise?"
"Maybe we'll find an answer in the junk," Ernie said. "Maybe a ruptured pressure vessel or something."
They were all pressed in on Gordon who was blocking the entry pretty effectively. Even the Caterpillars were looking around the edge. Gordon spread his middle limbs to dramatically block the doorway and explained: "I want one of you to go in and record the entire interior in video. Including the floor of the place before we all go tracking it up. And work from one end to the other of all that pile against the right wall before we touch anything."
"I'm used to taking specimen photos and documenting things," Lee said. "I also brought my good camera instead of just my pad. It won't take long. Would you all shine your lights in the door while I go across? It will reduce the contrast and make processing easier."
Gordon for once didn't object to her doing something. The floor was almost even with the ground outside; less than a centimeter higher, but a darker tan color. It might have been made with local materials because it seemed to be full of small random shapes of different colors that could be gravel. If so it was ground flat after being cast.
About half way across there was a thin streak of dust drifted across the floor. Lee reported it and panned the camera both ways to record it. It didn't seem worth preserving or sampling. There seemed to be some scrapes and gouges on the floor too, running left- right like the dust. When she looked up at the roof there wasn't any opening visible so it must have been blown in the door.
When Lee got to the far side and had recorded the entire floor she move to her right and started back recording the jumble of artifacts piled against the wall. The rest of them followed her recording in real-time on their pads or in their suit display. Gordon handed his pad to the Caterpillars, and they seemed engrossed in it, having no apparent trouble with it not being one of their own 3D displays.
"OK, now we can look over the junk there. I mean, valuable archeological artifacts!" Gordon corrected. "Let's do it this way. If you see something you want to move and inspect tell everybody. After we have a consensus it is safe first and foremost, then we will discuss if it can be moved without destroying it. This isn't a formal dig with grids and documentation, but I want to record when we pick anything up so we see what is around it and what is under it."
They all filed along looking intently. Thankfully the Caterpillars held back, watching them as much as they were eyeing the wreckage. If they'd dove in and started digging willy-nilly there was no polite way to ask them to desist.
"This is some sort of vehicle," Ernie said, shining his light on it. They all looked and agreed. It was leaning over on its side. There were two wheels with tires at either end. The tire was deformed – flat – against the floor. At an angle the tire was squashed flat at about a forty-five degree angle from the way it would sit upright.
"I'd like to drag this outside and have a good look at it in the light," Ernie said.
"The tires will probably disintegrate if they used any sort of material like we have," Thor said.
"Yeah, be sure to get good pix of them before we try to move it, Ernie agreed.
Lee and Ernie took video from two angles as Thor and Gordon grabbed each end and pulled it off the pile. It was twice or three times as big as a motorcycle for Humans. Lee realized she'd never seen anything like a motorcycle for Derf.
"It's a two seater, and even at that they must have been big," Ernie said.
"No," Talker disagreed. "I don't see any sort of seat. Just a rounded cover for the machinery that wouldn't be comfortable to sit on at all. I'm of the opinion they had four legs and stood with their belly over the center."
“The four pedals sticking out have recessed tops," Lee noted. “If they had a big flat foot that would locate them nicely and keep them from slipping off."
The tire shed some chunks of the outer layer with a tread pattern molded in, but it didn't totally disintegrate to dust. There were cords or wires inside that became visible as the outer layer broke off, any flexibility it had had long gone.
"There's a cable going down to the hub in each wheel," Ernie said. "I'm guessing it has an electric motor in each hub. Most Human motorcycles are rear drive only."
When they started to drag it toward the door one of the Caterpillars surprised them with a hoot. They weren't even aware they had found their shared radio channel and were listening in. He flowed off his board and positioned it parallel to the motorcycle making it sink down within a couple centimeters of the floor. They didn't know it could do that. He also held a couple tentacles out and patted the top of the floater board if he wasn't obvious enough, and gave another hoot.
Ernie laughed and tried to hoot back. It wasn't a very good hoot. He'd never earn a living with impressions, but it made the Caterpillar twitch so hard Lee thought he left the ground. Then he relaxed and made their long gobbling noise.
"I think he just had a good laugh at your pathetic hoot," Lee said.
"I wish you'd warn us when you are going to try something like that," Gordon said. "I'm just glad he took it OK and didn't get upset."
When they leaned the alien motorcycle over on the board it didn't try to slide away. "Don't cover up his control recess," Ernie warned. Whatever the Caterpillar had done had pinned it in place and it barely yielded a little as they lifted the motorcycle in place, trying not to drag it across the hover board.
"We should have brought a couple pull wagons," Ernie decided.
When it was laying on its side pretty evenly Thor gave it a couple taps with one toe to make sure it wouldn't fall off. "All yours," he said to the Caterpillar after he stepped back, doing a low bow and a dramatic hand sweep to tell him to take his board back. The Caterpillar surprised him by dipping on his forelegs like a curtsey and made a double flourish each way with his main tentacles. Everyone laughed at the mimicry, even Talker, and sure enough the Caterpillar did the warbling gobble again.
"That has to be their laugh," Lee insisted.
"Maybe you should concentrate on sign language instead of speech," Talker said. "He seems to take to that without much prompting."
"Alright, that's worth a try," Lee said, "but it's we should try sign language Ke-mo-sah-bee."
"OK, that's a new word again, and it isn't even in my pad," Talker complained.
"My parents used to drag that up any time you tried to edit yourself in or out of something," Lee said. "I'm not even sure where it comes from. I'll try to find out later."
The Caterpillar stuck a single tentacle in the control
recess and the board lifted a bit. He walked along beside it until they were outside. Lee noted the bunched up legs did ripple from front to back. A new wave starting at the front before the previous one reached the rear.
"Wow the bearing is still loose," Ernie said surprised, tugging on the wheel back and forth. "You'd think any lubricant would be hard and the wheel welded in place solid. It must have magnetic bearings or some other non-contact form. I'd like to take this back to the ship. We might get some pretty important engineering advances from it."
"Hmm. It's kind of big and massy," Gordon complained. "Maybe if the Retribution doesn't mind hauling it along. They have more open hold space than us since they left so much stuff behind for the Murphy's Law." He visibly had a new thought. "Assuming the Caterpillars didn't think we made a gift of it when we put it on their floater. I didn't think of that at the time."
"I think I saw the front wheel of another one in the pile," Talker said. "I'm looking at the video... Yeah, there's another one buried. Plenty for everybody," he quipped.
They continued removing smaller items from the pile, going in and out until they had a line of things laid out outside on the ground. Some were obvious, some a mystery. There was a remarkable shovel. The handle was short and very thick. The blade on the end was offset with a large flange to drive it into the earth on the right side. It implied a heavy user since the flange was so stout, and strong, because holding the weight of dirt on the blade would put considerable torque on the handle.
"We probably don't want to arm wrestle these guys," Ernie decided, turning the tool in his hands.
Talker was looking in his pad intently.
"Does our web fraction have anything about arm wrestling?" Lee asked.
"I'm that obvious? Yes, even a video. I don't mean to be offensive, but why?" he asked.
"Stupid male dominance games," Lee admitted. "Probably more common when drunk."
Talker blinked a few times and looked at her. "It's a natural for them. I'm going to introduce this to the Bills. With leagues by weight and betting in their bars, I'll make a fortune," he predicted.
Secrets in the Stars (Family Law) Page 18
