Bowl of Heaven

by Gregory Benford

  Cliff didn’t try to speak. Beth was talking her way through it, and that was nerve racking. “It’s flat, Abduss. There’s a hole in it, a pit with stars at the bottom. We want to land, right? Not go through to the outside. Hey, there’s light at the bottom! And here we go — ”

  Eros surged, then danced sideways under Coriolis force.

  EIGHT

  She set them down less than two kilometers from the butte wall, on a cluttered ledge that was perhaps four kilometers across. There was a wall along the inner rim. Beyond that, the universe peeked through a hole ten kilometers across. She made the ship linger on its jets, finding a bare spot. They thunked down and felt the tug of centrifugal gravity.

  She looked toward the butte face. Pale ivory light spilled out along the bottom of the wall, from a row of windows running from tiny to huge.

  They all felt the significance of the moment, but there was no time for reflection. They didn’t know what waited outside, but talking wasn’t going to tell them anything.

  They emerged from the scout ship in full space gear. Cliff listened with half his attention to Fred reporting to Redwing. The lightspeed time gap was seventeen seconds and rising. They stood at the foot of Eros, looking into the light. Into a row of glass boxes of increasing size, with forest on the far side.

  “Air locks,” Fred said, and laughed happily. “With transparent walls.” He stopped laughing when nobody joined him. “That one at the far end is fifty or sixty times as big as Eros. I guess they have to pass big machinery, given the scale of this, well — ” He groped for a word, then laughed again. “Describing all this isn’t easy. Captain Redwing, are the helmet cameras working?”

  “We want one of the little locks,” Cliff said.

  These gigantic structures weren’t funny; they were daunting. The one ahead would easily pass Eros, and it wasn’t the largest.

  Redwing, lightspeed delayed, barked on comm, “Cameras are working. Definition isn’t good. Keep talking, Fred. We’re lonely up here.”

  Beth added, “And nobody’s coming out to greet us, either.”

  * * *

  The smallest hatch that seemed to be an air lock wasn’t a good choice. It was no bigger than a child. Cliff had picked one big enough to pass a couple of elephants, Beth judged. They brought the cart rovers down the ramp from Eros and lined up their cargo in front of the air lock. Their suits weighed lighter on them in the lesser grav.

  Beth felt odd indeed, looking through two walls of faintly blue cliff to see … trees. Spindly black trunks, soft pink fronds, carrot-topped — but trees. They set to work opening the air lock.

  Only they couldn’t.

  * * *

  For three days, they tried to find a way into the air lock. The task took all the gear they had in the lander. Beth got tired from lugging apparatus out to the working area, setting it up, trial testing, integrating, then listening to the arguments about the results.

  People under stress, she observed, need to argue. It lets off steam.

  The team looked for obvious controls in the window/walls, but the surfaces were translucent, smooth, unmarked. They were synthetic diamond, at a guess. Carbon, anyway. Mounted on a blue interior wall were odd protrusions that might be controls — “For something with big fingers, or clumsy,” Fred reported to SunSeeker, now half a lightspeed minute away. But on the outside there were no manual assists, nothing like a computer interface they could recognize, not a lever or a valve. In a way it made sense: defensive architecture.

  They tested the cliff wall — a hard shell, rising straight up with a vacuum on one side and on the other an atmosphere. They could see the weather was heavy with sleeting rain the second day, and cloudy the next. Looking up the height of the transparent inner wall was like taking a cross section of the sky, with clouds sometimes stacked against it. Slowly winds blew the clouds around the enormous boundary of the butte. While the others labored, Beth and Cliff took time to watch the trees and soil and small darting things that flitted among the swaying trees. Something foxlike almost escaped a pouncing bird.…

  An alien world. It was like standing on one side of a museum diorama, only they were in skin suits and packs. And the other side was a living world just doing its business.

  Quick flitting birds like swallows, but much bigger. They were fast and sometimes flew in formations. Bright splashes of color amid snarled undergrowth looked like flowers with petals, but threw tendrils through the underbrush. Why? Trees of curious zigzag trunks and branches. Scampering slick-skinned blue gray things — like squirrels? same niche? — leaping on the ground and into trees. Odd angles in the tree limbs, gnarled things like nests or goiters, a broad-winged thing flapping through …

  Howard kept making analogies to Earth life. Sometimes they worked, but other features made no immediate sense. Strange and wondrous. Gradually Howard stopped talking to Cliff and just made notes.

  Redwing got irritated that they could not find a way in. He started giving orders in a stern tone. Eros’s crew stopped answering. People got prickly, Beth noticed without surprise.

  Beth figured there was some signal they were supposed to give, but the blank, smooth, slick face of the air lock wall gave no clue about what to try. Here was the abstract problem of communicating with aliens, brought down to a concrete level.

  Beams of particles, laser pulses, microwave antennas brought to within a meter — none made any difference, or provoked so much as a change of color in the eggshell blue wall.

  The third day they were standing around the big microwave beamer they had hauled out, Beth with her gloved hands on her hips, gazing down in frustration at the rig, which had done nothing to the barrier. Fred said very calmly, “Something moving in there.”

  They all turned and saw a big colorful creature walking out of the trees. Swaths of blue, yellow, and magenta seemed splashed over it in elaborate designs. A big narrow head, with a long nose between two large eyes, swiveled and watched with stately elegance. The native looked to be at least three meters tall and strode forward on legs that articulated gracefully, taking great long strides. Mouth like a stubby beak. Spindly long arms ending in complicated hands. It came forward quickly, carrying something tubular, and then three more like it appeared from the trees. They seemed to stroll, taking their time but covering ground quickly.

  Beth stood absolutely still, but part of her realized that this would be the first remark at the sighting of intelligent aliens. She said quickly, “They’re … beautiful.”

  “Birds,” Cliff said. “Those colors — they’re feathers.”

  “Smart birds?” Fred asked.

  “Hey, crows are smart,” Irma said. Then shrugged. “Somewhat.”

  Howard Blaire just gaped at the Bird Folk, his gloved hands flat against the glassy surface. He’d run a semi-private zoo in Maryland on Earth. He’d collected animals too. He’d been something of a star, bringing weird animals onto television shows. Cliff had asked Redwing to revive him because he was familiar with varied environments and animal behavior.

  They stood there for long minutes and the Bird Folk did just about the same, staring through the wall. They made quick, jerky movements with their two slender arms, moving their long necks sideways and jerking their beak-mouths. It was easy to see them as birds who had replaced wings with arms, but as well, they had a lightness and grace to their gait, an elegance of motion that recalled no creature of Earthly origin. Beth found this enchanting, a sort of dance she had never seen before.

  The newcomers did not make any move to open the lock. After a while, Cliff poked a finger at Fred and Irma Michaelson. Irma was one of the recently revived crew, a plant biologist. “Go forward. Make hand gestures about opening the lock.”

  The Bird Folk seemed excited when Fred and Irma approached, beaks flapping — but they did not answer the hand signals and gestures. They gawked. They talked to one another. They fingered the various burdens they carried on belts and vests.

  Beth watched them closely —
the humans were all recording visual and audio, of course — and decided the Bird Folk didn’t wear clothes at all beyond appliance wear like packs and belts. They had long swaths forming colorful patterns all over their bodies, particularly at the neck. Some wore what looked like headsets, or else ornamental hats. The backs of their heads had multicolored coxcombs of astounding profusion. Every one was different, with intricate bursts of color interwoven in rubbery pink combs, some nearly a meter long. They were tall, the biggest maybe 2.5 meters high.

  Redwing’s voice said on comm, “Company. About time! Fred, keep me posted.” Fred didn’t answer.

  More Bird Folk appeared, came forward, and seemed to talk to the others. Body language: strutting, bowing, fluffing of feathers. Plenty of beak flutter, speaking. Cliff reported, “We’ve got two species — at least two species — call them big and medium. Medium is still bigger than we are. Big defers to medium. Big carries sacks under the neck or on the ramp of its back.”

  First contact was turning out to be entirely a spectator event.

  They stopped using their beamers on the wall for fear that the Bird Folk would take it as an attack. So everybody stood there and looked.

  Beth chuckled. They had come light-years, met an obviously intelligent species — and neither could do much but gawk.

  The tension of it finally got to Cliff. “Let’s all go back inside. Maybe that’ll provoke them to do something.”

  Beth thought this was a good idea; their suits were running low on reserves of air and power, anyway.

  Nothing happened the next day, either. Some Bird Folk came and went, but came no closer to the lock.

  The humans made a more elaborate camp: pressure tents, stores of water, microwave stoves. Maybe that would give the aliens some idea of how they lived, Beth thought. With guard duties assigned, someone was always watching the Bird Folk, capturing every move on video.

  They all invented theories about why the Bird Folk did nothing — Captain Redwing had half a dozen — but without any way to check them, it seemed futile. So they had meetings and talked to Seeker and tried ideas.

  More Bird Folk appeared. They formed loose ranks and stretched beyond view. Over a thousand of them, by Abduss’s camera-count. Irma wondered, “Maybe they don’t have much technology anymore? Or are they just the local animals?”

  “They’re carrying things,” Abduss pointed out. “Not just the neck sacks. Those three Bigs are towing … what? Something big, five meters long. Made of metal, looks like.”

  More waiting. More Bird Folk.

  Cliff, mostly just to break the impasse, suggested they cut through the wall. Even diamond wouldn’t stand up to what they had for tools. Go straight through the outer door of the air lock. Maybe they could find and work interior controls.

  There were objections, of course. This was a crucial moment; don’t make any moves that might be taken as aggressive. This view held sway for a full day, until Irma asked just how long they would wait, doing nothing. Until SunSeeker ran out of air? That would be centuries.

  Biggest of all, there was the problem of cutting their way in. Nothing had worked before. So a team tried high-intensity gas lasers, tuned to an ultraviolet frequency that the air lock wall totally absorbed. It worked in trial runs, cutting in quickly, blowing off a carbon vapor.

  They set up the laser outside the air lock. By now they had an extensive audience of Bird Folk. Beth felt uneasy working under their gaze. They just watched. Were they waiting for something? Certainly their steady stares implied a remarkable calm. Or, she reminded herself, a remarkably alien consciousness.

  Redwing wondered on comm if this was some sort of test. Maybe the Bird Folk weren’t interested in strangers who couldn’t figure out how to get in?

  They started in the middle of the outer lock door. As they worked, their acoustic detectors on the lock picked up a hissing sound. The Bird Folk were filling it with air! Celebration!

  … but the lock did not open. What did this mean? The Bird Folk just looked at them, eyes glittering. Beak-mouths working. Even some odd moves, like dancing.

  Pressure in the lock, with vacuum outside, made the job more difficult. Nobody wanted the atmosphere jetting out suddenly. For safety, they built a chamber around where they wanted to cut, to hold the pressure. Then the laser punched all the way through.

  Through their first cut they slid a small pipe, just to sample air. Breathable, barely — high in CO2, warm, a bit lower in oxygen, humid and with minor differences from Earth’s. Had the aliens figured out human tolerances? That seemed unlikely. But the molecular ratios fit the measurements SunSeeker had made in its first studies.

  “Earth’s oxygen level is as high as it can be without igniting spontaneous fires in summers,” Howard said. “Maybe biospheres generally run up to that limit, then stop — or else they burn themselves back to our levels.”

  “Never thought of it that way,” Beth said, her voice hushed. “This place stays warm all the time. Maybe that draws down the optimum oxy level a little.”

  They were all in awe of this place, moving quietly, trying to take it all in.

  Howard said, “The more I see, the less I know. Some of these plants and animals are clearly evolved from Earth. Some clearly aren’t. Cliff, I think this thing — Bowl — went to Earth and picked up some life-forms. The birds are a maybe. I’d need to see a skeleton. Cliff? Anyone? What do we do next?”

  This was clearly the captain’s call, despite a lightspeed gap of four minutes. Redwing dithered; this was far outside his leadership skill set. They all finally got him to realize that they needed an exploratory plan. Some wanted to explore the Cupworld, at least enough to restore Seeker’s depleted stores. But they needed crew with the lander, too. The Bird Folk wouldn’t wait forever … would they?

  Cliff won the draw to lead an exploring party through the door they would cut. As pilot, Beth stayed with the shuttle party. The two of them didn’t like this, but they were short of crew, and nobody else had the right mix of skills. Beth grimaced at Cliff, and they made it up to each other that night.

  Or at least that was their excuse. Nobody wanted to admit being afraid.

  NINE

  They started the next morning — not that there were any sunrises here.

  Cliff’s team were four men and Irma, all muscular and tall and athletic. Beth and Cliff did not like being more than a few meters from each other, but they overcame that.

  They followed Greenwich Meridian morn, of course, because the sun never set on the British Empire and certainly not here; the reddish star always hung in the sky at midafternoon. The star’s jet was a furious neon line scratched across the sky, adding diffuse shadows. The eerie landscape confused their eyes and unsettled the mind.

  They could not be sure if the Bird Folk slept, though Irma had compared camera runs and found that each did take a few hours of closed-eye time, still standing up. They never seemed to sit; maybe their knees locked. Nor did they fly.

  Cliff had come to think of them as like ostriches. Far prettier and more graceful, but there was a similarity. Could such birds have built the Bowl?

  The gas laser took three hours to eat through the outer lock door. On broad-beam, it then cut an arc big enough for humans to squeeze through. Cliff went first. He felt very vulnerable, hurried and impeded by his pressure suit, crawling through a hole not much bigger than his torso.

  By then the laser was short on charge and overheating. The operators — two engineers, Lau Pin and Aybe — shut it down and worked over the gas chamber fittings, which were looking the worse for wear.

  Irma passed him some gear, then wriggled through. Cliff watched the Bird Folk for reactions. The big ones nearby fluttered a little, stamping their big feet, then went back to their steady stares. Much rippling of feathers, glorious runs of color.

  Irma was through, and Terry Gould was having some trouble. “Let’s move!”

  Cliff felt alien eyes on his back as he got his five through the hole. Aybe c
ame through, and Howard Blaire. Hustle, hustle, hustle. They had planned to put a plate over the round bore hole and let one of the party partake of the lock air. Getting set up for this, Cliff happened to look behind them.

  The hole had changed. It was lopsided … and smaller.

  He blinked some sweat from his eyes, smelled the sour flavor of the helmet. He had spent too much time inside. The hole still looked lopsided. As he watched, the rim of it wrinkled, changed color, crinkled at the edges and … grew. Inward.

  Not diamond after all.

  “Block it!” he cried, lunging at the hole.

  They wedged some fittings into the gap. Abduss had a hand laser on his tool belt and he cut some more metal bars to jam the hole from the butte side. These stuck … then bent … and snapped in two and flew away with lethal force, bouncing like shrapnel around the air lock as the hole tightened further.

  Howard cried, “Ow!”

  “It’s self-repairing,” Beth called over the comm. “Get out — now!”

  “Can’t — it’s already too small.” Cliff eyed the rate of closing. “It regrows just about as fast as we can cut it.”

  They stood helplessly watching the wall ooze into place, like a liquid. The laser team struggled to get it back in operation, but —

  “Too late.” Cliff stepped away from the narrowing hole. He scowled at the Bird Folk. “Why do I think they saw this coming? No wonder they didn’t look bothered.”

  “They knew something else, too,” Beth said. He followed her pointing finger.

  He hadn’t noticed the dust motes rising behind Eros. Cascades of white light came from everywhere.

  “That dust. It’s been there, ticking at the corners of my eye,” Beth said. “More every minute.”

  Until suddenly they were all glowing, as if bright sunlight were falling into the butte. Cliff heard shocked voices in his earphone, and Beth shouting, “Into the ship! Tananareve, you at least, get into Eros!”