Deepsix

by Jack McDevitt

  Drummond’s reputation was known to all. But the man himself was something of a mystery. Quiet, reserved, a bit bashful. An odd choice, the captain thought.

  He demonstrated how to use the e-suit. The Flickinger field had several advantages over the pressure suits of the previous century, principal among them being that it couldn’t be punctured.

  But someone could get so caught up in the drama of the moment that he accidentally released his tether. And the field itself wasn’t entirely foolproof. It was possible with a little imagination to screw up the antiradiation shielding and fry. Or make adjustments to the oxygen-nitrogen mix and thereby render oneself incompetent or maybe dead. Consequently, Marcel insisted they were all to keep their fingers off the control unit once it had been set.

  Marcel had suggested to Beekman that he, Beekman, not go. The planetologist had told him he worried too much.

  Theoretically, his medical record was fine, or he wouldn’t be on board. But he never really looked well. His pale complexion might have been emphasized by the black beard. But he seemed to get out of breath easily, he wheezed occasionally, and the slightest exertion brought color to his cheeks. Marcel had the authority to prevent his going, but this was Gunther’s show, and the captain couldn’t bring himself to deny the man an experience that promised to be the supreme moment of his professional career.

  “Everybody ready?” Marcel asked. They were all standing by the airlock, Beekman and Carla obviously anxious to get started, John Drummond looking reluctant. He checked their breathers and activated their suits. Carla had some experience with cutters, so he’d assigned one to her, and he took one himself. They strapped on wristlamps. He handed out vests and waited while they put them on. Each vest was equipped with a springlock so that a tether could be connected.

  Marcel also strapped on a go-pack.

  They did a radio check and went into the airlock. Marcel initiated the cycle. The inner hatch closed, and the lock began to depressurize. Beekman and Carla seemed fine. But Drummond began breathing more deeply than normal.

  “Relax, John,” Marcel told him on a private channel. “There’s nothing to this.”

  “It might be the wrong time to bring this up,” Drummond said, “but I have this thing about heights.”

  “Everybody has a thing about heights. Don’t worry about it. I know this is hard to believe, but you won’t notice it at all.”

  Carla saw what was happening and flashed an encouraging smile. She spoke to Drummond, but Marcel couldn’t hear what she said. Drummond nodded and looked better. Not much, but a little.

  The go lamps went on, and the outer hatch irised open. They looked across a couple of meters of empty space at the cluster of parallel shafts. They were lunar gray, gritty, occasionally pocked. As thick individually, thought Marcel, as an elephant’s leg. From the perspective of the airlock, they might have been fifteen entirely separate pipes, water pipes perhaps, coming to an abrupt end a few meters to their right; but on the left they stretched into infinity. And somehow they were perfectly equidistant, apparently separated and maintained by an invisible force.

  “Incredible,” said Drummond, leaning forward slightly and looking both ways.

  There were no markings, no decoration, no bolts or sheaths or ridges. Simply fifteen tubes, arranged symmetrically, eight on the outer perimeter, six midway, and the single central shaft.

  Marcel attached a flex tether to a clip on the hull and motioned the project director forward. “All yours, Gunther,” he said.

  Beekman advanced to the hatch, never taking his eyes off the long gray shafts. He put his head out and drew in his breath. “My God,” he said.

  Marcel clipped the tether to his vest. “It’ll pay out as you go, or retract as you need.”

  “How long is it?”

  “Twenty meters.”

  “I meant, to the brace.”

  There were braces along the entire length of the assembly. The nearest was—“Almost fifty kilometers away.”

  Beekman shook his head. “If someone else had reported such a thing,” he said, “I would have refused to believe it.” He put his feet on the outer lip of the airlock. “I think I’m ready.”

  “Okay. Be careful. When I tell you, just push off. Don’t try to jump, or I’ll have to come after you.” Marcel looked back at the others. “If anybody does contrive to drift away, I’ll take care of the rescue. In the meantime, everyone else is to stay put. Okay?”

  Okay.

  “Go,” he told Beekman.

  Beekman hunched his shoulders. He was wearing a pair of white slacks and a green sweatshirt with the name of his university, Berlin, stenciled on it. He looked, Marcel thought, appropriately dashing. And quite happy. Ecstatic, in fact.

  He leaned forward, gave himself a slight push, and cried out in sheer joy as he launched. They watched him drift awkwardly across the narrow space, one leg straight, one bent at the knee, rather like a runner caught in midstride.

  Marcel stood in the hatch, letting the tether slide across his palm until he was sure Beekman wasn’t traveling too fast. The project director reached out for the nearest shaft, collided with it, wrapped his arms around it, and shouted something in German. “Marcel,” he continued, “I owe you a dinner.”

  “I want it in writing,” Marcel said.

  Beekman loosened his grip, found another shaft for his feet, settled down, and waved.

  Carla moved up to take her turn.

  Beekman and his team clambered around on the assembly while Marcel stood guard. Carla took pictures and Drummond collected sensor readings. Beekman was talking, describing what he was seeing, and taking various gauges and sensors out of his vest to answer questions for the people inside. Yes, it was magnetic. No, it did not seem to vibrate when low-frequency sound waves were applied.

  Carla produced the cutter and conferred with Beekman. Marcel couldn’t overhear the conversation, but they were obviously looking for the right place from which to remove a sample. The surface had no features. The only distinguishing marks that they’d been able to see, either from the scanners or up close, were the encircling bands. And none of those was visible from here.

  They made up their minds, and Carla steadied herself, took aim at one of the shafts, and brought the laser to bear.

  “Careful,” Marcel advised her. The field wouldn’t protect her if she made a mistake.

  “I will be,” she said.

  She switched on the cutter, the beam flashed, and the view fields in all four suits darkened.

  She began to work. They were going to take off the last two meters of one of the outside shafts.

  Drummond had put his instruments away and was simply holding on. He appeared to be examining the assembly very carefully, keeping his eyes away from the void. Marcel left the airlock, went over, and joined him. “How you doing?” he asked privately.

  “I guess I’m a little wobbly.”

  “It’s all right,” he said. “It happens. You want to go back inside?”

  “No.” Drummond shook his head but kept his gaze on the assembly.

  “You’ll feel better in a bit. When you’re ready to go back, I’ll go with you.”

  He mumbled something. Marcel only caught “…damn fool.”

  “Maybe not. You might just be a little more sensible than the rest of us.”

  Drummond managed a smile, still looking at the metal. “Marcel,” he said, “maybe I ought to go back over there before I become a problem.”

  “Whatever happens, John, you won’t be a problem. Everything’s under control.”

  “Okay.”

  Drummond did not want to make the jump. Even though there was no gravity, Marcel suspected his senses were relating to the proximity of the Wendy Jay, using that to determine what was up and down. He had maintained a position which, related to the ship, kept his head up. Now he was being asked to cross that terrible void again. People who claim there’s no sense of altitude in space, Marcel thought, have never been ther
e. He reached out to place an arm gently on his shoulder, but Drummond drew away.

  “Thanks,” Drummond said. “I can manage.”

  “It has plenty of juice,” said Carla, admiring her laser. From Drummond’s perspective, she was upside down. His eyes closed tight.

  She had already sliced halfway through her target shaft. Beekman was hanging on the edge of it to make sure it didn’t drift away when she’d completed the job.

  Drummond’s eyes opened, and he looked back at the airlock as if it were a half klick away. Its light spilled out into the vacuum.

  “I thought there’d be more resistance,” Carla said.

  “You’re okay,” Marcel told Drummond. “Can I make a suggestion?”

  Drummon’s breathing was becoming ragged, but he didn’t reply.

  “Close your eyes, John. And let me take you over.” Wendy hovered only two meters away. Bill was keeping the ship perfectly still in relation to the artifact. But Marcel was aware of Deepsix climbing slowly but steadily up the sky.

  “Something wrong, John?” Beekman’s voice.

  “No,” said Marcel. “We’re fine.”

  “John?” Carla this time, sounding worried. “You okay?”

  “Yes.” His voice was tight and angry. He looked at Marcel. “Yeah. Please get me away from here.”

  Marcel put an arm gently around his waist. This time Drummond didn’t pull away. “Tell me when you’re ready,” he said.

  Drummond stiffened and closed his eyes. “Just give me a minute.” But it was too late. Marcel, without waiting, anxious to end the suspense, pushed them forward, off the shaft. They floated toward the open hatch and the light.

  “We’ll be there in a second, John.”

  By then the others were watching. Carla’s laser went out, and she asked whether she could help. Marcel saw that Beekman was shifting his posture, preparing to join them. “Stay put, Gunny,” he said. “We’re okay.”

  “What happened, Marcel?” he asked.

  “A little motion sickness, I think. Nothing serious. Happens all the time.”

  Drummond struggled briefly and they bumped into the hull. But he got one hand on the hatch and pulled himself into the airlock. Marcel let him do it on his own. When John was safely on board he climbed in beside him. “Damned coward,” Drummond said.

  They were inside the ship’s artificial gravity field. Marcel sat down on the bench. “You’re being a little hard on yourself.”

  Drummond just stared back out of bleak eyes.

  “Listen.” Marcel sat back and relaxed. “There are very few people who would have done what you did. Most wouldn’t have gone out there at all, feeling the way you must have.” He looked at the assembly, and the stars beyond. “You want me to shut the hatch and we’ll go inside?”

  He shook his head. “No,” he said. “Can’t do that. They’re still out there.”

  Beekman and Carla returned a few minutes later with their prize. They negotiated it carefully into the airlock, into the half-gee gravity field that was normal for ships in flight. (Maintaining full Earth normal would have consumed too much power.) The piece was as long as Marcel was high. They expected it to be quite heavy inside the ship.

  Instead, a look of bewilderment formed on Carla’s features. She signaled Beekman to let go and easily hefted the object herself. “Impossibilium is the right word,” she said. “It weighs next to nothing.”

  Beekman stared. “They’re pretty good engineers, aren’t they?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Because of the weight?” Marcel asked.

  Drummond was almost breathing normally again. He wanted to speak, and Beekman gave him the floor.

  “The problem,” he said, summoning each word as if it were Greek, “with this kind of construction…” He stopped to take another breath. “Problem is that you have too much mass distributed over such an extreme length.”

  He glanced at Beekman, who nodded.

  “The strength of the structure at any given point isn’t enough to support the strain put on it. Think of the, ah, Starlite Center in Chicago and imagine you had to build it from cardboard.”

  “It’d collapse,” Marcel said.

  “Exactly right,” said Carla. “The kinds of building materials we have now, applied to this kind of structure”—she nodded toward the airlock door, toward the assembly—“equate to cardboard. If we tried to make one of these, its own mass would crumple it.”

  Beekman picked up the thread. “If you’re going to erect something as big as the Starlite, you want two qualities in your building materials.”

  “Strength,” said Marcel.

  “And light weight,” finished Carla. She glanced at the sample. “We know it’s strong because the assembly holds together. And now we know at least part of the reason it holds together. It doesn’t have much mass.”

  They closed up. Minutes later green lamps blinked, and the inner hatch opened. They shut off their suits and came out of the airlock.

  “So what’s next?” asked Marcel.

  Beekman looked pleased. “We analyze it. Find out how they did it.”

  For August Canyon, Deepsix was aptly named. His flight to that unhappy world as pool representative for the various press services, to do a feature that was of only marginal interest to the general public, signaled beyond any doubt management’s view of his future. Is there a labor strike in Siberia? Send Canyon. Did they find water on the far side of the Moon? Get Canyon up there to do the interviews.

  “It isn’t that bad,” said Emma Constantine, his producer and the only other soul aboard the Edward J. Zwick other than the pilot.

  “Why isn’t it?” he demanded. He’d been simmering during the entire five weeks of the outbound flight, saying none of the things that were on his mind. But he was tired of being cooped up, tired of spending his time on virtual beaches while other people his age were doing solid investigative journalism, chasing down corruption in London, sex in Washington, stupidity in Paris.

  “It’ll be a good feature,” she said. “Worlds collide. That’s big stuff, if we handle it right.”

  “It would be,” he said, “if we had somebody to interview.” Canyon had all the credentials—graduate of Harvard, experience with Washington Online and later Sam Brewster. Brewster was an extraordinarily effective muckraker, and Canyon had been with him a year and a half, just long enough for Brewster to recognize he lacked a muckraker’s stomach while Canyon alienated every power center in the capital. After their less than amicable parting, he’d been lucky to catch on with Toledo Express.

  “We’ve got a whole boatload of scientists to talk to.”

  “Right. You ever try to get a physicist to say something people are remotely interested in hearing?”

  “We’ve done it, on occasion.”

  “Sure we have. Cube theory. Gravity waves. Force vituperations. That’s pretty hot stuff.”

  “I think that’s force correlations.”

  He took a deep breath. “As if it mattered. What we need is a good politician. Somebody to take a stand against planetary wrecks.”

  “Look,” she said. “Stop feeling sorry for yourself. We’ve got a database on these people.”

  “I know,” he said. “Tasker’s on Wendy, and he’ll talk, but that’s the problem. He talks forever.”

  “We can edit if we have to. Listen, Augie, we’re here and we have to make the best of it. This isn’t the assignment I’d have chosen either. But there’s going to be a lot more interest in this than you think.”

  “Why would that be?”

  “Because worlds don’t crash into each other every day.” She was frowning, maybe regretting not the assignment, but her partner. “Because there are ruins on Deepsix.”

  “But no sign of a civilization. Do you think anybody’s going to care that a pile of stones goes down with everything else?”

  “Augie, who built the pile?”

  “I doubt that the people they’re sending down there
are going to have time to find out.”

  She smiled benignly. “That’s exactly my point. Look, forget Wendy. This is a world that’s been racked up. Ice age for three thousand years. No sign of cities. That means if anybody’s left, it’s savages. Savages are relentlessly dull. But vanished civilizations? That’s news. The people we want to interview are on the ground, poking around the tower. Not in the starship. Figure out where to go with that side of the story, and we’re in business.”

  He let his head drop back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. “You know, Emma,” he said, “sometimes I really hate this job.”

  IX

  Archeology is a career for the terminally weak-minded. An archeologist is a trash collector with a degree.

  —GREGORY MACALLISTER, “Career Night,” Ports of Call

  Wendy proceeded in a leisurely manner along the entire length of the assembly. They took pictures, although every section looked like every other section, counted the bands (thirty-nine altogether) that secured the shafts to each other, and arrived at last at the asteroid.

  A rock rather than a chunk of iron, it was almost a perfect sphere. A metallic net was wrapped around it securing it to the assembly by means of a rectangular plate. The plate, several meters thick, had rounded edges and corners.

  The extreme length of the assembly tended to diminish the apparent size of the asteroid, until one drew near. It was in fact more than a kilometer in diameter.

  Marcel and Beekman watched from project control as they approached. Beekman looked disappointed, and Marcel, wondering how he could possibly be out of sorts at such a supreme moment, asked what was wrong.

  “I’d hoped,” he replied, “to find something that would give us an idea who put it here. What its purpose was. I thought maybe there’d be a control station at one end or the other. Something.”

  Marcel put a hand on his shoulder. “People leaving stuff like this around the neighborhood should include a manual.”