Okay. It’s hard to capture our state of mind while everything was in the air. The world, Belle had decided, was the second one out from the sun. Henceforth it would be known as Echo II. “There is no indication,” she said, “of artificial construction anywhere yet. Be aware, though, that we are still a considerable distance away. Even a city, at this range, might not be visible. But, unfortunately, there is no evidence of electronic activity.”
The surface, however, was green. “It’s a living world,” she continued, and that news alone sent my pulse up a few beats. We were angling in from the outer planetary system, so we had a good look at the nightside of Echo II. It was unbroken by light anywhere, except occasional flickers that probably represented electrical storms or fires.
Alex sighed. “Not going to be anything here,” he said.
Well, what had we expected? If we’d actually seen something, seen lights come on somewhere, maybe even seen a ship draw alongside and ask who we were, I’d have fallen out of my chair. In thousands of years, and tens of thousands of flights, it’s never happened.
Well, once.
So you don’t expect it. Still, there was the tablet.
Then Belle surprised us. “There’s an artificial satellite. I’ll have a picture for you in a minute.”
“Yes!” I said.
Alex raised a cautionary hand. “Don’t get too excited.”
“Why not?”
“It was probably left by us. Maybe a long time ago, maybe by World’s End. It could be a promo gimmick.”
“I think that’s stretching things, Alex.”
“Just don’t get your hopes up.”
A picture of the object appeared on the auxiliary screen: It was a rectangular case supporting an array of antennas. There was also a scope. The AI placed the satellite alongside an image of the Belle-Marie so we could judge comparative size. It was almost as big as we were.
“Belle,” I said, “put us on an intercept course.”
We needed a couple of hours to turn around and, eventually, to move alongside the object. It was dark gray, inert, and the scope had taken a hit from something.
“It’s in an irregular orbit,” said Belle.
I rotated the image at Alex’s request, spun it around its axis, turned it over until he saw what he wanted. “There,” he said. Two lines of characters were emblazoned on the case.
“Don’t recognize them,” said Belle. “They aren’t in the standard directory.”
And they bore no resemblance to the ones on the tablet.
“Belle,” Alex said, “you say the orbit’s irregular. How irregular?”
“Not an excessive amount. Apogee is one point four perigee.”
Alex looked at me. “Translate, please?”
“At its farthest point,” I said, “the satellite is almost one and a half times as far from the central body as at its closest approach.”
“If the trend continues unabated,” said Belle, “it will eventually begin dipping into the atmosphere. That will, of course, be the end of it.”
“When would that be likely to happen?”
“I would estimate about another hundred years.”
“Can we make an age determination based on that?”
“Negative, Alex. We simply do not have enough information.” We turned it some more. Magnified everything. “You can, however,” said Belle, “do an analysis.”
“How?”
“It’s actually quite straightforward. But you’ll have to bring a piece of it inside.”
I went out and cut a slice from the leading edge. I also removed part of the scope and brought both pieces back in. Belle examined them and, after a few minutes, announced her conclusion: “The satellite has been in orbit approximately four thousand years.”
“How can you tell?” Alex asked.
“If you look closely, you will note the pitting in the metal. It’s caused by micrometeoroids. Also, the burnishing along the forward edge is instructive. Very fine particles collide with it over the centuries, and this wear is the result. We also have a telescope lens. If you look at it under sufficient magnification, you will observe a slight hazing.”
“And that happens because—?”
“Accumulated radiation damage from the sun. I don’t have a clear analysis of the background radiation here, or the dust density, but it’s not difficult to provide a reasonable estimate.”
“Thanks, Belle.”
“You’re welcome, Alex. I’m sorry it’s not the result you would have preferred.”
We saw nothing artificial on the ground. But Belle reported large animals.
“Can you show them to us?” asked Alex. He couldn’t hide his disappointment that Echo II wasn’t a world full of cities. Or, at least, a place with some research facilities.
Something.
Belle put a catlike creature on-screen. It was gray, with long fangs, almost a saber-tooth. The thing was virtually invisible against the trees and shrubbery through which it moved. And she showed us a bird that seemed so fat it could not possibly have gotten airborne. But it soared through the sky like an eagle.
And a lizard with a long, muscular, serpentine neck. We couldn’t be sure how big it was, but it measured pretty well against the tree trunks.
There was also something that looked like nothing more than a cluster of weeds. But Belle asked us to watch for a moment. “Let me do a replay. This happened minutes ago.” A four-legged creature that might have been a vulpine of some sort wandered by, and a tentacle whipped out of the weeds and made a grab. More tentacles appeared, and, within seconds, the vulpine was hopelessly ensnared, and the animal was dragged into the tangle. The struggle went on for about a minute, devolving finally into a series of lurches. Then it stopped, and we saw movement that suggested the weed cluster had begun feeding.
Echo II was covered with towering mountain chains, broad rivers, vast plains, and jungles. A blizzard was dumping snow in the south polar region. No cities were visible, no highways, no bridges, no artificial structures of any kind.
Nothing.
“Can you see anything at all?” Alex asked Belle. “Tools? Shelters? Outhouses?”
“Negative. There does not appear to be anything like that here.”
“You’re sure?”
“Well, I haven’t looked at every square meter, Alex. But I will let you know immediately if I see anything of an artificial nature.”
I remember thinking how it would feel to go back empty-handed. How frustrating it would be after all the commotion about the tablet. And Rachel’s death would remain meaningless.
Alex developed a theory that maybe Tuttle was behind everything. That he’d designed the tablet himself, had arranged to get one made, and used it in an effort to get back at those who had derided him all those years, who’d tried to persuade him to do something “constructive” with his life. That somehow he’d fooled Rachel, had persuaded her he’d found something. Then, when she’d learned the truth, she was humiliated, had never forgiven him, and had tried to hide the story. That, ultimately, it was Tuttle who’d been responsible for her suicide.
“But the pieces don’t really fit,” he said. “I guess I’m just trying to get her off my conscience.”
The weed cluster wasn’t the only vegetation that was dangerous. We watched something that looked like a cactus jump on and devour a small animal that made the mistake of coming down from a tree. After that, there was a bush that grabbed a deerlike creature, ripped it apart, and was still enjoying the meal when we passed out of range.
There was a second terrestrial in the system that we wanted to check, but Alex refused to be hurried. “Let’s make sure there’s really nothing here before we leave.”
So for days we pursued the search. We looked closely into forest and jungle areas. We studied valleys and mountaintops. We tracked rivers. And finally, on the fourth evening as we were getting ready to give it up, Belle broke in with news: “I have a building.”
Alex looked pl
eased, but he was careful not to allow his emotions to carry him away. “Where, Belle?”
“In the northern latitudes.” She gave us a picture. It looked like nothing more than an old, battered structure, a wreck half-buried in the snow-covered floor of a winter forest. Whatever color it might once have had was gone. It was a washed-out gray, completely enmeshed in vines and shrubs. One section of the structure appeared to have been shoved aside by the trees.
It might originally have been a polygon. There were multiple sides, though it was impossible to determine how many. Maybe eight or nine.
“How big is it?” asked Alex.
“Approximately forty meters across. Maybe a bit more. It’s hard to make out details. The forest has been growing around it for a long time.”
“How long?”
“Can’t really say. But I suspect it’s been here for millennia. And it appears to have had several levels. Probably four. So much of it is buried, it’s hard to be certain.”
“Can you see anything else there anywhere?”
“You mean around it?”
“Yes. Another building. A vehicle. Some tools. Anything at all.”
“Nothing artificial, Alex. It is possible there’s an entire city buried at the site. I’m not equipped to probe beneath surfaces. As you know.” Belle sounded annoyed. That might have been because she’d suggested that Alex equip the vehicle with penetrating sensors. At the time, it had seemed an unnecessary expense.
“What’s the atmosphere like?” I asked.
“Inadequate oxygen. You’ll need air tanks.”
Belle put together lunches for us. Chocolate chip cookies and chicken sandwiches. We picked up a cutter and some torches from storage, went down to the launch bay, and climbed into the lander. Alex put the sandwiches in the cooler and started going through the images of the wreckage while I munched on a cookie and ran systems checks. Then he took a long look at the surrounding forest. After a few minutes, he shook his head. “Makes no sense,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“There’s nothing else down there. Just this one place.”
“Optimum launch time in six minutes,” said Belle.
“We’ll go with that, Belle.” I closed the hatch. Belle began depressurizing the launch bay. Alex looked at the cookies, which were wrapped in plastic, lying in my lap. “What?” I said.
“How are they?”
“They’re good. Want one?”
“Sure. Start every mission with a cookie. It’s in the Antiquarian Guidebook.”
I gave him two and put the rest in a compartment while he brought his harness down and secured himself.
We sat talking about the polygon. Who had put it there? How old was it? Might this be where Tuttle found the tablet?
“Depressurization complete,” said Belle. “Launch in ninety seconds.” The bay door opened, and I released the locks.
“Whenever you’re ready, Belle,” I said.
She eased us out of the ship. I started the engines, and we began our descent.
It was just after sunrise when we glided in over the polygon. It was literally buried among the trees. They had thick trunks though they were not especially tall. The biggest might have been about thirty meters. They appeared gray and hard, more like rocks than living things. Broken branches lay everywhere.
The polygon itself was barely visible. I could easily have flown over it without noticing the thing.
Where the hell was everybody else on this world?
We couldn’t determine whether it had a front or back. Not that it mattered. I circled the area, looking for a place to land. There was no sufficiently open space within twenty kilometers of the structure. So I picked a spot where we’d do the least damage to the trees, and started down. We tore off a lot of branches along the way and finally settled into the shrubbery.
We got into our suits, checked the air—we had a four-hour supply in the tanks—checked the radios, and armed ourselves with scramblers. Then we climbed out through the airlock.
Alex led the way down the ladder, took out his weapon, and looked around. When he was satisfied we weren’t about to be attacked by anything, he signaled me to follow. I did, leaving the outer hatch open. I thought it was a good idea, in case we had to get back inside in a hurry.
It wasn’t.
The snow wasn’t deep. Hardscrabble grass poked up through it. We were about forty meters from the building. We each picked up a fallen branch and used it to poke at the vegetation as we proceeded. Nothing reacted, nothing attacked, but I’ll admit I’d take my chances with a saber-tooth anytime. We didn’t think the scramblers would be effective against plants. They disrupted nervous systems. I wasn’t sure they’d do much more than that. In the end, I thought, the cutter might be of more use.
But the weeds left us alone, and we got to the polygon without incident.
It appeared to be made of plastic, but the material was so old and so corrupted, it was hard to be certain what it was. I think it had originally been a blend of white and other colors, but they were gone now. The surface was only a series of ashen, gunmetal, smoky splotches. The structure was bent and smashed by falling limbs and trees. In places it had simply buckled. The roof was flat, and sections of it were submerged in earth and snow. Very little of it remained above ground. A good blizzard would have covered everything.
It appeared that it was really a collection of modules. “I’d like to find the place it was shipped from,” said Alex.
We found a couple of windows and doors, but the windows had crusted over, and the doors were sealed tight. They had over time melded with and become a permanent part of the walls. But mounted beside one we found a plaque.
It had three lines of characters. Alex wiped it off as best he could so he could see the symbols more clearly. “This one,” he said, pointing at one that might have been a reversed “E,” “is also on the satellite.” There were others.
None of them, however, matched anything on the tablet, though one or two were close.
“Why,” I asked, “put this place in the middle of a dense forest?”
Alex picked up a fallen branch and tossed it aside. “There might not have been a forest here at the time.” He tried rubbing down one of the windows. Turned on his lamp and tried to look through. I could make out an empty interior. Cold, dirty, snowy, and empty. We used a cutter to remove the window.
It was simply a large empty space. It would have been easier to come through the roof, which had cracked open. Sunlight filtered through the break. Alex held the lamp up so he could get a better look at the overhead. It sagged. Wires hung down out of it. “It’s about three and a half meters,” he said.
“Yes. About that.” Then I realized what he was saying. “Oh.”
“Whoever made this was about our size.”
“Well,” I said, “we didn’t really expect aliens.”
“No, I guess not, Chase.” He couldn’t hide the disappointment in his voice.
We found pieces of what had once been a table and chairs. Everything had come apart, collapsed, broken down, you name it. We put together one of the chairs, hoping, I guess, to discover that the seat was too narrow to accommodate a human. Or maybe that it was too low. Something hopeful.
But it would have been a good fit for us. Alex pressed his fingers against the back of the chair. “It’s going to turn out to be a mission from a long time ago,” he said.
We found, on the floor and frozen to the table, pieces of metal so thoroughly corroded that I couldn’t have guessed their purpose. Knives and forks, maybe. Pens? Tools? Alex looked at them with frustration. “Whatever these are,” he said, “if they were in any kind of decent shape, they’d be worth a small fortune.”
Three doorways opened out of the room. There was also a staircase, leading to the floors below. Or it would have had it not been filled with dirt. The doors had long since fallen off their hinges. Two lay moldering on the floor. The third was either completely buried or had been
carried off.
We poked our lamps through each of the doorways in turn. Two opened into identical chambers. The third brought us into a passageway that led to the rear of the building. We took a quick look at the adjoining rooms, decided there was nothing of immediate interest, and exited into the corridor.
There were more doorways. We passed through one, found the remnants of plumbing fixtures, some basins, and a couple of toilets. The wall was broken through at that point, and snow had blown in and covered everything.
There were three other rooms off the passageway, all with collapsed furniture and assorted debris that might have been beds at one time. Alex was uncharacteristically quiet. At one point we approached a table that was, incredibly, still standing. It supported another corroded object. A recorder, possibly. Or an AI. Or the equivalent of a coffee machine. Who knew? I heard him take a long breath. Then he put his foot against one of the table legs. And shoved. It collapsed, dumping the object onto the floor.
“You all right?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said, “I’m fine.”
The reality about collectors is that they are never interested in anything that’s not in mint condition. You could be selling the dagger used by Anna Quatieri to finish off her maniac husband, and if it has a spot of rust, the price goes through the floor. People want items they can put on display, that look good in the living room.
We spent close to two hours in that place. And we learned next to nothing about whoever had occupied the polygon. Maybe experts would have been able to figure out what the equipment did. But all we could make out was that the space had contained furniture and that there had been a washroom available. There might have been operational areas and a maintenance section at ground level. And maybe a vehicle or two. Maybe a plaque to tell us who had been there. But it was all buried.
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