Jack Mcdeviit - Deepsix (v1)

by Emily

  "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 there. 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 Drum-mond'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. "Im-possibilium 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 muck-raker'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 archeologst 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."

  "I'm serious."

  "I know." Stupid remark.

  They went outside again, just the two of them, and inspected the asteroid. They floated above the rockscape, using Marcel's go-pack to get around.

  Much of the net was concealed by a layer of dust. The metal links appeared to be made of the same material as the shafts. They were only a couple of centimeters thick and were linked with crosspieces at lengths of about three-quarters of a meter.

  They stopped to examine the connecting plate and were pleasantly surprised to discover a series of engraved symbols. All the characters were joined, in the manner of cursive writing. "Eventually," Beekman said, "I'd like to take this inside. Take it home with us."

  It was big. Marcel measured it with his eye and concluded it wouldn't fit through the cargo airlock. "We might have to cut it in half," he said.

  "Whatever's necessary—" They drifted above it and looked back the way they'd come, down the long straight line of the assembly toward the heart of Deepsix.

  They took samples of everything, of the rock and the dust, of the net, of the plate. When they were finished they went back inside and had some coffee. It was after 2:00 A.M. ship time, November 27.

  Beekman suggested the unknown architects had developed quantum technology, and the skyhook had simply become obsolete. Marcel was too tired to care. But just as he was getting ready to head for his quarters, Bill broke in: "Captain, we now have the satellite scans you requested of the coastal mountain range."

  "Okay, Bill." Ordinarily he'd have asked to look. But not at this hour. "Anything interesting?"

  "There is a structure of substantial dimensions on one of the peaks."

  The door opened almost at the first touch of the laser. Beyond lay shelved walls and a vaulted ceiling. Hutch played her light over a bare wooden table. Shadowy figures looked back out of alcoves.

  "Bingo,"said Toni.

  Statues. There were six alcoves, and at one time there had been six figures. Five lay broken and scattered in the dust that covered the floor. One remained.

  The survivor resembled a falcon. But it stood upright, in a vest and trousers that suggested pantaloons. A medallion of illegible design hung about its neck. It reminded Hutch of Horus. "You think that's what they looked like?" she asked.

  "Maybe," said Nightingale. "It would fit. Little creatures, descended from birds."

  Whatever might once have filled the shelves was gone.

  She flashed pictures to Wendy. Hutch half expected to hear from Marcel, but it was early morning on the ship. In the interests of diplomacy, she also sent a picture to MacAllister, who was having brunch in the Star lander.

  He took it rather calmly, she thought, but made it a point to thank her and ask that he be kept informed. The manner of it implied that he thought it trivial.

  The room, she suspected, had been a study. Or perhaps a library.

  Nightingale agreed. "I wish we could read their scrolls."

  Indeed. What would a history not be worth?

  The other figures had apparently all been representations of the falcon, in various poses. They gathered up the pieces, packed each of the six separately to the extent they were able, took them out to the lander, and stowed them in the cargo hold.

  The snow had stopped and by late morning the last clouds cleared away. The environment was now suitable, MacAllister judged, for the interview.

  Wetheral had loaded several pieces of the doll-like furniture, a couple of cabinets, a chair, and a table into the cargo section. Everything was badly decomposed, but that didn't really matter. TransGalactic could process the stuff easily enough and make them look as if they were antiques in exquisitely restored condition. The details wouldn't matter as long as some part of the original remained.

  Wetheral had even made off with a javelin. It had an iron tip, and MacAllister wondered whether it had ever actually been used in combat. He tried to visualize hawks in trousers flying about trying to stab each other with these pea-stickers. The only thing more absurd than someone else's civilization, he thought, is someone else's religious views.

  Casey had brought a couple of folding chairs along and had planned to sit out in the open with him while they talked, with the tower as a backdrop. Or possibly even sit inside the tower.

  "The atmosphere's all wrong for any of that," he told her. "We don't want to be outside. Either in the building or in the snow."

  "Why not?"

  "It looks cold, Casey."

  "What does the audience care?"

  "If we look cold, your audience will not get caught up in the conversation."

  "You're kidding."

  "I'm quite serious."

  "But they'll know we're inside e-suits."

  "What do they know about e-suits? Only what they see in the sims. They'll see the snow; they'll see you and me sitting there in shirtsleeves. They won't see the e-suit. It doesn't look cozy."

  "I want cozy?"

  "Absolutely."

  She sighed. "All right. So what do we do? Sit in the lander?"

  "Correct. Roughing it, but not too rough."

  She gave him a tolerant smile, and he knew what she was thinking. They were too far from the tower. In fact, the tower was partially hidden behind the other spacecraft. "I'll get Wetheral to move us closer."

  "I've a better idea," said MacAllister. Two of the women, Hutchi
ns and Toni What's-Her-Name, were carrying a table out to their spacecraft. He studied Hutchins and realized that her problem was that she had no sense of humor. She was certainly not the sort of woman one would want to have around on a long-term basis. Took herself far too seriously, and seemed utterly unaware that she was a lightweight.

  The table was big, and they were struggling. He excused himself, got down out of the vehicle, walked over and magnanimously asked if he could help. Hutchins glanced suspiciously at him. "Yes," she said finally. "If you'd like."

  It was a rectangular table, so old it was impossible to be sure what the original composition material might have been. It was large, considering the scale of the other furniture, and probably would have seated twelve of the natives. A decorative geometry that might have represented leaves and flowers was carved into its sides.

  Casey joined the party and lent a hand.

  The cargo section was so full there was a question whether it would fit, but after some rearranging they got it in.

  "Thanks," Hutchins said. "That turned out to be heavier than it looked."

  "Glad to help."

  She looked at him and smiled. "Was there something you wanted to ask me?"

  Not a complete dummy, he decided. "As a matter of fact, I could use your assistance. Casey and I are going to record an interview. I was wondering if you'd allow us the use of your lander."

  "In what way?" She looked at him, looked at the cargo bay loaded with artifacts, and showed him she didn't much approve. "What did you have in mind?"

  "Just sit in it and talk. It's warm and out of the snow, but we still get the atmosphere of the dig. And a perfect view of the tower."

  "You can't close it up," she said.

  He guessed that she meant they could not seal off the cabin and repressurize it. "We don't need to. The audience won't know the difference."

  She shrugged. "You can have an hour. After that we'll need it back."

  "That's good. Thank you very much."

  She turned away. Ridiculous woman.

  They climbed into the cabin, and Casey removed her link, tied a microscan into it, put it on a tray, and aimed it at her subject. She set up two more in strategic locations.