Wasteland of Flint

by Thomas Harlan

  Hadeishi nodded slightly and motioned for her to continue. Susan tapped up a new screen filled with figures and graphs.

  "Our dutiful sho-i ko-hosei then undertook a review of the projected initial system mass, local stellar formation density and the current distribution of planetesimals throughout the observed volume. He wondered if some quirk of orbital mechanics had distributed the non-aggregated mass into two or three belts, rather than just one." A glitter entered Koshō's eyes and her lips curled back from dazzlingly white teeth. "This was not the case. Indeed, the analysis of the system as a whole shows the total mass to be slightly higher than expected for this type of sun and this area of space."

  "How much so?" Hadeishi had already formed a tentative conclusion. An obvious answer, he thought, feeling cold again. Even the cup in his hands had suddenly lost its comforting warmth. But...

  "There should not be a noticeable asteroid belt here at all. Yet there is. The system mass is higher than astronav projects." Susan's fingertip drifted over the dull red disk of Ephesus III. All traces of humor had vanished. "This extra mass came from somewhere. I have spent the last eight hours considering the source of this unexpected belt. I believe the cloud of planetesimals we are racing toward consists of the inner core and mantle of the third planet."

  Hadeishi did not respond. He took another sip of cold tea. Koshō continued to stare at the screen. Her fingertip moved over a control glyph and the disc of the planet rushed closer, swelling to fill the display like a sullen red eye.

  "We will know for sure when we enter the belt. Our sensors are sensitive enough to determine the densities and types of stone, rock and minerals in the asteroids. But I believe we will find materials which can only be produced in the molten core of a planet, or compressed aggregates drawn from the friction zones between the planetary crust and mantle."

  She turned to face Hadeishi with a cold, tight expression. "The First Sun people destroyed the third planet and dumped the remains in an opportune, gravitationally stable orbit. Then," and Koshō took a deep breath, "they reconstructed the surface."

  "But they did not finish the job," Hadeishi said quietly, placing his cup in the disposal at the end of the table. "The scientists in the 'cloud house' say they fled, leaving behind a ruin; a rushed, incomplete work."

  "Perhaps." Susan tapped a new command on the wall panel. "Doctor Russovsky filed a report with her superior soon after arriving on Ephesus Three, declaring the planetary geology so mangled by the efforts of the ancients that her planned georesonance survey of the crust was impossible. My understanding of the politics within the exploration crew indicates Doctor Clarkson was only too happy to reassign Russovsky to another task."

  Hadeishi frowned. "He did not review her preliminary findings?"

  "No." Koshō's dry tone expressed both her opinion of the late Clarkson and the equally late Russovsky in a single word. "He did not. Doctor Smalls, however, is very meticulous and he saved all Russovsky's work, including the geosensing readings she continued to make after declaring the effort was impossible."

  "I see." Hadeishi felt a twinge of disgust. Academics! Hiding data from each other, falsifying results to obscure their conclusions, scrounging and grubbing for advantage ... bah! "What do the data reveal?"

  "This." Susan keyed a different glyph. "Shipside comp worked up these density readings in the past three hours."

  The image of the surface of the third planet disappeared and was replaced by a mottled plot of tiny points, some brighter, some dimmer. There was the familiar ripple of the comp interpolating results and a new image began to build, shaded and colored by depth, describing an ovoid shape surrounded by a jumbled, chaotic shell. Hadeishi watched the display build—then interp again—then build—then interp. Section by section, kilometer by kilometer.

  "The world is hollow," he said at last as the panel chimed to indicate a completed task.

  "Like a bar¯e ball," Susan said in a subdued voice. "With something massive nestled inside. The geodetic sensors cannot penetrate the inner shell, but the mass readings are conclusive. At least part of it is hollow, or at the least very diffuse. I think—no, I fear it is a ship. A massive, unimaginably large ship. An entire hidden world. Something which can only be out of the time of the First Sun."

  Hadeishi found himself unable to speak. An image impressed itself upon his waking mind: two tiny figures in z-suits struggling across the curve of an impossibly huge egg. Minute, miniscule in comparison to the surface of the... the vessel they were slowly toiling across. Is something inside? Something alive? Something which might... notice us? Part of his mind began to gibber in fear and he struggled to keep such thoughts from overwhelming his consciousness.

  "I understand," he said at last, not to Koshō—though she nodded in acknowledgement—but to the memory of Hummingbird speaking tersely over a high-security comm channel.

  You must go quietly, echoed the memory of the tlamatinime's voice. Quietly.

  Hadeishi smoothed down his beard and fixed the exec with a stare. "Have Smith or Hayes seen this? No? Good. Sequester this data—you and I will know, but no one else. In particular, mention nothing of your speculation that this is a ship to anyone. We do not know that. Not in truth."

  Susan almost saluted in response, but nodded her head jerkily. Hadeishi's face was grim and his thoughts were already far away. What is inside? Does Hummingbird know? He must. Why else fling himself into such a reckless attempt to wipe away our tracks?

  THE SHUTTLE WRECK, NORTHERN HEMISPHERE, EPHESUS III

  The sun broke free of the eastern mountains and a steady bright light illuminated the roof of Gretchen's pressure tent. Almost immediately, a hot radiance filled the tiny, cramped space. Stale air trapped inside began to heat, making the shelter entirely uncomfortable. The archaeologist groaned and rolled over, burying her head in an olive-drab blanket she'd stolen from Fitzsimmons's rucksack. The cloth was filled with the irritating, precious smell of his aftershave. She wished she were still on the ship, listening to him talk about nothing. Sister of God, she thought wearily, why didn't you remind me to put up the sunshade?

  "Because last night was pitch black and thirty below outside, idiot." Gretchen mumbled aloud, then raised her head and groped for her goggles. With her eyes protected from the morning glare, she looked outside and began cursing. Immediately to her left, one buckled, scorched wing of the shuttle cast a long shadow across the sand. The nauallis's pressure tent was well placed to keep cool until the sun had risen above the wreck. "I was tired," she declared to herself, feeling thwarted. "He just got lucky."

  Thirty minutes later, half-bathed in her own sweat, Gretchen rolled out of the shelter, her suit, goggles, djellaba and kaffiyeh. squared away. She shook out her shoulders, letting the recycler, rebreather apparatus and tool bag settle comfortably on her back and hips. With deft, assured motions she struck and cleaned the tent, then packed the material into a small bag. Chewing a paline-flavored threesquare, she knelt beside Hummingbird's tent and peered inside.

  No nauallis, she thought, shaking her head. He shouldn't leave his gear lying around like this. Or does he think I'll play porter for him and pick up the camp? Gretchen snorted at the thought, then gathered up her gear and walked to the Midge. Another fifteen minutes passed in careful scrutiny of the landing gear, the wheels and the lower parts of the aircraft. Russovsky had obviously taken meticulous care of the ultralight. There were many signs of microfauna infection, but they had been cleaned and patched. Gretchen, for her part, took the time to clean all of the exposed surfaces with the magnetic sweeper. Then she surveyed the interior of the cabin with her goggles dialed up into ultra. Seems clean, she thought.

  After stowing her baggage and prepping the ultralight for takeoff, Gretchen ran a test on the shipboard systems, including the cameras and the geosensing array Russovsky had added to the underside of the wings. Everything checked out. She amused herself for a few minutes with the cameras, zooming the viewfinders and seeing what kind of magni
fication they were capable of. They were of moderate quality, so she left them focused on the horizon in case something happened.

  Gretchen climbed up into the wreck. The shuttle had been reduced to a skeleton of twisted metal and soot-blackened surfaces. A jumble of unidentifiable wreckage filled the interior, leaving no way to crawl inside. Every nook and cranny was filled with spidery stone filaments and tubelike extrusions. Anderssen grimaced at the mess, then climbed down and began to circle the debris, paying close attention to the hull surface.

  Atmospheric shuttles were fitted with heat-ablative polyceramic sheathing. This one had been twisted and warped by the impact of the crash, stripping away long sections of the hex-shaped tiles, leaving them scattered across the sandy floor of the valley. Anderssen bent down and gingerly turned over one of the black hexagons. To her surprise, the underside of the composite was dusty but not eaten away or encrusted with the mineralization she'd come to associate with the microfauna.

  "They don't eat everything," she mused, picking up the tile. Under a rubbing fingertip, the ceramic came away clean and shiny. Gretchen frowned before realizing the composite would be designed for minimal air resistance as well as its heat-shedding properties. "Huh. We could collect the whole set and make ourselves a house."

  Emboldened by this discovery, she took out an excavation tool and wedged the metal tip between a pair of tiles still attached to the wreck. Both tiles popped off, revealing a honeycombed, stonelike crust beneath. Gretchen drew back, but even the unaided eye could see the delicate filaments so-suddenly exposed to the bare sun wither and corrode. "Sister! They're already eating away the hull."

  Her comm woke with a buzz and Hummingbird's harsh voice filled her ears.

  "They are. The first storm of any magnitude will tear the sheathing away, scattering the tiles, and then there will be only dead stone."

  Gretchen turned, following the winking light of her directional finder and saw a tan and black shape climbing down the face of a long, low dune to her west. A line of footprints smudged the perfectly smooth face. "Where have you been?"

  "Two men survived the crash, one injured, one not," the nauallis said, his breathing a little short with the effort of moving in sand. Gretchen could hear a background hiss of his rebreather and the hum of suit systems over the comm link. "They went toward those hills."

  The distant figure raised an arm, pointing west.

  "Did you find their bodies?" Gretchen continued to move along the edge of the wreck, turning bits of metal and plastic over with her tool. "Or any sign they were picked up?"

  "They found a cave at the edge of the hills. A deep cave. They did not come out."

  Anderssen clicked her teeth in amusement. "You mean you didn't find any more tracks."

  "No." Hummingbird's voice was still thready. "The cave could have another exit, but I did not explore beyond the mouth. The floor was covered with minute bluish crystals—they were not disturbed beyond a certain point."

  "Hmm." Gretchen had rounded the western side of the wreck and stood near the tents again, staring at the long scarlike furrow torn across the valley. "These crystals only grow in shadow?"

  "Yes." The nauallis began to make better time, having descended the dune to the gravel-strewn floor of the valley. "But there is enough space for two men to find shelter. How swiftly do these structures grow?"

  "A good question, old crow." Gretchen bent down and began to unstake the nauallis's pressure tent. "If they have something to eat—and are protected from UV—you can watch them expand with the naked eye."

  There was a sigh on the comm, followed by an intermittent hissing sound. "Then both men could have gone deeper into the cave and the crystals might have regrown, covering their tracks."

  "I suppose." Gretchen made a face, examining the bottom of Hummingbird's tent. The reinforced floor was discolored and ragged. So much for impact-resistant microfiber. This looks worse than mine does, but it's been sitting here longer. At least a half-hour longer! Better figure out some way to sterilize the ground when we camp. Ah, I know! She stirred the sand with her boot, watching sparkling motes appear among the reddish grains, then disappear. "We should make camp early each day," she said in an offhand voice.

  "Very well." Hummingbird approached, striding easily across the hard-packed gravel. Gretchen looked him over and saw he'd managed to get his head scarf and cloak properly secured and draped. "What are you doing with my tent?"

  "Seeing how badly it's been damaged," she said, dropping the rotting plastic back on the ground. "Do you have a spare?"

  Hummingbird shook his head as he came up. At close range, his eyes were only smudged shadows within the cowl of his kaffiyeh. "What happened?"

  "The sand is hungry. I guess it likes the taste of double-flex, single-porosity polymer." Gretchen stifled a sigh and tried not to glare at the Náhuatl. "We'll have to double-bunk in mine. We'll keep yours as a ground cover for as long as the fabric lasts."

  The nauallis turned over the tent himself and Gretchen heard the hiss of an interrupted breathing tube again. "I see," Hummingbird said at last. "What about the aircraft?"

  "What about any of our equipment?" she snapped in annoyance. "Everything we have is at risk. Are we leaving here today?"

  The nauallis shook his head. "There are some things I have to do first."

  "Get busy, then." Gretchen felt a stab of worry, staring at the Midge landing gear. All three wheels were resting in the sand. Great, an inch of dust is dangerous. Well—if we land on solid rock, we should be safe. What are those wheels made of? I'd better find something to protect them with.

  The day passed and grew hotter. The nauallis wandered around the wreckage in an aimless fashion, apparently ignoring the fierce, white-hot glare of the sun. Gretchen kept to the thin sliver of shade under the corroded, decaying wing of the shuttle. Her suit was insulated and cooled, but the thin atmosphere of Ephesus offered only meager protection against the radiation flooding down from the system primary. She amused herself by peeling hexagonal tiles from the skin of the shuttle. Each hex was cut with alternating tongues and grooves, allowing a secure fit between the sections.

  Gretchen looked up, her attention drawn by a faint muttering sound. She felt disoriented and realized the sun had changed position noticeably, twisting the shadows cast by the wreckage and the boulders to the west. The quality of the air seemed different—though there was no single factor she could bring to mind to account for the feeling.

  The nauallis passed by, facing into the sun. Hummingbird seemed to be limping, dragging his feet. Further, he was hunched over and swinging his arms as if he were weighed down by a tremendous weight.

  "Crow? Are you all right?" Anderssen rose from her pile of black hexagons. An adhesive from her tool belt seemed to adhere to the ceramic, allowing her to make a series of meter square pads from the material. The first assembly was buried in sand at the base of the shuttle wing. She planned on excavating the offering in a couple of hours to see if the microfauna liked the taste of the bonding agent. "Have you hurt your leg?"

  There was no answer, only a faint hissing and chuckling sound on the comm link. Gretchen felt a queer, stomach-churning tension overtake her and jogged out into the sunlight. The nauallis had turned away, heading out along the line of the shuttle's impact. Despite his unsteady gait, Hummingbird made good time. Anderssen blinked in surprise—it seemed the Náhuatl had suddenly leapt ahead, receding before her eyes. She began to run.

  The nauallis shambled along the line of the skid, a long rough gouge in the sand and stony soil. He seemed to waver, weaving his body, kneeling, almost crawling on the ground, moving as if a wind pushed him, but the air was still and cold. Gretchen felt the heat of the pale white disk of the sun burning on her arms, even through the layers of insulation and her cloak. The air pressure in her suit seemed to rise, making it difficult to breath, though the gauges showed nothing abnormal.

  Hummingbird grew smaller again, as if he had traveled a great distance ove
r the desolate plain, but he still had not passed the nearest boulder. Gretchen felt her pace slow, following the line of his tracks in the disorderly sand. Now she felt a heaviness in her own limbs, as if the suit had grown thicker, more cumbersome.

  Gasping, Gretchen forced her feet to move, to step forward. There was an instant of resistance and then she began to run. She became aware of a peculiar sensation—her legs had become long and heavy, tipped with something sharp, something which dragged in the sand. Her body moved strangely and she weaved, realizing a swing weight followed her motion, acting as a counterweight to her loping stride. Terror rushed up in her throat, green bile biting at her tongue. The sky had darkened to brass, the sun shrunken to a single point of steady white light. Under her feet, the footprints left by Hummingbird were obscured, blown away by the wind and only her heavy, three-toed tread replaced them.

  "What was that?" Gretchen found herself standing beside Hummingbird on the crest of a low, scythe-shaped dune. The hills were a dim line along the horizon. Her entire body was aching, starved for breath and she crumpled with agonizing slowness to her knees. Sweat clouded the inside of her goggles and pooled in the hollows of her cheekbones. "What happened?"

  The masked face of the nauallis stared down at her. A steadily rising breeze tugged at the man's kaffiyeh and cloak. He did not seem winded by the run across the desert. "You should not have followed me. Now you will have to walk back."

  Gretchen tried to rise, but found her attention entirely occupied with the effort of breathing. "I saw ... I thought I saw something. There were tracks in the sand.... They weren't human footprints."