It wasn’t as hard a climb as it seemed looking up at it. Indeed, the rock face was most obliging even though it had an outward bulge that was a trifle awkward to maneuver. Then they came to the area of squared-off, dressed stone which must be the control post. A farther twenty feet, easily scaled, got them to the array of solar panels crowning the cliff top. But, once again, no discernible way into the facility they knew must be contained behind the rock. That is, until Kris, exasperated with the whole thing, climbed well above the panels and discovered the vents.
“Well, they had to have venting somewhere, didn’t they?” she said when she had called Bert and Zainal to inspect her find. Then she saw both men regarding her, and she looked back at the vents and realized she was the slenderest one among them. “I knew we should have brought Lenny.”
It took a good two hours to pry the grill off the vent with the use of the heaviest chisel of the ones Zainal “borrowed” from a protesting Aarens, who had showered imprecations on them if they nicked any of the blades. When Zainal had chipped enough space for his fingers, he gave one mighty pull and wrenched the vent cover off.
They slung a rope under Kris’ arms and, not without scratching herself, she squeezed into the opening and was let down. A long way down into musty darkness.
Then, as soon as she touched the ground with her feet, lights came up: an orangey glow rather than the blue-white of the lighting the Catteni used. She could see the panels that lined the “front” of the facility and then the long boxy rectangles that ranged along the back. There was nothing that resembled seating, nothing that resembled anything she was familiar with, bar the sloping control panels with their regular indentations. There were six rectangles of an opaque material which looked like screens, placed high up on the walls, and one larger like a blank picture window in front.
“I think Bert better get down here or you, Zainal,” she said. “I haven’t a clue what to do next.”
Bert’s head appeared in the vent aperture. “Tell me what you have in front of you, Kris. Maybe I can talk you through it.”
“Ha!” She ran her fingers lightly over the left-hand group of indentations and, in the next instant, everything lit up. “Oh, lord, I hit something. Hey, and there’re sorts of pictograms that even I can read. And one of them looks like doors.” She pressed her fingers together, ditheringly, and felt totally out of her depth to be confronted with such technology. She could now feel a humming through the soles of her boots, low and not menacing. She told them about it.
“We hear, too,” Zainal said, his voice encouraging.
“How many door pictograms?” Bert asked.
“Five.”
“Do they differ in any way?”
“You mean in size? Yes.”
“Try the smallest and see what happens.”
Reluctantly she put her finger in the depression beside the small door. She heard a whoosh and saw a door panel swing open behind her.
“I’ve got access to the inside.”
“Take a look around, then.”
She did and came on to a blind corridor, wide and tall, cut into the rock. She reported.
“Try the next door glyph.”
She did and heard a roar from both of them, then Bert’s raucous “Open sesame!” She felt the cool air before she realized that she had inadvertently opened the outer door. She was overwhelmingly relieved, however, when Bert and Zainal entered the room.
Bert’s face was a study—the eager boy on Christmas morning with all the games he’d asked Santa for—as he pored over the control panel. Zainal was more interested in the rectangles on the inner wall, looking for the way in to their innards.
“Well, here goes on the Big Daddy Bear,” Bert said in a tone of decision and pressed the last of the line of “doors.”
Immediately Zainal’s comunit bleeped.
“Hey, man,” and Joe’s triumphant tones were audible to all three, “you did it. The main portal’s sliding back inside the cliff, smooth as a baby’s ass. And, wow!”
“What’s inside?”
“Some kind of aircraft: one, no, two of ’em, parked in tandem. Stubby wings, looks like air-cushion jobs as I can’t find any wheels, but I’d say they were atmospheric planes. Maybe for the Inspector General to have a look around, see if all the mechos are doing their jobs right. Hey, now, wait just a sec, there, Aarens…” Abruptly the transmission cut off.
Zainal leaped for the outer door. Bert and Kris almost bumping into each other to follow.
Over the bulge of the cliff, they couldn’t see what was happening at the base by the garage until Zainal’s unit beeped again.
“S’all right here,” Joe said. “Sorry to panic but that fool got himself inside one of the planes and I didn’t know what would happen.”
“We need that fool up here,” Zainal said, scowling, and Kris just wished that Aarens could see that expression: he’d take less risks if he had Zainal to account to.
While they awaited Aarens’ arrival, Bert studied the panel hieroglyphics, trying to figure out what did what. There were only a few identifying signs that made any sense, the doors being one. Another was a line of six depressions, marked with a blunt-nosed object, some sort of a projectile. One space did not light up.
“Could have fired one off,” Bert said. “A probe? Some kind of a capsule?”
“Or a torpedo,” was Kris’ guess.
“Yeah, could be any of those.”
“Zainal?”
The Catteni came in to study the line, shaking his head after a few moments. The comunit bleeped.
“He won’t go,” Joe said, thoroughly disgusted.
“He won’t go?” Zainal repeated, blinking.
“He won’t climb up. Seems he’s afraid of heights.”
“Afraid of heights?” Zainal echoed, as if he didn’t believe his ears, or thought he had misunderstood the words.
“Wouldn’t you know?” Kris said.
“He will climb,” Zainal said flatly. The look on his face boded no good for Aarens.
“I’ll help,” Kris said happily, looking forward to Aarens’ reaction when he realized he couldn’t pull that sort of an act on a Catteni.
They rappelled down, Kris reveling in the maneuver, for she’d always liked the exercise in her survival course. Joe and Sarah now had Aarens cornered in the garage, behind the two stubby-winged planes, nose-to-tail in the long building. The garage was much higher than it needed to be to accommodate just the two planes. The garage was also lit, so all its functions were controlled from above. Kris wondered if the planes were also remote-control devices. Maybe that was what the screens beside the control panels were for: remote viewing. Zainal now confronted Aarens, picked him up by the fold of his coverall, and was carrying him, one-handed, to the front.
“No, no, I tell you I won’t go. I can’t handle heights. I’ll faint. I’ll be sick all over you.…” Aarens was protesting, batting vainly at the hand that carried him.
“You are needed up. You will go up!” Zainal told him and then gestured at Joe to bring the spare rope.
Without actually releasing the now violently struggling mechanic, Zainal created a harness that strapped his arms tight to his chest, with loops under his arms to lift him. Then Zainal fastened the loose ends of the harness to himself and started up the rock face, hauling Aarens, who was flailing hard with his legs to impede his upward progress.
“You’d better use your legs to keep from bruising yourself against the rock,” Sarah suggested with objective indifference.
“Ah, I can’t. I can’t stand heights. Oh, god, oh, god, oh god,” and he kept up that litany as Zainal inexorably hoisted him, dangling and banging against the cliff face. “Oh, god, oh, god.”
Kris followed behind, not that she could have rescued Aarens, or even wanted to, or would need to since Zainal had the exercise under complete control.
“Oh god oh god, oh god,” Aarens’ voice rose to an hysterical pitch.
“Keep your eyes
shut then, you damn fool,” Kris advised. “Don’t look. Don’t look down.…”
Aarens did not become sick but he did have an episode of incontinence. Kris was able to move out of the way of it, which was as well, as it left a wet streak down the cliff.
The “oh god oh gods” became piteous and hoarse but Zainal ignored them and then Bert helped haul the terrified man up on to the shallow ledge and through to the door into the control room.
“Pull yourself together,” Bert said with disgust to the quivering mechanic as he untied the ropes. Zainal was shrugging out of his harness. “This complex goes deep into the mountain, Zainal. Care to have a look?”
“No, I stay here,” Zainal said, looking down at the sorry sight Aarens presented. “He must do work.”
Kris was as glad to leave the close confines of the control room because Aarens’ accident was smelling the place up. She didn’t know how Zainal could stand it, but the door was left open and perhaps the wind at this height would clean the air and dry Aarens off.
Bert led her out of the control room, through one door, and then down a short flight of very wide steps with low risers. Lights came up, brightening slowly, as if slow from disuse, to the same orange glow that shone in the control room. They entered the first room and it was empty of everything but a sort of long pedestal table but no chairs or stools or anything to sit or rest on. The table did look used, with some edges smoothed and some scratches marring its surface. Scratches from what? Bert urged her to the room on one side.
“I don’t know if these are beds or what,” he said, pointing to large square platforms, built up a foot off the floor surface. “Much less this?” and he showed her an equally large room beyond, which had a square depression in its center with what seemed to be a drain in the middle. “I can’t find any water outlets or hoses or anything.”
They prowled here and there about the rooms and decided that those that had the same built-in equipment might be sleeping accommodations. The purpose of others was not immediately apparent. Some had large rectangular coffers which defied their attempts to open them. The wall shelving was all above her shoulder height.
“Big creatures? Appendages at this level?” Kris asked, pretending to remove something from a shelf.
“Not been used in yonks,” Bert allowed, scuffing the dust on the floor.
“I don’t know what this is,” Aarens’ voice said, issuing from somewhere near the ceiling. “No reaction anywhere.”
Bert and Kris grinned at each other.
“Maybe we better tell them that they’re on intercom,” Kris said.
Bert shrugged. “Why?”
“Why are you touching the bullets?” Zainal was saying, a note of concern in his deep voice.
“They’re for those torpedo-type gizmos on a rack in the garage,” Aarens was saying in a smooth sly tone. “Could be…”
“Don’t!” Zainal’s command crackled.
Just then they heard a rumbling that echoed up from below. With one accord they ran back to the control room.
Zainal was standing over the prone body of Dick Aarens, his right hand still clenched in a fist. In his left hand he held the comunit, its on light glowing.
“I decked him,” Zainal said. Then he pointed to the panel where one of the bullet depressions shone red.
Was red always the color of alarm?
“He pressed it. It go off.”
“Thanks, Zainal,” Joe’s voice could be faintly heard from the comunit. “We moved. The right way. Thing launched in a blaze and we’d’ve been all too close to its exhaust. Wait till I get a hold of that Aarens!”
“You’ll have to stand in line,” Kris said, pulling the comunit over to her so that she could register her priority. “When he comes to, that is.” She toed the prone body. “What did he think he was doing, Zainal?”
“Make trouble,” Zainal said.
“Oh!” That was from Bert Put because Kris was shocked into immobility by the very thought of deliberately summoning the Mecho Makers, and having to answer to whatever used solid rock as a bed and ate at a table without sitting and had shoulder-high storage units.
“Oh, my god!” she finally said, leaning weakly against Zainal.
“Maybe good idea after all,” he said at length, nodding his head. “Then we know worst, or best.”
“How could it be best?” Kris asked, very glad when Zainal put a supporting arm around her, his fingers tightening briefly on her shoulder encouragingly.
“First, best to know. Second, fun to find out who makes mechos.” He grinned at her exclamation of protest.
“If the condition of this place is any evidence, no one or no thing has been here in a long time, Zainal,” Bert said, shaking his head. “Wish I could have seen it go,” he added sorrowfully.
“Ask Joe when we get down again.”
“And what do we do with sleeping beauty?” Kris asked, prodding Aarens’ shoulder again.
Zainal took a deep breath and then let it out.
“It’d be more fun to lower him down when he knows he’s up high,” Bert said with a malicious expression on his usually pleasant face.
“And listen to the oh-god-oh-god-oh-gods for hours?” Kris said.
“Well, if I promise not to touch anything, can I stay up here and see if I can figure out any more of what that panel controls?” Bert asked.
Zainal shrugged and looked at Kris. “I don’t see why not, NASA-man,” she said with a grin.
“First, we report to Mitford,” Zainal said.
“He’s not going to like this,” Kris said, shaking her head. “Especially since I think we were probably supposed to prevent just such a thing happening.”
To her surprise, Mitford took somewhat the same attitude Zainal had: he wouldn’t have authorized sending a message, if that was indeed what Aarens had managed to do. But he was, in a way, relieved that it had gone off.
“And if your guys are watching this planet, Zainal, it’s going to give them a shock.”
“There is that,” Zainal replied.
“Should we come back to the Rock, sarge?” Kris asked.
“Might as well, but on your way back, check out the other sites on the part of the map I gave Bert.” Then Mitford signed off.
* * *
IN THE END, ZAINAL LOWERED THE UNCONSCIOUS Aarens down the rock face, with Kris guiding the strapped body’s descent. It wasn’t what she’d rather have done with Aarens, but that would have been playing the game on his level. Sarah and Joe loaded up a sack of food, water, and furs which Zainal then hauled, more carefully, up to Bert. He would leave his comunit with Bert so the MS could stay in contact.
“Tell Bert there’s no real rush for him to come down,” Joe said to Zainal on the com, winking at Sarah in a conspiratorial fashion.
They decided not to untie the unconscious Aarens but put him in the Hopper, between the seats. Sarah flung his fur over him.
“It may stink in the morning but that’s his problem,” she said. “There’s stew for supper,” she added. “Just the four of us.” Then Sarah smiled, a different sort of knowing smile. It didn’t take a moment for Kris to catch on and she grinned back, nodding her head. “We could stand our watches together tonight. Be sort of cozy, wouldn’t it?”
“Great idea,” Kris said, her eyes wandering over the area to see where she would place hers and Zainal’s blankets and furs. Certainly far enough away from Aarens to be able to ignore any complaints from him when he finally came to, and far enough not to impinge on the privacy of Joe and Sarah.
“I hear Catteni make great lovers,” Sarah went on conversationally. “You have?”
“Yeah. Back on earth, I knew a couple of girls who took up with Catteni…on purpose, to find out what they could,” Sarah hastened to add.
“Ah, line of duty,” Kris said.
“Well, the word I got was that giving out was not the hard part of the job.” Sarah winked at Kris, and waited a moment, evidently wanting some indication of how K
ris accepted the information. “In fact, they used to come home smiling. Oh, I know there were plenty yelling rape, and I heard all about Patti Sue, and I know some of the rougher types were brutal. But Zainal’s different. Oh my word, but he’s different and if I hadn’t met Joe…” Sarah’s smile was enviously wistful. Then her expression changed to her useful forthright candidness. “What I’m trying to say is, don’t worry about liking Zainal that way, Kris. And I think you do like him.”
“Hmmm. I think I do, too, Sarah. And thanks.”
Then, while Sarah went back to the fire to stir the stew, Kris watched Zainal rappelling down the façade, his movements deft and graceful. But then she was accustomed to his size and she certainly was no longer going to be worried about what other people thought. Still it was good of Sarah to speak up as she had. Especially since a lot of people now on Botany had mentally paired Zainal and herself off a long time ago. She watched while he untethered himself, neatly coiled the rope for future use, and then entered the garage. She watched him have a good look at the launch tube that had released the capsule: at the other four sitting in their tubes. Ventilators had come on when the missile had surged out of the garage so that the fumes had dispersed, but he sniffed, trying to decide what fuel had been used, she thought. Then he inspected the rest of the puzzling cabinets, panels, and equipment. He settled himself on the sloping stubby wing of the last plane and took some bark paper and his carbon pencil out of a thigh pocket. She joined him when he began to make accurate sketches of the interior.
“Is Bert doing the same upstairs?”
“Up stairs?” Zainal asked, puzzled. When she pointed upward, he grinned. “Yes. We get it all down for Sarge. For report.”
Kris liked watching Zainal work, the deft way his fingers moved, big but not clumsy. She thought of how they would move on her, while they stood their double watches that night, and shivered with anticipation.
He had considerable skill as a draftsman because he only needed a quick glance before he sketched in a whole section accurately: frowning as he held the sketch up against the model to be sure he had done it with precision.
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