by David Geary
Ahead, around the curve, something moved.
Rose. And fell.
A door. It was twisted on a lower hinge, but still connected to the jamb. As they watched, it struck the wall in time to the vibration, moved slowly down and bounced off the deck.
They looked through the doorway into another, smaller chamber. A crosspiece set at eye level resolved itself into a rectangular table, surrounded by eight chairs of gargantuan dimensions. The chairs were padded (or had been: everything was rock-hard now). Hutch entered, feeling like a four year old. She stood on tiptoe and directed her lamplight across the tabletop. It was bare.
George had a better angle. "There are insets," he said. He tried to open one, but it stayed fast. "Don't know," he said.
The furniture was locked in place. "It looks like a conference room," said Janet.
Cabinets lined the bulkheads. The doors would not open. But, more importantly, they were inscribed with symbols. Maggie made for them like a moth to a flame. "If it is the
Monument-Makers," she said, after a few moments, "they aren't like any of the other characters we've seen." She was wearing a headband TV camera, which was relaying everything back to the shuttle. "God, I love this," she added.
There was another doorway at the rear of the room, and a second, identical suite beyond.
Hutch turned off the common channel, and retreated into her own thoughts. She watched the shifting shadows thrown by the lamps, and remembered the lonely ridge on lapetus, and the single set of tracks. Who were these people? What had it been like when they gathered in this room? What had they talked about? What mattered to them?
Later, they found more open doors. They looked into a laboratory, and an area that had provided support functions to the station. There was a kitchen. And a room filled with basins and a long trough that might have had an excretory use. The trough was about as high as the table. They saw what might have been the remains of a showering facility.
Daylight came again. Forty minutes after it had passed out of the windows, the sun was back. At about the same time, they came to an up-ramp which split off the passageway.
"Okay," said Carson. "Looks like time to divide. Everybody be careful." He looked at Maggie. "Do you have a preference where you want to go?"
"I'll stay down here," she said.
He started up. "We'll meet back here in an hour. Or sooner, if anybody finds anything interesting." Truscott and Sill fell in behind him, and the plan to have Hutch watch them collapsed. Carson grinned, and signaled for her to forget it. Hutch, delighted to be rid of what had promised to be onerous duty, rejoined George and Maggie.
They continued along the lower level, and almost immediately found a room filled with displays and consoles half-hidden by lush, high-back chairs. "Computers," breathed Maggie.
There were photos on the walls. Faded. But maybe still discernible.
Maggie was trying to get a look at a keyboard, but the consoles were too high. She glowed with pleasure. "You don't think they'd still work, do you—?" she wondered.
"Not after a few thousand years," said Hutch. "If it's really been that long."
"Well, even if they don't, the keyboard will give us their alphanumerics. That alone is priceless."
Then George got excited. He'd found a picture of the vehicle they'd seen in the shuttle bay. It was in flight, and the space station was in the background. "Glory days," he said.
A second photo depicted Beta Pac III, blue and white and very terrestrial.
Eager to have a look at the consoles, Maggie moved in front of a chair and pulled off one of her magnetic shoes, planning to float up onto the equipment. But she became suddenly aware of something in the chair. She half-turned, and screamed. Had she been successful in removing both shoes, she would probably have launched. As it was, one foot remained locked in place, and the rest of her anatomy careened off at a sharp angle. She pitched over, and crashed into the deck.
The chair was occupied.
Carson's voice erupted from the commlink. "What's happening? Hutch—?"
Maggie stared up at the thing in the seat, color draining from her face.
"We've got a corpse," Hutch said into the common channel.
"On our way," said Carson.
The occupant of the chair was a glowering, mummified thing.
"This one, too," said George, trying to steady his voice, and indicating the next chair.
Two of them.
Maggie, embarrassed, stared up at the corpse. Hutch walked over and stood beside her. "You okay?"
"Yeah," she said. "It just startled me. I wasn't expecting it."
Its eyes were closed. The skin had shriveled to dry parchment. The skull was dust-brown, lean, narrow. Ridged. Long arms ended in large hands that retained a taloned appearance. The gray-black remains of a garment hung around its waist and clung to its legs.
"There must have been air here for a while," said George. "Or the bodies wouldn't have decomposed."
"I don't think that's so," said Maggie. "Organisms are full of chemicals. They'd cause a general breakdown whether the
corpse is in a vacuum or not. It would just take longer."
It was belted into its chair.
Had been belted in when the airlocks were opened.
Its dying agony was still imprinted on its face.
What had happened here?
Maggie gingerly touched its knee.
Hutch stood in front of it, and knew the thing. Recognized it.
Carson and the others filed in.
They spread around the room, moving quietly. "Is it them?" Truscott asked. "The creatures from lapetus?"
"Yes," said Carson. He looked around. "Anybody disagree?"
No one did.
"Sad," Maggie said. "This is not the way we should have met."
Sill was just tall enough to be able to see the work stations. "It's their operations center, I think," he said.
George turned back to the photos. They were encased and mounted within the bulkhead. Most were too blurred to make out. But he saw a cluster of buildings in one. He found another that appeared to be a seascape. "That could be Maine," said Sill, looking over his shoulder.
Hutch could not look away from the corpses.
Strapped down.
Had they been murdered? Unlikely. The restraining belt did not look capable of holding anyone who didn't want to be held. Rather, they had stayed here while someone opened the airlocks and let the void in.
The station was a mausoleum.
They found more corpses in spaces that seemed to have been living quarters on the upper level. They counted thirty-six before they stopped. There would undoubtedly be more. The bodies, without exception, were belted down. They understood the implication almost from the start, and it chilled them. // was a mass suicide. They didn't want to get thrown around or sucked out by decompression, so they overrode whatever safety features they had, tied themselves in, and opened the doors.
"But why!" asked Truscott. Carson knew the director to be tough and unyielding. But she was shaken by this.
Maggie also seemed daunted. "Maybe suicide was implicit in their culture. Maybe they did something wrong on this station, and took the appropriate way out."
In the aftermath of their discovery, they roamed aimlessly through the station. Adhering to the spirit of Carson's safety concerns, or maybe for other reasons, no one traveled alone.
Maggie commandeered Sill and stayed close to the operations area. They prowled among the computers, and took some of the hardware apart, with a view to salvaging data banks, if they still existed.
George and Hutch went looking for more photos. They found them in the living quarters. They were faded almost to oblivion, but they could make out figures wearing robes and cloaks. And more structures: exotic upswept buildings that reminded Carson of churches. And there were two photos that might have been scenes from a launch site, a circle that resembled a radio dish and something else that
looked like a gantry. And a group photo. "No question about that one," said George. "They're posing."
Carson laughed.
"What's funny?" asked George.
"I'm not sure." He had to think about it before he recognized consciously the absurdity of such intimidating creatures lining up for a team picture.
In another photo, two of them stood beside something that might have been a car, and waved.
Carson was moved. "How long ago, do you think?" he asked.
George looked at the picture. "A long time."
Yet the place did not evoke the weight of centuries, the way the Temple of the Winds had. The operations spaces might have been occupied yesterday. Things were a little dusty, but the station was full of sunlight. It was hard to believe that the sound of footsteps had not echoed recently through the long corridors. But there was an easy explanation for that: the elements had not been able to work their will.
George found a photo of the four moons strung out in a straight line. "Spectacular," he said.
"Maybe more than that," said Carson. "It might give us the age of this place."
Maggie found the central processing unit. It appeared to be intact. "Maybe," she said.
Sill folded his arms. "Not a chance."
Well, they would see. Stranger things had happened. She would remove it, if she could figure out how to do it, and send it back to the Academy. They might get lucky.
Three hours after their entry, they regrouped and started back to the shuttle. Maggie had her CPU, and they carried the photo of the four moons. They also had taken a couple of computers.
Hutch was preoccupied. She watched the shifting light and said little as they clicked back through the passageways.
"What's wrong?" Carson asked at last.
"Why did they kill themselves?"
"I don't know."
"Can you even imagine how it might happen?"
"Maybe they got stuck up here. Things went to hell planetside."
"But there's a shuttle on board."
"It might not have been working."
"So you'd have to have a situation in which, simultaneously, your external support broke down, and the onboard shuttle also broke down. That sound likely to you?"
"No."
"Me, neither."
Priscilla Hutchins, Journal
Tonight, I feel as if someone took an axe to the Ice Lady. The Monument-Makers seem to have vanished, to be replaced by pathetic creatures who build primitive space stations and kill themselves when things go wrong. Where are the beings who built the Great Monuments? They are not here.
I wonder if they ever were.
0115, April 12,2203
23.
Beta Pacifica III. Tuesday, April 12; 0830 GMT.
The shuttle glided through the still afternoon above a rolling plain. The windows were drawn halfway back, and fresh air flowed freely through the vehicle. The smell of the prairie and the nearby sea stirred memories of Earth. Strange, really: Carson had spent all those years on Quraqua, on the southern coastline, and he'd never once felt the sting of salt air in his nostrils. This was also the first time he'd ever ridden a shuttle without being sealed off from the outside environment.
First time with my face out the window.
There were occasional signs of former habitation below: crumbling walls, punctured dams, collapsed dock facilities. They were down low, close to the ground, moving at a hundred fifty klicks. The sky was filled with birds.
They came up on a river. It was broad, and mud-colored, with sandy banks, and giant shrubs pushing above the surface close to shore. Lizardlike creatures lay in the sun.
And more ruins: stone buildings in the water, worn smooth; a discolored track through forest, marking an ancient road.
"They've been gone a long time," said George.
"Want to go down and take a closer look?" asked Jake, their pilot.
"No," Carson said. Hutch could see that he wanted to do precisely that, but Truscott had given them thirty-six hours. "Mark the place so we can find it again."
The prairie rolled on. They listened to the rush of air against the shuttle, watched the golden grass ripple in the wind.
"Something ahead," said Maggie.
It was little more than a twisted pile of corroded metal. Carson thought it might once have been a vehicle, or a
machine. Impossible to tell from the air.
They left the river and flew over a patch of desert, passing over walls, and occasional storage tanks sinking into the dunes like abandoned ships.
Prairie came again, the land rose and narrowed, and ocean closed in on both sides. In this area, rock walls were everywhere, like pieces of an enormous jigsaw puzzle.
They picked up another river, and followed it south into forest. Mountains framed the land, and the river disappeared occasionally underground, surfacing again to roll through picturesque valleys.
Carson had a map on his display. "Seems to me," he said, "that the towns are located in the wrong places."
"What do you mean?" asked Hutch.
"Look at this one." He tapped the screen. A set of ruins were well out on the plain, several kilometers from the ocean, and fifteen from a river junction. "It should be here, at the confluence."
"Probably was, at one time," said Maggie. "But rivers move. In fact, if we can figure out when the city was on the confluence, we might get a date for all this."
"They shared the human taste for living by water," said Hutch.
Carson nodded. "Or they relied heavily on water transportation." He shook his head. "Not very rational, for a civilization that had anti-gravity thousands of years ago. What happened? Did they have it, and then lose it?"
"Why don't we go down and look?" suggested Janet.
Ahead, the river drained into a bay. "Up there," Carson said. "Looks like a city. And a natural harbor. We'll land there."
The forest took on a jumbled, confused appearance. Mounds and towers and walls broke through the foliage. It was possible, with a little imagination, to make out the shape of streets and thoroughfares.
Was the entire continent like this? One vast wreck?
Jake touched his earphones. "Ops says the Ashley Tee has arrived. Rendezvous in about forty hours."
"Marvelous!" said Maggie. Maybe they would be able to stay now, and inspect this world of the Monument-Makers at their leisure.
Jake congratulated them, but Hutch saw that he was not pleased. When she asked, he said that he did not want to get pulled out now.
The forest overflowed a wide, sun-dappled harbor. Great broad-leafed trees crowded the shoreline. The shuttle sailed out over the open sea, and curved back. A narrow, grassy island divided the harbor mouth into twin channels. Both were partially blocked by a collapsed bridge.
Hutch saw truncated squares in the water, massive concrete foundations (she thought), and piles of rubble.
"There used to be big buildings down there," said Janet. "Maybe something on the order of skyscrapers."
"There are more in the woods," said George.
"Anybody got a suggestion," asked Carson, "where we should set down?"
"Don't get too close to the shoreline," advised Hutch. "If there are predators, that's where they're most likely to be."
They picked out a clearing about a half-kilometer from the harbor. Jake took them down and they landed among wet leaves and bright green thickets.
Hutch heard the cockpit hatch open. "Hold it a minute," said Carson. "We need to talk a little before we go out there." Good, she thought. For all their experience on the Quraqua mission, these were not people who necessarily understood the potential for danger on a new world. The old fear of contamination by extraterrestrial disease had been discarded: microorganisms tended not to attack creatures evolved from alien biosystems. But that didn't mean they might not attract local predators. Hutch had gotten an object lesson on that subject.
Carson assumed his best military tone. "We don't really
know anything about this place, so we'll stay together. Everybody take a pulser. But please make sure you've got a clear field of fire if you feel you have to use it."
They would not need energy shields here; but they would wear heavy clothing and thick boots to afford some protection against bristles, poison plants, stinging insects, and whatever other surprises the forest might have for them. "Which way do we go?" asked Maggie, zipping her jacket.
Carson looked around. "There are heavy ruins to the north. Let's try that way first." He turned to Jake. "We'll be back before sundown."
"Okay," said the pilot.
"Stay inside, okay? Let's play it safe."
"Sure," he said. "I'm not interested in going anywhere."
The air was cool and sweet and smelled of mint. They gathered at the foot of the ladder and looked around in silent appreciation. Bushes swayed in a light breeze off the sea; insects burbled and birds fluttered overhead. To Hutch, it felt like the lost Pennsylvania, the one you read about in old books.
The grass was high. It came almost to her knees. They got out, checked their weapons, and picked out an opening in the trees. Carson moved into the lead, and George drifted to the rear. They crossed the clearing and plunged into the woods.
They immediately faced an uphill climb. The vegetation was thick. They picked their way between trees and spiked bushes, and occasionally used the pulsers to clear obstacles.
They topped a ridge and paused. Tall shrubbery blocked their view. Janet was trying to look back the way they'd come. "I think it's a mound," she said. "There's something buried here." She tried using her scanner, but she was too close, literally on top of the hill, to make out anything. "Something" she said again. "Part of a structure. It goes deep."
George produced a lightpad, and started a map.
They worked their way down the other side, past an array of thick walls. They ranged in height up to treetop level, and were often broken, or leveled. "This is not high-tech stuff," said George. "They've used some plastics, and some stuff I don't recognize, but most of this is just concrete and steel. That fits with the space station, but not with the telescope."
"It doesn't follow," said Janet. "The more advanced stuff should be on the surface. A low-tech city should be long-buried."
