Lair of the Cyclops

by Allen Wold

  If Rikard's surmise was correct, there was at least one other interstellar people to add to the record, though as yet without name—the cyclopeans first hinted at in the Ahmear archaeology text.

  Rikard and his companions arrived at the Tsikashka system on a small, privately chartered flickership. It was Rikard's preferred mode of transportation, and since there was no regular starship service to Tsikashka anyway, that was just as well. He did take the precaution of not divulging his destination until they were under way, just in case Karyl Toerson had access to the company's records.

  All travel to and from the Tsikashka system was by demand only, on the part of universities, research acade­mies, planetary governments, Federal conservation services, and so on. And so the bare-bones jumpslot station was used to dealing with flickerships of all types. They were not used to dealing with private individuals. For this reason, Rikard had more difficulty than he had anticipated in getting per­mission just to dock at the tiny station, with a staff of under six thousand, and most of them clerical.

  Rikard knew how to deal with the red tape, however, and had his credentials, but his reputation had preceded him. The whole system was run more like a university than a civilian government, and those in charge were not that happy having someone who, on the one hand, had made four or five major and a dozen or so minor archaeological discoveries that were changing the development of the history of the Federation, on the other hand was known to frequently keep good archaeological examples for himself, to disfavor monopolistic development and research, and to occasionally leave a swath of destruction behind him.

  Their apprehensions were all well founded, of course, but they were people too, and the liberal application of money—administered according to his uncle Gawin's careful instructions—was strangely reassuring to those in charge, and after a delay that was more cosmetic than actually necessary, he was given his permits and allowed to proceed to the orbital station, where he brought his equipment down by shuttle to one of the larger spaceports, known simply as Port KB-7.

  There were only twenty-three shuttleports on Tsikashka altogether, most of them with nothing more than a landing field, a planetary office, residential facilities for a few hundred visitors, a general service and supply store, and a preservatory research lab. Port KB-7 was one of the four ports that actually had a civilian population, some fifty thousand people of a mix of species, who with the other three major stations, XR-1, DD-14, and LA-23, provided all the amenities for everybody there on research grants.

  All the ports, regardless of size or location, were en­closed in protective domes. Tsikashka was an old world and the environment was deteriorating and most people needed special equipment to remain comfortable, if not to survive. All ports also had facilities for providing surface transporta­tion and life support outside the ports as needed.

  Rikard and his companions arrived at their surface ac­commodations, and for once had no problems with Endark Droagn's size, or Grayshard's peculiar dietary requirements. The amenities were minimal, but space was ample, with plenty of facilities for storage, and the directory of commu­nity services listed everything a researcher might want, whether to study artifacts and reports at the port or to go afield.

  As soon as they were settled in, Rikard plugged into a geographical database and checked out the locations of what they knew as the remains of the cyclopean cones. There proved to be many such remains indeed, some of them mere stumps, others broken piles, a few still-standing cones. They were scattered all around the globe, more than two hundred of them, and all of them were assumed to be natural if bizarre geological features. After all, each appeared to be a solid mass of unworked marble.

  It was their good fortune that the largest and perhaps best preserved examples were a reasonable distance from Port KB-7. Rikard inquired as to how to get there, and discovered that there was no regular transport of any kind, and no air transport to speak of except between the four major ports, all else being handled by heavy floater. He arranged for one of these, which could not be delivered for three days, along with a trailer and floater carts for artifacts, and environment suits for all three. Droagn's would have to be custom-made, but the company that provided the suits was used to that kind of thing. Grayshard didn't actually need one, as his disguise was perfectly adequate for that purpose as well, but if he didn't get one it would arouse more attention than Rikard wanted.

  They spent the rest of the afternoon and evening looking around the port, which was a cross between a logging camp, an academic coffee room, and an outcast bar. Rikard remembered his experiences at the Troishla years ago, on Kohltri, and was not impressed.

  For the next two days, without having to leave their accommodations except for a change of view, they researched all that was known about the cones, getting physical data on each one where available, plotting their distribution around the globe, collecting theories as to their nature, all of which were plausible, uninspired, and bore no hint of the truth. Rikard did not actually expect to learn much, but he was trying to give the impression of legitimate research, which was believable since even if these cones were natural formations, their existence on several distinct worlds was sufficient cause for academic curiosity.

  At last the morning of the delivery came, and they checked out their equipment. The heavy floater was really a portable living quarters, and the trailer, which floated but without power, was plenty big enough for the smaller floaters on which they hoped to haul out whatever treasures and artifacts they might find. They carried only minimal weapons—which for Rikard meant his heavy wired-in pis­tol, of course—since they did not expect to run into any trouble here. They had purchased standard excavation equip­ment, but had some special devices of their own as well. They packed everything, boarded the floater, drove to the dome exit, registered their clearance with the academic authorities, and were ready to go.

  The heavy floater was completely sealed, of course, and consisted primarily of a cabin large enough for all three, with pull-down bunks, cooking and sanitary alcoves, a driver's control console, and access to the rear portions, which could be separately sealed, where they carried most of their equipment. Designed for six Human-sized explor­ers, it was big enough, though they'd had to modify one set of bunks for Droagn's use.

  They departed the port at midday, pulling their nearly empty trailer behind them, and moved across a landscape that was rocky and damp, with sparse, coarse vegetation, under perpetually overcast skies. The air was thin and caustic. There was occasional lightning off over the horizon. They were not moving as quickly as Rikard would like, but the floater was built for power, not speed.

  After only half an hour at the driver's console Rikard set the floater on automatic. It would head toward the cones in as straight a line as possible, accommodating obstructions and variations in terrain. If nothing went wrong they would reach the cones by noon of the next day.

  With the guidance equipment on board, and the destina­tion locked in, there was nothing for them to do but wait out the ride. Fortunately, the cabin's windows were large, tem­perature and humidity well controlled, and they had brought plenty of food and beverages along, though they'd had to make some compromises with Grayshard's ferments, and Droagn wouldn't be getting any really fresh meat.

  As the afternoon wore on the level of the land rose and became drier. Ahead of them, many kilometers away, was the crest of the ridge, a black line against the gray sky. The vegetation grew more sparsely here, and there were fewer and fewer rocks sticking up from the finely tumbled gray ground. And then, in the middle of the afternoon, Droagn saw something ahead and to the left of their line of travel. Spikes and spires stuck up out of the ground, with smaller spikes projecting from them at right angles. The ground, which elsewhere was grayish, was pinkish around the spikes, with long curving lines of a darker color that crossed their line of travel and headed toward the structures.

  As they neared them they could make out more details. Some of the spikes were fl
at plates, others were rectangular prisms, still others were irregular columns. Their surfaces were marked with annular projections, stepped sections, grooved ridges, and other shapes. All of them were a pale amber or beige color. They looked somewhat like sand-eroded tree trunks, something like broken skyscrapers—except for those long spikes that projected at ninety degrees, high up on the sides. How they kept from falling, none of them cared to hazard a guess.

  As the floater came closer they could see that there were domes at the bases of the spikes, more of them on the side nearest their line of travel than on the side facing their approach. Some of the domes were round, some ovoid, some with sloping flat faces, all with circular depressions, or radial grooves, or annular projections, or smaller spikes sticking up from the center or the side, and with what looked like doors near the ground. One dome was longer and taller than the rest, and a dull red.

  The whole conglomeration was some two kilometers to the left, so as they progressed they passed around its end and got some idea of its dimensions.

  Now a plate with a hole stuck up among the spikes, then a tower much smaller than the spikes, then more broken skyscrapers on the far side came into view. The clustering domes, denser on this side, they could now see rose to a height of maybe fifty or sixty meters. That meant that the spikes were something like half a kilometer high—not much by contemporary Federation standards, but then this place had not been built by any contemporary Federation race.

  As they passed the end of the reach of ruins they saw larger buildings, arches and bridges, hidden by the first, simpler spikes. All were the same pale beige color, with only one or two exceptions—red, or yellow, or deep amber, once black.

  And here and there, between them and the main stretch of ruins, strange objects floated above the pinkish ground, flat on top and domed below, with little igloos off to one side on some of them, and spikes that projected downward from the middle of their bottoms. Some of these objects had fallen over and were now resting canted on the soil that was as alien as the structures.

  The forest of spikes continued for a long way into the distance, at right angles to their line of travel, with three or four kilometers off what looked like permanent banks of haze and fog halfway between the base and tips of the spikes. One spike was yellow, and another was black, and on this side they had more but shorter projections.

  As the ruins dwindled in the distance Rikard began to doubt whether his evaluation of the uniqueness of the cyclopeans had indeed been a valid judgment. He'd guessed that because he'd never seen anything like them, in any text, they were unknown to everybody. But he'd never seen anything like these ruins either. Had he been fooled by his own ignorance?

  An hour after the last of the spikes disappeared into the distance they came to the crest of the ridge, then descended to a rather more vegetated area, prairie or savanna or steppe, with a few trees with slender leaning trunks and flattened clouds of leaves high above the ground.

  Later they passed through fields that might once have been cultivated, where stones stuck up out of the ground, most just a meter high or so but others up to six meters tall. All of them were slender and angular in section and gray and otherwise unmarked. Here and there among them were the trenches of archaeological digs. There had been a lot of activity here in the past, though nobody was present this afternoon. Those who had made the trenches did not seem to be concerned about intruders, as all their equipment had been left unprotected. There were tractors and power shovels and trenchers and sifters and water wagons and hand tools of all kinds, and boxes—stacks and stacks of boxes. It was impossi­ble to say, without stopping, how long it had lain there.

  They ate their supper on the floater as it carried them across a broad valley, and toward nightfall they passed, nearby on the right, an anachronistic and impossibly large structure something like a medieval castle, and yet unlike anything Rikard had seen in his uncle's collection of minia­tures. It consisted of clusters of tapered cylinders, half organic, half artificial in appearance. There were few cylin­ders in the clusters at the side facing them, but many more farther back, so that they seemed to be forming the face of a cliff that surrounded a plateau instead of being a collection of buildings.

  From a steep and smooth base carved from grayish white stone, the cylinder walls curved upward, narrowing and straightening as they rose meter after meter until, maybe two hundred meters up, they reached their narrowest and began to arch outward again. The gentle outward sweep was occasionally stepped abruptly by machicolations, from which the walls rose straighter for a while before curving outward again. Each cylinder, or tower, rose four or five hundred meters altogether before ending with battlements, bulging casements, steep roofs, or flat tops.

  There were no windows in the lower part of the cylinders, but there were, above the bands of machicolations, and sometimes higher in the cylinders too, in straight rows around the curving walls. There were no doors, though there were sometimes ramps that wound slowly up the lower walls and disappeared between the white columns.

  The ground around the base was littered with gray rock, darker gravel, and here and there something moved among the stones, like a snake. The full extent of these buildings was maybe twenty hectares. And this time they were something Rikard recognized from his texts, though he could not name or date their builders.

  Their floater easily climbed the heavily eroded mountains on the other side of the broad valley, but they had to deviate from their course, in order to take advantage of the passes between the mountaintops. This was not difficult for the floater to manage unattended. The sun set with a spectacular glow, with shades of magenta and even green. Rikard, Droagn, and Grayshard occupied themselves as best they could. The floater would keep going the whole night without their attention. But they decided that though they didn't really need to, they would keep watches, and keep the floater's outer lights on so they could see whatever they might pass.

  Grayshard drew the first watch, but before Rikard and Droagn retired they came upon maybe a dozen large creatures, like crabs, or scorpions, as big as cattle, pressing closely around something that they kept picking at with long, slender claws. Rikard shone a spotlight on the scene, and the arthropods turned but did not back off from their kill, which looked something like an elephant or a gorvalon, except that it had too many legs.

  At first they thought the arthropods, with bulging eyes and eight or ten splayed legs, were scavengers, but as they passed, several of the creatures leapt after the floater, waving two sets of claws each, threatening the floater now that any threat of danger was past. They moved quickly enough that they might actually have been the predators that had brought the creature down.

  Nothing happened during Grayshard's watch, or at least he reported nothing. It was Rikard's turn next, and he gazed serenely out into the night as the floater came out of the passes and started down the other side of the mountains.

  Once they overtook another of the large arthropods, alone, moving parallel to them some twenty or thirty meters away. The floater passed it, and it sped up to keep pace with them for a while, and then angled away again. Rikard's watch came to an end with no further incident.

  But once, during Droagn's watch, he was roused when the floater stopped. He looked out the broad window beside his bunk and saw that their vehicle was surrounded by hundreds of creatures, as big as the floater itself, moving slowly across their trail. Their humped bodies glistened wetly in the lights of the floater, long and dark gray, and whether they moved like slugs, or had lots of small feet, Rikard couldn't tell. It took twenty minutes for them to pass.

  He went back to sleep after that, but toward morning Droagn roused him and Grayshard again—though of course Grayshard didn't sleep the same way Droagn and Rikard did. They were at the foot of the mountains now, going across a broad flatland, and though the sky was lightening it was still dark on the ground. Droagn pointed and off to the right they saw some lights, small white lights, but an occasional yellow or amber l
ight, and one or two green ones. Some of them were moving from side to side. A red light came on for a moment and went out. They couldn't see any structures, though it was still dark enough that small buildings could be missed. They heard no sounds of ma­chinery. Eventually the lights disappeared behind a shoulder of land.

  They had breakfast, such as it was, as the sun came up. The flatland stretched on ahead of them, but an hour or so after sunrise they came to low rolling hills. Instead of climbing straight across they set the floater to take advantage of the valleys that cut through them, rising higher and higher.

  At midmorning they passed an isolated fragment of a complex road structure. It had multiple levels supported by columns, extended for several kilometers in a perfectly straight line diagonally across their direction of travel, and competely disregarded hill shoulders or changes of level, though now it was slightly tilted up and canted to one side, and each end ended abruptly in a clean break with no ruins or other remains to indicate any larger system of which it might once have been a part, or any destination or origin. It was just as if this piece of road had been dropped down onto the ground, though there was no compression of the soil underneath it.

  Higher in the valleys they came to a plateau, with badlands channeled through it, and had to slow so that the floater could find the best route, both immediate and long-range. They descended to a shallow but fast river, rose to the other side, crossed a ridge and as they did saw, on the other side of the badlands, just barely peeking up beyond the slope of the far side of the plateau, the white tips of what they thought were the cones.

  2

  As the floater came up out of the badlands and over the edge of the plateau they could see, some ten kilometers off, that it was not the cones that they had been traveling toward, but instead the white concrete and steel remains of gigantic pyramidal arcologies. Rikard checked the guidance system on the floater, but it indicated that they were indeed within ten kilometers of the site. It was just concealed by these crumbling structures.