by James Warner
“Captain, this shouldn’t take more than a few minutes. But I think we should keep the head gear on, right? Anything could happen to the cave structure when the shield opens up.”
“Meph, do you honestly think these suits will save us if that generator blows? I sure don’t. And these walls are fused rock. Not much likelihood of a cave-in under any less stressful conditions.”
“I suppose you’re right. But you should put yours on when we start to make a hole. There could be gas, vacuum, or anything in there.”
“Right.” I put on the head cover and stood by the force field. I had to acknowledge it was his job to protect me.
“I’ve got a pinhole now, Captain.” Meph said.
“The force field is dissipating” the Hornet announced over our comm link. And sure enough the shimmering was just disappearing. I started to walk forward then stopped just before where the field had been. The entire cave, mountain and everything on the other side of that curved line just started tilting. I jumped back a couple feet in surprise. Of course! The field had cut a microscopic channel through the rock when it started and the inside had been held in stasis. Now it was like a big ball joint rebalancing itself in a glass smooth socket. There was just a slight sound of rumbling from in front of me.
In a moment it stopped. Where there had been a cave wall before had slid into its place what looked like an air lock. It looked like the same material as the Artifacts I had been discovering over the years – a dark gray with colored specks and threads. Very pretty.
“Meph?” I asked as I looked at the thing, wondering how to activate it.
“Captain I get nothing on it – totally beyond my technology. I can look past it, but a mini field, just like its big daddy blocks the interior opening mechanism. Should I blow it?”
“No, let me try to make it go first.” I said as I walked up to the door and pressed with my gloved hand on the lights, protrusions and generally all over it, looking for something to press, pry or squeeze. No reaction.
I took off my head cover so I could examine the door up close. I could see nothing that indicated any way to open it. I rested my head on the door, not believing we had come all the way here just to blow up this antique piece of architecture. And the instant my hair touched the door it began to open.
“Aeeck!” I squealed in surprise as I sprang away from the opening door. “What the hell?”
“Congratulations, Captain – ‘mind over matter.’ Your hair has just destroyed the entire Scoutship program.”
“Thanks Meph. We mental giants have to get by somehow. Next time I’ll take off my gloves.”
Through this looking glass was, well wasn’t a cave. It appeared to be a building, perhaps carved out of the rock, with lights, stairs and who knew what. All apparent Ancient Artifact material! And it smelled like the old Colorado Springs public library.
“Meph!” I whispered, staring down that softly lit elevated walkway to the stairs ascending a few meters beyond and the equipment spreading out left, right, up and down from the door. “What, who, I mean, this is fantastic! And it’s all Artifact stuff!”
“Looks like you found your goose. My guess is it laid some golden eggs in there. And this probably will make you the wealthiest woman in the universe.”
“Yeah. Maybe. And you’ll be the wealthiest octopus in the universe. But we haven’t retired yet. Shall we go?”
We reverently entered the doorway into wonderland.
I couldn’t help whispering, “Meph, there isn’t any gold here.” We were on a catwalk or bridge extending into the quiet.
“Right, I guess not. How do you suppose we get off this bridge?” Meph replied. The catwalk was a little narrow for him and he was on his tippy tentacle toes.
We reached some stairs and I stopped to look around. There was a soft pinkish cast to the lighting and all around us there was what looked like some sort of control room for some sort of craft. Except the scale was gigantic. It must have been all of fifty meters in diameter and appeared to be spherical, following the outline of the shield we viewed from the Hornet.
“Captain, our exit is closing,” Meph said. The door had closed behind us. I decided to worry about that later.
The walk, the stairs, the entire place seemed to be molded out of solid Artifact material – the random veins of blue, red and other colors mixed in slightly fluorescing beauty, making it look like a kind of granite. The walls of the sphere actually seemed to be a very thin almost translucent bubble. I was in awe of the beauty of the place.
The walk we were on went up to another level that traversed the entire width of the sphere. All we had to do was walk up those steps.
“Captain, we’re cut off from the Hornet. I can’t raise her at all, even with the scalar transmitter.”
“What? Oh, let’s see, there is a larger cluster of instrument lights over there to the left at the end of that wide walk. Let’s go up there and see if we can figure out what’s going on here.”
I started to run up the stairs and flew a meter off my feet, almost over the edge of the upper walk handrail. I just caught myself with my left foot and settled down to the ramp. Well what do you know? We were in an anti-grav field. I estimated less than half a G. Meph, after seeing me fly off the walkway, eased up with a graceful (for him) jump.
“Captain, we could be anywhere in space right now.”
“Yes Meph, the thought had occurred to me that we might be in a space ship. So what do you suggest?
“I think that your first idea was best Captain. Let’s go over and see if we can figure out what’s happening here.”
We hopped over to the control panel and studied the controls, lights and so forth. It was like any human control panel for any human ship or other device, about five feet wide and two and a half feet deep, elevated a bit high for me to easily reach. I studied the writing closely with a magnifying glass from my archeology tool pouch. It looked like hieroglyphics – definitely a pictogram type of language.
“Meph, I’m pretty sure this writing is the same as what’s on those tablets.”
“Too bad we can’t read it, Captain.”
“Yeah. But if we can figure out something here, it could be the Rosetta stone I’ve been looking for.”
“Oh right,” Meph responded sarcastically. “You find the biggest Ancient Artifact in the galaxy and you’re worried about the instruction manual.”
Not pushing anything on that panel was the hardest thing I had ever done. In the meantime Meph had his tools out and was opening what appeared to be an access door down near the floor.
“What are you doing?” I squeaked. It echoed all around the structure. I felt so self-conscious, it was really embarrassing. Then I was embarrassed for being embarrassed. I felt really silly.
“I’m looking for some sort of device that I might recognize which could give us a clue as to what those things are that you avoid touching.
“Oh. Well get out of there. I’m going to push something.”
“No, I’ll watch carefully from down here. Go ahead.”
“Okay.”
I picked the only light that was pulsing regularly and pressed what looked like a touch panel just below it. The light went steady and Meph exclaimed something as I heard a voice in a language I didn’t recognize speaking. It sounded like the Hornet’s voice, but certainly not English.
“What the hell is that?” I exclaimed out loud.
“Would you wait just a moment?” the Hornet’s voice came back from the control panel in front of me, “I’m teaching their computer English.”
I just sat down on the ramp, my mouth slightly open and stared at the panel. Meph stuck his head back out of his access hole.
“Wasn’t that the Hornet, Captain?”
“Yeah.”
What else could I do? I just sat there and waited for the next surprise, pondering all that we had discovered. Meph was right. This discovery might ruin the entire Scoutship program for everyone. No more broken fragments of
indecipherable technology. There could be a “gold rush” the likes of which had never been known in human history.
“Captain, I figured it out,” Meph said pulling out of the access hole and closing the door, “what you pressed was a short range radio transceiver. The electronics are pretty much like what we use, once you figure out the elements. Is something wrong?” “No Meph. That is, I don’t think so. Sassy will be back to us in a moment. She’s talking to the computer here right now.”
“Oh, so that’s why the transmitter kept working after you sat down.”
Meph looked at me the same way he had looked at me when I first fainted after meeting him. But this was not the same. I was furiously thinking, trying to put together what I knew about these people with what was here. I was interrupted by the voice, this time in English.
“Welcome Children. We have been talking to our daughter up in space. She tells us you are tracing the ancient Diaspora trail for the first time. This is a welcome event. We have been waiting a long time for your arrival. As the descendants of fertilization 13, you will find much to learn here in this Library Station. There are 50 separate learning bays that can be configured for any of the 327 races we established. Our facilities, while old, are nonetheless in perfect working order due to the stasis field we generate. Food and other necessities are available in appropriately marked cubicles. Please make yourselves welcome for as long as you like. We are Library Station 8 of 327. We carry no record of the whereabouts of the other 326, but assume they are each stationed near one of the 326 other fertilizations. Do you have any questions?”
Wow! What to say? ...I was unusually speechless for a few moments while I caught my breath. I did have some questions, though.
“I would like to ask some questions. First, is this a spacecraft? Second, how do we leave to return to our spacecraft? Third and final for the moment, what are the gold tablets found on various worlds in a path leading here?”
“First, yes this is a spacecraft. It is designed to orbit near a fertilized planet. There are docking facilities for eight visiting spacecraft at a time. There are feeding and resting facilities for one hundred beings on our other levels. Second, you may leave for your spacecraft the same way you entered. We have not departed our resting place here in the mountain. Third, the gold tablets are greetings and explanations of how to operate our facilities. Each is the same and was placed in an area of protection from immature curiosity.”
“Captain I also have some questions,” Meph said.
“We are not prepared at this time to deal with races other than those originally fertilized until the depths of our storage have been plumbed. You are not one of our children; I am sure you understand.”
“Sorry Meph, I guess this is for humans only.” Meph looked thoughtful. “Then may I investigate on my own examining circuits and so forth in a nondestructive way?”
“Yes.”
“Then I would like to have freedom to examine anything here so long as I don’t interfere with your operation. Is this permitted?”
“Yes.”
“Well Captain, I can’t ask for more than that, I guess.”
I spoke to the console “Library Station 8, I would like you to transfer the locations of all the other fertilizations and the coordinates of the home world your builders originally came from to my spacecraft.”
“I cannot disclose the origin of the builders.”
Before I could protest the station continued.
“The Silver Hornet is calling you. Shall I put her through?”
“Sure!”
“Captain, I have scanned a fairly well preserved city. Would you like to put on your Archaeologist hat and go explore it?” Sassy asked.
“Absolutely, thanks!”
“Meph” I called out into the void. He was half way inside one of the service panels across the sphere. “I need to explore a local city. Will you be okay here? I’ll leave you the lander and you can catch up to me later.”
“Sure Captain. Go ahead. I’d like to stay a little while, like maybe a year or so.” Meph yelled across to me. His words echoed around the sphere for a few seconds.
“I will return and we can discuss your origins then,” I said to the Ancient device.
The sphere said nothing and I retraced my steps to the airlock. It opened at my touch and I exited the cave. It was dark, but I had a light and the lander was easy to find. The night sounds of creatures scuttling, clicking and cawing sounded much like any other uninhabited world I had explored. I took out a portable anti-grav jump suit and put it on over my protection gear. After downloading the coordinates of the city, I set off to explore.
“Sassy, are there any large predators I should worry about nearby?” I asked.
“No Caryn. You are the largest predator I have found on the planet so far.”
The rocket jump suit was basically a harness with two small drive units on the back and a long blast shield to protect my butt and legs. It had a helmet with a built-in display that was connected to Sassy and she helped program the jumps. Acceleration up and deceleration down required traveling in several jumps rather than one long distance shot because of the limitation of the thrusters’ power. Inertial guidance kept me vertical.
It was twelve jumps to the archeological ruins, but it was still early and the night flying was beautiful with the crystal ceiling and sharply pointed lights of a cloudless sky. My night visor helped me pick out the terrain, as the stars cast very little light. Mostly it was hills covered with scrub brush, valleys with brooks and trees, grasslands with occasional trees and possibly remnants of farms, the usual temperate climate flora and fauna. The air was rich with the smell of growing things uncut and unharvested. Once I surprised a herd of large, fat four legged something or others feeding in the relative safety of a valley at night and once I almost landed on top of a pride of very large cat things sleeping in low brush near a tree. Otherwise there were no incidents.
On the twelfth jump I landed on an open square a few hundred feet to a side, in the center of a small city. As near as I could tell around me the square was somewhat overgrown but still modestly impressive with a dry, dust filled fountain, five foot high walls, decayed art paintings on the walls and lovely intact stone buildings facing the fountain. As I released and removed the suit I looked around. The surrounding buildings seemed to be generic government style architecture: large, cubic, with pillars and smallish windows. I chose one and walked over to look in. The windows were intact and the door was closed. It was as if the holocaust hadn’t touched this island of sanity, but I couldn’t see inside.
I called Sassy, “What’s inside here?”
“It looks like a series of bedrooms, Captain. You’ll love it,” she replied after a moment’s scan.
I pushed on the door. It didn’t budge. It felt like some sort of metal. Great. The first archaeologist on the site and I was going to have to blast the door open if I wanted to go inside. I decided to look around the back.
Walking around the side of the building on a jumbled concrete sidewalk I noticed a broken window three stories above me. I went back and got into the jump suit and set it for hover. I hovered at the window and looked in. In the blue-white light from my high intensity beam I saw dust everywhere and what looked like a bedroom. ‘How fitting’ I mused, ‘that the first place I find would be a bedroom.’ These people were very human, apparently. Well of course, if they were from the same “fertilization” as I was, they would have a very similar biology, society and structures.
I squeezed through the window into the room and quickly shut off the jump suit as it was raising all the dust. I reached for the door into the next room. The wood all crumbled as I turned the door handle and I stood there holding the gold colored handle, looking into the corridor, a gray/brown pile of rubble at my feet that smelled of trees. There were what may have been works of art of some sort hanging on the walls – it looked like something from the modern period on Earth, very abstract and even in the dark I could
see it was very colorful. I didn’t dare touch them. As I walked down the corridor there was a room with the door open. I carefully walked in and it was another chamber, apparently empty of furniture.
The dust was stifling so I decided to settle down outside for the night and wait until light to do more exploring. I left the way I had come in. On the ground outside in a small grove of trees I removed the jump suit, set a proximity guard, laid my fanny pack down for a pillow and tried to fall asleep. It was not easy; there was no comforting subliminal hum from electrical equipment and the strange animal noises I had heard from above were not very far away now. I thought of exploring some more and ended up dreaming I was in a crowded rapid transit terminal surrounded by hundreds of 4-foot tall gray bipedal creatures with gigantic almond eyes.
I awoke with my blaster in my hand, ready to disintegrate the thing that had a bright beam of light on my face, but it turned out to only be the sun waking me up through the trees.
