Spindrift

by Allen Steele

  He found himself in a tunnel, black as a moonless night and seemingly without end. When he turned to the left, his helmet lamps revealed only a long, cylindrical passageway, apparently excavated from solid rock, that appeared to go on forever. Turning to the right, he saw much the same thing. A barrel ceiling rose a half meter above his head; like the walls, it was seg mented as a series of rings, with veinlike grooves forming horizontal patterns between them.

  The darkness seemed to swallow the light from his helmet lamps. When he took a few steps, though, the grooves within the walls glowed to life, casting strange shadows across the floor. Looking down, he saw that it was comprised of a mosaic of randomly shaped plates, much like the ramp he’d descended from the outer hatch.

  Ramirez realized that he could hear his own footfalls; apparently the tunnel was pressurized. He winced as he raised his left arm; after a minute of fumbling with the buttons on the wrist control unit, he managed to access the suit’s atmospheric analysis system. Translucent figures appeared on his heads-up display, revealing the composition of the air around him. As he’d suspected, it was largely oxygen—why else would carbon dioxide be vented from Spindrift’s interior?—but there was also a higher than normal concentration of nitrogen, along with trace amounts of argon, helium, and selenium. And the pressure was only 235.6 millibars, rarefied by Earth standards. He might be able to breathe…but only until decompression sickness killed him as surely as it would a deep-sea diver who had risen to surface too quickly. Best to leave his helmet shut.

  Hearing a rasping sound, he looked around to see the hatch close behind him. Another faint rumble; he hoped the sound meant that the compartment was ascending. Perhaps Harker and Cruz had figured out how to operate the control panel that he’d unwisely ignored before venturing into the airlock. If so, it wouldn’t be long before they came down to find him.

  And if not…

  He glanced at the heads-up again. A little more than six hours of air left in his suit. He’d either be rescued well before then, or he’d die down here alone, surrounded by an alien darkness. Despite his fear, Ramirez found himself vaguely amused by the prospect. If that happened, then at least he’d be following the footsteps of many great explorers. Here lies the body of Jared Ramirez, discoverer of the first alien starship, only to perish in the name of science…

  “Hell with that,” he muttered. Common sense dictated that he should wait for the others to come to the rescue, but he wasn’t inclined simply to stand around like an idiot. The tunnel had to lead somewhere; if he was going to die in this place, then he might as well satisfy his own curiosity.

  Since there seemed to be no difference between the ends of the tunnel, he chose to go to the left. Before he went that way, he opened the cargo pockets of his overgarment and rummaged through them until he found a lightstick and a socket-wrench set. He broke the lightstick and placed it on the floor directly in front of the hatch, then carefully arranged the wrench and two of its heads beside the stick so that they formed a crude arrow pointing in the direction he’d decided to take. Not only that, but the stick would also serve as a beacon to lead him back to his starting point.

  “Better than bread crumbs,” he said aloud, trying to assuage his nerves. Then he ventured down the tunnel.

  Although the floor was level, its uneven surface made walking difficult; several times, his toe caught the raised edge of a plate, causing him to stumble. Apparently this suited Spindrift’s inhabitants, but it made the going tough for a biped like himself. He’d walked less than ten meters before he realized that the walls within his immediate vicinity were emitting a weak, blood-hued radiance. When he turned to look back, though, he saw the section of the tunnel he’d left behind had gone dark once again; only the soft glow of his lightstick was visible. Whoever had built Spindrift evidently kept energy conservation in mind…and yet, the newfound awareness that some mechanism existed that was capable of tracking his movements, footstep by footstep, sent a chill down his spine. One way or another, his intrusion had not gone unobserved.

  “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” he said softly, turning to continue down the tunnel. “Marco…Polo. Marco…Polo…”

  Silence, save for the soft hiss of his regulator, the dull tread of his boots upon the floor. Ramirez continued onward, moving his head back and forth so that the twin beams of his helmet lamps could sweep across the walls. Ring sections of the corridor lit up as he entered them, went dark again as soon as he passed through. As before, he was unable to discern an end to the tunnel; it seemed to stretch before him as a limitless passageway. Indeed, he had no idea in which direction he was…

  “Stupid!” he said aloud, scolding himself. “Of course you do!” Ramirez stopped to check his heads-up once more. There, in the upper right corner of his visor: the translucent circle of the suit’s direction finder, depicting the compass point in which he’d been heading. Its red arrow showed that he was going almost exactly due north.

  Seeing this, everything began to make sense. The carbon dioxide emissions Galileo had detected from orbit all lay within a central line of longitude, stretching north to south. Since he now understood that one of those emissions came from a hatch leading underground, then it only stood to reason that this tunnel would lead to…

  Another vent? That would be the most logical conclusion. Yet if that were so, then the next vent would be…how far away? A hundred and fifty kilometers. A long march, even for someone with four legs.

  No. It only stood to reason that there had to be more there than merely a planetwide tunnel connecting one vent to another. They couldn’t have been so lucky to have discovered, out of the eight vents Galileo mapped from orbit, the only one that also contained a hatch leading underground. Yet why hadn’t he found anything else, at least within this immediate area? Perhaps if he’d gone south instead…

  Stop second-guessing yourself, he thought, shaking his head. Go a little farther. If you don’t find anything, you can always turn back. And besides, it wouldn’t be a good idea to wander too far from the airlock. The others may arrive any minute.

  Or so he hoped. For years, Ramirez had found himself anxious to rejoin the human race. Through all his life, he’d hoped to discover someone better than his own kind. And now that he was on the verge…

  So he continued down the tunnel, periodically looking back to make sure that he hadn’t lost sight of his beacon. The lightstick had become a dim glimmer in the distance when he noticed that the wall to his right had begun to slope outward. The section he’d just entered became illuminated; that was when he found another passageway, its entrance formed by a funnel-like mouth leading to another tunnel that branched off to the east.

  Once again, he was struck by the almost organic design of the place. Save for the random-shaped plates of the floors and ramps, along with the pie-wedge segments of the hatches, he’d seen no right angles; everything else was rounded off and curved, almost biomimetic. He peered down the new passageway. It didn’t seem to go very far; the beams of his helmet lamps settled upon its end, less than ten meters away, where another hatch was set within its wall.

  Ramirez hesitated. In his haste to explore the tunnel, he hadn’t checked his suit’s pedometer. Looking back at the distant lightstick, he estimated that it was little more than a hundred meters from where he was standing. Surely Harker and Cruz would be able to find him if they followed his marker…but why take a chance? He broke open another stick, and within his pockets he found a suit-patch kit and a couple of spare batteries. He was reluctant to leave them behind, yet his curiosity was greater than his need to take precautions; he arranged them on the tunnel floor so that they pointed toward the branch, then he entered the new passageway.

  Its walls began to glow as soon as he passed the intersection. Now he could see the hatch more clearly. Like the others before, it was cut into four wedges, each with their own finger-hole lockplates. On the wall to the right was a chevron-shaped panel, with four recessed buttons. Another airloc
k? That didn’t make sense; why put a second one so close to the first?

  The new hatch had to lead somewhere else entirely. He was fresh out of bread crumbs, though, and his luck was running thin. Nonetheless, he had to know where it went.

  “If it’s another airlock,” Ramirez murmured to himself, “you are not stepping inside.” As he’d done before, he pressed the two top buttons, then the two lower ones.

  He wasn’t surprised when the flanges slid open, again with the muted, unoiled grind of ancient machinery. This time, though, the ambient light from the walls caught dust motes escaping from the interior, suspended in the air for a moment before slowly settling to the floor. Positive air pressure, he realized. Like a vault door being opened for the first time in ages. Feeling his heart hammering within his chest, he stepped away from the panel. Despite his earlier caution, he found himself compelled to approach the door…

  “Jared! Do you copy?”

  Harker’s voice within his headset. Ramirez closed his eyes. Despite the relief he felt at having been found, for a moment he was tempted not to respond. The mystery was no longer his and his alone.

  “Roger,” he said, “loud and clear.” He tried to force some levity. “What took you so long?”

  “For the love of…” There was no mistaking the irritation in Harker’s voice. “Where the hell are you? Why didn’t you stay where we could find you!”

  “Sorry. Got carried away there.” Ramirez let out his breath; to his surprise, he found that he was disappointed by the intrusion. “Did you find my pointer? I left a lightstick on the…”

  “We found it, yeah.” Cruz was only slightly less irate. “Didn’t anyone ever teach you to wait for the other guy if he gets hung up?”

  Turning away from the hatch, Ramirez gazed toward the intersection. Although the other two were still out of sight, he could see faint flashes of light upon the walls of the original tunnel. They were headed his way, all right. In only a few minutes they’d find him.

  “Never mind that,” he said. “Look, I’m pretty close to where you are now. Keep coming this way, then take a right when you find my patch kit. I’ll wait here for you.”

  “Whatever you say.” Harker’s vocal tone had shifted to one of awe. “What is this place? How long have you been down here?”

  “Long enough to find something you may want to see.” Ramirez couldn’t help but grin. “Hurry up. You’re just in time.”

  They stood just outside the open hatch and peered inside, careful not to cross the threshold until they had a good idea of what lay beyond.

  Instead of another airlock, their helmet lamps revealed a circular room, so broad that they could barely discern the opposite wall. Within its center was a large, opaque sphere, positioned upon a slender pedestal and surrounded by a ring-shaped bench that encircled the orb without touching it. Projecting outward from the walls were shelflike structures, each tilted at an angle, that might be control consoles; arranged in front of them were low objects that could be furniture of some sort. To the right, near the far end of the room, lay yet another hatch.

  “And this one opened the same way as the others?” Harker didn’t wait for Ramirez to respond. “At least they’re consistent.”

  “Shouldn’t be surprising, really.” Standing between him and Cruz, Ramirez used a flashlight to probe the room’s interior. “Sort of like a doorknob. The first time a small child finds one, he doesn’t know what to do with it. After he sees an adult use it a few times, though, he gets the idea…and after that, all knobs are the same.” He pointed the light toward the hatch on the other side of the room. “Bet you that one opens exactly the same way.”

  “Yeah, well, we’re not going to find out standing here.” Cruz started to move forward. “I don’t think this place is going anywhere. Let’s…”

  “Not so fast.” Ramirez pointed his light at the floor. Although it was comprised of the same random mosaic as the tunnels, he saw no indications of footprints. As he suspected, the airlock’s electrostatic scrubbers had lifted away any regolith from the outside that would have left traces. There was nothing they could disturb. “All right…after you.”

  “You found it first.” Harker extended a hand.

  Ramirez nodded, then stepped into the room, the others following close behind. As before, capillary-like grooves within the walls slowly glowed to life as soon they entered, illuminating the interior with an amber radiance no brighter than that of a low-watt bulb.

  “Spooky, the way it does that,” Cruz murmured. “Like it knows we’re here.”

  “Caused by some sort of motion detection system.” Ramirez pointed his light at the floor. “Perhaps set off by our footsteps. Whenever you leave a certain area…”

  “The lights cut off again. We noticed.” Harker turned toward the nearest wall. Above the shelflike console were oblong panels of some glassy substance that reflected his helmet lamps. “Those could be comp screens.”

  Ramirez walked over to study the console. Nearly at the level of his chest, it was about the right place for a being two meters in height, and it was covered with buttons that had no regular shape but instead appeared to be molded in some random order: circles, ovoids, a few rectangles and hexagons here and there. Leaning closer, he saw that they were inscribed with the same patterns he’d seen before.

  “Don’t touch anything,” Harker said. “You don’t know what it might do.”

  “Oh, really…” On impulse, Ramirez reached out and depressed one of the buttons. As he expected, nothing happened. “Uh-oh. I touched something…”

  Harker glared at him. “Don’t you think you’ve caused enough trouble already?”

  “Commander…” Ramirez sighed. “Look around you. It’s a control center…either the main one or a secondary station. Maybe we can’t tell what these instruments are for, but they’re probably not all that different than the ones aboard Galileo. Not only that, but it’s obvious that they’ve been shut down. We’re not going to cause anything to blow up just by…”

  “Umm, gentlemen…” Cruz said quietly. “There’s something here you might want to see.”

  He stood nearby, examining one of the low objects they’d spotted earlier. A piece of furniture, or at least so it appeared, considering its vicinity close to one of the consoles, yet unlike any they’d seen before. A narrow couch, elevated about a half meter above the floor, it had no obvious headrest, but instead dipped low in the middle and rose high at either end, its sides slightly folded over. Its shape reminded Ramirez of an enormous Chinese soup spoon.

  “What do you make of this?” Cruz asked.

  Walking closer, Ramirez gave the couch a thorough inspection. Its interior was padded with something that, when he gently prodded it with his fingertips, felt like cheap vinyl filled with gelatin. And there seemed to be a narrow indentation within its middle, as if to accommodate some anatomical feature.

  “This is how they sit,” he said. “Belly down, I think, with their legs hanging over the sides.” He pointed to the end closer to the console. “See? This half is just a little higher, like it’s supposed to support the forward part of their bodies…”

  “Where are you getting all this?” Harker asked. “You’re just guessing, aren’t you?”

  “No. Not guessing…extrapolating.” He shook his head. “Trying to piece together everything I’ve observed so far. Using my imagination a little…”

  “A little.” Harker was plainly skeptical. “Right…”

  “Yes, right.” Ramirez became irritated. “And I was doing quite well, thank you, before you two showed up. Now are you going to let me do my job, or are you going to be another know-nothing like your captain?”

  Harker stared at him for a moment. “All right,” he said at last. “Do what you’ve got to do. Have fun. But we’ve got”—he paused—“two hours left before I call this off.”

  “Oh, c’mon!” Ramirez glanced at his heads-up. “My suit says we’ve got five hours, ten minutes…”

&
nbsp; “And I’m taking no more chances.” Harker held up two fingers. “That long, then we head back. Understood?”

  “I’m with Ted,” Cruz said. “Two hours, max. I don’t want to get stuck down here.”

  Ramirez started to argue but realized that it was pointless. Like it or not, Harker had a point. Even though they’d be able to retrace their steps to the airlock, and had a good idea how to operate it, there was no guarantee that they wouldn’t encounter more surprises. Even if nothing else went wrong, it would take at least an hour and a half, perhaps longer, to return to the shuttle.

  “All right,” he said, surrendering to the inevitable. “But at least give me a chance to look around some more.”

  “Fine.” Harker seemed to relax a little. “But no more wandering off by yourself. From now on, we stick together.”

  “Agreed.” So now he was on the clock; two hours to investigate a puzzle that would take a lifetime to solve. Perhaps the next team would find a little more…yet he continued to harbor serious doubts whether another team would be sent. Lawrence was much too paranoid about the possibility of encountering hostile aliens, and Cole was more concerned about following instructions from his government than conducting a scientific expedition.

  Two hours, he thought. Make the best of it. You may never see this place again.

  Turning away from the couch, he gazed around the room. Where to start? The hatch they’d just found was an obvious choice, yet he doubted that Harker would agree to going off blindly to explore another underground section. But the sphere…there had to be a reason why it occupied a central position in this room.

  He walked over to the ring-shaped rail that surrounded it. As he suspected, it was another console; its surface was tilted slightly forward, and was covered with more odd-shaped buttons. Ramirez pushed one at random; nothing happened. Why a sphere? So far as he could tell, it served no purpose, unles s…

  “Of course,” he murmured. “That has to be it.”