CHAPTER 5
It had only required about forty hours for the Maktoum survey vessel to close with their target, and all three crew members now stared at the huge rock illuminated on their scopes.
As ordered, they had matched velocity and bearing with the asteroid, then slowly circled its circumference, scanning with every instrument, and now they nervously prepared for the next step.
By now all three of them understood the only thing this asteroid could really be, all the indicators of ancient nonhuman construction sticking out like a variety of sore thumbs and other less complimentary swollen members, and this underscored the serious, historical nature of this next phase of their orders.
Of the survey ship’s three-person crew, two were to don EVA gear, transit over to a feature that appeared to offer some sort of small entrance, and have their names forever immortalized. They would be the first human explorers to ever set foot in a functioning station of alien construction.
They even drew straws to see which of them would receive the honor of making history. Antoniy Keller lost the draw, selecting the long straw, leaving Angel Rua and Griff McCardle holding the short straws . . . and giving them their sudden chance at historical immortality.
Angel Rua would certainly have preferred to lose the draw and allow Keller to become famous instead. He didn’t know all that much about Bethune, but everyone knew about the Gear, and the first question most people had when they heard about the unimaginably huge piece of alien vessel getting sliced off was: Who the hell did the slicing?
To Angel it seemed pretty likely that either side of that ancient conflict probably did a pretty good job of securing their facilities against interlopers and pests, even if the owners had been off on vacation for twenty thousand years or so, and he seriously considered resigning on the spot, refusing to go rather than face whatever unpleasant watchdogs they may have left waiting about.
It wasn’t only the contract penalty he faced that drove Angel to the sticking point. As he stood in the survey ship’s airlock listening to the air draining away, Griff McCardle poised woodenly beside him, Angel tried to calm his pounding heart with the image of his future stature within Maktoum Corporation. This action now would surely catapult him up through the ranks . . . if he survived.
On that cheerful note, the airlock’s outer hatch began to cycle open, the immense mountain of rock appearing subjectively “beneath” them, its surface well lighted by Bethune’s congenial sun.
Angel and Griff knew enough to approach the rock at a very cautious pace, vectoring toward the mostly smooth surface at a crawl until their boots touched down, seeming to accelerate rather sharply in the last instant. Angel almost keyed his radio to comment about the surprisingly firm gravitational pull when he remembered their agreement to maintain radio silence. Instead he followed Griff’s cautious steps as he set off for their goal.
They had spotted the promising declivity during their external survey of the object, and their insertion point at the rock’s pole offered them a simple route across a flat expanse to this shadowed notch. In just moments Angel saw Griff descending a modest slope, the rock seeming to bulge in beside them on the left and right.
In their flyby, the notch had not seemed so deep, but as they continued to follow the narrow course, the rock walls rose up high above them on each side. As Angel looked up to gauge their depth, he almost crashed into Griff, who had halted suddenly.
Peering past Griff’s shoulder, Angel saw the clean rectangular depression in one rock wall and the shimmering metallic panel inset there, looking very much like a door.
They had hoped that advanced aliens from long ago still might employ something equivalent to hatches, airlocks, and the like, and they had brought the necessary tools to force entry into such a barrier. This proved unnecessary.
Even as Griff felt around the edges of the apparent hatch, they both staggered back as it eased open, a spray of thin vapor making it clear that it truly had been sealed a moment before. They shared a look, Angel seeing the pale, sweating face of McCardle through his faceplate before they both shuffled cautiously within and closed the hatch.
A greenish light flickered into life and they felt and heard the rush of atmosphere into the lock. Angel tilted his body back to look up. If the builders of this station scaled this door to their height in a manner similar to humans, then Angel guessed they must have stood over ten feet in height, which seemed rather small compared to the vast dimensions of the Gear on Bethune.
Angel silently wondered if the aliens who constructed this asteroid base might actually be those who blasted the Gear free from whatever ship it had been attached to. The difference seemed entirely academic to his fear-heightened mind.
His attention came back down as the inside hatch breathed open, revealing their first view of the station’s inner workings.
An immense chamber expanded out before them, the smooth floor glowing with a soft aquamarine luminance. To the right they glimpsed smaller passages that opened onto this vast sweeping space, some angling downward, clearly ramps to lower levels, while to the left this huge chamber continued on to the indistinct distance.
As Angel moved to step from the airlock, Griff threw out a restraining arm, holding him back. Angel froze and Griff leaned forward with his multiscan, waving it over the glowing floor, testing for radioactivity. Griff turned his whole body to look at Angel, and Angel heard the crinkling sound of his EVA suit through the atmosphere surrounding them.
Only the soft scuffing of their steps and the sound of his own breathing came to Angel’s ears as they approached the first of the smaller entrances, seeing a smooth ramp angling downward, the luminous glow continuing unchecked on the floor surface. With one shared look, they took the downward path, finding the passage nearly twenty feet in width, and perhaps a third smaller from floor to ceiling.
Angel slid a gloved hand along the arched wall, feeling its smoothness, though it seemed to have been bored through the asteroid’s native stone, angling downward at about fifteen degrees on inclination.
Griff continually employed the multiscan as they descended, but Angel occupied himself only by counting their strides, reaching sixty-five paces when the sloped passage reached a broader tunnel, terminating as it leveled off.
Griff and Angel stood at the junction with this larger thoroughfare, alternately looking in each direction for some clue to guide their further exploration. At first Angel could not identify the slight pressure pushing him back, until he heard the whispering sound on his helmet.
“Wind?” he said, hearing his own voice loud inside the enclosing helmet.
Griff made a sound, staring to the left, and at first Angel couldn’t understand what provoked Griff’s attention. In the next moment Angel perceived the dark shape blocking a distant patch of the luminous floor, its blotting occlusion racing nearer. With a lurch Angel jerked Griff backward, managing two stumbling steps back into the sloped passage before the rushing force of wind roared about them. Angel looked up in time to see a large, box-like wheeled vehicle shoot past the opening, the roar of wind tugging them forward in its wake for a moment following its passage.
Angel staggered back to the junction, looking after the vehicle, seeing it disappear into the distance, and Griff appeared beside him, the multiscan in his hand.
When the dark shape finally faded from visibility Griff turned wide eyes toward Angel, his face contorted with some inexplicable shock. “What?” Angel said. “Just some automated system, right?”
“Not that!” Griff barked, his agitation clearly audible despite the muffling helmet between them. “Do you remember how long this asteroid is on its longest axis?”
“Uh, exactly how long?” Angel said, confused. “Not exactly . . . about—”
“Well, this passage”—Griff waved his arm—“is too damned long.”
Angel looked down both arms of the immense tunnel before turning back to Griff. “Too long for what?”
“Look,” Griff held the multiscan readout for Angel to see. “This should be the narrow axis, but just this bit we can see is almost as long as the entire rock is wide.”
Angel heard the words and saw the numerals, but he didn’t feel anything like Griff’s evident agitation. “Some kind of mistake. That’s all, Griff.”
Griff shook his head and snatched the multiscan back even as they felt the telltale wind of another approaching vehicle, perhaps the same vehicle returning. “Come on,” Griff snapped, leading the way back up the slope to their entrance point, but pausing to look back as the vehicle raced by again.
Angel hugged the right-hand wall as they ascended, freezing as a narrow entrance appeared beside him. “What the hell?” He turned to look at Griff, seeing an expression of Griff’s face that multiplied his sense of unease. “This passage wasn’t here on the way down, was it? We would have seen it.” Griff shook his head, but Angel wasn’t sure what that meant, turning his attention back to the small archway.
This perplexing new opening spanned only a little broader in width than Angel’s outstretched arms, its floor glowing aquamarine like all the other spaces they had scanned so far, but he saw a faint ruby glimmer from the curving wall ahead, and that drew him forward.
“What’s this?” Angel murmured, advancing a few steps to the curve until he could see the source of the light.
Angel only caught a brief glimpse of something like a large rippling carpet undulating upon the floor and wall before it twisted, a dozen glowing ruby eyes turning to transfix him. With a startled cry Angel fell back as the broad, flat shape flashed toward him, the impression of a beautiful, frightening symmetry etching Angel’s vision before he utterly panicked. He turned blindly, losing all awareness until he felt himself suddenly seized and held.
“Damn it, Angel! What is it? What’s wrong?” Griff’s words finally penetrated and Angel realized only human hands gripped him.
“Didn’t—didn’t you see it?” Angel gasped, trying to see in all directions at once.
Griff looked past Angel into the narrower tunnel. “I saw the glow of some kind of red light, it got brighter and then you came crashing out . . . That’s all I saw.”
Angel didn’t want to stand around discussing the experience, or go looking about for the apparition, so he urged a hasty return to the ship, hurrying back to the large central chamber as quickly as his legs and lungs allowed.
“You see?” Griff said at last, puffing along behind him as they approached the exit. “Look how far this chamber extends.”
Angel glanced obediently at the yawning distance, but his focus remained on that waiting airlock. “I see, I guess,” Angel said. “It’s a long ways.”
“It’s too long; too far,” Griff said, his tone strangely terse. “We’ve got to get to the ship and let them know.”
Angel reached the airlock and held his breath in dread until it cycled, finally allowing them through. As the atmosphere dissipated from the lock, Angel touched his helmet to Griff’s. “What does the . . . the size of the chambers matter compared to everything else that we saw anyway?”
The lock cycled open and they broke contact to negotiate the path back across the asteroid’s surface where they found the survey ship still faithfully holding position. Angel didn’t hear the answer to his question until they stood aboard, peeled out of their suits, and only then because it was the first thing Griff blurted out to the waiting Keller. “The damned thing is larger on the inside than it is on the outside!”
“What?” Keller asked blankly, his expression exactly matching how Angel felt.
“And something’s alive in there too,” Angel added, wondering why his contribution was deemed less important than some odd alien ideas of geometry.