TWELVE
The ripper looked like a huge spider, with its spherical abdomen and nine limbs—four for support, movement, and anchoring and five for operating tools. That sufficed to overcome every possible obstacle.
“What now?” Bourne asked, his fingers hovering above the keyboard. “Do we blow up the entire entrance, or cut cautiously and find out what’s on the other side?”
“Drill a hole through that shit, just to be on the safe side,” Iarrey said.
“Yeah …” agreed Morrisey, who was sitting a few yards away and checking the data from the probes in the dock tunnels.
The ripper spread its support limbs wider. It could not anchor itself on such a hard surface, the electromagnets didn’t work there either, and so it used suction cups. The plasma needle cutter approached the circular door, its point emitting a blinding light, and when the brightness became too much even for their helmets’ visors, the arm moved toward the membrane blocking the passage. However, even before the plasma blade touched its strange surface the membrane furled all by itself, revealing a narrower, vaulted corridor.
“Oh, fuck,” Bourne groaned, staring into the dark opening.
“Well, I’ll be damned!” Morrisey leapt to his feet and flew over to the robot. “Lights, cameras!”
The small probes skittered between the spindly limbs, and a moment later, they were looking at a dead straight corridor, which ended with a membrane identical to the one that had just opened. Several smaller openings were visible in the side walls. Iarrey directed a camera toward one of them. The membrane furled the moment the robot flew up to it. The same thing happened with all of the remaining membranes, even the one at the end of the corridor. The four men stared in silence as another 3D image captured on the drones’ cameras grew on the hologram.
On both sides of the passage linking the two ring corridors—outer and inner—there were only a few small rooms containing mostly equipment of the kind people use every day, but also a few completely strange things. Wherever they looked, however, they did not encounter even the tiniest shred of evidence of the beings which had built the ship. No images, no odds and sods, nothing; just the sterile chambers that had never been used—even the ones that seemed to be living quarters.
“Bizarre,” Bourne commented, perching on the edge of a large seat and examining the streamlined surface of a table covered with peculiar controls. “Everything’s integrated, impersonal. Like it had been designed by machines for machines.”
“Perhaps it’s some kind of unmanned—” Iarrey began, but didn’t finish his sentence. The soft, but familiar bleeping coming from Nike’s holopad quietened him.
They all gathered around the cadet to watch a red dot pulsating in one of the two accessible chambers on the other side of the corridor’s inner bend. The probes had discovered traces of life.
“Visuals!” Morrisey demanded.
“There are none,” Nike reported. “We’ve only got some scanning drones there and no other equipment. All the camera drones have been sent to search the shafts in the hangar.”
“Get those pieces of junk back here! Right now!” the captain ordered.
“Yes, sir!” The cadet quickly fed in the appropriate commands.
Seconds went by, but none of them moved a muscle. No one said anything either; they were all staring hypnotically at the pulsating red dot. Annataly’s raised voice sounded like a gunshot in the total silence. Even Morrisey jumped like a scalded cat.
“I’ve got a small problem here,” she said.
“What is it?”
“I sent the additional camera drones to you, but—”
“Out with it,” the captain ordered impatiently.
“There’s something wrong with the holomap,” she ended much more quietly.
“What do you mean?” Iarrey asked, confused.
“Take a look for yourself.”
The grid recorded by the camera drones covered the iridescent green outlines of the ship’s chambers, showing that one of the sections of the outer corridor was narrower than the first measurements had led them to believe.
“Perhaps the sensors are uncalibrated,” muttered Bourne after examining the differences. “Most of our robots are museum pieces.”
“So how do you explain that?” The drones had just reached the passage between the corridors. “It was straight according to the first readings, and now—”
Morrisey approached the membrane, which opened before him noiselessly.
“Clone-of-a-bitch …”
The corridor was indeed bending gently—very slightly, yet discernibly.
“The difference is about a foot and a half in the middle section. The measurements can’t be out by so much.”
Bourne shook his head in disbelief.
“Say what you like …”
“We have visuals,” Nike interrupted them.
They gathered around the cadet and his holopad. In the inner corridor there were no such differences; all the lines in both colors matched up perfectly. A moment later, the displays showed the inside of a cabin with gleaming cylinders arranged against the walls. There were a dozen of them, all looking the same and almost as high as the ceiling, with a diameter of over three feet. A thirteenth cylinder was in the center of the chamber, suspended above the floor or floating in the air. And the drone emitting an alarm signal was hanging right in front of it.
“Time to greet our hosts!” Morrisey shouted, and—not waiting for the others—glided toward the open membrane. They followed him, arming their weapons as they flew.
The inner loop, although a little smaller than the first, seemed to go on forever. Identical sections divided by elastic, self-sealing bulkheads, glowing with fungi-like growths, devoid of any distinguishing marks. The only sign that they were approaching their destination was the red dot on the hologram coming closer. They finally reached a dark-blue circle, beyond which—at least according to the readings—there ought to be something alive.
They entered warily, pointing their phasers at everything within view, but this cabin seemed just as empty as the others. Nike looked at the hologram, enlarging it to be able to see more details. The flashing red dot was inside the cylinder floating in the air. Seeing the captain’s enquiring glance he nodded toward it.
Morrisey cautiously approached the cylinder and tapped it with the barrel of his phaser. Nothing happened, so he moved still closer and rested both hands on the shining surface, and then pushed down with all his strength. The cylinder dropped a little, but immediately returned to its previous position without apparent effort.
“Antigrav, stone me …” The captain knelt down and looked at the cylinder’s bottom part.
Meanwhile, Bourne walked around the object operating the controls of the sensors.
“It seems to be perfectly smooth,” he said. “No cracks, grooves, or temperature differences.”
“Tough. We’re gonna pry it open anyway,” Morrisey muttered.
Iarrey was about to protest, but Annataly spoke first.
“We’ll have cut through the bulkhead in a few seconds,” she informed. “Here we go. The visuals of—”
Her voice was suddenly drowned by static. In the chamber the glowing growths flickered, and their light intensified. Morrisey jumped away from the cylinder. Bourne and Iarrey raised their weapons. Nike backed off and stood nearer the wall.
The cylinder was changing color; the upper part darkened very quickly, and its surface wasn’t smooth any longer. Waves ran over it, as though the cylinder experienced combined stress.
“—ing on, for fu—” the navigator’s distorted voice broke through the crackling for a moment, “—got to——ish—”
No one paid attention to Annataly’s snatches of speech, or her evident anxiety—even when she started shouting. Suddenly the cylinder’s surface bulged, as though something was trying to get out of it. And this was exactly what was happening. The shell—up until then as hard as helon—tore open under the pressure of almost human, six-fingered hands.
Someone fired. Nike didn’t know who, but it certainly was not Morrisey. A gush of energy enveloped the upper part of the cylinder, blackening its entire width and burning a hole in one of the cylinders standing behind.
“Lost your fucking minds?!” the captain yelled.
Meanwhile, entire forearms appeared in the rent. They were horribly thin, considering their length. Gray skin, clearly visible gnarls of muscles working subcutaneously, and something like elbows. The creature seized the edges of the opening where the cylinder had remained solid, and began to pull itself up.
First they saw the Alien’s head. Covering its crown were long protrusions, soft but thick as human fingers, the color of gold; they fell over its thin shoulders like hair. Seemingly, the creature’s face resembled a human’s. The eyes, nose, and mouth were in the right places, but everything was totally … ALIEN.
The eyes, which were in whole as black as the darkness of space, lacked irises, the nose was underdeveloped and without any nares, the mouth so wide that its corners disappeared under the hairlike protrusions. But the strangest of all was a small growth in the center of the forehead, resembling lips squeezed tightly together. Something like a third eye, only closed.
The creature looked around the chamber. It did not seem astonished by the presence of the short beings surrounding it. It moved its mouth, and may have said something, but they couldn’t hear anything through the crystallite anyway. Then it waved a hand, as though driving the intruders away. They did not react, just stood there, staring at the Alien as it straightened up. It was over nine feet tall, and standing in the cylinder it towered over the spacesuit-clad figures even more. Its head reached the domed ceiling. Its gray body was covered with a flowing tunic bereft of decoration. The clothing hung down over the cylinder’s surface, obscuring the Alien’s legs. The only other thing that could be discerned was a large bulge on its back.
Nike, fascinated, lost track of time. The Alien looked down on them from above, and they kept craning their necks to look up at it. Finally, Bourne took a step forward and raised his hand in the classic gesture of greeting. The being slowly turned its head toward him and tilted it, like a bird observing its surroundings. Yes, just like a bird, thought Nike and at that moment two curved shapes—furled wings—appeared from behind the Alien’s back.
The being slowly spread them out to their full width, revealing complex patterns on a downy, snow-white background.
“It’s an angel …” Iarrey whispered, and genuflected, crossing himself reflexively.
A sort of a smile widened the Alien’s lips. The being spread its arms and suddenly—
It all happened so quickly, the exact sequence of events wasn’t clear. The Alien trembled. Its wings fluttered and the previously smiling mouth opened as if to scream. Nike saw the teeth; rows of even, conical fangs. Hundreds of them … And that was the last thing he registered before his crystallite visor became covered in a dense web of cracks. At the same time, a split second before his visor shattered into tiny fragments, he heard the Alien’s voice. It was an inhuman, ululating howl. Nike was standing farthest away, so he did not pass out at once, though he couldn’t be sure any longer if what he saw was a real image or a delusion. Only a moment later did he realize he was breathing the air of an alien ship. He held his breath instinctively and almost immediately understood the absurdity of such behavior.
The Alien jumped down onto the floor and seized unconscious Bourne by the arm. It cleared his helmet visor of the crystallite shards, then lifted him up to his face. In his mind’s eye, Nike saw hundreds of pointed fangs clamping onto the lieutenant’s neck, but nothing of the sort occurred. The Alien and the human touched foreheads and remained so, motionless for several seconds. Finally, Bourne landed on the floor and the creature turned toward the exit, charging straight at Nike. The lump on its forehead, which had resembled pursed lips a short while before, was now open, but Nike didn’t get a chance to peek inside. Flung by the Alien, he flew several yards down the corridor.