A strange sensation crept up her spine, raising goosebumps. This place was making her edgy, and she’d only been out here for a few minutes.
She stretched out a hand to run her fingers along the wall. They barely bumped over the smooth surface, and she couldn’t imagine that some river had so perfectly carved out the stone. A machine, something like a tunnel borer, must have been responsible. But that didn’t explain the light that arose as her fingers brushed the stone. It lingered for a few seconds after her hand left, then faded back to dark. She tried dragging her staff along the wall, and that also elicited the response.
The spacesuit’s helmet display of data wasn’t as detailed as what one got with combat armor, but it offered Jelena her pulse rate, blood pressure, and oxygenation levels. The 110 for her pulse seemed extreme given the utter lack of effort it took to walk. With the gravity so negligible, she might as well have been walking in space. But her heart seemed to know the tunnel was eerie. The entire asteroid was. And leaving Brody back on the Snapper left her with a further feeling of discomfort. Why had she even come out here? A captain was supposed to stay with the ship. A pilot was definitely supposed to stay with the ship.
Was she worried about Thor? Of all the people among her crew, surely he could take care of himself.
Thor? It’s hard for me to walk into trouble at your side when your side is so far in front of me. Jelena sensed him ahead of her and knew he wasn’t far, but she wasn’t sure why he wouldn’t wait for her.
He’s watching, Thor replied. We may not have much time.
Who’s watching? Brody? Jelena picked up the pace, bounding in long strides as she tried to catch up with him.
He’s going to realize what I’m after, if he hasn’t already.
What are you after in here?
I’ve been sensing out the passages back here, and I looked at his map.
Jelena faltered when she reached an intersection, the tunnel branching in a Y and offering two options. She could sense Thor ahead of her and knew he’d gone toward the right, but the possibility that they were entering a maze disturbed her.
These tunnels weren’t on his map, Thor went on, maybe because they’re too small for a ship to travel through.
The fact that they hadn’t been mapped didn’t make Jelena feel any more comfortable about the maze.
The map was guiding us via a roundabout way, in a loose half circle. I believe these smaller tunnels may lead directly to the lost ship.
Oh. Shortcut?
Shortcut, he agreed.
No wonder he’d been interested in coming out here.
Yes, whatever the artifact is exactly, I believe it’ll be easier to keep Brody from acquiring it once it’s in my possession than vice versa.
Ah. Jelena didn’t know what else to say. She hadn’t particularly wanted Thor to get the artifact. She feared that whatever it was, it might be better for the entire system if it stayed buried.
I must do everything within my ability to fulfill my destiny, Thor told her. Having a powerful Starseer artifact might sway more of my father’s men to sign on with me.
Jelena finally caught sight of the back of Thor’s suit. He lifted a hand, acknowledging her without looking at her, and pressed on, choosing the rightmost offering again at another intersection.
Belatedly, Jelena flicked on her helmet camera to record their route. They could use it to find their way back if they needed the help. It might have been easier to mark the intersections, but she questioned whether she should use a paint pen on an archaeological site.
A hiss of static came over the comm, then Zhou asked, “Jelena?” in a faint voice.
“I’m here.”
“I can’t hear you that clearly.”
She frowned as more static came through. They couldn’t have gone more than half a mile. How could the link be having problems?
“What have you got?” she asked, hoping he understood.
“I’m examining the rock and the webbing under a microscope.”
“Anything interesting? We’re finding that all the rock glows.” She tapped her staff against the stone wall again, and green light flowed into the tunnel.
“Yes, all the rock in this area, at least. As for interesting…”
His pause made Jelena check the comm link to make sure he hadn’t dropped off. No, the channel was still open.
“They both have an interesting cellular makeup.”
“I didn’t know rocks had cells.”
“They don’t.”
Thor looked back for the first time.
“What are you saying, Zhou?” Jelena asked. “I thought we’d determined that those webs weren’t made from organic material.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“No, I did. I mean, the sensors did.”
“The ship’s instruments aren’t that sensitive. They said there wasn’t any life in the asteroid, nor should we expect any, but as I examine these interesting cells, I’m not positive there never was life here. But it was nothing typical. The cells have a crystalline makeup that’s nothing like the building blocks of life brought from Old Earth.” He was speaking quickly, excited by his discovery. “I believe these samples may indicate frozen or maybe fossilized remnants of life that once existed on Trajea.”
“Zhou, my suit tells me it’s negative two-hundred-plus degrees outside. How could life have survived this far away from any of the suns?”
“I see two possibilities. First, Trajea was once in an orbit much closer to the other suns. It may have been in that desirable zone, desirable to humans at least, where conditions allow for liquid water. There may have been a collision or another astronomical event that knocked it out of its orbit. The second possibility is that life evolved underground, thriving on the warmth of that molten core I’m hypothesizing once existed. I suppose a remote third possibility is that something could have evolved even in such a cold environment. We know of bacteria that can survive travel on the hulls of spaceships, after all.”
“Yes, I heard you were scaring Erick with tales of space-faring microbes that could cause problems in humans.”
“I merely said they existed, not that they were looking to burrow into his insides. His own imagination scared him.”
“He comes from an imaginative family.” Jelena followed Thor down a turn at another intersection. He hadn’t slowed down, and she wasn’t sure if he was listening to any of this. She picked up her pace again as he descended a slope ahead of her.
“Oh, how interesting,” Zhou murmured and took a breath, as if he meant to go into further detail, a lot of detail.
“Zhou, I’m glad you found something here in your field to study—”
“Isn’t it wonderful, Jelena? Maybe this is why Leonidas asked me to come along.”
Jelena didn’t point out that Leonidas had no idea about molten cores or planets in rogue orbits, and had probably only sent Zhou to thwart any boyfriend advances Thor might be making. As if that was necessary. “Yes, I bet you can write some fascinating papers on it too.”
“I’m already composing abstracts!”
“In the meantime, can you let me know if we have anything to worry about from this fossilized life? This all happened a long, long time ago, right?”
“Oh, eons ago, most certainly.”
“Good. There’s no chance this life could have left booby traps behind, is there?” Though Jelena suspected that rockfall at the entrance had been set by those Starseers, she still wondered what had befallen the original Kirian ship. Had it truly succumbed to some mechanical failure?
“Booby traps?” Zhou sounded puzzled. “No, certainly not. These are cells I’m looking at. Very simple cells. The webbing looks to be made from billions and billions of the crystalline equivalent of prokaryotic organisms. Even if they were living today, I’m certain they wouldn’t be creating booby traps.” He chuckled. “Humans haven’t encountered anything more intelligent than animals in the system. It’s why we chose it for habitation.
No competition.”
“Some animals are intelligent.” Jelena thought of the dolphin-like creatures on Fourseas that had transported her team to shore.
“Yes, but not sentient.”
Jelena was on the verge of protesting that statement, but Zhou continued on first.
“I’m certain these prokaryotes didn’t leave million-year-old booby traps around. The Starseers might have left some, but these are single-celled organisms without brains.”
“Aren’t viruses single-celled organisms without brains?”
“Oh, not at all. Viruses are genetic information surrounded by a protein coat. They’re obligate intracellular parasites.”
“So they’re smaller than cells. And they cause a buttload of problems.”
“Yes… but they don’t build booby traps.”
Jelena would have rubbed the back of her neck if she could reach it. Her scientist didn’t seem to be on the same page as she was. She wanted to know if they were likely to run into trouble. She didn’t particularly care if that trouble came by way of booby traps or brain-eating bacteria.
I’m not the scientist, but I don’t think fossils can eat brains, Thor told her silently.
He’d finally come to a stop and was peering out into a dark expanse.
“This is an interesting variation on the Fibonacci Sequence,” Zhou said to himself.
Jelena turned down the volume on the comm. She didn’t want to cut him off, but she didn’t want to listen to him muttering microbiology musings, either.
What are we looking at? Jelena asked the question silently, afraid Zhou would chime in with a lengthy answer if she spoke over the comm.
She stopped beside Thor. There was no choice. The tunnel ended, and the edge fell away abruptly.
The beam from their helmet lights was pitiful compared to the open darkness ahead of them, but Jelena turned her head left and right and up and down to try to see. Up, left, and right only revealed darkness, the beams not stretching far enough to reach a wall. But about a hundred feet below them, she could make out rubble. Lots and lots of rubble. Huge boulders that had tumbled down and covered the floor of the vast chamber.
Since Thor seemed lost in thought, or perhaps lost in using his powers to examine everything, Jelena stretched out with her mind to sense what the light wouldn’t show her. To her surprise, she detected energy right away. The artifact that Thor had felt from the edge of the asteroid belt?
The energy seemed to emanate from the center of that rubble. She could also sense the vastness of the chamber—it was miles wide and high, with a couple of large tunnels exiting from the far side. That must be the way Brody’s map would have led the Snapper in. Down below, the rubble pile covered almost the entire floor, and it seemed to be a hundred feet or more in thickness. Was the ship under it all?
Thor sighed. We should have brought hand tractors.
Hand tractors? A mining ship, more like.
As she continued her examination, Jelena sensed an area on the floor in the corner. It was oddly clear of rubble. She pointed her headlamp in that direction. The beam barely reached the spot, but the light glinted off something. Something metal?
“That’s not the ship, is it?” she asked, puzzled. She sensed the energy source coming from the center of the chamber.
“No, I don’t know what that is. Something the Starseers were building when this happened maybe.” Thor waved at the rubble and made a disgusted noise. “I’m going to take a closer look.”
“Be care—” Jelena’s warning broke off in a squawk when he stepped off the ledge.
Granted, he didn’t fall fast in the low gravity, but it was still a hundred-foot drop. He landed without hurting himself. Jelena would have pulled out a calculator before trying that move herself.
“We’ll see if you can get yourself back up here when it’s time,” she said as he bounced across the rocks, the beam from his headlamp dancing about.
“I’m sure I can manage.”
“What are you looking at?” came Masika’s voice over the comm.
“Nothing,” Thor replied before Jelena could decide what they should say over the channel. Only her people were on it, but she remembered Thor’s warning that Brody might be able to read minds.
“Why is it that the people who are doing interesting things that you want to hear from aren’t the chatty ones?” Masika grumbled.
In the background, Zhou muttered about Fibonacci patterns sometimes being different in their system than they had been on Old Earth.
While Thor picked his way across the rubble, Jelena turned her light toward the metal that had glinted before. She examined the area further with her senses. There was a metal tower or something like it. She couldn’t imagine who else besides the Starseers would have erected something in here, but what had they been erecting? And why? Had it resulted in the rockfall that buried them? And had that resulted in the deaths of all aboard? It seemed odd that a ship full of Starseers hadn’t been able to use telekinesis to move the rocks off their vessel, especially given the low gravity. In Arkadian standard gravity, all those tons of rock could have crushed a ship too quickly for the crew to do anything. But here?
“I’m going to look at that thing over there,” Jelena said, eyeing the hundred-foot drop to the rubble. Nothing had happened to Thor when he’d jumped, so she ought to be safe doing the same thing, but it was hard to fling oneself off a cliff without hesitating.
“Don’t touch it,” Thor said.
“Was that an order, request, or invitation?” Jelena stepped off the ledge.
“It looks like something that might contain an electrical charge, and it also looks damaged.”
Huh, and here I thought all you were looking at was an artifact, she said, switching to telepathy.
I thoroughly examined the chamber before jumping down.
“What are you looking at?” Masika asked again.
“I’m not sure.”
“Is it more organic material?” Zhou broke in. “Can you send a vid?”
“I think it’s just metal.” Jelena bounced her way over the rubble, feeling like an avatar in one of Erick’s games, one with super powers that could leap boulder piles in a single bound.
“I’d still like to see a video. I didn’t realize you were leaving to explore without me.” Zhou sounded disappointed.
“Sorry. Thor was impatient.”
“Don’t feel too bad about him missing out,” Masika said. “He only realized you were gone twenty seconds ago.”
“It was at least two minutes ago,” Zhou said.
Jelena could see more of the metal object now, and she examined it instead of responding to them. A tower hadn’t been a bad word for it. She had only been looking at the top two-thirds of it. The bottom third had been hidden from her earlier point of view by the rubble, which hadn’t fallen anywhere around the structure’s base. Most of the tower appeared to be made out of metal, narrowing toward the top where a single rod stretched up, disappearing into the chamber’s rock ceiling. Irregular, lumpy black spikes thrust out of the ground around the base of the tower, and they were draped in more of that webbing.
Jelena shifted uneasily. Spikes? Was that the right word? They reminded her of crystals.
“Uhm, Zhou?” she said.
“Yes? Have you realized it was a mistake to run off without me?”
“Possibly. I’m going to send you my camera footage. Tell me what you think.” She decided not to taint his opinions by voicing the word crystal. Maybe she only had that in mind because of his earlier report. Maybe this had nothing to do with the prokary-whatsits.
She climbed down the boulder-strewn slope to get a better look for Zhou, but she kept Thor’s warning in mind. She wouldn’t touch a thing.
When she reached the ground, she paused to take footage of the black spikes—they were as tall as she was. She avoided touching the cobwebs, even though she had already poked at some of those without a problem. Even so, a strange tingle went through he
r body as she stared at the base of the tower. Was it the electrical charge Thor had mentioned?
She walked around the tower, looking for the damage he’d spoken of. From a distance, the structure hadn’t seemed that alien, aside from the spikes, but now that she had a better look at what she’d taken for metal support posts, she saw that they were made from something else. The edges were fuzzy and covered with more of the spikes, small ones that bristled out from the posts like hackles on a dog.
As she reached the far side, she spotted the damage Thor had mentioned. A large clump of crystal spikes had been broken off, some smashed to pieces. It looked like a huge cannonball had slammed into the structure. Or an e-cannon blast. Soot painted the ground around the damaged base.
“Erick?” Jelena asked. “Are you listening in?”
“I was until Zhou started reciting encyclopedias to himself.”
“I’d like you to look at this video too. Let me know what you think this thing is. Or was.” She tilted her head back, peering at the dark ceiling far above, at the way the rod disappeared into it. “This doesn’t look like anything typical of Kirian technology, but then, I’m not familiar with what they were doing five centuries ago.”
“I’m busy right now. How important is it?”
“Well, I don’t know. I guess it’s not important unless you’re an archeologist.” Maybe she should be helping Thor figure out a way to unbury the ship, assuming it was down there somewhere, rather than sightseeing.
“Just take some footage of it, and I’ll look la—”
“Erick!” Austin blurted in the background. “The Starseers are leaving.”
“What do you mean leaving? And which Starseers? Brody and Abelardus?”
“Yeah, they snuck their spacesuits on, grabbed the thrust bikes, and they’re opening the airlock right now. The doctor just yelled at Abelardus about how he shouldn’t go anywhere, and—”
Footsteps thundered, drowning out the rest of Austin’s words.