Spindrift (46 page)

“
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…”

“
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.”

“
Has to be what?
” Harker came over to join him. “
Y'know, we're not going to get very far if you don't tell us what you're thinking.
”

“Assume that I'm right, and Spindrift is a spacecraft…”

“
You've won that argument.
” Cruz had raised his camera again and was using it to take pictures of the couch and the consoles. “
That's pretty much a given.
”

“Very well, then assume that I'm also correct in believing that this is some sort of control center.” Ramirez pointed at the sphere. “If that's so, and given the size of this asteroid, wouldn't it make sense to have some means of displaying vital functions anywhere within the ship? A three-dimensional model of some sort?”

“
I'm having trouble with that idea.
” Harker gazed at the sphere. “
Look, I agree with the general concept, but this looks nothing like what we've seen from orbit. It's all smooth…no surface features.”

“This may control that somehow.” Ramirez looked back down at the ring. As with the console he had examined earlier, the buttons had no obvious function; their inscriptions stood for something, of course, but were meaningless to human eyes. He was tempted to push buttons at random—some stroke of luck might cause him to enter the correct combination—yet he resisted the impulse to stab away at them blindly. “Look for a pattern. Something that stands out…”

“
A pattern?
” Harker was dubious. “
Jared, this place was designed by aliens. I don't…
”

“Try to pretend you're one of them.” Ramirez slowly walked around the ring, letting the beams of his helmet lamps drift across the console. “You're the first officer of a starship, aren't you? Try to put yourself in the mind of someone like you, but not
exactly
like you. You've got four hands, four feet…”

“
This one's different.
” Unnoticed by either of them, Cruz had walked around to the other side of the sphere. “
It's round, and pretty large.
”

Ramirez went over to join him. As he indicated, one of the buttons formed a perfect circle. Larger than the others around it, it was positioned in the center of that section of the ring. Reaching forward, he pushed it.

Harker gasped, and Ramirez looked up to see that the sphere had suddenly become transparent.

Where there had once been an opaque, featureless surface were now layers of some crystalline substance, illuminated by whisker-fine threads of light that revealed the details within its depths. At first he thought it was a holographic projection, until he realized that what he was seeing wasn't an illusion formed by focused light but instead the result of an infinitely precise arrangement of fiber-optic filaments suspended within an immense globe.

“
It's beautiful
,” Harker whispered, clearly awestruck.