The Trilisk Ruins (27 page)

“
Yeah. Well, I could be more
careful in a real lab. This is the artifact I shocked myself on,”
Telisa said. “It still has some juice, even after all this
time.”

“
I wonder how?”

“
Search me. I don’t know
what the power source is. My scanner isn’t showing that it has any
power at all. It should be dead. But it just generated quite an EM
spike.”

“
Broadcast power, maybe,”
Magnus suggested.

“
We left the planet a long
time ago. You’re not suggesting that it could have such a
range...?”

“
No. I don’t know. We could
try to hook up a circuit to check it out more carefully,” Magnus
suggested. He chuckled. “It might be easier to study when your body
isn’t part of the conductor.”

Telisa smiled. “Yeah, that sounds like
a great experiment. Let’s set it up. I wonder how much power the
thing has left? Of course, we might end up using the last bit of
energy it needs to work, then we’ll never figure it
out.”

“
Well, right now there’s
something else up. I came down here to tell you... we’ve
arrived.”

“
Where?”

Magnus shrugged. “What Shiny called the
sanctuary, I guess. Some kind of space station or outpost. Here,
I’ll point you at our sensor data.”

Telisa’s link received a location to
find what Magnus saw. Telisa closed her eyes and saw the ship’s
sensor output interface in her mind. She flipped through the
accumulated scans, seeing images and three-dimensional models in
her mind’s eye.

The base extended well
beyond the size of the
Iridar
, shaped like three identical
spheres anchored together in a triangle with thin filaments of
material. The entire assembly shadowed a rocky moon in its orbit
around a nearby planet.

“
It’s not really rotating. I
wonder if Shiny’s race has mastered artificial gravity,” Telisa
said.

“
I’m betting there is. They
have to have gravity control or else the whole base would
eventually collide with the moon. I think it’s paired with the
moon, kept at a constant distance with some kind of force
link.”

“
Shiny’s probably been gone
for a while. I hope they welcome him back... and for that matter I
hope they welcome us, too.”

“
I assume that Shiny will be
going over there soon. Question is, will we be going over
there?”

“
We could stay here, but I’m
tempted to follow. There might be more artifacts, and we could meet
more of his kind, see if they are at all interested in
us.”

“
They might just flush us
out the airlock, of course,” Magnus said.

“
Yes, they might. But Shiny
hasn’t seemed openly hostile. Despite his recent
takeover.”

He shrugged. “Alright. As we’ve said,
he could have killed us already. Let’s follow him and see what we
can learn. But make sure your link logs the way back. I assume this
time, the stupid tunnels won’t switch around on us.”

“
Funny, it makes sense that
they won’t now, but I half expect them to,” she said.

Magnus nodded. “We’ve learned not to
take that for granted anymore. At least for a while.”

They walked over to the equipment bags
they had taken with them on the previous sortie.

“
I already restocked the
food and water. And added a little more, this time,” Telisa
said.

“
Can never have enough of
that canned rations crap,” Magnus added sardonically.

Shiny marched into the bay, his many
legs flicking nervously.

“
Lead the way, Shiny!”
Telisa said.

The alien stood in place for a moment.
One of his legs twitched periodically, making a slight scraping
sound.

“
Why do you do that, Shiny?”
Telisa asked.

“
Brain damage. Leg moves
sometimes,” Shiny answered.

“
Wow. Sorry to hear that. At
least you have nineteen other brains!”

“
True. Correct.”

“
We can go onto your base,
can’t we?” Telisa asked.

“
Egress. Entrance. This is
allowed,” buzzed Shiny’s generated voice. The statement ended the
moment of inactivity. The cargo bay doors activated, filling the
space with the sound of the hatch mechanism.

“
Shit! Shiny, you’re not
depressurizing the bay, are you?” Telisa asked, her voice wavering
near panic.

Magnus bolted across the bay, motioning
to Telisa. “Go for one of the pods!” he called.

“
Pressure, present
externally,” came a broken sentence from the alien.

Telisa stared at the growing opening of
the bay doors and realized that there was no screaming wind of
depressurization. Instead of the darkness of space, a soft white
light filtered in from the outside.

Magnus stooped and put his hands on his
knees. “You’re a laugh a minute, Shiny,” he said, his voice
strained.

The doors moved to their maximum
dilation, and the mechanical sounds stopped. Shiny moved out,
heading straight down the lower door, which formed a ramp to the
outside floor.

“
We’re inside the station, I
assume,” Telisa said. She checked the sensor feed through her link
and saw that she’d guessed correctly. She saw their position within
one of the large spheres that formed the body of the
base.

“
Should we follow him or
what?” she asked Magnus.

They walked side by side to the edge of
the bay, staring out into the alien room. It looked like a natural
cavern, lined with pockets of the now familiar formations of dull
beige shapes littered with green rods. Shiny was just disappearing
down a side corridor.

“
Ah, I guess not,” Magnus
said. “Unless you want to sprint after him.”

“
Yeah. He’s in a hurry or
something,” she said.

“
It’s just like back in the
Trilisk installation,” Magnus noted. “All this cave stuff is going
to look alike.”

“
Yeah. I’m using my link to
map it. This stuff might be a little different. Before it was a
poor copy, remember the reports we read in the fake office place?
This should all be real.”

They walked down the bay ramp, looking
in all directions. Telisa walked up to a bank of cubes.

“
It all looks connected.
Shit, don’t any of these aliens have a civilization where they keep
a lot of junk lying around?”

Magnus laughed. “So you can take
anything that’s not nailed down?”

“
Exactly.”

“
Well, as things get more
advanced... stuff just starts getting smaller and more remotely
activated... for all we know, there’s furniture embedded in the
floor, factories waiting in every wall, who knows what.”

Telisa stared at the intricate blue
panel. She didn’t dare touch anything since it was a complete
mystery.

“
Where are the other
Shinies? Aren’t they curious about the new visitors?” she wondered
aloud.

“
I’m getting a little
nervous,” Magnus admitted. “Let’s go see if we can catch up with
him, since there isn’t anything just lying around for us to
collect.”

Telisa nodded. She led the way, heading
out the tunnel that Shiny had raced down a minute ago.

“
Well, we won’t have any
trouble finding him,” Magnus said. Telisa looked at the floor where
Magnus indicated. She saw an intricate trail of tiny footprints,
each little more than a round impression the size of a
thumbnail.

“
Hrm, I would expect some
sort of automated cleaning system in a place this
advanced.”

“
Maybe it was shut down to
save power, or because there aren’t any other Shinies here right
now,” Magnus guessed.

“
Or maybe they just like
living with this dirt or sand on the floor. We removed dirt from
our inside environments. This sandy stuff looks pretty clean,
though. It may be sterile.”

They followed the trail through three
chambers and a long, rough corridor before finding Shiny. The alien
worked on a bank of cubes at a feverish pace. Several of his legs
held blocks of the material that laced the walls, and his attendant
spheres danced in and out, fusing things together almost faster
than the eye could follow.

“
Shiny, where are the others
of your kind? You aren’t the only one here, are you?”

Shiny swiveled around and spoke with an
orb that buzzed against the wall. “Singular. One. Only.”

“
There’s only one of your
race?”

“
One, here, sanctuary.
Others, elsewhere, distant,” Shiny said.

“
Is it unusual that others
aren’t here?” asked Magnus.

“
Unusual. Unexplained.
Mysterious,” Shiny said. The many legged alien turned back and
skittered down the passageway. Telisa and Magnus jogged after,
trying to stay close.

“
Hey Shiny, are there any...
pieces of equipment around here that aren’t attached to the walls?
I want something to bring back with me. Is there something here
that you wouldn’t miss?”

“
Telisa maintains objective:
collect artifacts,” Shiny said.

“
Yes! That’s me. You’re
getting better at speaking our language all the time,” she
said.

“
Collect artifacts. Begin.
Commence. Select alternate location.”

“
Hrm, ahhh, so you mean,
take what I want... just don’t take it from what ya got here,
huh?”

“
Affirm.
Correct.”

I will ask Telisa desist,
cease, if critical equipment is confiscated.

The voice came to Telisa in her head,
across her link. It was the smooth voice of a man. Telisa glanced
around.

“
Whoa... who is that?”
Telisa asked.

“
Who’s talking?” Magnus
asked. “My link says it’s... Shiny. I guess that’s why some of the
authentication information is missing.”

Abandoned primitive
methods. Now communicate through your more advanced
system.

“
Umm,” Telisa wondered if
she should complain. “Shiny, could you use your real voice? I mean
the way you used to speak, well, I’ve associated you with the
buzzing voice from your... helper spheres.”

I will comply.

This time the voice in her head sounded
like the buzzing voice Shiny had used with them before. It sounded
much better to her than the strange man’s voice, which Telisa
didn’t want to think of as coming from Shiny.

“
Thanks, Shiny,” Telisa
said.

“
Yeah, that’s a lot better.
It sounds like you really sound. Well, I mean like you... never
mind,” Magnus said.

“
Alright, then. We have
permission from an owner. Let’s take a look.”

Magnus laughed and nodded. “Lead the
way.”

Telisa consulted the maps in her head.
“Let’s move deeper into the sphere.”

They chose a corridor at random and
walked through the fine sand. Telisa couldn’t see any real
difference between these caverns and the ones they had encountered
while trapped underground on Thespera Two. The light came from the
exposed cubes hanging from walls or rising from the
floors.

They took a side branch, looking for a
more interesting room.

“
Too much of this stuff all
looks the same to me,” she said. “I think a human station would
offer more variety.”

“
A human city would,” Magnus
said. “But the insides of the
Iridar
look pretty much the same
throughout.”

“
Hrm, yeah I guess
so.”

“
When did you first become
obsessed with alien artifacts?” Magnus asked.

“
Well, that’s a change of
subject,” Telisa said, but she was secretly pleased. “Let’s see. I
remember one time when I was a kid poring through my dinosaur
books. My father brought home a Talosian water compass. At first he
let me play with it, and I remember being amazed by the thought
that it had been created by creatures that weren’t people. He told
me stories the few times a year that he showed up after that, and I
became hooked. I sought out artifacts in museums and traveling
displays wherever I could find them.”

“
You haven’t mentioned your
father before,” Magnus said carefully.

“
One day years later, he
showed up and took the Talosian back to the government. He told me
to forget about the artifacts until I joined the space force. I was
upset but I didn’t grow apart from him until later, when I joined a
civil rights group in high school.”

Telisa became silent for a moment. They
both realized at the same moment that a noise like rushing water
came from a branching in the corridor on their right.

“
What’s that
sound?”

Magnus shrugged. “Stop. Before we go
check it out, tell me what happened with your father.”

Telisa sighed. “The government kept
taking rights away. They made it illegal for us to own artifacts.
They stopped telling us about the new discoveries. They kept
information about aliens from the academic community. At the same
time, I was starting to get a mind of my own, and I became ashamed
that my father was part of the force. I rebelled against my mother
and I gave my father the riot act, until he exploded. He hit me for
the first time ever, and told me I wasn’t his daughter. It was the
worst argument of my life.”