No spurting blood, no dangling tendons, no gleaming-white bone greeted his tired eyes. Clean flesh covered the end of the stump, pink and fresh.
"Too bad," he commented.
She made a face. "Too bad? What did you expect?"
"I didn't expect anything, Maggie. I hoped for full regeneration, for the arm to grow a new hand. I guess even the life crystals have their limits." He ran bloodied fingers over the smooth terminus. The new skin was so perfect, you couldn't tell that the limb had ever been damaged.
"Interesting. It can restore life but not individual body parts. I'll bet we could have reattached the severed hand if we'd been able to dig it out." He looked longingly at the narrow crevice in the rocks that had caused all the trouble. It would take days to excavate the sundered appendage, and that was assuming the loose scree didn't come crashing down to trap them while they were working.
Brink didn't need two hands anyway, Low rationalized. He was an idea man.
Robbins's thoughts had traveled along similar lines. "Hey, he doesn't have any reason to complain. It beats the alternative."
They stayed close to the scientist all through the night. The strange constellations were a welcome sight, sparkling and twinkling in the unpolluted air. There was no need to rush to shelter since after dark the temperature dropped only a few degrees before steadying.
By morning the scientist had recovered sufficiently to share water and a couple of handfuls of scavenged berries, which Low prayed contained nothing toxic enough to knock their feet out from under them. They ate comforted by the knowledge that in the event of poisoning, a life crystal apiece could probably cure them.
Brink managed well with his one remaining hand. "It's all right," he assured his companions. "I told you to do what you had to do, and you did. At least I am alive."
"You know what my biggest fear was?" Low told him. "That the shock would kill you and I'd have to use one of the crystals to revive you ... with your hand still trapped in the rocks."
Brink was thoughtful. "Perhaps the crystals are not all identical. It may be that different kinds contain different instructions and we are not perceptive enough to distinguish between them. Possibly some are not capable of full resurrection. Hence the lack of any digital regeneration." He held up his stump.
"It was my fault. I had, and still have, plenty of the crystals. I should have let that one go."
Robbins put a comforting hand on his arm. "Don't blame yourself. You couldn't have known the rock was going to shift like that."
"She's right." Between the bloodstains on his hands and arms and the pulpy residue from the berries darkening his lips, Low looked first cousin to a condor.
"No, I blame myself." Brink paused, trying to find the appropriate words. "I have to thank you both. Recently I have been somewhat..."
"Obsessed?" Low supplied the word without prompting.
The scientist smiled thinly. "As good a term as any, Commander Low. I still feel their pull"—he patted his overstuffed crystal-packed pockets—"but I think I can control my interests now as opposed to having them control me."
"Good. Then maybe you're ready for another piece of good news. Remember me telling you that I'd found a preserved Cocytan? Well, while you were sunbathing in crystal light, I used a couple to resurrect it. Twice. Maggie was there the second time. We learned a great deal about this world and what happened to it."
"I should like to have seen that." A glimmer of the old inquisitiveness shone in the scientist's eyes.
"You had your chance," Low told him. "We promised it that we wouldn't revive it anymore. In return, it told us where to find more of the activation plates. We have four of them again. Whether they'll work on the asteroid-ship or not is anybody's guess, but at least we've been given a chance."
Brink nodded solemnly. He no longer appeared agitated or nervous. His most recent brush with death and the subsequent amputation had left him chastened. Nothing like losing an important appendage to put things in perspective. Or perhaps his newfound calm was a salutary side effect resulting from the absorption of the life crystal. Low didn't really care. He was simply pleased with the result. It might well take all of them to make it off this world, and he was glad to have the scientist back on the team.
"If you will lead the way, Commander, I will help as best I can." Brink gestured in the direction of the main chamber.
"What about 'attending' to your life crystals?" Low inquired challengingly.
"These?" Brink patted his bulging pockets. "They're not going anywhere." He started off in the direction of the break in the chamber ceiling. "We are wasting time. I suggest you both keep up with me, since my capacity to wave to you has been significantly diminished."
CHAPTER 20
They gathered up the four plates and hauled them to the tower mound containing the four matching cavities. Whether inserting the plates would activate the asteroid-ship or some other system they had no way of knowing, but there was no place to put the plates inside the asteroid. The original control pylon had metamorphosed and sunk into the floor, taking the original four plates with it.
One at a time, Low carefully placed them in the vacant recesses. When the time came to insert the fourth and last, he directed his companions to move back. Then he inserted the plate and hastened to join them.
Side by side they watched and waited. The plates sat neatly in their receptacles. Light poured through the distant fracture in the ceiling. Somewhere up above, a representative of the local fauna squealed inquisitively.
Nothing happened.
"Maybe if we alter the order of placement," Robbins suggested. "We might have inserted certain plates into the wrong orifices."
"I don't think there is a wrong order." Low did his best to sustain his companions' spirits, not to mention his own. "There's nothing to indicate that a particular plate goes into a certain cavity."
"We are fools for expecting this to resolve our situation." Both of them turned to Brink. "What did you expect? For this chamber to turn into a giant spaceship and carry us homeward?" Arm outstretched, head flung back, Brink turned a slow circle.
"The machine is broken. We have been spoiled by finding so many mechanisms still capable of functioning. It is unreasonable to expect everything to work. Unreasonable!" Lowering his arm and straightening, he looked back at them as he staggered to a stop. His eyes were wild.
The beneficial side effects of his amputation were already wearing off, Low saw sadly.
"Perhaps it requires more than four plates to activate it, whatever this damned console controls." Brink held up his foreshortened arm. "Perhaps it is missing a part, as am I."
Robbins looked around sharply. "Did you feel that?"
"Feel what?" Low was baffled, and he didn't want to be baffled. He wanted to be simultaneously sorry for and angry at the scientist.
Then he didn't have to ask. The floor had begun to tremble. The distinct yet subtle quivering ran up his feet and into his body. It was accompanied by a deep electronic hum, like the moan of some huge hibernating creature stirring from a long sleep.
The ceiling did not crumble, the floor did not crack. The chamber simply continued to vibrate in harmony with the unseen source. Nor did it begin to rise skyward and accelerate toward the distant Earth. Not for the first time Low noted how different the interior of the great chamber was from that of the asteroid-ship.
He turned his attention to the gap in the roof. Rocks and gravel spilled over the edge, adding to the height of the rubble pile beneath. There was no more sign of impending collapse than there was of a hidden port sliding sideways to seal the opening.
Robbins's attention was directed elsewhere. "Over there!" She pointed excitedly.
Following close on the heels of their elevated expectations, Low found the sight decidedly anticlimactic. The fifth and last high, arching doorway had finally opened. In appearance it was identical to the four he had accessed with the aid of the compact robots.
They advanced cautio
usly on the newly revealed portal. Beyond lay no sleek Cocytan starship or gratuitous alien wonder. The sight was depressingly familiar: another spherical transport station that was an exact duplicate of the four they had already utilized. Low's gaze took in the same gray walls, the same unmarked dark tunnel, the perfect pearllike sphere resting alongside the loading platform.
The vibration in the floor ceased. Looking back, he could see that the four round plates, acquired after so much effort and with such high hopes, still rested neatly in their respective recesses. They could be removed, he decided, as easily as they had been inserted.
It was hardly what Brink had been hoping for. The disappointment hit him harder than either of his companions.
"Another tram." Brink swore softly. "How exciting. Perhaps this tunnel terminates in Orlando. The Cape or Disney World, I would not care. Heidelberg would be better still. But I think not, I think not."
"I guess its destination is pretty obvious." Low sighed tiredly. "The fifth island. The only one we haven't visited yet." He frowned. "I wonder why such an elaborate setup to operate this doorway? Why hide it like this? There must be something special on the fifth island. Something even more remarkable than the Creator's sarcophagus."
"A used-starship lot, no doubt." Brink giggled. It was clear his sanity was continuing to slide, the slip no doubt accelerated by yet another failure, another disappointment. "The starships are free, but you have to turn over an important body part in return for a map."
"Ludger, get a hold of yourself." Low started toward the other man. "Use one of the crystals if you have to."
Brink backed away. "Might as well make yourselves comfortable," he told them derisively, "because we're going to be here for a long time, I think. Probably just this side of forever. We're never going to leave this world, you know. Never, never, ever. In a thousand years or so some other cursed, unfortunate visitors will trip over our skeletons and wonder what we were doing here and why we failed to leave. Cocytus, oh yes, how true I named it!
"Now, if you will excuse me"—he executed a mock Prussian bow—"I have to go and find a nice, cozy burial site. Do not ask me to share. Each must find his or her own."
Babbling in German, he whirled and sprinted madly away from them.
"Ludger!" Low took a couple of steps after the other man before slowing to a halt. It would do no good to run him down and tackle him. As mad as he was at the moment, he might be capable of inflicting serious damage on anyone who tried to restrain him, and that would do none of them any good at all.
"Ludger, please!" Robbins had come up alongside Low. Her entreaties were no more effective than those of the Commander.
"It's no good, Maggie." Low put an arm around her. "Let him go."
"Go where? He could end up hurting himself again, and next time we might not be able to find him."
Low tracked the running man's progress. "I think he's headed back to his crystal sanctuary. If he stays in there, he should be all right. Either he'll come to his senses or"—Low shrugged—"he won't."
She wasn't satisfied. "But we have to go after him, we have to help him."
Low eyed her quizzically. "Why? When you stomped out on me, I didn't go running after you, and you came to your senses."
Her gaze narrowed. "I never lost my senses." Angrily, she shrugged his arm off. "I was upset and I needed time to think." She gestured in the direction the fleeing scientist had taken. "Ludger's gone over the edge. He's not responsible for his actions. There's a difference."
"Then he'll climb back up, or he won't." Low was insistent, if not obdurate. "I'm not going to waste what time and energy I have left trying to wrestle him back to reality. For one thing, we're all out of concentrates and we have to find a suitable food source." He turned. Brink was now out of sight.
"Really, he'll be okay. He's carrying a king's ransom in life crystals. I wonder if they can cure madness? If so, he'll heal himself. He has a better chance of doing so than we do. Eventually he'll get tired, or hungry, or both. Then he'll remember who and where he is and come looking for us, wearing that same sheepish grin he flashed after we saved him the last time.
"Meanwhile, since we've nothing better to do, we might as well make a visit to the fifth island. Who knows? Maybe it's a giant preserved Cocytan supermarket. At this point I think my stomach's willing to try thousand-year-old dehydrates." Turning, he headed for the beckoning portal.
"But why the elaborate door key? That's what I don't understand."
She fell into step alongside him. "Maybe we'll find a key to the key."
He snorted skeptically. "I'm getting sick and tired of finding keys. I want to go home."
Her eyebrows arched as she cast him a reproving look. "Now who's out of patience?"
He didn't reply. His shirts stank of Brink's blood, he was hungry and tired as well as depressed, and worst of all, he didn't have a clue how to tell Maggie how he really felt about her.
The transport sphere behind the fifth arch functioned exactly like the other four, its entrance cycling behind them before it commenced its slow, steady acceleration down the blank tunnel. While he had no means of measuring their velocity precisely, Low did his best to time the duration of their journey. It coincided closely with the previous four, which put it in line with the estimated travel time to the fifth and last island.
When it finally rolled to a halt, they exited and found themselves confronting another spacious, high-ceilinged chamber crammed with unrecognizable instrumentation. The individual devices were larger than anything Low had previously encountered save for the Creator's pyramidal sarcophagus. That didn't mean they would be of any use.
From the outside, the machinery appeared simplistic, no doubt in contrast to highly intricate interiors. Dominating everything else and rising toward the peak of the spire was a massive, irregularly shaped console. As big as a house, it took some time to circumnavigate. Low hunted for individual controls while Robbins kept an eye out for circular depressions that might accept metal plates. Neither search was successful.
What they did find sticking out of the far side of the mass was an assortment of projections tipped in glass, crystal or some other translucent material. When they touched these, or attempted to manipulate them, or passed their hands over the ends, nothing happened.
It was Robbins who picked out the image from the wealth of elaborate glyphs and engravings.
"Doesn't mean anything." Low made no effort to hide his continued disappointment as he studied the schematic she had found. "It's just a picture of a bunch of Cocytans."
"You're looking at it, Boston, but you're not seeing it." She traced the surface of the detailed representation with a fingertip. "See how they start out wholly and perfectly rendered and then gradually fade away to nothingness?"
"So? Part of the image is well preserved and part has worn away."
"No, no, don't you see?" Her excitement contrasted sharply with his lassitude. "There's a steady progression, right to left, from fully rendered forms through transitional stages right down to minimal outlines. Furthermore, the material on the left is as smooth and polished as the material on the right."
"What's your point?" he muttered impatiently.
She took a step back and gestured at the massive mechanism. "Don't you get it? This is it, this is the machine!"
He blinked, his apathy sloughing away. "You mean you think this is the Eye?"
"That's what the diagram says to me. Believe me, after you've spent months staring at thousands of Mayan glyphs, certain ways of illustrating things visually catch your attention." She stepped back to examine the inscrutable bulk. "The only thing is, the Cocytan spoke of stepping through, and I don't see anything like a door or portal or screen." She encompassed the exterior with a speculative wave. "It all looks solid, except for this one slot over here."
Moving to their right, she pointed out a dark hole in the otherwise unbroken flank of the machine. It displayed the same elaborate starburst design that embellished
a number of other devices throughout the chamber.
"What could go in there?" Low bent forward to study the opening. "It's much too small to take one of the plates. Maybe some kind of key, or card."
"There's only one thing we've found that might qualify as a universal tool." When he looked puzzled, she gestured at his pocket.
He felt of the remaining sheathed crystal within. "You're serious, aren't you?"
"Why not? They resurrect people, and aliens. Why not machines?"
"From an engineering standpoint that doesn't make any sense. You use a socket wrench on a car, not on a person."
She smiled slyly. "Even if that person has an artificial hip joint that needs tightening?"
He considered. "Maybe you're right. Maybe I'm thinking too much like a human again." He studied the slot. "If the machine's well and truly dead, dumping anything in there isn't going to hurt it. If it's still capable of activation, well ... I left my Eye ignition key in my other pants." He grinned admiringly. "You're a pretty observant gal, Robbins, you know that?"
"If I wasn't," she replied evenly, "I'd have been dead twenty times over these past ten years." She stepped aside to give him better access to the slot. "Go on, just do it."
Taking the shard from his pocket, he moved to deposit it in the waiting opening ... and hesitated. "Wait a minute. Why are we bothering with this, not to mention probably wasting a life crystal? There's no spaceship here, no way home."
"We're doing it because we can," she told him, "and because it might bring us some help. The Creator can't do anything else for us. Maybe this machine can. Maybe it'll let us talk to the Cocytans in the other dimension and they'll know how we can reactivate the asteroid-ship. If not, maybe they can tell us where to find food, or how to get somewhere besides these islands."
He took a deep breath. "As I've said before, I don't have any better ideas." Then he turned to her. "Here. This is your idea. You do it."
"Okay." She took the life crystal, turning it over several times in her fingers, feeling the warmth of it while admiring the uniquely cool green glow. Then she slid it into the opening and gave it a little push. It disappeared silently within.