Looking up from his work, the scientist responded with that strange, enigmatic smile of his. "I am well known within a select small circle of individuals. That is enough for me."
"Better get used to the idea of being world famous, Ludger. It's inevitable now."
"It is the intrinsic scientific worth of what we have found that interests me, Maggie. Of course," he added gently, "I have no objection to being famous. Such intangibles are useful in raising funding."
She pushed still closer. "You think there might be more plates?"
"Perhaps." He dug carefully. "Or if we are lucky, something more."
Hanging back, Low checked his gauges. They still had some time. He wasn't sure if he was glad or not.
Using Brink's assortment of tools, they unearthed nothing else, but they were able to loosen the plate. The scientist slipped his gloved hands beneath the artifact.
"Careful," Low said warningly.
Brink smiled back at him. "No sharp edges, Commander. I checked. Will you give me a hand? It weighs nothing, of course, but I wouldn't want to accidentally jam it against a wall and break it in half."
With Robbins looking on and commenting excitedly, the two men easily raised the plate from its resting-place.
"Come on, Boston," exclaimed Miles into everyone's headset. "Don't start keeping secrets."
"We've freed the plate," Low informed her. "I see no problem in bringing it back to the ship. In an hour you can both be propounding your own theories."
"Dang, and me forgetting to bring my human-alien dictionary with me." Confident now that his companions were in no danger, Borden had returned to form.
"Hey." Robbins lowered her camera arm. "Hey, have either of you two looked under the plate yet?"
Carefully setting the artifact aside, Low and Brink turned back to face its original location. There was a hole where it had rested. A very deep hole.
A shaft.
CHAPTER 7
It pitched downward; smooth-sided, cylindrical and nearly six feet in diameter. Low's first thought was that it was a natural extension of the fissure they had blown into the asteroid's surface and that the plate they had found had become dislodged and momentarily blocked it. Further inspection soon revealed that the passage was as artificial in nature as the plate they had removed. The walls were fashioned of or lined with a pale gray ceramic. No steps or indentations leading down were visible.
Robbins prodded him with words. "Well, Commander? You're the leader of this expedition. So lead."
Mesmerized, Low found himself staring down into the opening. It was clear now that the light they had been seeing emanated not from the plate itself but from somewhere beneath. It appeared, set aside against the rock of the cleft, to be solid and opaque. Yet there was no denying the steady, soft light that rose from somewhere below.
Robbins was less hesitant, jabbed a hand past him. "Over there, in the ground!" Her excitement broke his concentration.
She'd spotted another plate protruding from the fractured surface. No, not another plate, he saw on closer inspection. Three of them.
"You have excellent eyes, Maggie." Brink was already upending the first of their new discoveries. It came free easily and was identical in size and shape to the first. Only the inscriptions, or engravings, or whatever they were, differed.
How had they missed them, Low found himself wondering? A trick of the limited light? Or something more subtle and wondrous? Irregardless, it took only moments to extract the additional plates and stack them off to one side.
That still left the mystery of the open shaft, which was not about to resolve itself. Using his thrusters and warning Robbins to keep some distance between them, he started down, following the light.
The shaft ran perfectly straight into the body of the asteroid. There were no side branches or offshoots, nothing to mar the smooth, satiny interior surface. As they descended, Low thought he felt weight returning. That was impossible, of course. As impossible as the shaft and the light and the plates. Which was to say it wasn't impossible at all.
"There's gravity here," Robbins announced with newfound authority. "I can feel it."
"Yes." Through the faceplate of his helmet Brink's expression was a mix of awe and puzzlement. "But there shouldn't be. Certainly not this much. It is very strange. I am starting to feel quite myself, yet we continue to descend at the same speed. If it is gravity returning, it is not gravity as we know it."
"There's more than one kind of gravity?" Low wondered aloud.
"It would seem so. Either that, or we are being affected by forces of which we have no knowledge and cannot yet identify."
"So long as we don't fall." Low kept his attention on the bottom of the shaft. His boots had now dropped below his waist and he was descending in a normal position, feet first. A glance to one side showed that Robbins and Brink were similarly aligned.
Tilting back his head, he saw the dark circlet that was the top of the shaft continuing to recede. If the unnatural condition could not be reversed, they were going to have trouble retracing their path.
He had no time to contemplate possible alternatives because at that moment the shaft opened out into a huge chamber. Clearly not a consequence of their explosive efforts, it boasted gently curving walls and a domed roof. In places the walls were covered with more of the distinctive inscriptions, in others they bulged with fluid, free-form shapes. The ceiling and floor were likewise decorated.
Gently their feet made contact with the floor.
"Not terrestrial gravity," Brink commented. "Barely Lunarian, and nowhere near as strong as Mars."
"I thought artificial gravity was a mathematical impossibility," Robbins commented innocently.
Low looked at her in surprise. She'd done some homework.
"Nothing that can be propagated as a wave is impossible to reproduce," Brink stated matter-of-factly, as if he were discussing something as simple as the pulley or the wheel instead of an effect beyond the ability of human science to duplicate.
"That's reassuring," observed Low dryly as he studied their surroundings. "I think I can safely say that we've found another artifact."
Brink studied the seamless floor. There was no sign of a seal, joint, rivet, screw, or other fastening or connection point. The entire floor might as well have been poured out whole and entire.
"I am wondering how much of the asteroid is asteroid and how much artifact? This chamber is large enough to hold several football fields. Has the bolidal material accumulated on its surface, or is the encrustation intentional? How does one ascribe motivation to creatures we cannot even envision?"
Bouncing like hurdlers, they took stock of their surroundings. Light came not from fixtures but from the building material itself. Low checked his gauges. All remained on null. They were being illuminated by radiation that, according to his suit instrumentation, didn't radiate. As far as he was concerned, that was a phenomenon that ranked right up there with artificial gravity.
"I think we've done pretty well for a half hour's hunting." He turned to Brink. "We'd better try to figure out a way back. It'll be interesting to see if our suits can generate enough thrust to push us back up that shaft." With a wave of one arm he encompassed the expansive chamber. "There's too much here to try to inspect on one EVA anyway. This is a job for a properly equipped, long-term expedition. We came here as demolition specialists, remember?"
"Just another five minutes, Commander," Brink pleaded. The scientist's face was alight with the joy of discovery.
Robbins backed him up. "Come on, Boston. What's five minutes? We might find more plates, or something else not nailed down that we can take back with us."
Brink smiled at her. "Thank you, Maggie. As a representative of the international scientific community, I find your unconditional support refreshing."
"You're welcome." Her eyes were shining as she scrutinized their stunning surroundings. "This is just like the Yucatan all over again, only without the snakes and the bugs."
r /> "Or air, water, and food," a reluctant Low felt compelled to add. He looked back over a shoulder. The location of the escape shaft was now well behind them.
"To think that someone built this." Brink was thinking aloud. "Look at these walls, with their folds and ripples. Are they the result of some alien aesthetic at work, or do they perform functions we cannot imagine. I see nothing resembling a switch, button or control as we would conceive of it."
"And the light," Robbins added. "It just comes right out of the metal."
Low indicated the floor over which they were bouncing. "I'm not sure this is metal, Maggie. It looks more like a high-grade ceramic, or plastic of some kind."
"I believe there is something of interest directly ahead." Brink continued to lead the way.
Low checked his suit gauge. They had ample air remaining—provided they could make it back up the shaft on the first try. He tried to contact Borden, but the material of which the chamber was composed effectively blocked his transmission. He tried to envision the scene on the shuttle, with Borden and Miles likewise unable to make contact with the EVA party. Ken was going to need all his vaunted sense of humor to cope with the temporary lapse in communications.
What must be happening down at Mission Control he didn't try to imagine.
All the rage and frustration would subside the instant the absent explorers reported their findings. Sheer bliss would replace fury as soon as they held up the first inscribed plate.
"Two minutes," he announced. "Come on, Ludger. There's more here than we could explore if we'd brought a year's worth of air with us. Remember, excitement makes the body use air faster."
"Then I am surprised to be still breathing." Brink's reply brought forth an appreciative laugh from Robbins. For some reason he couldn't explain, this had the effect of irritating Low.
"You can't breathe dreams, Ludger," he added curtly.
"I know, I know, Commander. Believe me, I have tried." He took another long leap toward the prominent stalagmitelike structure that lay directly ahead. "Let me examine this one prominence and then I promise you we can start back."
"All right." Low followed, moving more easily in his suit than either of his companions.
The metal swirl thrust up from the floor like a sharp dimple in the surface of a balloon. Stolid and featureless, it was as much an enigma as everything else they'd seen. Low leaped high for a look at the summit, while Brink and Robbins explored the base. As he drifted down from his jump, Robbins's ebullient squeal echoed in his ears.
"Commander! I mean, Boston ... come and look at this!"
Low responded before he hit the floor. "What is it? More plates?"
"Not exactly, Commander." As usual, Brink remained in quiet control of his emotions. "You will know when you see for yourself."
The scientist was not lying.
One side of the pedestal, or column, was marred by multiple depressions. They were much deeper than the inscriptions that covered other parts of the chamber. All four were circular, shallow, and approximately a yard in diameter.
"The four plates." Robbins wore the expression of one who had just uncovered an alien Rosetta stone. "They'd fit these holes exactly."
"Maggie is correct." Brink smiled through his faceplate at Low. "What do you suppose might happen, Commander, if we were to place them in these empty receptacles?"
"Probably nothing." Low bent to study the depressions. Like the rest of the column, or for that matter the floor and ceiling, they were utterly featureless. "Maybe this is a giant alien dishwasher and they'll pop back out all nice and shiny. Or maybe they're the components of a giant bomb and we'll all be blown to Kingdom come." He shot a look at Brink. "I don't think it's a very good idea."
"Come, now, Commander," Brink chided him. "Doubtless this object has been drifting through interstellar space for eons. Whatever purpose its makers intended, I doubt that of a bomb was foremost in their minds. Besides, who would design a weapon that had to be armed from the inside out? I suspect you are correct in your evaluation. Most likely nothing will happen anyway."
"Let's try, Boston." Robbins was insistent. "If nothing happens, we can still take the plates back to the ship."
"Well, Commander?" Brink was staring expectantly. "Are you game?"
"Is that a scientific proposal?" Low considered. Using the plates meant returning to the top of the shaft where they'd been left. It would give him a chance to find out how effective their suit thrusters would be against the artificial gravity. The experiment would make things close, air wise, but if they moved fast, they could manage it.
"You get two," he told Brink decisively, "and I'll bring the others."
"What about me?" Robbins protested.
Low hesitated, then unhooked her. "You stay here and make sure the aliens don't run off with the holes."
"Oh, very funny, ha ha. No wonder they never ask any astronauts to host Saturday Night Live."
The two men started to retrace their long steps. "You can make a video of us bringing back the plates," Low told her. "That'll make for a nice, dramatic shot."
"Wide-angle to close-up, yeah. All right, I'll wait here. But don't be long."
"Afraid of ghosts?"
"Not hardly. I just miss your stimulating company, Boston."
With the task at hand foremost in their minds, Low and Brink chose to ignore the frantic flow of inquiries directed at them from the shuttle and, via the shuttle, from Houston. Answers could be provided when they had finished and when air time was no longer so precious a commodity.
The recovery and transference of the alien plates gave Low an opportunity to examine them at length. Save for the inscriptions, they were utterly featureless. Mindful of Brink's intentions, the Commander searched front, back and edges in vain for signs of prongs, plugs or anything resembling a means of affecting a connection with the mound rising from the chamber floor. There was nothing.
True to her word, Robbins had hardly stirred from the spot where they'd left her. She was happily filming away, turning slow circles and letting her arm camera document the interior of the artifact. Despite himself, Low felt self-conscious as he approached, knowing that the recording would probably appear later that day on televisions all over the world, no doubt accompanied by suitably breathless voice-over commentary and dramatic, wholly inappropriate music.
The inscriptions on each plate were unique. There was nothing on the mound to indicate where they might be expected to go, or if indeed they were designed to fit into the empty depressions on its flank.
"Would you like to do the honors, Commander?"
Low turned to the scientist. "I wouldn't think of it, Ludger. This was your idea, and it comes under the heading of archaeological exposition. You represent the science portion of this team. You do it."
"This hardly requires an advanced engineering degree." Brink took the topmost plate and carefully pushed it into one of the matching depressions on the side of the mound. As soon as they saw that it wouldn't fall out, Low started passing the remaining plates to his colleagues.
When Brink filled the last depression with the fourth and final plate, Robbins inhaled expectantly. Nothing happened to justify her mildly melodramatic reaction. The four plates occupied the four depressions with as much élan as they had the rocks surrounding the top of the shaft.
"Perhaps if we rotated them somehow," she suggested, making no effort to conceal her disappointment.
"They fit too snugly." Demonstrating by pushing on the edge of the nearest plate, Brink succeeded only in lifting himself sideways off the floor. "You can just put them in or out. See?" Hooking his gloved fingers into a deep inscription on the metal surface, he tugged gently. The plate came away easily in his hands. Having demonstrated the validity of his assertion, he reinserted it.
"Maybe they're nothing more than decorations." Low leaned forward to scrutinize the etched surfaces. "Pictures that have fallen off a wall. Maybe the explosives blew them loose and they drifted up to lodge in the
loose scree near the top of the shaft. All except for the one that temporarily plugged it."
"They certainly do not appear to have any active function that we can divine." Brink was not as disappointed as Robbins. Failure was common currency in his profession, to be accepted as such.
Low checked his chronometer. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to call an end to recess. It's time to get back to the ship."
"Yes, of course." Brink reached a second time for the plate he'd just removed and reinserted. "I think between the three of us we will have no trouble bringing these four along."
His fingertips never contacted the metal. "Did you see that, did you see it?" Robbins exclaimed as the scientist hastily withdrew his hand.
"I saw it." Low was backpedaling in the weak gravity. "Everybody get clear, move away."
The single bright blue spark that had jumped from the plate to Brink's suit had caused no evident damage, but it wasn't an event either the scientist or Low had any desire to see repeated. As the three of them retreated, more sparks flared, leaping from plate to plate. Others erupted and began to flash about the circumference of the mound like blue kraits overdosed on hormones. They jerked and twitched in an orgy of electric alien lust, occasionally burrowing into the vitreous substance of the mound itself, at other times singeing the vacuum around them.
Had Low allowed it, Brink and Robbins would have stayed and watched. But while admittedly hypnotic, the electrical display was not half as mesmerizing as the falling reading on the Commander's tank gauge.
In their wake the sparks intensified, miniature lightning bolts that began to explore floor and ceiling as well as the increasingly engulfed mound itself. Beams of light followed close upon the bolts, illuminated distant corners of the chamber with a seeming randomness that was anything but. Within the suit Low felt his hair beginning to stand on end.
Lights of different hue began to pulse within the mound, which had taken on the appearance of a tower of metallic glass. The opaque plates stood out starkly against the increasingly translucent structure. By now the metallic circles were wholly involved in dazzling bursts of intensely colored light, and it was impossible to look directly at them.