In this case, some life still remained. Tough, fibrous tendrils a yard thick, looking like great white worms, snaked out across the desert, interspersed with occasional cactus-like growths. Intelligent life was gone, but the terraces characterizing this part of the desert were regular enough to betray their artificial origin. With a soft rumbling sound Caerman’s digging machines were biting into the terraces, vacuuming away the rubble to be sorted in a vibrating sieve system. Piles of skeletons and artifacts, the output of the sieves, littered the landscape. Team E-7 was archeologizing the site, not gently, perhaps, but well.
Caerman himself, a big-boned man who moved easily and energetically, stepped forward to meet them. He had abandoned the cloak usually worn by team leaders and wore a one-piece track suit.
“Glad you decided to drop in,” he welcomed cheerfully. “Care for some refreshment?”
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Hakandra replied curtly. “No thank you. I’d rather get down to work.”
“Okay. Over here.” He led the way to a nearby pavilion. As they walked he turned to Shane. “How do you read this place?”
Shane glanced at the yellow sun and shrugged. “It’s all right. We’ll be okay here for a while. Everything feels calm.”
“That’s good to know. I’ll pass the word around-it makes me nervous seeing my men watch the sun all the tune.”
“How long since this civilization fell?” Hakandra asked.
“Not long. I estimate this city had inhabitants not more than fifty thousand years ago, maybe much less.”
“And the cause?”
Caerman spread his hands, looked glum. “There’s nothing specific. I can only put it down to one thing:
premature ecological aging.”
“A peculiar concept.”
“It’s one I’ve learned to accept since working in the Cave. Here as in other places, the whole biota went, though there are still a few bits and pieces hanging on, mostly cactuses. The intelligent species lasted longer than any other animal life, which is unusual. We have reason to believe they planned to survive and were aware of the nova situation here in the Cave.”
He ushered them into the pavilion. “Well, here it is.”
The interior of the pavilion looked like a museum, or display, depicting the dead civilization. Painted reconstructions of the natives adorned the walls. They were sad-looking creatures with lizard-like skulls and bony, scaly limbs.
But team E-7 was less interested in their appearance than in their technology. Caerman led Hakandra to the find that had caused him to break off his itinerary and come here.
The alien machine still showed signs of its long internment in the earth. The metal casing, though rustproof, was much corroded. It was shaped like a huge
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drum, the top surface of which consisted of a flat crystalline lens which sparkled vividly but was totally opaque.
“You say it’s functional?”
“All we know is that it responds to a power input. Until we can work out what power level and waveform it uses we won’t really be in a position to say what sort of shape it’s in.”
“But what about its purpose?”
Caerman pointed to a thin, nervous-looking man who entered the pavilion at that moment and went to speak to the technicians working on a transformer. “Wishom here can tell you more about that. He’s in charge of the technical study.”
Wishom joined them, nodding a greeting to Hakandra and listening carefully to his questions. “We know these people were interested in random phenomena,” he said in a reedy voice. “It seems they were working on the problem of why stars in the Cave are apt to go nova. In my belief they had hoped to control the process so as to ensure their own survival.”
“They planned to stop stars going nova?”
“That’s what I think.”
Shane cackled wildly. “They needn’t have bothered -they died anyway! They never stood a chance-nobody does in Caspar!”
Caerman frowned in the sudden silence. “Quite right,” he agreed quietly. “They needn’t have bothered.”
“But they did bother, right up until they realized that, novae apart, they were going to become extinct biologically.” Wishom tapped the casing of the alien machine. “This was found in a sealed preservation chamber-obviously they set considerable store by it. Its core is a globe of black solid material that’s opaque to everything we’ve beamed at it. We are fairly sure it’s a randomness machine of some sort, but we’re reluctant to take it apart in case we can’t put it back together again. Instead we’re giving it the black box
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treatment-giving it inputs and seeing what comes out.”
“Perhaps it’s only a fermat,” Hakandra conjectured. “In some ways it reminds one of a fermat, but there’s clearly more to it than that.”
Hakandra pondered briefly. “I’m here to decide whether tills investigation should continue,” he told Wishom in a brusque voice. “I can only do so if there is a significant possibility that it will be militarily useful.”
Wishom blinked. “By controlling the nova process?” “Exactly.”
“It’s a tall order,” Wishom said doubtfully. “As yet I don’t know of anything that would suggest the natives were close to their goal, or even that they knew something we don’t.” The scientist’s gaze became vague. “How soon do you need to decide?” “Immediately.”
Wishom snorted. Just then the technicians at the transformer signalled to him.
“Better stand back,” he advised, “we’re about to begin an experiment.”
The transformer hummed as it fed into the alien drum a power waveform Wishom had calculated the machine might use. The flat crystal tabletop suddenly sparkled and blazed, throwing off spears of light.
Wishom and his technicians scarcely seemed to notice the display. Wishom had returned to the transformer and was busy studying the recording instruments. “Interesting,” he murmured, pointing out something to his helpers.
Suddenly a yell of fear came from Shane. He cringed away from the glowing machine, his mouth sagging open and his face white. “Stop it!” he keened. “Stop it!” Hakandra leaped to the boy. “What is it, Shane?” he barked.
“Uncontrollable-” Shane whimpered.
He began to drool.
At a gesture from Caerman the transformer was
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switched off. Its hum died into a strained silence. Hakandra seized Sbane by the shoulders, peering at him anxiously. “Is it all right now?” he demanded.
Shane nodded weakly. “Tension,” he muttered. “Tension in the air, in the stars-but uncontrollable. Uncontrollable.” His voice faded.
Hakandra straightened, looking first at Shane and then at the machine, weighing the youth’s words.
“Gentlemen,” he announced, “the project goes on.”
Chapter Eight
Looking around the crowded force network platform, Cheyne Scame decided the time had come to make a break for it. He turned to one of his two escorts.
“I have to go to the men’s room,” he said.
“Okay, we’ll wait here.” The escorts seemed relaxed. Scame was not on probation any more.
The washroom was at the end of the platform, near the main concourse. Once inside the door Scame went to the visionless phone on the wall and tapped out the number Magdan bad given him.
A woman’s voice answered. “Yes?”
Pretending to stroke his cheek, Scame cupped his hand round his mouth to muffle his words. ‘“This is Professor Scame,” he murmured. “I’m at Sanfran force station. I have what you want. Will you pick me up?”
Scame heard a click, a buzz, then a hum. Another voice, which from its intonation he knew to be a computer voice, spoke. “Give me your exact location.”
“I’m in the washroom on platform sixteen.”
“Do you have company?”
Scame paused before answering. A citizen brushed
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by him and went out of the door. “Two Wheel heavies. They’re waiting for me further up the platform.”
“Lock yourself in cubicle number nine and wait there until you are contacted.”
The phone fell silent. Scame went and did as he was told. Inside the cubicle he sat down on the pedestal, feeling at once excited and weary.
After five minutes there came a sharp rap on the door. As he opened it a slim, conservatively dressed young man squeezed in quickly, closing the door behind him.
The two of them so crowded the small space that Scarne was obliged to sit again, the Legitimacy man towering close above him. The agent opened the attache case he carried and spoke in a low voice.
“Remove your outer clothes.”
Scame obeyed, clumsily. The agent was impatient. “Faster,” he murmured, “your friends will be wondering about you.” From the case he took fresh garments: a brown striped suit and a small flat hat, an item Scame would normally never have worn.
When he had changed, transferring his belongings to the new suit, the agent stuffed his old garments into the case.
“Now for the face,” he said softly.
Scame was obliged to sit once more while the other man pulled something soft and squishy-feeling over his head and over his face, pressing it into his neck. The stuff seemed to melt into his skin with a faint burning sensation.
Opening bis eyes, Scame found he was being studied intently. The agent tilted bis face. “That’s good enough. Better than it need be, in fact. Okay, we leave now. Enter the main concourse by the other door, so the Wheel mugs don’t see you-get it? I’ll be right behind you.”