Carol pulled off her mask and finished removing her diving gear. She was in a medium-sized room somewhat like the ones she and Troy had encountered at the beginning of her last dive. The curved wall partitions were colored black and white. There was a small window to the ocean next to the splash pool on her left. The ceilings were low and tight, only a couple of feet above her head, giving her a feeling of claustrophobia. So here I am again, she thought, Back in Wonderland. This time I will take plenty of pictures. She photographed the procession of the carpet and three platforms just as it disappeared from the room. She then changed lenses and took a dozen quick close-up pictures of the warden standing next to Troy. It had the same amoebalike central body as the one she had confronted the day before, but there were only five implements sticking out of its upper half. The warden had probably been customized for its particular job of taking the objects from the trio.
Troy walked over beside her. “Where’s Nick?” he asked. My God, Carol thought as she turned around and looked back at the slide and splash pool. I almost forgot. She chastised herself for not having waited for Nick. After all, he’s never been down here . . .
Nick’s big body careened out of control against the sides of the slide and he hurtled into the splash pool. The heavy buoyancy bag came down behind him and hit him hard, just above the kidneys. He stumbled to his feet, fell down in the pool, and then stood up again. In his diving apparatus with the thin plastic material from the bag tied around his wrist, it was he who looked like the visitor from outer space.
Carol and Troy were laughing as Nick climbed out of the splash pool. “All right. Professor!” exclaimed Troy. He reached forward to give him a hand. “Good show. It’s a shame we don’t have that entry on tape.”
Nick removed his mouthpiece. He was out of breath. “Thanks a lot for waiting, team,” he stammered. He looked around him. “What is this place, anyway?”
The warden meanwhile had approached him from the side and was already tugging at the bag with one of its appendages. “Just a minute, weirdo,” Nick said, suppressing his fright. “Let me get my bearings first.”
The warden didn’t stop. A knifelike appendage cut the bag below where it was attached to Nick’s wrist. Next the warden took the entire bag, including its lead and gold contents, and somehow pushed it through its own semipermeable outer skin. The bag could be seen intact, adjacent to the rectangular control boxes, as the warden turned and hurried across the floor. It went through the same exit that the carpet and platforms had used earlier.
“You’re welcome,” Nick managed to say as he watched the strange creature disappear with the loot. He finished taking off his diving gear and walked over to Troy. “Okay, Jefferson, you’re the main man here. What do we do now?”
“Well, Professor,” he answered, “as far as I can tell, our job is finished. If you guys want, we can suit up again and jump through that window wall over there. We’d be back in the boat in less than five minutes. If I’ve read the messages right, these alien dudes will be ready to leave very shortly.”
“You mean that’s it? We’re done?” Carol asked. Troy nodded. “This is the most overrated experience since my first sexual encounter,” Carol commented.
Nick was walking across the room, moving directly away from the splash pool and his two friends. “Where are you going?” Troy asked.
“I paid a hefty admission price,” Nick replied. “I’m at least entitled to a tour.” Carol and Troy followed him. They crossed the empty room and walked through an exit between two wall partitions on the opposite side. They entered a short, dark, covered corridor. They could see light at the other end. They emerged into another room, this one circular and significantly larger. It had the high cathedral ceilings that Carol had liked so much on her last visit.
This room was not empty. Sitting in its middle facing them was a gigantic, enclosed, translucent cylinder, about twenty-five feet high altogether and ten feet in diameter at its base. A horde of orange pipes and purple cable sheaths attached the cylinder to a group of machines built into the wall behind it. There was a light green liquid filling the inside of the cylinder and eight gold metallic objects floating at different heights in the liquid. The objects were many different shapes. One looked like a starfish, another like a box, a third like a derby hat; the only thing the objects had in common was their gold metallic outer covering. Upon close inspection of the cylinder, thin membranes could be seen inside the liquid. These surfaces effectively partitioned the internal volume and gave each of the golden objects its own unique subvolume.
“All right, genius,” Nick said to Troy, after he stared at the cylinder for almost a full minute. “Explain what this is all about.” Carol was in a photographer’s paradise. She had nearly finished recording all hundred and twenty-eight pictures that could be stored on one minidisc. She had photographed the cylinder from all angles, including a close-up of each of the objects suspended in the liquid, and was now working on the machines behind it. She stopped taking pictures to listen to Troy’s reply.
“Well, Professor . . .” Troy started. His forehead was knitted as he tried to concentrate. “As far as I can make out from what they’ve been trying to tell me, this spaceship is on a mission to a dozen planets that are scattered in this part of the galaxy. On each planet the aliens leave one of those golden things you see in the cylinder. They contain tiny embryos or seeds that have been genetically engineered for survival on that specific planet.”
Carol walked over beside them. “So the ship goes from planet to planet, dropping off these packages containing seeds of some kind? Sort of a galactic Johnny Appleseed?”
“Sort of, angel, except that there are both animal and plant seeds inside the container. Plus advanced robots that nurture and educate the growing things until they reach maturity. Then the creatures can flourish on their own without help.”
“All in that one little package?” Nick asked. He looked again at the fascinating objects floating in the liquid in the cylinder. He loved the golden color. All of a sudden he thought of the trident. He imagined thousands of tiny swarming embryos inside its outer golden surface and in his mind’s eye he projected the growth of the swarm into the future. There was something fearsome about creatures genetically engineered to survive on the planet Earth. What if they are not friendly?
Nick’s heart sped up as he realized what had been bothering him, partly subconsciously, since he started believing Troy’s story about the aliens. Why did they stop on the Earth in the first place? What do they really want from us? His mind raced on. And if that trident contains beings destined for Earth that are extremely advanced, he thought, then it doesn’t matter if they are friendly. We will be finished sooner or later anyway.
Carol and Troy were talking in general terms about the way an advanced civilization might use seeds to colonize other planets. Nick wasn’t listening carefully. I can’t tell Troy or even Carol. If the aliens know what I’m thinking they will stop me. I’d better do it soon.
“Troy,” he heard Carol say as she began to take another set of pictures of the objects in the cylinder, “is it just co-incidence that the trident we found on Thursday looks so much like one of these seed packages?”
Nick did not wait for Troy to answer. “Excuse me,” he interrupted in a loud voice. “I forgot something very important. I must go back to the boat. Stay here and wait for me. I’ll be right back.”
He burst out of the room, down the corridor, and across the room with the low ceiling and the window on the ocean. Good, he said to himself, nothing is going to stop me. Without even pausing to put on his diving gear, Nick took a huge breath and dove through the window. He was afraid that his lungs were going to explode before he reached the surface. But he made it. He climbed up the ladder and onto the boat.
Nick went immediately to the bottom drawer underneath the racks of electronic equipment. He reached in and grabbed the golden trident. He could feel that the axis rod had thickened considerably. It was now nearly twice as thick as it had been the first time that he held it. Carol was right. Damnit, why didn’t I listen to her at the time? He pulled the object completely out of the drawer. The sun was just about to come up behind him. In the dawn light Nick could see that the trident had changed in several other ways. It was heavier. The individual tines on the fork end were much thicker and had almost grown together. In addition, there was an open hole into a soft, gooey interior on the north pole of the larger of the two spheres.