“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.
“How’s that for an ‘active function?” Robbins was trying to run, float, and aim her camera backward at the same time. She would have fallen behind had not Low taken a firm grip on one of her suit straps and jerked her along. So bright had the light issuing from the plates and the mound become that his faceplate darkened automatically every time he glanced back over a shoulder. Nor did the incrementally intensifying display give any indication of slowing down.
Silent flowerings of light began to spew from the base of the mound and explode past the retreating humans. His suit gauges were going crazy, though the critical radiation meter remained well within tolerable limits. Around them the chamber was responding with flares and flashes and electrical eruptions of its own. Walls bulged and twisted, the ceiling rippled like beach sand, and the floor underfoot ran through a dizzying series of patterns, like a morphing squid gone berserk. Within the chamber only the three fleeing humans remained untouched.
Trapped within a psychotic rainbow, he thought tensely. Or an engineer’s schematic of an exploding battery. Neither image was particularly reassuring.
All about them, the chamber was coming alive, and they were trapped in its heaving gut.
“The shaft! Use full power on your thrusters!” As he gave the order, he ran his own fingers over the relevant controls and felt himself beginning to rise. The suit propulsion unit possessed just enough thrust to counter the feeble artificial gravity. As they rose higher, the gravity weakened and the strain on the suit motor gradually decreased. Robbins performed admirably, letting Low tow her while she continued to operate her camera. He would have complimented her but didn’t feel he could spare the time.
All of his attention was concentrated on the opening above, the exit to fissure, surface, space, and shuttle. Four simple steps to security, four different landscapes to traverse.
A bolt of red lightning blew past him. It seemed to wink as it passed, a parade of semidomesticated charged particles.
“It’s beautiful!” Robbins shouted over her communicator.
“You can describe it to me later.”
“Damn, would you look at that.” Eyes wide and unblinking, Borden leaned forward in his chair.
“Man oh man.” Having left her station, Miles hung in the air between the two piloting stations.
There were no words for what they were seeing, no facile way to describe that which had never previously been witnessed, or even imagined.
Scintillating beams of light were erupting from the surface of the asteroid, or rather, from depths unseen. Their source was invisible, buried somewhere deep beneath the rocks. Though intensely bright, they did not lase. Depressions and small craters spat silent thunderbolts and fireballs, which raced off into space or arced back to smash afresh into the agitated surface.
“What’s happening?” she found herself whispering. “What the hell’s happening?”
“Maybe that’s it. Maybe Hell’s happening.” A grim-faced Borden was trying to interpret readouts as fast as he could scan them. “More important is, why is it happening?” He shouted without looking up, knowing that the omnidirectional pickup would snatch his words out of the cabin’s atmosphere. “Boston? Come back, Boz! What’s going on down there? Where are you guys?”
“… lights…,” a familiar and heavily distorted voice replied. “On our way out. Artifacts activated … device. We are—” Overpowering electrical interference stifled the rest of the words.
“Boston, Boston, say again!” With an effort, Borden fought down the urge to pound his fist against the speaker grid. Instead, he looked up at the mission payload specialist. “Did he say ‘device’?”