The voices of ground control had gone from restive to anxious to desperate and now to imploring. “Atlantis, this is Houston. Do you read? Atlantis, this is Houston, do you read?” It was a mournful mantra that deserved to be acknowledged.
Borden’s eyes hadn’t left the place where the asteroid had been. A part of him continued to listen to the plaintive voices of Earth.
“Atlantis, we’re registering an anomaly down here.” A new voice, as curious as it was concerned. “Can you enlighten?”
“Sure,” Borden heard himself replying. “We can explain. The asteroid is gone. Oh, and it wasn’t an asteroid.”
Silence from far below, from a place of reality and familiar surroundings, so different from the dark emptiness where the shuttle floated. Then, very tentatively, “Atlantis, say again?”
“I told you: It’s gone. It changed shape, morphed, whatever you want to call it. It was an asteroid, and then it became … something else. And now it’s gone.”
A shorter silence this time. “That’s what it shows here. But that’s impossible. Asteroids don’t suddenly pick up and move. Your position has remained constant.”
“That’s us humans for you.” Miles took over from Borden. “Constant. Ken told you. It wasn’t an asteroid. Whatever it was did move.” She swallowed. “Real fast. As in instantaneous.”
“Borden, can you confirm?”
He waited until the query was repeated. “Yeah. Yeah, I can confirm. It went poof. Just like the genie of the lamp.”
More silence before, “Commander Low? Specialist Brink and Ms. Robbins?”
“I expect they went poof, too, since they were inside the object when it vanished.” He exhaled slowly, suddenly very tired. “They found artifacts. Inscribed metal plates of some kind. Then they found a shaft, or tunnel, leading inside. So they went in. And now… they’ve gone away. That’s the concise version. I’ll try to be more illuminating later.”
“Inside?” queried Mission Control. “Artifacts?”
“That’s right. Nothing exceptional about finding artifacts on an artifact. Once they were inside, communications became intermittent. There was a lot of free energy running through the object and coming off it. Cold energy.” He giggled, caught himself quickly. “Cold confusion. It skipped a little to one side, flashed a good-bye, and vanished.”
“What you’re telling us makes no sense, Mr. Borden.”
The copilot responded without hesitation. “Thank you for confirming our hypothesis, Houston. We are awaiting orders.” He could envision many very confused experts caucusing aimlessly.
“All right.” A new, no-nonsense voice had wrested control of the transmission. “If they are no longer there, then where did they go?”
Borden and Miles exchanged a glance before Cora Miles— daughter of a janitor, international chess champion, NCAA women’s runner-up on the three-meter board, summa cum laude MIT, responded in her best congresswoman-to-be tone.
“Honey, don’t ask us, but if you find out, we’d sure like to know. Because I’m telling you, they’re not onboard, they’re not in the lock, they’re not within range of any of our instruments. They’re gone, man.”
Borden pushed back against his chair. “Wherever they’ve gone, I hope there are green trees, and morning fog, and the cry of gulls, or Boz is going to be pissed. But somehow I don’t think there will be.”
His eyes dropped to a gauge that monitored the shuttle’s ground speed. Next to it was one that had been calibrated to do the same for the asteroid. It was frozen, showing only a long line of zeros.
Which happened to represent with unexpected scientific accuracy the sum total of their current knowledge as to the asteroid’s makeup, purpose and present whereabouts.
CHAPTER 8
Adrift amid oceans of preternatural calm, there were continents. Each wore a reddish-pink halo of algal bloom in which fan-tailed sievers of bloated mien held court, arcing and diving like pale prima donnas in a perpetual alien pax de deux. Swifter of pace but lesser in bulk, other creatures inhabiting the sea frolicked around these masters of biomass conversion. The land held concourse with pacific denizens, while in the pale-blue sky thin-winged supplicants gesticulated alternately to clouds and mountaintop.
The three humans onboard the unasteroid saw none of this as their transport winked into the world at a predetermined boundary between soil and space. They were still confined to a tiny, circumscribed world of light and slippery surfaces, wondering what had happened to them but so surrounded by marvels that they had little time in which to bemoan possible fates.
The device circled thrice around the peaceful planet before commencing its descent. Those within felt no cessation of motion, just as they had felt none of the incredible acceleration. Robbins was preoccupied with the condition of her suit, into which she had, during an awkward moment, thrown up. She was as much embarrassed as she was discomfited.
No one knew what had happened to them or what was going on in the outside world. Nor did they have a clue that that same outside world no longer, to all intents and purposes, actively existed. They had known only intense light, subtle vibration, stomach-churning disorientation, and a complete lack of communication with their colleagues back aboard the Atlantis. Decision was on hold, life on automatic, thinking processes on maintenance. They would remain so until one of them succeeded in figuring out what the hell was going on.
In the south-central part of one rosy-tinged ocean, out of sight of the nearest continent, a rocky, bowl-shaped island surrounded by a handful of smaller islets thrust out of the sea from a stabilized volcanic bed. The unasteroid appeared above them, descending through a twilit sky. Slowing, it hovered for long moments while instruments within communicated with instruments situated below. Then and only then did it gently lower itself into a waiting, lined depression in the rock. Other instruments located on the outer islands observed silently without offering comment.
The stony flotilla lay anchored in an otherwise featureless sea. From each of the secondary islets a single shining spire shot skyward. Disturbed by the silent arrival in their midst of the mile-long mass, a few primitive island dwellers had taken fright. Reassured by the object’s continued lack of motion, they soon returned huffily to their places of rest and nest.
It was Brink who first noticed that a gauge on his arm was signaling the presence of external atmosphere. When it had begun to infiltrate their formerly airless prison no one could say, but their suits pronounced it eminently inhalable. Despite Low’s cautionary protestations, the scientist was quick to crack his helmet seal. The commander did not argue overmuch. All three of them were nearly out of air anyway.
The addition of a breathable atmosphere gave them something else to think about, not to mention a greater degree of comfort. They remained close to their suits, the shed skins laid out nearby lest invisible and unknown powers decide to withdraw the fresh air as capriciously as they had provided it. Robbins was understandably more eager than either of her companions to avail herself of the opportunity.
“What happens now?” Robbins was trying to unfasten the arm camera from the sleeve of her suit. She had managed to clean herself up reasonably well.
The last of the flaring illumination flickered and went out, as though someone had turned out the floor. Low considered the situation. “We try to get back in touch with the shuttle somehow. The manipulator arm won’t reach very far down the fissure, but if it’s still clear of debris, then Ken could lower a line to us. Drop us some refills for our suit tanks first, of course, and then—”
And then never came about, because one wall began to groan like an old Cyclops with a bad stomach, and an opening appeared in the side of the asteroid. There was no visible door. The wall simply separated and crinkled back in upon itself, like a torn sheet of aluminum foil.
Wan, yellow sunlight poured through the gap. Beyond, they could see peculiar-shaped trees and bushes; short, scruffy grasslike vegetation; rocks, clouds and sky.
Low took a cautious step toward the portal. “You know what? I don’t think we’re in geosynchronous orbit above Kansas anymore.”
“Should’ve listened to the dog,” Robbins remarked uneasily. “The dog always had more sense than any of them.”
“Tell it to the wizard.” Low was striding purposefully toward the light. “At this point, I’m willing to believe he just might be hanging around.”
“Different milieu, if I am interpreting the reference correctly.” Brink followed closely. “I see no Emerald City, Commander.”
Low reached the opening. Sure enough, it went all the way through the outer wall of the asteroid. “Given where we were just a few hours ago, Ludger, I personally find the presence of trees even more remarkable.”
They exited simultaneously, and even the redoubtably loquacious Robbins was at a loss for words.
The gleaming outer surface of what had once looked like an asteroid was mirror-smooth and nonreflective. The object now rested in a hollow that it had gouged in the ground … or that had been prepared to receive it. Beyond and around there was only air, sea, sky and plant life. The appearance of the few clouds hovering overhead was achingly normal. Low estimated the temperature to be between seventy and seventy-five degrees, with the ambient humidity appropriately reflective of their coastal locale. Except for the lapping of small waves on the nearby shore, it was silent, though Low had experienced greater silence elsewhere. Northwest Australia, for example.