“Too bad,” he commented.
She made a face. “Too bad? What did you expect?”
“I didn’t expect anything, Maggie. I hoped for full regeneration, for the arm to grow a new hand. I guess even the life crystals have their limits.” He ran bloodied fingers over the smooth terminus. The new skin was so perfect, you couldn’t tell that the limb had ever been damaged.
“Interesting. It can restore life but not individual body parts. I’ll bet we could have reattached the severed hand if we’d been able to dig it out.” He looked longingly at the narrow crevice in the rocks that had caused all the trouble. It would take days to excavate the sundered appendage, and that was assuming the loose scree didn’t come crashing down to trap them while they were working.
Brink didn’t need two hands anyway, Low rationalized. He was an idea man.
Robbins’s thoughts had traveled along similar lines. “Hey, he doesn’t have any reason to complain. It beats the alternative.”
They stayed close to the scientist all through the night. The strange constellations were a welcome sight, sparkling and twinkling in the unpolluted air. There was no need to rush to shelter since after dark the temperature dropped only a few degrees before steadying.
By morning the scientist had recovered sufficiently to share water and a couple of handfuls of scavenged berries, which Low prayed contained nothing toxic enough to knock their feet out from under them. They ate comforted by the knowledge that in the event of poisoning, a life crystal apiece could probably cure them.
Brink managed well with his one remaining hand. “It’s all right,” he assured his companions. “I told you to do what you had to do, and you did. At least I am alive.”
“You know what my biggest fear was?” Low told him. “That the shock would kill you and I’d have to use one of the crystals to revive you … with your hand still trapped in the rocks.”
Brink was thoughtful. “Perhaps the crystals are not all identical. It may be that different kinds contain different instructions and we are not perceptive enough to distinguish between them. Possibly some are not capable of full resurrection. Hence the lack of any digital regeneration.” He held up his stump.
“It was my fault. I had, and still have, plenty of the crystals. I should have let that one go.”
Robbins put a comforting hand on his arm. “Don’t blame yourself. You couldn’t have known the rock was going to shift like that.”
“She’s right.” Between the bloodstains on his hands and arms and the pulpy residue from the berries darkening his lips, Low looked first cousin to a condor.
“No, I blame myself.” Brink paused, trying to find the appropriate words. “I have to thank you both. Recently I have been somewhat…”
“Obsessed?” Low supplied the word without prompting.
The scientist smiled thinly. “As good a term as any, Commander Low. I still feel their pull”—he patted his overstuffed crystal-packed pockets—”but I think I can control my interests now as opposed to having them control me.”
“Good. Then maybe you’re ready for another piece of good news. Remember me telling you that I’d found a preserved Cocytan? Well, while you were sunbathing in crystal light, I used a couple to resurrect it. Twice. Maggie was there the second time. We learned a great deal about this world and what happened to it.”
“I should like to have seen that.” A glimmer of the old inquisitiveness shone in the scientist’s eyes.
“You had your chance,” Low told him. “We promised it that we wouldn’t revive it anymore. In return, it told us where to find more of the activation plates. We have four of them again. Whether they’ll work on the asteroid-ship or not is anybody’s guess, but at least we’ve been given a chance.”
Brink nodded solemnly. He no longer appeared agitated or nervous. His most recent brush with death and the subsequent amputation had left him chastened. Nothing like losing an important appendage to put things in perspective. Or perhaps his newfound calm was a salutary side effect resulting from the absorption of the life crystal. Low didn’t really care. He was simply pleased with the result. It might well take all of them to make it off this world, and he was glad to have the scientist back on the team.
“If you will lead the way, Commander, I will help as best I can.” Brink gestured in the direction of the main chamber.
“What about ‘attending’ to your life crystals?” Low inquired challengingly.
“These?” Brink patted his bulging pockets. “They’re not going anywhere.” He started off in the direction of the break in the chamber ceiling. “We are wasting time. I suggest you both keep up with me, since my capacity to wave to you has been significantly diminished.”
CHAPTER 20
They gathered up the four plates and hauled them to the tower mound containing the four matching cavities. Whether inserting the plates would activate the asteroid-ship or some other system they had no way of knowing, but there was no place to put the plates inside the asteroid. The original control pylon had metamorphosed and sunk into the floor, taking the original four plates with it.
One at a time, Low carefully placed them in the vacant recesses. When the time came to insert the fourth and last, he directed his companions to move back. Then he inserted the plate and hastened to join them.
Side by side they watched and waited. The plates sat neatly in their receptacles. Light poured through the distant fracture in the ceiling. Somewhere up above, a representative of the local fauna squealed inquisitively.
Nothing happened.
“Maybe if we alter the order of placement,” Robbins suggested. “We might have inserted certain plates into the wrong orifices.”
“I don’t think there is a wrong order.” Low did his best to sustain his companions’ spirits, not to mention his own. “There’s nothing to indicate that a particular plate goes into a certain cavity.”
“We are fools for expecting this to resolve our situation.” Both of them turned to Brink. “What did you expect? For this chamber to turn into a giant spaceship and carry us homeward?” Arm outstretched, head flung back, Brink turned a slow circle.
“The machine is broken. We have been spoiled by finding so many mechanisms still capable of functioning. It is unreasonable to expect everything to work. Unreasonable!” Lowering his arm and straightening, he looked back at them as he staggered to a stop. His eyes were wild.
The beneficial side effects of his amputation were already wearing off, Low saw sadly.
“Perhaps it requires more than four plates to activate it, whatever this damned console controls.” Brink held up his foreshortened arm. “Perhaps it is missing a part, as am I.”
Robbins looked around sharply. “Did you feel that?”
“Feel what?” Low was baffled, and he didn’t want to be baffled. He wanted to be simultaneously sorry for and angry at the scientist.
Then he didn’t have to ask. The floor had begun to tremble. The distinct yet subtle quivering ran up his feet and into his body. It was accompanied by a deep electronic hum, like the moan of some huge hibernating creature stirring from a long sleep.
The ceiling did not crumble, the floor did not crack. The chamber simply continued to vibrate in harmony with the unseen source. Nor did it begin to rise skyward and accelerate toward the distant Earth. Not for the first time Low noted how different the interior of the great chamber was from that of the asteroid-ship.
He turned his attention to the gap in the roof. Rocks and gravel spilled over the edge, adding to the height of the rubble pile beneath. There was no more sign of impending collapse than there was of a hidden port sliding sideways to seal the opening.
Robbins’s attention was directed elsewhere. “Over there!” She pointed excitedly.
Following close on the heels of their elevated expectations, Low found the sight decidedly anticlimactic. The fifth and last high, arching doorway had finally opened. In appearance it was identical to the four he had accessed with the aid of the compact robots.
They advanced cautiously on the newly revealed portal. Beyond lay no sleek Cocytan starship or gratuitous alien wonder. The sight was depressingly familiar: another spherical transport station that was an exact duplicate of the four they had already utilized. Low’s gaze took in the same gray walls, the same unmarked dark tunnel, the perfect pearllike sphere resting alongside the loading platform.
The vibration in the floor ceased. Looking back, he could see that the four round plates, acquired after so much effort and with such high hopes, still rested neatly in their respective recesses. They could be removed, he decided, as easily as they had been inserted.
It was hardly what Brink had been hoping for. The disappointment hit him harder than either of his companions.