Engines Of God

Truscott nodded, in that infuriating ma

"That's easy. Set course for home. Report the finding, and let people who are trained in these things, and properly equipped, deal with them." He straightened his shoulders.

"You're probably right," she said. "But I can no more turn away from this than you could walk out the airlock. John, don't you have any curiosity? Don't you want to know what's over there? Or what's down on the surface?"

"Not when it interferes with my duty."

"I understand. We'll have to disagree on this one. Please continue the preparations."

He bowed. "As you wish. The shuttle is ready."

"Thank you. And, John?"

He turned, standing in the doorway.

"Log your objections."

"Thank you, Director."

He walked back through the quiet passageways of the Catherine Perth, toward the bridge, and he knew that if things went wrong, she would do what she could for him. But it wouldn't help much: they'd all go down together.

The comm watch officer chimed Carson. "Response to your question, sir."

Frank was walking with Maggie toward the shuttle bay. "Go ahead."

"Telescopic examination of the anomaly on Three-B does reveal charring. Over perhaps thirty percent of the structure."

Carson watched his team file into the shuttle ready room. George looked happy and anxious; Maggie was intense and full of electricity. He had grown close to Maggie during this mission, had found her far more human than he would have believed. And less detached than she would have wanted to reveal. Today, standing on the edge of history, she anticipated photos. And had dressed the part.

Janet was playing her usual casual role, unflappable, talking quietly to Hutch. But she was a little more erect than usual, her eyes brighter, and he sensed her eagerness to get about the day's business.

And Hutch herself. He'd learned to read her moods. Today she was distracted, preoccupied, thoughtful. He understood that their objective was more personal for her than for the professionals. The archeologists had uncovered their grail, and maybe far more. But Priscilla Hutchins had never learned to let go; she was carrying a lot of baggage with her to the derelict.

"Safety first when we get over there," he said. "Take care of yourself, and don't break anything." They would split into three groups: Janet and himself, George and Maggie, and Hutch with Truscott and Sill. "I'd have preferred that we didn't have to carry Dr. Truscott and her pet bulldog along, but since they own the shuttle, there's not much we can do. Hutch, I want you to keep an eye on them. Don't let them get hurt; don't let them wander off.

"We'll keep in contact, check in with each other every ten minutes. Try not to get involved with the details of what we see. We need a map and a general survey. Once we've got those, we'll set up a plan of action and try to go about this systematically."

"How long will we be staying?" asked Maggie.

"Four hours. That allows us a reasonable safety margin. We'll carry a couple of extra Flickinger harnesses and air tanks on the shuttle. Just in case. Hutch?"

"Will there be someone with the shuttle throughout the operation?"

"Jake is our pilot. He'll stand by. We're going in through an open hatch. It's one of several. Apparently, when the owners left, they never bothered to close the doors."

Sill came in. "We'll be ready in a few minutes," he said.

George was studying a lightpad. "The station has at least six airlocks," he said, "or apertures that look like airlocks. The outer hatches on three of them are open." He looked at the faces around him, inviting an explanation.

"They left in a hurry," suggested Janet.

"Don't know," said Sill.

"1 think," said Maggie, "we're going to discover the artifact has been stripped of everything valuable. The last visitors were looters. Which would explain why they didn't bother to close the doors." She put a finger to her lips. "I wonder why there are no other stations? The later ones? There should be more advanced orbiters."

"Who can say?" said Carson. "Maybe they all went down." He looked at each of them. "Okay, what else? What have we missed?"

Hutch looked up. "Pulsers?"

"We'll have one with each group," said Carson.

"Why do we need them?" Maggie asked.

"To get through doors that won't open."

But Maggie looked uncomfortable. "What's wrong?" asked Janet. "That's not unreasonable."

"Don't know," she said. "The place is a little spooky, and I'm not sure it's a good idea to be walking around in there with weapons. In case somebody gets nervous."

"If nothing else," said Carson, "we might need it to cut through the i

Truscott and Sill arrived. "Sorry to be late," she said. "Our people have been doing a structural analysis of the station."

"What have they concluded?" asked Carson.

Truscott passed to Sill. "Primitive," he said. "It isn't up to our technology at all. And by the way, we have an answer to Hutchins's question about the orbit. As far as we can tell, it's stable. This thing may have been here a long time. Possibly for thousands of years."

"One other thing," said Truscott. "We've found some more ruins. A lot of them."

Melonie Truscott, Diary

"As for man, his days are as grass; as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, ana it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more."

— Psalms 103: 15–16 April 11, 2203

22

Approaching the space station at Beta Pac HI. Monday, April 11; 2140 hours

They looked through large oval windows at long passageways, and wide sunlit rooms filled with oversized chairs and carved tables and broad carpets.

"They knew how to live," Hutch told Truscott. The two women had been talking like old school friends. Everyone was a trifle garrulous on this flight, except maybe Sill, who simply stared warily out the window.

Their pilot, Jake Dickenson, was elaborately uneasy, and full of advice. "Don't assume there's no power," he warned. "Be careful what you touch." And: "Keep in mind there's always a chance the thing might be booby-trapped. We don't know what the circumstances were when these people left."

They drew alongside, and the air in the shuttle thickened. The station was brick-red. It looked like a run-down factory, cluttered with struts and joists and supports and turrets. There was no attempt here to create a smooth outer skin: the hull supported a wide array of pods and ante

"Shuttle bay to port," said Jake. Two cradles were visible through a pair of windows. A small, blunt-winged craft lay in one of them.

They passed above an ante

"What's wrong with them?" asked Carson.

"Ungodly long. We've been doing better than that since the twentieth century. And it uses oversized solar panels. They're inefficient. This thing wasn't built by the same people who designed the telescope."

Hutch described her own conclusion that the shape of the station suggested a technology more primitive than the one associated with the lapetus visitors.

"How long ago was that?" asked Sill.