Engines Of God

Cabinets lined the bulkheads. The doors would not open. But, more importantly, they were inscribed with symbols. Maggie made for them like a moth to a flame. "If it is the

Monument-Makers," she said, after a few moments, "they aren't like any of the other characters we've seen." She was wearing a headband TV camera, which was relaying everything back to the shuttle. "God, I love this," she added.

There was another doorway at the rear of the room, and a second, identical suite beyond.

Hutch turned off the common cha

Later, they found more open doors. They looked into a laboratory, and an area that had provided support functions to the station. There was a kitchen. And a room filled with basins and a long trough that might have had an excretory use. The trough was about as high as the table. They saw what might have been the remains of a showering facility.

Daylight came again. Forty minutes after it had passed out of the windows, the sun was back. At about the same time, they came to an up-ramp which split off the passageway.

"Okay," said Carson. "Looks like time to divide. Everybody be careful." He looked at Maggie. "Do you have a preference where you want to go?"

"I'll stay down here," she said.

He started up. "We'll meet back here in an hour. Or sooner, if anybody finds anything interesting." Truscott and Sill fell in behind him, and the plan to have Hutch watch them collapsed. Carson gri

They continued along the lower level, and almost immediately found a room filled with displays and consoles half-hidden by lush, high-back chairs. "Computers," breathed Maggie.

There were photos on the walls. Faded. But maybe still discernible.

Maggie was trying to get a look at a keyboard, but the consoles were too high. She glowed with pleasure. "You don't think they'd still work, do you—?" she wondered.

"Not after a few thousand years," said Hutch. "If it's really been that long."

"Well, even if they don't, the keyboard will give us their alphanumerics. That alone is priceless."

Then George got excited. He'd found a picture of the vehicle they'd seen in the shuttle bay. It was in flight, and the space station was in the background. "Glory days," he said.

A second photo depicted Beta Pac III, blue and white and very terrestrial.

Eager to have a look at the consoles, Maggie moved in front of a chair and pulled off one of her magnetic shoes, pla

The chair was occupied.

Carson's voice erupted from the commlink. "What's happening? Hutch—?"

Maggie stared up at the thing in the seat, color draining from her face.

"We've got a corpse," Hutch said into the common cha

"On our way," said Carson.

The occupant of the chair was a glowering, mummified thing.

"This one, too," said George, trying to steady his voice, and indicating the next chair.

Two of them.

Maggie, embarrassed, stared up at the corpse. Hutch walked over and stood beside her. "You okay?"

"Yeah," she said. "It just startled me. I wasn't expecting it."

Its eyes were closed. The skin had shriveled to dry parchment. The skull was dust-brown, lean, narrow. Ridged. Long arms ended in large hands that retained a taloned appearance. The gray-black remains of a garment hung around its waist and clung to its legs.

"There must have been air here for a while," said George. "Or the bodies wouldn't have decomposed."

"I don't think that's so," said Maggie. "Organisms are full of chemicals. They'd cause a general breakdown whether the corpse is in a vacuum or not. It would just take longer."

It was belted into its chair.

Had been belted in when the airlocks were opened.

Its dying agony was still imprinted on its face.

What had happened here?

Maggie gingerly touched its knee.

Hutch stood in front of it, and knew the thing. Recognized it.

Carson and the others filed in.

They spread around the room, moving quietly. "Is it them?" Truscott asked. "The creatures from lapetus?"

"Yes," said Carson. He looked around. "Anybody disagree?"

No one did.

"Sad," Maggie said. "This is not the way we should have met."

Sill was just tall enough to be able to see the work stations. "It's their operations center, I think," he said.

George turned back to the photos. They were encased and mounted within the bulkhead. Most were too blurred to make out. But he saw a cluster of buildings in one. He found another that appeared to be a seascape. "That could be Maine," said Sill, looking over his shoulder.

Hutch could not look away from the corpses.

Strapped down.

Had they been murdered? Unlikely. The restraining belt did not look capable of holding anyone who didn't want to be held. Rather, they had stayed here while someone opened the airlocks and let the void in.

The station was a mausoleum.

They found more corpses in spaces that seemed to have been living quarters on the upper level. They counted thirty-six before they stopped. There would undoubtedly be more. The bodies, without exception, were belted down. They understood the implication almost from the start, and it chilled them. // was a mass suicide. They didn't want to get thrown around or sucked out by decompression, so they overrode whatever safety features they had, tied themselves in, and opened the doors.

"But why!" asked Truscott. Carson knew the director to be tough and unyielding. But she was shaken by this.

Maggie also seemed daunted. "Maybe suicide was implicit in their culture. Maybe they did something wrong on this station, and took the appropriate way out."

In the aftermath of their discovery, they roamed aimlessly through the station. Adhering to the spirit of Carson's safety concerns, or maybe for other reasons, no one traveled alone.

Maggie commandeered Sill and stayed close to the operations area. They prowled among the computers, and took some of the hardware apart, with a view to salvaging data banks, if they still existed.

George and Hutch went looking for more photos. They found them in the living quarters. They were faded almost to oblivion, but they could make out figures wearing robes and cloaks. And more structures: exotic upswept buildings that reminded Carson of churches. And there were two photos that might have been scenes from a launch site, a circle that resembled a radio dish and something else that looked like a gantry. And a group photo. "No question about that one," said George. "They're posing."

Carson laughed.

"What's fu

"I'm not sure." He had to think about it before he recognized consciously the absurdity of such intimidating creatures lining up for a team picture.

In another photo, two of them stood beside something that might have been a car, and waved.

Carson was moved. "How long ago, do you think?" he asked.

George looked at the picture. "A long time."

Yet the place did not evoke the weight of centuries, the way the Temple of the Winds had. The operations spaces might have been occupied yesterday. Things were a little dusty, but the station was full of sunlight. It was hard to believe that the sound of footsteps had not echoed recently through the long corridors. But there was an easy explanation for that: the elements had not been able to work their will.