Chindi

“What is this place?” asked Herman.

“Probably experimental animals,” said George.

Pete shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“What then?”

“Dining room.”

George flinched. “Ridiculous,” he said.

Alyx squealed and backed out into the corridor.

It was Hutch’s conclusion, too. “Looks as if these critters liked their di

“That’s ugly,” said Herman.

Their lamps were moving around the room, throwing the silhouettes of the cages across the ceiling and walls. “I don’t know,” Pete said. “I’m not sure it’s much different from what we do.”

“It’s a lot different from what we do,” insisted Herman.

“Maybe we’re just a little more squeamish,” said Pete.

They wandered through the room, peering into the cages until Herman suggested maybe they’d seen enough and might consider going back. The sense of a Sunday afternoon outing had vanished.

“It’s the problem with looking at civilizations that are completely different.” Pete went into lecture mode. He was back on the mock-up starship bridge he’d used during the Universe shows. “We tend to have idealistic notions of what they’ll be like. We assume they’ll have abolished war, that they’ll be smart…”

He went on in that vein for another minute or so. Hutch turned the volume down but not off while she tried to control her own imagination. The place was creepy. She’d visited a few alien sites over the years, inevitably wondering what the occupants had really been like. For the first time she was glad she didn’t have details.

They pressed on, and descended into an underground area that housed storage tanks, engines, supply bins (filled with decayed garments whose shapes were no longer discernible), and control consoles. Nick stumbled over a pair of tracks, but there was no sign of a vehicle.

Then they climbed a ramp and emerged in a large chamber that might have been an auditorium. One wall was completely dedicated to display systems. Another was lined with shelves, each of which was packed with plastic rings, about the size of di

“Computer storage?” wondered Pete, who was first to enter.

Nick shrugged. “It won’t matter much. If this place is as old as it looks, whatever was on them is long gone.”

The rooms and corridors throughout the complex were filled with the ubiquitous ironwork. All had high ceilings. But there was something vaguely unsettling about the dimensions and the architecture, as if the proportions weren’t right.

“More rings in here,” said Pete, from somewhere down the corridor. “And more here.”

George and the others were hanging back, perhaps intimidated in some way nobody understood. But Pete just plunged ahead. “And still more.” He stopped. “No, I’m wrong. This one is empty.”

“No rings?” George asked.

“No nothing,” said Pete. “No tables. No cabinets. Not even any iron.”

That sent everybody tracking in to take a look, but they stayed together. The herd instinct had taken over.

The room was bare.

“Odd,” said Pete. He knelt and examined the floor. “It looks as if the monkey bars were here. You can still see the fittings.”

One wall was discolored in places suggesting the presence of shelves at one time. “Well,” said George, “maybe they were getting ready to remodel when the war shut them down.”

THEY FOUND A room full of mummified things, creatures with segmented abdomens and multiple limbs and long, sloping skulls. They were hanging in the ironwork, most of them seated in loops and mounts. Several had fallen to the floor.

“That’s enough for me,” said Alyx, who took one look and returned to the passageway.

The creatures would have been, on average, about the size of cheetahs. But they had large jaws, lots of teeth, two sets of appendages ending in curled claws, a third set in manipulative digits. Their skulls might have approached human cranial capacity. There was, Hutch thought with a shudder, something spidery about the creatures. Like their alphabet.

There were goblets and plates on the table, and bones in the plates.

Only one of the goblets was still standing upright.

“What do you think happened here?” asked Herman.

Nick came up beside Hutch. “You mind company?” he said.

She smiled. “I think we’re all a bit rattled.”

“Looks like nine of them,” said Pete.

“Wouldn’t want to meet one of these critters in a dark alley.”

“Didn’t all get out after all, did they?”

“Bones in the plates aren’t theirs.”

“They were having a celebration.”

“I don’t think so. Looks more like a last meal.”

“Yes. Had to be.”

They spread out around the room, gazing down at the corpses. Alyx lingered in the entrance, pointedly looking off in a neutral direction.

“I thought the place was going to turn out to be pretty old,” said Herman.

“What makes you think it isn’t?” asked Hutch.

He gazed quietly at the bodies. “They’re not as decomposed as I’d have expected if this had happened forty or fifty years ago.”

“This is probably a sterile world,” said Hutch. “No organisms to digest the remains. They could have been here for centuries.”

Pete stepped carefully past the remains to study the lone standing goblet. “They look like climbers,” he said, bestowing on them the name they would retain forever.

“You think the goblets were the method?” asked Alyx, of the room at large.

“I’d think so,” said Nick. “A final meal, a last slug of wine, and exit. They were probably trapped here when the war broke out.” He shrugged. “Pity.”

George shook his head. “Bear with me, Nick,” he said, “but I’m not sure I can feel much sympathy for something like this.”

PETE CONTINUED TO prowl ahead of the rest. They were in the largest of the domes, on the far side from where they’d entered the complex, when his voice sounded in Hutch’s commlink. “How about that?”

He was standing in front of an airlock. Both hatches had been cut open. Beyond, the ground was white and flat in the glow of Safe Harbor.

“That’s the damnedest thing, George,” he continued. It looked as if someone had used a laser on the hatches. From the outside.

“Why would they do that?” asked George.

Hutch looked at the mutilated lock a long time, shook her head, and took some scrapings. George caught her eye, almost demanding a rational explanation.

“I have no idea,” she said.

Chapter 11

He is blessed over all mortals who loses no moment of the passing life in remembering the past.

HUTCH HAD COLLECTED some soil samples, which she added to her scrapings. She also had air samples, taken from Safe Harbor by probe. She sca

The research vessel Jessica Brandeis duly arrived, optimistically carrying a medical staff as well as a team of engineering specialists. By then, the Memphis had recovered more body parts and pinpointed the vectors of most of the larger pieces of wreckage.

She was delighted to turn the salvage operation over to Edward C. Park, the captain of the Brandeis.

They’d been able to identify seven of the eleven persons on board, including Preach. In his case there had only been a blackened arm, but the fourth finger had worn the eagle ring. She removed it while her stomach churned. She had swallowed her grief as best she could, said good-bye to him, giving up all hope that he’d pull off one more miracle. Then she’d set the ring for delivery to next of kin.

When it was over, after Park officially took charge, she pointedly avoided the temptation to retreat to her quarters, but stayed instead in mission control or in the common room, where there was always someone else.