Kaspar's Box

Maslovic was now positive who he had aboard. Now all he had to do was decide whether or not he liked it. Certainly he felt as if he could handle it.

"Okay, then. Surface team… Might as well make this a political thing; it sure doesn't seem like we're going to do battle down there, or that it would do us much good if we could. That makes it me in the lead, A

"I would like to come as well," Joshua put in.

Maslovic was surprised. "You joining the team?"

"I am in the service of the one who killed Macouri," he told them. "Besides, I have nowhere else to go."

"Okay. That makes a pretty awful military team but a good science and muscle blend. Draw your suits and check your equipment, suit up, and be outside Bay One in an hour. My own team, who are showing really nasty looks at me at the moment, will be backup. We're not going in blasting here. I have a feeling that this is pretty close to the group whoever it is down there would want invited."

"Not at all by the book," A

The fit for the suits, including A

They decided on the alien spaceship simply because it was so prominent. Anyone who actually landed would be almost forced to check it out and, for that reason alone, it seemed to be the logical place to start.

Nobody said much on the way down. Joshua took it slow and easy on manual and put it down about a hundred meters from the alien wreck, which seemed even more ghostly and bizarre close up.

"Okay, you can expose your stones to the outside," Maslovic told them. "Let's see if they act as old Kaspar's candy and bring the natives for a treat."

"Yeah, us," Murphy said gloomily. It was too dark, too barren, and too alien for him.

Queson and Nagel finally got to examine the wreck close up. It was gigantic, and much of the interior that had stayed intact didn't make a lot of sense, but clearly it was what it appeared to be. What had come in it? How long had it been since they'd crashed here, and where were they or their descendants now? These questions had no obvious answers.

After several hours of surveying the wreck and the surrounding area, though, it appeared that they had guessed wrong.

"We're going to have to pack it up and move, folks," Maslovic told them, gathering them around him against the eerie backdrop of the ruined ship. "This is getting us nowhere. I propose we try one of the low cave entrances. There appears to be illumination just inside, so maybe we'll have to go knocking."

They all agreed, turned to go back to the shuttle for the move, and stopped dead in their tracks.

How long the creatures had been there it was impossible to say. They didn't show up as a recognized life-form on any of the instruments, yet they had something of a familiar look. And, A

There were six of them, one for each of the humans it was supposed, and they looked identical.

In one sense, they were humanoid. Less than a meter tall, they stood on two thick trunklike legs with massively oversized feet and they had two arms ending in equally outsized hands, three fingers and an opposable thumb that extended opposite the index finger rather than at the end of the hand. Their heads were hairless balls, with two big, round black dots for eyes flanking either side of what seemed to be a massive nose that began almost at the top of the head and extended down and out to the waist, sausage-shaped but with a number of tiny pits at the end rather than a single large pair of openings. Two outsized floppy ears, one on each side of the head, completed the look, as well as earth-tone tunics and pants, leatherlike floppy boots, and light brown gloves.

Most important, each wore a ring on the middle finger that clearly contained one of the Magi stones.

"Silica based," Nagel commented, checking his readings. "Definitely not the natives here."

One of the little creatures stepped out from the others and looked at each of the humans in turn. The huge round eyes captured and reflected the pale light, but there was no question that it was examining each of them in turn. Finally, it raised one oversized gloved hand and, with its index finger, it pointed in turn to several of them. A

"I wonder what would happen if the squad followed us, no matter what the big-nosed bastard wants?" Maslovic mused aloud.

"I don't think they'd get very far," A

"Are," Randi Queson reminded her. "I feel about as empowered at the moment as I did sealed in the control room of our salvage station on a different world far from here, hoping that something very alien couldn't find a crack to ooze through. I have this nasty feeling that I've been here before."

Although the surveys had shown a vast network of caves beneath the surface and some wide entrances to them, the little gnome surprised them by simply going over to what seemed to be a barren rocky knob, which proved to be an artificial hatch of some sort that began to open, first with a hissing sound, then a rush of steam. When the steam floated off into the cold atmosphere of Kaspar, they discovered that it had emerged from a steep set of stairs going down beyond their point of view into the heart of Kaspar. The stairway seemed carved or fabricated out of a single unbroken rock wall and was also scaled better for the gnome than for the much larger party of visitors, but it was manageable. The gnome had no hesitation and jumped in, taking the stairs at a good clip. The humans were much slower, but, one by one, they managed to get down into the hole and, with the aid of a suddenly visible thin but sturdy hand rail, were able to make it, single file.

The top of the stair was also icy, which they hadn't expected, but the condition didn't last long and caused only minor discomfort in spite of the depth of the passage. When the last of the party had descended below the surface, the hatch closed behind them and there was another hissing sound as if sealing an airlock, followed by a deep rumble from far below and a rush of much warmer air into the stairwell.

"Temperature's going up," Jerry Nagel noted. "This may be comfortable in a little while." It was already in the mid-twenties Celsius, and the humidity level was going from moist to tropical in a hurry.

"Maybe uncomfortable in a few minutes more," A