Inherit the Stars

Chapter Five

The morning sun poured in through the window and accentuated the chiseled crags of the face staring out, high over the center of Houston. The squat, stocky frame, conceivably modeled on that of a Sherman tank, threw a square slab of shadow on the carpet behind. The stubby fingers hammered a restless tattoo on the glass. Gregg Caldwell, executive director of the Navigation and Communications Division of UN Space Arm, reflected on developments so far.

Just as he’d expected, now that the initial disbelief and excitement had worn off, everyone was jostling for a slice of the action. In fact, more than a few of the big wheels in some divisions-Biosciences, Chicago, and Space Medicine, Farnborough, for instance-were mincing no words in asking just how Navcomms came to be involved at all, let alone ru

His thoughts were interrupted by the chime of the console built into the desk behind him. He turned around, flipped a switch, and answered in a voice of baritone granite:

"Caldwell."

Lyn Garland, his personal assistant, greeted him from the screen. She was twenty-eight, pretty, and had long red hair and big, brown, intelligent eyes.

"Message from Reception. Your two visitors from IDC are here-Dr. Hunt and Mr. Gray."

"Bring them straight up. Pour some coffee. You’d better sit in with us."

"Will do."

Ten minutes later formalities had been exchanged and everyone was seated. Caldwell regarded the Englishmen in silence for a few seconds, his lips pursed and his bushy brows gnarled in a knot across his forehead. He leaned forward and interlaced his fingers on the desk in front of him.

"About three weeks ago I attended a meeting at one of our Lunar survey bases-Copernicus Three," he said. "A lot of excavation and site-survey work is going on in that area, much of it in co

He paused to gaze from one to the other. Hunt and Gray returned the look without speaking. Caldwell continued: "A team from one of the survey units was engaged in mapping out possible sites for clearance radars. They were operating in a remote sector, well away from the main area being leveled…"

As he spoke, Caldwell began operating the keyboard recessed into one side of his desk. With a nod of his head he indicated the far wall, which was made up of a battery of display screens. One of the screens came to life to show the title sheet of a file, marked obliquely with the word RESTRICTED in red. This disappeared to be replaced by a contour map of what looked like a rugged and broken stretch of terrain. A slowly pulsing point of light appeared in the center of the picture and began moving across the map as Caldwell rotated a tracker ball set into the panel that held the keyboard. The light halted at a point where the contours indicated the junction of a steep-sided cleft valley with a wider gorge. The cleft valley was narrow and seemed to branch off from the gorge in a rising curve.

"This map shows the area in question," the director resumed. "The cursor shows where a minor cleft joins the main fault ru

"Here the side was a sheer cliff about sixty feet high. That was where they came across the first thing that was unusual-a hole in the base of the rock wall. The sergeant leading the group described it as being like a cave. That strike you as odd?"

Hunt raised his eyebrows and shrugged. "Caves don’t grow on moons," he said simply.

"Exactly."

The screen now showed a photo view of the area, apparently taken from the spot at which the survey vehicle had been parked. They recognized the break in the wall of the gorge where the cleft joined it. The cleft was higher up than had been obvious from the map and was approached by a ramp of loose rubble. In the background they could see a squat tower of rock flattened on top- presumably the one marked "560" on the map. Caldwell allowed them some time to reconcile the picture with the map before bringing up the second frame. It showed a view taken high up, this time looking into the mouth of the cleft. A series of shots then followed, progressing up to and beyond the bend. "These are stills from a movie record," Caldwell commented. "I won’t bother with the whole set." The final frame in the sequence showed a hole in the rock about five feet across.

"Holes like this aren’t unknown on the Moon," Caldwell remarked. "But they are rare enough to prompt our men into taking a closer look. The inside was a bit of a mess. There had been a rockfall-maybe several falls; not much room-just a heap of rubble and dust… at first sight, anyway." A new picture on the screen confirmed this statement. "But when they got to probing around a bit more, they came across something that was really unusual. Underneath they found a body-dead!"

The picture changed again to show another view of the interior, taken from the same angle as the previous one. This time, however, the subject was the top half of a human figure lying amid the rubble and debris, apparently at the stage of being half uncovered. It was clad in a spacesuit which, under the layer of gray-white dust, appeared to be bright red. The helmet seemed intact, but it was impossible to make out any details of the face behind the visor because of the reflected camera light. Caldwell allowed them plenty of time to study the picture and reflect on these facts before speaking again.

"That is the body. I’ll answer some of the more obvious questions before you ask. First-no, we don’t know who he is-or was-so we call him Charlie. Second-no, we don’t know for sure what killed him. Third-no, we don’t know where he came from." The executive director caught the puzzled look on Hunt’s face and raised his eyebrows inquiringly.

"Accidents can happen, and it’s not always easy to say what caused them-I’ll buy that," Hunt said. "But to not know who he is…? I mean, he must have carried some kind of ID card; I’d have thought he’d have to. And even if he didn’t, he must be from one of the UN bases up there. Someone must have noticed he was missing."