It grew larger as their engines ate the space between them, the dull gleam a little more pronounced but the surface showing no sign of detail. West led the flight towards the side away from the Omphalos, staying well clear of the cone he knew connected the two bodies, wary of any stress-fields which might be in the vicinity.
‘Carey?’
‘Skipper?’
‘You stay in space and maintain observation of immediate area behind and to all sides. Holt, you hover low but free and keep us in your screens. Report to Mission Control on regular schedule. Understood?’
He smiled at the double agreement, one backed with envy, the other with resignation.
‘Don’t be jealous, Holt, you’ll get your chance. You too, Carey. Right, full alert — we’re going in.’
Ten minutes later, West stood on one of the strangest surfaces he had ever known.
It was smooth, that was the most overpowering impression, a ball of rock which had been ground in a gigantic lathe or set to tumble in a drum filled with other objects as large and as hard so that common attrition would wear them into a near-perfect ball. A fantasy which lasted for only a moment then, as Martyn came from the grounded Pinnace towards him, West stooped to kneel, to thrust his helmet close to the ground and to run his gloved hands over the spot before his eyes. ‘Skipper?’
‘Move three paces to one side and take a sample.’ As the co-pilot obeyed West spoke again, this time on relay to where Weight sat in Mission Control. ‘Frank? You read me?’
‘Yes, go ahead.’
‘We’ve landed and I’m on the surface. It is smooth like a pebble that has been polished. No sign of fusing or of any corrosive forces.’
‘Appearance general?’
‘Yes. I’m taking samples and will investigate further.’ West rose to his feet and stretched, feeling the slight chafe of the suit against his limbs. The enclosing helmet blocked his vision a little so that he had to turn his entire body to see towards the sides, arch his back to stare upwards.
‘Martyn, I’m heading towards the right of the Pinnace. Dump the sample and follow.’
He would be ahead but there was no danger of getting lost. Nothing could hide in such a smooth expanse devoid as it was of tree or shrub or even a loose boulder. Like an ant he moved over the, sharply curving surface, eyes following the beam of his helmet-light as it threw a cone of brilliance before him.
A light which showed a greyness striated with streaks of dull colour; rust, puce, brown, ochre, madder, indigo, ebon — ebon?
West paused and turned and looked again at the black patch which had caught his eye. It rested in a ragged circle a little to one side, the light penetrating it to show walls of a dark olive. A shaft?
‘Skipper?’ The co-pilot had caught up with him, breathing heavily as though he had been running. ‘What’s that? A tunnel?’
‘Maybe it’s only a natural fissure.’
‘Maybe.’ Martyn dropped to his knees at the edge of the opening. ‘Hey! It’s got grips attached. Metal loops by the look of it. We can climb down.’ He added, anxiously, ‘We are going to take a look, aren’t we?’
They had come to investigate — what else?
West led the way, hands gripping the metal hoops which were set too far apart for comfort and too thick for an easy hold. Once his boot slipped and he hung suspended by one hand until he managed to find another hold and to take the strain off his aching shoulders. Below him was nothing but darkness, the beam of his helmet-light seeming to be absorbed by the dull olive of the interior of the shaft. Above, blocked by Martyn’s body, the ragged circle of the opening grew smaller.
Then a hoop broke and West was falling.
‘Martyn! I —’ He landed before he could complete the warning, boots jarring, knees buckling as he dropped to roll, to land hard against a firm surface. A short fall, luckily, frightening in its sheer unexpectedness.
‘Skipper? Are you alright?’
‘Yes, but watch it. There’s a broken hoop. Found it?’
‘I — yes. There are others below, still intact.’
‘Good. Follow them. It can’t be far to the bottom.’
A blur of light and Martyn was beside him, breathing a little heavily, leaning back so as to shine his light back up the shaft.
‘One broken, Skipper. You were unlucky, but we’ll have no trouble climbing back when we want.’ The light moved, the bright circle settling in an opening piercing the shaft. ‘A passage.’
One ten feet high, the walls rounded, smoothly finished and, like the shaft, of a dull, olive. Carvings marked it, abstruse diagrams which could have been mere accident or deliberate decoration.
Touching them Martyn mused, ‘I’ve seen something like this before, Skipper. In a museum one time. They came from Egypt. I forget what they were called.’
‘Hieroglyphics.’
‘What?’
‘Picture writing.’
‘Writing?’ Martyn sucked in his breath. ‘What the hell do we have here?’
‘I don’t know,’ said West, flatly. ‘But we can try to find out.’
*
The passage curved, fell in a gentle slope, straightened to curve again in a reverse arc to what it had before. Twice West halted and attempted to contact the Pinnaces outside, both times without success.
‘Try contacting the relay,’ he ordered. ‘My radio isn’t working.’
‘I can hear you.’
‘The other frequency. The set may have been damaged when I fell.’ He waited then snapped, ‘Well?’
‘Nothing.’ Martyn’s voice held a shrug. ‘Maybe that olive stuff’s a barrier of some kind. What is it, anyway? Metal of some kind?’
West struck at it with one of the tools clipped to his belt. The edge barely scratched the surface. He tried again, using more force this time, then replaced the tool. Metal or not the stuff was harder than rock and more stubborn than a tempered alloy.
Martyn said, ‘Skipper, do we go on?’
A decision and West knew he had to make it. Safety dictated that he should return, set up a relay-point then recommence the investigation only after making certain that all possible precautions had been made. But Martyn, impatient, was already moving down the passage.
For a moment longer West hesitated. The matter was urgent, to return and summon the others would take precious time and probably be a waste. This passage would end soon and then would be the time to make decisions.
‘Wait!’ West stepped after the other man. ‘Martyn, not so fast!’
‘Look!’ The man had halted to stare at an engraved design. ‘Look at that, Skipper! If that isn’t a schematic of a rocket engine, I’ll eat my helmet! And this — an electronic circuit?’
Accidents, the both of them, a trick of light and an over-active imagination, but there were resemblances and certainly the shaft and passage showed the impact of a sophisticated technology. Someone or something must have built them both and those same people or things could have graced the bare walls with their concept of decoration.
‘Let’s see what lies lower down.’ Martyn forged ahead, grunted as the passage forked, unhesitatingly took the left hand corridor.
‘Wait!’ West swore as the other made no answer. ‘Martyn, blast you, wait!’
The man had gone, racing ahead, following fancied discoveries, moving on before West could catch up with him. Turn after turn, the corridors branching, forking, each exactly alike, forming a maze in which West realised, too late, they were lost.
‘Martyn!’ He lunged ahead, caught the man’s shoulder, pulled him back to slam hard against the wall. ‘You fool! Why don’t you answer me?’
He saw the startled face beyond the face plate of the helmet, the moving lips. Metal rang in his ears as he jammed his own helmet against that of his co-pilot.
‘Now can you hear me?’
‘I — yes. What’s the matter, Skipper? The radio —’
‘Doesn’t work. Or doesn’t seem to be working. Check and report. Now!’ West moved back, lifting his helmet, breaking contact, the bridge over which sound vibration had passed. Again he saw the lips move but his speakers carried nothing but a soft hum. ‘Blast!’
The radios were out, but the silence could be broken. Suits were designed to cater to emergencies and, at times, radio-silence was an advantage when too many men were working in an electronically ‘noisy’ situation. West plucked at his belt, caught the terminal and unreeled the wire from its spool. Plugging it in to Martyn’s receptor he said, ‘Better now?’
‘Fine.’ The man sighed his pleasure at again being in vocal contact. ‘Wonder what killed the radios?’
A question which could wait for an answer. The battery-powered direct connection was, in effect, a telephone and would serve. The next thing to do was to get out of the maze of tunnels.
‘This must be an old mine of some kind,’ mused Martyn. ‘Or an underground shelter. ‘I’ve seen pictures of bombproofs and this could be one. Those diagrams could be maps of various sectors and storerooms.’ His arm lifted to point. ‘That could be one, Skipper. To me it looks like a door.’
The man had sharp eyes. West examined the spot, seeing the thin lines tracing an octagonal area, a sunken point containing a knurled wheel surrounded by a ring of individual designs. A combination lock? If so it had to be built by aliens, but all races which used doors and a means to lock them would follow a basic pattern. And unless there were stringent precautions against the practice, it might have been as common for them as it was for those of his own kind to make a note of the combination somewhere close.
He found it seven feet from the edge of the door, three symbols which matched those found in the array around the knurled wheel. It moved beneath his gloved hands, turning, a nub halting at each of the symbols in turn. A guess — and West glowed to his success.
‘You’ve done it!’ Martyn stepped forward as the door swung open. ‘Skipper, let’s look inside!’
They stepped into a mausoleum.
West halted, Martyn at his side, head and back tilted so as to look up and around. From the high, domed roof hung a mass of delicate, lace-like web, sheets of fine gossamer glowing with refracted colour, hues which faded to burn again only to fade as they shifted the beams of their helmet-lights. Hanging in the webs, folded in it, were tall, fragile shapes with long, pointed skulls and narrow shoulders. The faces were peaked, the eyes enormous beneath protruding brows, the hands long-fingered with nails of pearl. Each hand held seven fingers and each finger was jointed in four places.
‘Dead!’ whispered Martyn. ‘They’re all dead.’
They had been dead for eons. Even as they watched a body fell from where it hung suspended in the web which had served as a shroud, bones shattering to add their substance to the pile below, a heap of greyish dust which rose beneath the impact to settle in a slightly wider pattern.
The floor was covered with the dust, the accumulated debris of ages.
‘Webs.’ Martyn moved, guiding his light, the circle of brilliance probing the rear of the cavern. ‘Spiders, maybe?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Look at the bodies. None touched or eaten. Those webs weren’t spun by spiders.’
Not unless the bodies now suspended had stemmed from an arachnid ancestry, the extra limbs absorbed as mankind had absorbed the gills it had once known, shed the tail it no longer needed. And who could tell of the customs and ways of an alien race? They had lived and built and tried to survive with tunnels and sealed chambers and, perhaps, mystic signs scratched on the adamantine walls of their defences. They had failed and had withdrawn to spend the last moments of their lives in communion with each other, gathering to fashion their webs, to hang in them, to die in them.
Their equivalent of beds, perhaps, of couches.
Of tombs.
West moved a little, looking at a pathetic tableau; two adult shapes together with two smaller ones of unequal size. A family group gathered together for mutual comfort? The hands were interlocked, the huge eyes open, pale and desiccated orbs which one, perhaps, had known the bitterness of tears.
‘Skipper?’ Martyn was uneasy. ‘This place is giving me the creeps. How about getting the hell out of here?’
Another body fell as he spoke, landing close by to dissolve into dust, adding more bulk to the powder which littered the floor. Another, two at a time, a sudden fall of withered figures like a ghastly rain.
‘The floor! It’s moving!’ West turned towards the entrance. ‘The door! It’s closed!’
More than the floor had moved. The slight tremor had swung the door on its gimbals, sending it to fit snugly into the opening.
Even before he reached it West knew that, somehow, it had locked itself.
That he and Martyn were sealed in with the alien dead.
Alan Guthrie lurched and almost fell, regaining his balance with a tremendous effort, uneasily aware of the danger of smashing his face, the danger of smashing his face-plate, of dying in the airless void.
‘Alan?’ Lang Ki’s voice, concerned as it came from the radio. ‘You alright?’
‘Fine.’
‘You sure?’
‘Sure I’m sure!’ Anger edged his reply. Why the hell couldn’t Ki mind his own business? The day he needed mothering would be the day. ‘I’m fine,’ he said again. ‘Now let’s quit worrying about me and get on with the job. Right?’
‘Maybe you should report back in?’
‘No!’
‘I think you should.’ The overseer’s voice held determination. ‘Get back inside the ship, Alan, and take it easy. That’s an order.’
‘You know what you can do with it?’
‘Now you listen —’
‘No! You listen! This is an emergency job, right? It needs to be done and fast — that’s what emergency means. Now you stick to your job and let me get on with mine.’ He added, grimly, ‘I mean it, Lang. Come near me and I’ll brain you and that goes for anyone else who thinks I’m getting past it.’
A challenge and a stupid one, why had he given it? Would he really fight if anyone came close? Only an idiot would attempt to struggle outside on the hull of the Ad Astra when too many little things could cause a ruptured suit and burst lungs. But why the hell couldn’t they leave him alone?
He sighed, rising to straighten his back, conscious of the ache, the drag of weary muscles. Damn the hospital and the doctors — he hadn’t felt right since they’d done that series of tests on him after Gordon had died. And that was another thing. Gordon shouldn’t have died. They should have looked after him. Gordon had been one of the best. He missed him.