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38




The antechamber had been as Jack described, a featureless cylinder ten meters in diameter and nearly twice as long. Whatever they moved through here, it needed a lot of space. Given the dimensions of the chamber and the portals on either side, it suggested either quite large beings or an awful lot of regular-sized ones. A whole platoon of humans could fit in here at once.

Enough of the military analogies. It’s not for an invading army, she reassured herself.

The chamber was dimly lit from a source she couldn’t readily identify, the lights coming on as the outer portal closed behind her. Either the beings that had built this vessel didn’t require much illumination, or it was analogous to emergency lighting to conserve power. At this point, either was equally likely.

“The antechamber is an airlock like we suspected,” she said, narrating as she went. If they couldn’t hear her, the suit would still record everything. “No features stand out, and I don’t see anything like equipment storage.” She pushed off for the opposite portal. After centering herself in front of it, it winked open just as the outer door had.

More lights came on, their sources equally unidentifiable and appearing as naturally as a sunrise. It occurred to her that their dim yellow glow was approximating the weaker light of Tau Ceti. Her suit still had the stiffness of its skin holding fast against vacuum. She checked the pressure differential gauge on her chest pack. “Inner spaces don’t appear to be pressurized.”

Ahead was a circular tunnel that seemed to stretch to infinity, shining white beneath her helmet lamps. “I’m in a central corridor now. It’s long, probably the full length of the sphere.” At regular intervals were more circular portals, each in groups of four on opposing sides of the corridor. As she approached the closest group, she saw that each was open and led to yet more corridors. “Looks like the secondary corridors branch out from the central one, like spokes on a wheel. Each of the secondaries is flat on one side, along the thrust axis.” No alien artificial gravity generators, they relied on acceleration under thrust. “This has to be a lift tunnel. I don’t see any handholds, and it’d be a long climb up when the engine’s burning.”

As she made her way along the corridor, she looked down each cluster of secondary passages. Each was longer than the ones previous, extending out to the inner surface of the sphere. Yet there were still no distinctive features, not so much as a doorknob or window. Just more of the same apertures, smaller versions of the one that had first led her inside.

She continued her narration. “This might be crew quarters or workspaces, assuming it once held atmosphere. Walls look like a type of composite. The arrangement puts plenty of structure between here and whatever the power source is at the opposite end. Natural radiation shielding. Each space is progressively larger the closer they get to center. That would make them good for storing consumables or bulky equipment.” She was making assumptions, but every living thing needed food. Maybe they’d kept gardens in some of those spaces?

As she approached the center of the sphere, the corridor opened up into an enormous circular cavity. As more of the peculiar indirect lighting came on, Traci saw the first signs of something other than perfectly smooth walls.

The corridor opened into a catwalk that traversed a cavernous semispherical chamber. It curved around her and came to an apex at the far end of the sphere, its walls sparkling like gemstones, with a pebbly texture that refracted the light as if she were inside a kaleidoscope.

She sucked in her breath in astonishment. “I’m in a large chamber now. It’s . . . it’s spectacular, like a rotunda of stained glass. Like a cathedral. I’m going to have a closer look.”

The bowl-shaped chamber was spacious enough for her to use the maneuvering jets, which she gave a light thrust upward. As she drifted closer to the curving wall, she could see its dimpled texture was actually a vast collection of individual grapefruit-sized spheres, their multicolored contents glimmering inside translucent crystalline shells. “It’s like a bowl full of Christmas tree decorations,” she marveled.

She reached for the nearest one and ran her gloved hands across it. Though she couldn’t feel its texture it appeared perfectly smooth, like everything else aboard this floating enigma. It was mounted in a cradle of what appeared to be the same silvery alloy that made up the ship’s hull and airlock portals. She wrapped her fingers around it and easily lifted it from the cradle, the metallic ring opening itself under her gentle pressure. That was when she noticed markings, small characters in a script made of wedges, dashes and dots across the rim of the mounting ring. They were as crisply defined as if they’d been laser-etched into the alloy.

Checking the adjacent mounts, she noticed the markings were largely the same for each, with minor variations corresponding to the different hues inside. It was their language, most likely cataloguing each translucent sphere’s contents.

She turned the bauble over in her hands before releasing it to float freely in front of her. It sparkled beneath the chamber’s yellow glow, refracting the light like a prism. “Can’t tell what it’s made of, something translucent and crystalline. Almost like balls of ice.”

Ice.

Her heart racing anew, Traci checked the environmental controls on her wrist: outside temperature minus two hundred eleven centigrade. She looked up in shock, the glistening chamber walls a disorienting swirl of color and light. All of a sudden she understood precisely what she was looking at, and cursed herself for not recognizing it right away. “I’m such a dumbass.” She began laughing uncontrollably, rapturously. With a halting voice, she collected herself and described the scene before her. “Noelle’s going to wish she’d come along. It’s a storage chamber, a massive one,” she hesitated, “for Hoover spheres.”


An incessant, steady beeping clamored for her attention. Oh yes, she realized, it’s time. Had it been an hour already? She reached down to her wrist controls and shut off the alarm. “Don’t know if you can hear me, but I’m on my way out.” She grabbed the bauble floating before her to place it in an empty pouch on her waist, then pivoted to face the chamber’s entrance. With a pulse of thrusters, she flew down to the open corridor.

As she approached, the chamber’s pale yellow lighting suddenly turned red around the entrance. The portal closed in on itself, its rim illuminated with an angry crimson glow. She centered herself in front of the metallic disk, just as she had outside for the airlock. “Okay, you can let me out now,” she said in a tight whisper, much more calmly than she felt. Lighting it up with the laser range finder likewise had no effect. The portal remained shut in mute defiance. She searched its rim in vain for any sign of controls, a button or simple handle. As with everything else she’d encountered so far, the entryway was fully automated.

That was when she noticed more of the same type of elegant wedge-shaped characters appear on the face of the door, outlined in white against the glowing crimson rim. They appeared to be illuminated from within the portal itself, pulsing insistently as if broadcasting a warning.

She reflexively checked the oxygen remaining in her suit. Forty percent; about three hours’ worth of air. That was how much time she had to figure a way out.

She turned and flew across to the far end of the kaleidoscopic dome, carefully managing her breath. This was no time to burn oxygen in a panic. As she approached the opposite portal, it likewise closed up with the same circle of red light, the same mysterious writing appearing on its face.

Okay, I’ve just pissed this thing off somehow. As she took in the scene, the problem became obvious: It knew she was stealing from it. She reached down and caressed the storage pouch on her hip, making sure the pilfered ice ball was still there. Now if she could just find where she’d taken it from among the chamber’s dizzying swirl of color.


“It’s been an hour,” Daisy observed in her unshakably calm voice.

“I know.” Jack steered the drone back in front of the forward portal. “Outer door isn’t responding.”

“Have you tried the laser range finder? That apparently activated it before.”

If Jack didn’t know better—and perhaps he didn’t—he would’ve thought Daisy was showing distress. “Tried that. I don’t know what’s going on in there, but it’s locked down.”


Traci retraced her path through the dome, stopping at its center above the catwalk. She flew upward in what she hoped was the right direction. Calm, girl, she told herself. Calm. She came to a stop a few meters short, hurriedly searching the wall of crystalline spheres for the lone empty cradle and wondering why it had given its treasure up so easily in the first place.

One thing at a time. First, make things right and hope the alien machine doesn’t hold a grudge.

The shimmer of thousands of nearly identical shapes was too much to process. She reached up for her helmet’s polarizing visor and pulled it down over her faceplate, cutting through the glare.

There. An open cradle. She carefully lifted the bauble from her pouch and placed it inside the ring, which closed tightly around its prize.

That’s it? Was it truly that simple? She twisted a hand controller and pivoted toward the entrance, now far below. The insistent crimson glow had disappeared; the chamber was again flooded with the dazzling radiance of its contents.

Relief washed over her as she saw the aperture wink open. She jabbed at both hand controllers to shoot through the opening and down the corridor, aiming for the distant airlock. It responded to her speed, opening to its full diameter as she approached. She pulsed her jets in the opposite direction to slow down, coming to a stop in front of the outer door. As the inner door contracted behind her, the outer door opened.

To her great relief, she was again staring out into open space with the orange beach ball drone hovering directly in front of her. Without waiting for Jack to move it aside, she pulsed her thrusters one more time and shot out of the airlock, catching the drone in her arms along the way. It was as close to holding on to a friend as she could get. Behind her, the metallic disk winked shut.

“You all right?” Synthetic or not, his voice had never sounded so good.

“I’m okay,” she breathed heavily. “Just . . . I got rattled for a minute.”

“Only a minute? You were in a big hurry to get out of there.”

“I tend to forget my manners when I’m about to be trapped in an alien spacecraft with my air running out.” Traci snapped a D ring to a grommet on the drone, securing it to her suit. “I’ll tell you all about it when we get home.” She realized it was the first time she’d ever thought of Columbus that way. With a twist of the hand controllers, she turned and jetted them across space to her waiting ship.


She backed into the airlock’s suit mount, unlocked the waist ring, and shimmied out of the stiff upper torso. She pulled herself up out of the legs and reattached the empty halves together. Bob was downloading her video and audio records as she took a long pull from a bottle of electrolyte juice.

She began unzipping her formfitting cooling garment when she noticed the beach ball drone still floating nearby. With a disapproving frown, she grabbed it and turned it to face the wall.

“You don’t miss a thing, do you?” he said with amusement. “I’ll bet Bob doesn’t get that treatment.”

“Bob doesn’t care if he sees me in my skivvies.” As she cleaned herself with some wet wipes, she eyed the camera and microphone mounted in the airlock. There were identical ones placed all through the ship, the AI’s eyes and ears. “In fact, I think you should keep your datalink isolated to the beach ball while you’re here.”

“No problem. I kind of like being able to jet around at will.”

She slipped into a clean flight suit, threading her ponytail back through a blue Kentucky Wildcats baseball cap. She turned the drone back to face her. “Now I’m presentable. Bob, how do the video files look?” Now that she was here to narrate, she wasn’t as concerned about the audio and was anxious to share the video.

“Excellent,” he said. “Your feed was uninterrupted. Resolution is within ninety percent of optimum.”

“Then let’s get to work. Send the recordings to the big monitor on the rec deck.” She pushed herself up out of the airlock and into the open crew hab, Jack directing the drone behind her.


Traci belted herself into the lounge’s curved divan, with Jack floating by her side via the inspection drone. With the datalink between ships being dedicated to him, Daisy was left to listen over the radio.

As Bob began replaying her video, she filled in the gaps of her narration. “This doesn’t convey just how pristine the interior is. It’s like the place was never occupied.”

“I think you’re right about the forward sections being crew dorms,” Jack said. “As you go deeper into the sphere those compartments are going to get a lot bigger, like pie wedges. That opens up storage space for whatever they use for food and water.”

“That would probably be food and water,” Daisy said, “for whatever might constitute ‘food’ for these beings.”

Traci quirked an eyebrow, casting a sideways glance at the drone. It had become surprisingly easy to think of it as Jack himself. “When did she develop a sense of humor?”

“That’s a new feature. Probably from me taking up space in her network,” he said through the drone’s speaker. “I think Mother’s just glad you’re home safe. She was getting worried.”

She decided to explore that later. “There’s not much to tell about these corridors. They’re all the same. I have no idea how anyone would find themselves around, though I’m guessing that directions and placards might appear when it’s occupied and under power, like embedded liquid crystal displays.”

“What makes you think that?”

“The warning that magically appeared on the portal when it locked me in. You’ll see in a minute.” Her foray into the chamber was up next. “The video doesn’t do it justice. It’s immense, probably half the sphere’s volume. And it’s cold in there, more than two hundred below zero.”

“Approximating the conditions Roy and Noelle found on Pluto,” he said. “And you think those are the same kind of frozen organic compounds they brought back?”

She nodded, not sure if he could discern her gesture. “They certainly look like Hoover spheres. Noelle would come out of her skin if she could see this.”

“It’d be nice if we could bring a few aboard to run through a gas chromatograph. We still have her lab on Magellan.”

“That’s the trick,” she said. “I don’t know how we do that. The Artifact didn’t react to me taking one out of its cradle,” she said, pointing to the video where a glistening blue-green ball of ice floated in closeup. “It just didn’t want me leaving the chamber with it.”

“That implies a security protocol,” Daisy said. “Which you violated.”

“Thanks, I got that,” she said caustically. “It’s not like there were any warning labels. Not that I could read them.”

“I am not suggesting that you did anything improper, but clearly this section of the spacecraft was constructed to safeguard these compounds and their containment vessels. While I agree the forward compartments could be for logistics, it seems equally likely they could be laboratory spaces or processing facilities.”

“You think they may be manufacturing these things?”

“Unknowable without further investigation. The Tau Ceti system has an outer belt of minor planets and cometary material similar to ours. It is possible these compounds were harvested from that region.”

The video continued to her first encounter with the locked portal. “At this point you can see why I’m not too enthusiastic about going back.”

The closed aperture flashed by in a moment as she moved in front of it. “Wait!” Jack exclaimed. “Rewind and freeze. I want to see that writing.”

Bob scrolled back the image of the aperture, its metallic surface turned red in warning with that enigmatic white lettering appearing on its face.

“That’s . . . interesting,” he said, his background in linguistics taking over. “You said there were similar markings on the cradle you lifted it from?”

“I presume it’s the same language. I didn’t exactly have time to compare.”

“Let’s have another look at it, then.”

Bob opened a second window in a corner of the screen and isolated the image of the bauble’s cradle. “Same characters, with some additional ones appearing on the portal. See? It’s identifying what you have, while the rest is probably telling you to put it back where you found it.”

“Authorized personnel only,” Traci guessed. “You can look, but don’t touch?”

“That may be precisely the case,” Daisy interjected. “The chamber has a considerable amount of unused volume. It could be that manipulation of the Hoover spheres are allowed within the chamber but that they must remain in place.”

“That would make sense. There’s no way the whole ship is at two hundred below when it’s occupied,” she said. “Even if the chamber uses passive cooling, the rest has to remain livable.”

“We need to go back,” Jack said. “If we can find more writing then I may be able to start piecing together a primer.”

She was unconvinced. Deciphering a completely alien language was a tall order without context. “You mean I have to go back.”


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Framed