Across the passage, one room was full of opaque canisters almost waist-high, stacked three wide on either side, with an aisle between them. They were labeled, but not in a script she knew. On the walls above hung the same kinds of cleaning equipment familiar to humans everywhere. Brushes, mops, a shelf of something that looked like small balls of moss but felt like something to scrub pots with.
The other room looked, at first glance, like a laboratory or laboratory supply room. Tall transparent containers of different-colored liquid and a faintly tangy odor. Ky moved closer; the room’s light brightened. Inside the jars she could now see shapes—translucent, taking the color of the liquid. A long string of little bags, each with a dark dot in it. A sinuous line of… bones? segments of one thing?… with feathery fronds extending to either side. Each jar bore a yellow label with a single symbol on it—again, she could not understand it, but when she reached out to trace the symbol, it flashed a bright blue light at her.
That had to mean Don’t touch. She looked around once more, forced herself to ignore what wasn’t going to solve their problems, and went out, closing that door.
Kurin came out to join her in closing all the doors, and the others climbed aboard the vehicles. They left the area as they’d found it, all doors closed.
“I think they’re a lot like us,” Kurin said. She was in the first vehicle with Ky.
“They eat, they drink, they excrete, they must lie down on those shelf things because what else would you use a soft-halfway-down shelf for? And cleaning supplies.”
And whatever that was in the last room. Nobody’d mentioned that, and Ky wasn’t going to.
After another three hours of travel, they passed another portal that closed behind them. Ky signaled to keep going. If they found another rest stop, they might as well stop for the night. An hour later, there it was: the same as the last except somewhat larger.
“We need to loosen up,” Ky said before Cosper could start in on fitness training; he looked pleased that she’d mentioned it. “Ten minutes,” Ky said. “Then we set up for the night.”
Nobody complained about the vigorous calisthenics and stretches. Afterward, when they discovered four rooms, not just two, with beds, they each claimed a bed, clustering in two of the rooms, leaving the rest for Ky to choose from.
Gurton investigated the kitchen/dining room, discovering a cooking surface behind the plain counter, and set to work on a hot meal. Some were dozing by the time she served, and immediately after Ky sent them all to bed.
The room she chose for herself had two electrical outlets on the wall without bunks. What would the mystery people have used for voltage? She checked with her implant cable; the green light came on. How likely was it that a different race or culture, or humans from before electricity was used on Old Earth, would choose a compatible voltage to… whichever side of Old Earth it was that used 110 instead of 220?
But safe. Except—she didn’t need to call Rafe now. They were out of the old base, doors locked behind them, and he wouldn’t be expecting to hear from her tonight anyway. It would be smarter to wait a few days, until they were farther away—maybe even had found another route to the outside—and she could tell him where she was, a long way from any enemy. She put away her special cable and went peacefully to sleep.
Despite her confidence in the obscurity of the hidden doors, and the fact that they had all the power rods they’d been able to find, Ky woke early and chivvied the others into action. “We can do twelve hours,” she said. “Fifteen minutes at the rest stops; half an hour for lunch. Twelve hours will get us 180 more kilometers.” If everything worked as well and no better than the day before. If the enemy hadn’t figured out where the entrance to the rest of the facility was, and how to get their own vehicles into the tunnel. Because their vehicles would not be self-driving and would go much faster, she was sure.
The day ground on, hour after hour of rolling almost silently along in a traveling bubble of light, doors opening in front of them, closing behind them. She was stiff every time she got out of the vehicle, less and less glad to be climbing back aboard. Finally they came to the opening where Ky had planned to stop for the night, and everyone climbed down, groaning and muttering.
“Exercise period?” Cosper asked.
“Definitely,” Ky said, over the groans. “Including you, Gurton—I’m sure you’re stiff, too.”
An hour later, she agreed when Droshinski said, “At least we can shower and change clothes—but I wish we had a ’fresher cabinet for the dirty ones.”
While the others continued to clean up, Ky wandered through the other rooms, similar to those she’d seen before. What were those shapes in jars? And what were they for? How old?
“Sir? Gurton’s serving supper.”
“Coming.” Ky closed the door as she left the mystery behind and set her mind firmly on the present and future. Everyone bedded down early, making up for the night before. Again, Ky thought of contacting Rafe, but decided that they hadn’t traveled far enough yet and she had nothing really to say.
In the next two days they covered 360 kilometers of gray tunnel, most of it straight, with interruptions at the same regular intervals. Although the tunnel never seemed stuffy, and the lights and water continued to work, Ky felt certain that no one had been down this way for centuries. The silence was oppressive, once they stopped for a meal or a night’s rest. Conversation lagged. They went through the exercises Cosper insisted on without enthusiasm; Ky, focused on what might be happening outside, didn’t try to rouse them to any.
On the second night, she contacted Rafe. He sounded exhausted and distracted when he answered.
“Where are you?”
“Out of the main complex. Our vehicles can only go fifteen kilometers an hour, but we run them twelve hours a day.”
“So you’re well away, that’s good. Supplies?”
“Ample food and water for two or three tendays, if we can use the vehicles the whole way; if we have to go on foot, it’ll be tighter.”
“And where exactly are you now?”
“There’s a passage—the only one that we found—leading from the main complex. You should be able to do a void-scan and see it. It started out heading north, but we’ve had some curves and I’m not sure now.”
“That’s good—sorry, Ky, I’ve got to go. Teague’s calling me.”
Ky shook her head, shrugged, and lay down wondering if he’d actually heard everything she’d said. Where were their enemies? And their friends?
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Rafe and Teague, working together with Rafe’s own tool kit and another set of special devices MacRobert procured from somewhere, were tracing the power supplies to the facility they thought was the site of the unusual fatalities. Grace, home from the office, reading files she’d hunted down, looked up from time to time. What they said was cryptic, techtalk she didn’t know, but both the intensity of their concentration and the rising tension kept her checking in on them every little while. The file she’d pulled and was now marking offered hints at something deeper, less amenable to immediate action, than the flow of electrons to and from that facility.
Finally Teague said “Ahhh” in a tone that could only mean success, and Rafe said “Gotcha.” She looked up again. Rafe turned away from the table and grinned at her.