Brandon nodded. “Makes sense.”
Meek, Thornberry, and Elyse joined them as they practically trotted toward the tent.
Brandon reached out his hand to Elyse as he asked her, “You came back from the city?”
“Once Adri told me you were returning from your field excursion, yes,” she said, smiling happily at him.
“What do you make of this latest finding?” Meek asked Jordan.
“Harmon, I’m merely an unemployed administrator. I don’t make scientific judgments. That’s your department.”
“It can’t be natural,” Brandon said.
De Falla, leading their little parade, said over his shoulder, “That’s my conclusion, too. A sheet of polished metal fourteen kilometers deep isn’t natural.”
Jordan expected Meek to be glowing with triumph. Instead, he looked worried, frightened. “How could there be a layer of polished metal fourteen kilometers below the surface?”
“We’ll have to ask Adri,” said Jordan.
“And if he doesn’t know?”
“He knows,” de Falla said, with grim certainty. “The question is, will he tell us?”
Jordan phoned Adri, who immediately agreed to come to the camp to answer their questions. Jordan wondered if Aditi would come with him, but hesitated to ask in front of all the others.
They ate dinner together while they waited for the alien, all nine of them, bouncing unanswerable questions around the table, making guesses, suppositions. Jordan listened to them in silence. Scientists, he thought; they can’t simply sit and admit they don’t know what’s going on. They have to try to find an answer. Or invent one.
A scrap of poetry came to his mind. Robert Frost, he remembered: We dance round in a ring and suppose, but the secret sits in the middle and knows.
It was full night by the time Adri reached the camp, walking briskly in his usual befigured robe. Jordan’s pulse quickened when he saw that Aditi walked beside him, looking fresh and happy in a knee-length skirt of dark green and a short-sleeved white blouse.
The night was lit by the Pup, casting a silvery moon glow over the tall, silent trees and the round white domes of the camp.
“Good evening, my friends,” said Adri, his thin voice carrying through the shadows. “It’s good to see you all once more.”
As his brother had done with Elyse, Jordan held out a hand to Aditi. She came to him and clasped it warmly.
But Brandon said sharply, “We need some answers from you, Adri.”
“Of course. I will be glad to tell you anything I can.”
De Falla said, “Let’s go over to the geology lab. The computer should be finished with the profile by now.”
“By all means,” said Adri.
As they started toward the tent, Jordan whispered to Aditi, “I missed you.”
Her smile lit up the landscape. “I missed you, too.”
De Falla led the little procession through the camp’s bubble tents to the geology lab. Jordan noticed that Meek walked several paces behind Adri, with Longyear beside him. Both men wore tight-lipped expressions, taut with hostility. Brandon walked alongside Elyse, of course, chatting happily with her, nearly oblivious of the others.
Once in the geology tent, de Falla called up his computer’s profile of the planet’s structure while Adri sat on one of the stools lining the worktable. The others clustered around the table, looking expectantly at the computer’s big flat display screen.
“As you know,” de Falla said, his round, beard-fringed face utterly serious, “we’ve been digging boreholes at several locations.”
“To determine the structure of this planet, I presume,” Adri said.
De Falla went on, “And we’ve hit an anomaly.”
A wisp of a smile appeared on Adri’s age-creased face. “An anomaly?”
The display screen lit up, showing a graph that depicted a cross section of the planet’s structure. The metal layer appeared in blazing red at the fourteen-kilometer depth. Below it was nothing but a dull gray, indicating that the deeper structure of the planet was unknown.
De Falla began, “There seems to be a layer of polished metal—”
“At a depth of fourteen kilometers,” Adri interrupted. “Yes, that is correct.”
“It can’t be natural.”
“It’s not.”
Jordan felt his breath catch in his throat. Meek looked like a prosecutor who’s just heard his suspect confess. Longyear looked angry, almost, de Falla stunned, despite his previous attitude. Even Thornberry’s usual quizzical smile was gone, replaced by a suspicious scowl.
Brandon snapped, “You know about this?”
“Yes, of course,” said Adri.
They clustered around him, as taut and stressed as a lynch mob. All they need is a rope, Jordan thought.
Brandon asked, “There’s a shell of metal fourteen klicks deep?”
“Yes.”
“All around the planet?”
“Yes,” said Adri, as if it was the most natural thing in the universe. “Of course. It’s the structural base for New Earth’s crust and biosphere.”
Meek found his voice. “Look here, are you telling us that the upper layers of this planet have been … landscaped? You’ve deliberately shaped this upper section of the planet, this entire biosphere?”
In a placatingly calm voice, Adri replied, “New Earth has been constructed to resemble your world as closely as possible.”
“Constructed?” Longyear squeaked.
Adri’s smile turned slightly rueful. “We had no intention of deceiving you, my friends. Our policy has been to allow you to discover the truth at your own pace.”
Jordan said, “Are you telling us that this entire planet has been built, deliberately constructed to resemble Earth?”
With a nod, Adri said, “And placed close enough to your world so that you would find us, and come to examine us.”
Elyse gasped, “Red Sirius!”
“What?”
“Naked-eye observations of Sirius made more than two thousand years ago, around the time of Christ,” she said, almost breathless. “They reported that the star had turned red.”
Adri said, shamefaced, “I’m afraid that was due to the construction operation,” he admitted. “I’m sorry if it confused your astronomers.”
“You constructed this planet?” Meek asked, in obvious disbelief. “This entire planet? You built it?”
“Not I,” said Adri. “Our Predecessors did.”
Meek said, “But why? How?”
Adri glanced at Aditi, then turned back to Meek and explained, “Our race is much older than yours. Our technology, as you’ve seen for yourselves, is considerably in advance of yours.”
“Then you do have spaceflight,” Thornberry said. “You’re not from this planet, you came from somewhere else.”
“Our civilization does have the capability for spaceflight, yes,” Adri said. “But we—myself, Aditi, all the others you have seen here on this world—we have lived on this planet since our conception. We have never been anywhere else.”
“But to build an entire planet,” Jordan objected. “It’s fantastic!”
“Who built it?” Brandon demanded. “If you and your people have been born here, then who the hell built this planet?”
“Our Predecessors,” said Adri.
“Your ancestors?”
“Our Predecessors,” Adri repeated.
“Why would they do such a thing?” Meek demanded again. “What’s the purpose of it all?”
“Why, to bring you here. To encourage you to make contact with us.”
Frowning, Brandon said, “Wouldn’t it have been easier for you to come to Earth and announce your presence?”