Nightfall_at_Algemron

Maybe not, Gabriel thought. Increasingly he was beginning to believe that nothing associated with these places was accidental.
"All right," he said after a moment. "Just land anywhere." Delonghi gave him a cockeyed look. "Anywhere?"
"Probably somewhere away from one of the domes would be better," Gabriel replied. "See if you can find something like a cliff face or a ravine."
They found one after a few minutes—the remnant of some rocky hillsides up near the "pointy" end of the moonlet, mined once or twice and then abandoned. The pilot landed the shuttle there, and Gabriel and all the others checked their suit gaskets and then stepped out into the light gravity of the moonlet's surface.
All this while Delonghi was watching Gabriel like someone she expected to catch in a trick. He walked over to one of the nearer hillsides with all the Marines and their weapons in tow and stood there with his fist clenched on the stone, deep in concentration.
It was all over. It was under his feet. It was buried in the hill. Gabriel could feel it under him, alive, breathing like some gigantic beast. He felt like a character in one of those ancient pre-space stories of a mariner who lands on what he thinks is an island. Everything is fine until he builds a fire. Then the "island" arches its back, rolls him and the fire and everything else off into the endless sea, and the great maw
opens to devour him.
I don't care much for the first part of that image, Gabriel thought, but the "great maw" is useful. He closed his eyes again, tried to feel where the most likely contour was.
There. Just off to the left, down and in.
I'm here, he said to the facility. Let me in.
Nothing. Nothing at all.
Then just the slightest tremor. growing stronger so that I he ground began to rattle, unheard but plainly felt under the Marines' feet. Delonghi found herself bouncing in place in shock. Little rocks danced around, and big boulders jumped and bumped in their sockets. Dust was jolted up into the hard vacuum and floated like a siliceous fog a meter or so above the surface, twinkling and jittering with the transmitted energy in Algemron's light. Lacey and Berlin lost their footing, fell down, and got up again with annoyed expressions. Gabriel shook, too, but he shook in harmony with what was shaking underneath him. He didn't fall. not even when the hill stood up.
It hunched up slowly, shrugging away the dust and the stones that had overlaid it. The first thing to emerge was the spire, which Gabriel had hardly expected. He had thought this would be like Ohmel, all subterranean, but this one apparently felt no need to hide. The glass grew while they watched, spinning itself up into five slim minarets, one off to the side, and a sixth one taller than all the others. This last was a towering spike, past which the silent stars slid, their light catching in it, running down it in a way that suggested the facility buried underneath here would let not even that energy be wasted. The place glittered, for this glass was less greenish than what Gabriel had seen on Ohmel, more like crystal. It grew up spikily through the ground, pushing upward, flowing as if molten, but the glass looked cold as ice, clearer than any ice Gabriel had ever seen. After the spires came the roof of the facility—or its roof for the moment. Gabriel had the feeling that this whole structure could and would resorb itself into the greater mass below if there was need. The personality of the place was definitely more active, more aggressive than the one or Ohmel, and even though he and it had obviously been built or rebuilt for one another, Gabriel shivered a little at tin touch of the presence inside it, waiting impatiently for him It had been waiting for a long, long time.
Delonghi and the Marines were staring at this in awe. "How does it do that?" she whispered.
"Will," Gabriel answered. "The glass moves when the will moves it. and until it does, unless it does, nothing else can make the slightest impression on it. Come on."
He led them toward the broad domed wall, crowned with spikes and spines, that now stood thirty meters high against the hard starry dark. The wall drew aside for him.
Gabriel paused on the threshold. Enda ?
Nothing.
It's open, he said into the silent dark. It's perfectly visible. We 're going in. You can see their shuttle parked outside.
No answer. He would only have to hope she had heard him.
Gabriel rested the gloved hand containing the stone against the doorsill as he went in. As he did, he felt the whole place shiver around him, almost flinching away from his touch. It had been waiting for a long while, but even now it might have to wait longer.
Lacey and Bertin went in first, at point, then stepped aside for the others to follow them into the great central hall that lay open before them. They all looked down and around at the long corridors, six of them, which led from the central hall, downward into the heart of Argolos. From the inside, the glass was full of light, though none of this showed on the outside. Delonghi went over to one of the walls and touched it thoughtfully.then took her gloved hand back quickly.
"It's alive!"
"It's a vessel for life," Gabriel said. "I don't know if it's necessarily the same thing." He looked around, clenching his fist on the stone again, saying, Which way?
No immediate answer.
Well, I'm here. Get on with it!
Nothing, though. Gabriel frowned. It was strange.
Diligent, Rathbone and MacLain were now quartering the area, examining the openings into the long, smooth, shining corridors and looking up at the great dome that now rose above them.
"There's atmosphere in here," Dirigent said.
"Is there?" said Delonghi. She went over to look down one of the corridors.
MacLain was looking at a gauge on the outside of his sleeve. "It's inside the green zone for humans," he said. "Pressure's good."
"I'd just like to know how it's staying in here," said Lacey.
"It's some kind of invisible barrier," Gabriel replied. "Go back there to where the wall was, where it let us in. You can feel it a little as you pass through."
Delonghi looked curiously up at the dome. It appeared clear, but no stars were visible through it, only darkness. She shook her head. "Okay, people. Go ahead and reconnoiter. Check these tunnels to five hundred meters, see what you can see, then report back."
Berlin and Lacey led the way again, heading inward. The others followed.
"We really ought to stay together," Gabriel said.
"Well," she said, "I'd prefer to do the first part of this by the book, anyway." She walked over to examine the nearby wall again.
Gabriel closed his eyes for the moment and stood still, concentrating on the stone, trying to find out what the problem was. Where was the direction he was expecting?
Nothing.
He swore. Suddenly it was as if the crystal had gone opaque, as if there were a glass wall in his mind, and a blank one. He opened himself out as wide as he knew how and listened with everything in him.
Nothing.
n/~> tt
Connor.
Still listening, he opened his eyes, looked at Delonghi, and felt what he had not been open enough to feel before.
Curl. The green warmth, the writhing and stroking. It pressed, pressed on her mind, and there was no way she could fight it, none at all. It had been there too long. The only question was how much Delonghi there was in there anymore.
All this in a single moment of absolute shock and horror. Gabriel opened his mouth to say he didn't know what—
Everything whited out.
Gabriel crumpled. What was that? What—
The stone in his glove seared him. Then he knew. The teln in her had attacked him, tried some kind of psionic blast on him. The stone had protected him, but the protection wasn't enough. The blow hit him again, and everything whited out in pain again. Slowly, after a few moments, the world came back.