The little lamps had come on again, this time steadily. They illuminated the space between the hulls with a bright, steady, yellow-white light. "Look!"
There was another change happening too. The mesobot reported the presence of a faint gas pressure, rapidly rising. The gas was warm— in fact it was a mix of nitrogen and oxygen at the same temperature as the inside of Michael's suit.
It was Michael's turn to swear, very quietly.
"I think we've just been invited in," he said.
RUE WATCHED THE others slide through the black circle of the airlock. It was frightening to think that something inside the Lasa habitat knew they were here and was opening the way for them. On the other hand, Rue had always known she was just the finder of the Envy, not its real owner. The scattered habitats that made up the cycler had kept their secrets for almost two years now; without knowing where it came from or why it was here, she was forced to be humble. So her anxiety was mixed with relief at the thought that if the Envy's true masters appeared now, they could at least take the burden of doubt away from her.
Her turn came and she flipped through the airlock with ease. She nearly ran into somebody's back and climbed over them to get a better view.
The place was transformed. "Humidity, temp, pressure, oxy mix, they're all identical to our suit standard," Mike was saying. The interhull was lit up now too, in brilliant white light like the false sunlight the R.E. people favored. Rue dimmed her faceplate so she wouldn't have to squint.
"Eerie," somebody said. Rue nodded; this cavity between the spheres was strangely like a place on Allemagne known as the Gallery. The Gallery was the last insulating space between the outer shells of the colony and the inner part, where the centrifuge and power plant resided. It was much bigger than this space, but perspective was tricky here due to the smooth reflective metal everywhere. If she just glanced around casually, though, the place had a weird familiarity to it. Almost like home.
"I suggest we designate the airlock as bottom," said Herat. "We can string some lines up the sides so we can orient ourselves." The other men grunted agreement and soon were unreeling lines and jetting off around the sphere in pairs.
Slowly, like a shy animal, one of the little habitat models was drifting in Rue's direction. She held onto the lip of the airlock and studied it. It was an elongated doughnut shape about sixty centimeters wide and a hundred long, made of some burnished white metal. It didn't match any of the Envy's habitats, so it was hard to get a sense of how big the object it modeled would be. But there was an obvious airlock etched in one end and a whole slew of tiny machines, intricately shaped, stuffed into the tubular doughnut hole. It glimmered like some fantastical toy; for a moment she fantasized about some day being able to hang this bauble over her son or daughter's crib. Of course, it might be solid and weigh five hundred kilos.
For some almost superstitious reason, nobody had touched one of these models yet. Rue wasn't about to be the first. As it reached her she drew back, letting it parade slowly past.
"The readings are pretty clear," said Michael. "No organics of any kind, just the perfect breathing mix for us."
That got her attention. "Can we export it? Tank it and take it back to the Banshee?"
"Please!" Uh oh, she'd set Herat off again. His suited figure jetted over to her. "If this is a first contact situation I hardly think we'd make a good impression by stealing their air."
Chagrined, Rue fell back to the airlock. But Herat didn't know how dire their life-support situation was. Rue's inventory last night had revealed some cracked stack tubes, which was going to reduce the carrying capacity of the Banshee even further. She'd told Crisler about it, but so far the news hadn't percolated down. There was a good chance, though, that this would be their last EVA for a while.
It was pointless to argue with Herat. If this air became crucial to their survival, she would requisition it; he would have no say in the matter. Better just to avoid the confrontation, since it would do no good.
"If the air is breathable, we should at least conserve our suit supplies," she said. It was a small defiance, but saying it made her feel better.
"Good point," said the professor. "Bequith? Can we take off these damnable head-clamps?"
"Yes. We could even renew our suit supplies here; I doubt the Lasa would object to that."
She threw Mike a grateful look, which he probably didn't see as he was in the process of taking off his helmet. She quickly did the same. Her first sniff of this alien air revealed a metallic tang and the faint sharpness she associated with cold and ice. But the air was warm.
"Where's the heat coming from?"
Mike clipped his helmet to a shoulder loop. "In there." He jerked a thumb at the inner sphere.
Crisler and one of the marines had flown over to one of the black circles on the inner sphere. "What do you make of those?" asked Crisler. "Looks like airlocks covering the whole surface. Makes no sense."
"Not human sense, maybe," said Herat. "I'm more interested in why the air is perfect for us. I know how; The lasers must have taken a spectroscopic reading through our faceplates. But why?"
"Like Bequith said," said Crisler. "We were invited in."
Herat was scowling. "That makes a lot less sense than you might think. And what sense it makes isn't good. You might think they want to talk— but Bequith and I have found ample evidence that symbolic communication is only really useful within a species; different intelligent species are usually so different that communication between them is useless at any level above threat/reward signals. We never have anything in common above basic bodily functions, so what's to talk about?"
"What are you saying?"
"Well, Admiral, ask yourself this: Under what circumstances does one organism invite a member of another species into a place?"
Crisler looked alarmed. "When it's trapping the other for a meal."
Herat nodded. "This place has already extracted quite a bit of information about us without asking."
What Herat was saying was unsettling— but Mike shook his head.
"They are asking," he said. "These open doors are an invitation more clear than a symbolic communication. So was the air. They're gestures of friendliness."
"So is the scent on a Venus's flytrap," said Herat.
One of the marines shouted. Rue looked over in time to see him leaping away from the inner sphere. The airlock disk next to him had irised open.
"I just reached out to touch the thing and it opened!" he said. He had his sidearm out and ready.
Silently, all across the surface of the inner sphere, other airlocks opened.
No one moved. All conversation had ceased and they waited to see what would emerge.
Rue was in a position to look directly into the first airlock that had opened. Unlike the outer lock, this and the others had collapsed from disks into rings around the lip of a round opening. The magnetic liquid spiked up in cones and fantastical arcs that must follow the reshaped magnetic field. They were perfectly still, though the surface of the liquid roiled like oil.
The airlock opened into a can-shaped chamber about four meters long and half that wide. At its far end was another, closed, airlock disk. Floating in the center of the space was a large, perfect ball of water.
"The trap opens," muttered the marine.
"Quiet, Barendts," said Crisler.
"Only some of them opened," said Mike quietly. He and Herat had drifted together. Rue jetted over to them; she felt safer next to these experienced alien-hunters.
"I wonder why that is," said Herat, also quietly. "We need to get around the other side and see what's happening there." Rue felt a thrill of fear when he said that; something might be emerging opposite them while they hung here gaping.