On the screen, Kris watched, as a new view opened. It showed the inside of the passageway. Then, in slow motion, darts shot out from the walls. Some crossed in front of the flyer, but, no doubt, others hit it. The view went dark.
“Okay, they really don’t want us in there,” Jacques said.
“Captain Hayakawa, do you have any more flyers?” Jack asked.
“We have plenty of small ones, and we can make nano scouts from Smart Metal, but I’m reluctant to lose more on a problem we already know. Wait one, we are looking at other solutions.”
A long minute later, the Imperial Marine was back on the line. “We have a suggestion from one of our medics. She has surgical gloves that, have on occasions, been blown up like balloons. She suggests we try them. We’re working on that idea.”
“But air-filled balloons don’t fly very far,” Kris pointed out.
“Yes, we know that. It seems we will have to advance down the entrance a ways. We are also working on that.”
A few minutes later, a Marine appeared with a Smart MetalTM ladder and carried it cautiously into the entrance to the pyramid. He returned a few moments later to report that the ladder had crossed the pit and turned into a ramp. A moment later, a Marine medic in a fully armored space suit headed into the pyramid with an armful of blown-up rubber gloves.
“This would be funny if it wasn’t so mortal,” Amanda said from her place at Kris’s elbow.
“It will provide a comic interlude, no doubt, when they make the vid of this expedition,” Kris said.
What Jack growled under his breath, his blushing bride was careful not to hear.
“She’s a few feet from the crash of the flyer,” Jacques said from the position he’d taken up at the mouth of the entrance. “She’s turning on lights.”
Again, the screen above the drop bay lit up, now with the feed from the medic’s helmet camera. It showed a long hallway pocked with a lot of tiny openings. She stopped a good meter from the first one, and the wreck.
“Let’s see what happens,” she said in Japanese, which Nelly translated for Kris.
She tossed the first inflated glove down the passageway.
Darts shot out and shredded the glove. However, a lot more darts were shot than were necessary. Most bounced off the stone walls of the passageway and fell harmlessly to the floor.
“Hold it,” Kris said. “Can you pan your camera around the floor?
The Musashi medic did. There weren’t a lot of darts on the deck.
“Anyone want to bet that we’re the first to trigger those darts?” Kris asked.
She got no response.
After a minute, the medic said, “One balloon down, eight to go.” She tossed another balloon into the danger zone. That triggered more darts and shredded another glove.
A third and fourth balloon glove suffered the same fate.
“Is it my imagination,” Amanda said, “or were there less darts that time?”
“You maybe be right,” Kris said.
Two more inflated gloves went downrange, and each of them got farther before meeting its inevitable fate.
“This is my next-to-last glove. If they’re all popped, we’ll have to wait for more from orbit or find something else to toss.” The medic tossed the ersatz balloon in the air, then batted it up with her hand, just like every child learned by their sixth birthday party.
This one slowly floated down the ramp. Darts flew. Several missed but tossed the glove about on the wind of their passing. Then one hit, and the balloon popped.
“And my last one.” That balloon was batted high. It floated down the passageway, carried on air currents whose source Kris could not see. One lone dart flew on camera across the passageway. It didn’t even get close enough to the glove to knock it around in its flight.
The glove finally settled to the floor. It rolled down the incline and out of the lights.
“I think we have exhausted their supply of darts,” the medic reported. “Captain Hayakawa, I request the honor of advancing across the dart-covered way.”
“You have earned that honor. Is your battle armor tight?”
“Yes, sir. My sergeant and my lieutenant checked it before we dropped.”
“Advance with care, Marine.”
Cautiously, the medic took a step into the kill zone. Nothing happened. Slowly, she sidestepped around the wreckage of the flyer. Still, nothing happened. She was on her third step past the wreck when a single dart shot out from the wall and buried itself in the shoulder of her armor.
From the view from Jacques’s helmet camera, she pulled the dart out and could be heard to laugh.
“Captain Hayakawa, may I report that the darts penetrate solid Musashi body armor less than a millimeter. I do not think we ever had anything to worry about.”
“Your report is noted. Do not relax your alertness. Stay cautious.”
“Aye, aye, skipper.”
The Marine reached the end of the beaten zone. “Captain, I request that you send in a new flyer. I can see what appears to be a large room no more than five meters from where I stand, but those five meters of wall have not been tested.”
“We will send in a flyer,” the Musashi Marine company commander said.
A small winged flyer made its way slowly down the passageway and flew over the medic. It got maybe three meters farther.
A wall of flame shot out to engulf it.
“Get out of there, Medic,” her skipper ordered.
“Sir, please. I have rolls of bandages. The fire came from only three meters farther in. I can toss a roll that far.”
“You may try,” did not sound all that happy.
She tossed a small roll of bandages into the flame zone.
It was incinerated. Only a tiny bit of fluff survived, and it burned out before it hit the deck.
Without hesitation, the Medic tossed a second roll.
It was also burned but not so quickly that there wasn’t a flaming ball of fire when it hit the deck and rolled a bit before burning out.
“Here goes a third. I hope no one needs bandaging,” and another roll went out in a long, underhanded throw.
It arched past where the others had been flamed and hit the deck just short of where the passageway opened up, to roll out of sight into the dark.
“I think we have exhausted the supply of incendiaries, sir. May I continue to advance?”
“Do so with extreme caution.”
The medic paused to remove her shoulder bag marked with a red cross. Then, swinging the bag in front of her, she advanced step by step into the beaten fire zone. Kris found herself holding her breath, but each swing of the bag brought no response from the flamethrowers, and each step was a successful one.
In what seemed like forever but couldn’t have taken more than a minute, the young woman stood at the end of the corridor. “Skipper, you’re really going to want to see what I’m seeing.”
What Kris saw on the screen was too diffuse to make out.
“Jack, let’s get down there.”
“Yeah, I guess it’s time to go.”
15
Kris wanted to see for herself what the pyramid held. As her admiral’s barge dropped from orbit, she ignored the visuals, but she couldn’t help but hear a lot of “Oh my God!” and “This is horrible!” and “I wouldn’t believe this if I weren’t seeing it with my own eyes.”
Kris had never been on a slower shuttle drop.
Finally, she was walking across the glass plain headed for the entrance to the pyramid.
Professor Labao was right. Seen up close, the glass was full of dents, cracks, and striations. In those imperfections, bits of dust had collected and tiny plants struggled for life. Here and there, a small bug waddled about its business. Lichen, moss, and fungus spread out from those oases of life, doing what they could to destroy the ever-present glass.