We passed another door that had been cut and left half-open. I stepped through the opening and into a chamber. The outer wall clearly followed the curve of the tower wall, and so did the inside wall. The entire room was an arc, barely, given the size of the tower, and the end walls bowed inward slightly.
There was something about the outer wall. The faintest shift in shading, a darker silver, outlined an oval on the wall. “This was a window.”
“How do you know?” asked the tech.
“It’s on an outer wall. If it faced that flat area where the shuttle is, when it lifts off, we might see something.”
“You think so, sir?” I could see the skepticism through the body armor.
“Well… not here. We’re too far below the ice. Can we get up several levels? How long before the shuttle lifts off?”
“Another half stan, sir. The captain doesn’t like to leave them groundside too long, but it does take a while to turn them around, with the samples and all.”
“How about going up?”
“There are ramps in the center of the tower. They circle up. There are two.”
I followed Nuovyl out of the chamber and along the corridor, past a number of doors that had been opened, then to the center ramps. Unlike the other chambers, there were no doors to the ramps, just open circular archways When I looked down at the silvery floor of the ramp, it appeared just a shade rougher. “You said that there were two ramps?”
“Yes, sir. They each circle.”
“One was an up ramp and one a down. They probably carried the Danannians each way.”
“That was what Dr. Lazar said. He couldn’t explain how, not in any terms I understood.”
I doubted that I would have understood either.
We left the ramp through another open arch off three levels up. I hoped that there were some open doors and that I could figure out which side of the tower faced the flat area where the portable quarters and the shuttle were. Only a handful of doors had been opened on the fourth level, and none was directly opposite the shuttle. I picked the one that might offer an angled view and stepped inside. The chamber was larger than the one on the first level, but just as empty of anything as it had been. I could make out a far larger oval, one that stretched a good six meters from end to end, taking up most of the outer wall, and captured an image of it.
“Now what, sir?”
“We wait, and we look at this blank wall. You tell me what else you know about the towers, or this one.”
“Sir?”
“How many towers has the team entered? Do you know?”
“I’d heard that they’ve only gone into five or six. It takes a lot of power to melt the ramps through the ice…”
Nuovyl didn’t seem to know that much more about what was inside the towers. He did know a great deal more about what was outside. “… we’ve found five of these circular lakes, and the towers are spaced the same around each one. Each lake has a wall around it, and the ground-imaging equipment shows they’re all smooth. They don’t have any decorations at all…”
Abruptly, the oval on the wall—or a small section of it to my right—turned hazily transparent. I could see what looked to be bluish lines around the shuttle, in addition to the ground lights focused on the craft. I quickly used the imager and hoped the pictures would turn out. As the shuttle lifted, the transparency faded quickly.
“Sir—it is a window. But… what were those blue lines? I never saw those before.”
“I don’t know.” I didn’t. I had an idea that the window had displayed or translated some form of the AG-drive energies in a visual image, but I could have been wrong.
“How did you know?”
“I was just hoping.” I’d guessed. Intelligent aliens who had intelligent doors and buildings—if they looked at anything—might have had intelligent windows. The windows were probably one-way, and they needed energy to work. There wasn’t that much visual light, and almost no heat energy on Danann. Only something like a shuttle or a high-power laser would activate them. Even so, someone had to be looking when it happened.
I’d found windows. I doubted that my discovery would even make the footnotes in the scholarly papers. Someone else would have found them sooner or later, but I enjoyed the idea that I might have been among the first.
“We can head back, Nuovyl. We might as well report this to Dr. Lazar or Dr. Henjsen.” I took a few images of the chamber. The only thing special about it was that I’d seen a window work there for a moment, but I wanted a personal record.
“Yes, sir.”
Besides, I was getting more than a little tired, and my legs were beginning to ache, really ache.
37
Fitzhugh
At five minutes past eleven—or eleven hundred five in military terminology—on the morning of oneday, a mere two days before I was scheduled for my descent to Danann, the console in my work space flashed on with the image of the Magellan’s operations officer. “Professor Fitzhugh, this is Commander Morgan.” For all that his image was clear, and the announcement of his identify unnecessary, I merely replied, “Yes, Commander?” I refrained from rhetorically offering assistance that he neither needed nor probably desired.
“You are currently scheduled to go planetside on threeday.”
“That is what I’ve been informed by Major Tepper.” “I would like to suggest that we postpone your descent for another week. It’s taken more time and a great deal more equipment to gain access to the towers and structures below. We’d like to retard the schedule for those members of the expedition team whose specialties deal with cultural artifacts other than the shells of the structures and with the culture itself.” Morgan paused. “That’s because, frankly, as you may have noted from the images and findings made available to you, we have yet to find anything besides empty buildings, and getting inside those has been more difficult than we imagined.”
“I understand, Commander.” I could have lodged some sort of protest, perhaps with the Special Deputy Minister, but it would have been in vain—and self-defeating over any length of time. Morgan was in charge of the exploration schedules, and he had encountered a problem, certainly not the last, I suspected, over which he had little control. Moreover, as he had intimated, it was most highly improbable that I would be likely to discern additional new insights about the Danannian history from looking more closely at the few structures to which the team had gained access. The greater the range of structures and artifacts to which I had access, the more valuable and potentially accurate my analysis and contribution would be—if I could make any real and meaningful addition at all.
Still, I did have questions and decided to ask one or two. “I have not seen any reports on any life-forms, even lesser life-forms—”
“You haven’t seen any reports because there haven’t been any found yet. There isn’t any uncovered ground in the megaplex. Torres is attempting to get core samples outside the built-up area and from underneath the lakes.”
“Nothing like cemeteries, memorial garden, statues?”
“Nothing, Professor. Believe me, everything that’s been reported is routed to all of you on the project. Now… if you will excuse me?”
“I’m sorry. If you would let me know when my time on Danann will be?”
“We will, as soon as we know. Thank you, Professor Fitzhugh.”