There wasn’t even a tech waiting. So I made my way to the temporary base. I just followed my lamp and the gray plastrene pathway. After checking in, and asking for Nuovyl, I went back to the illuminated map. There were more golden lines, showing where more exploration had been done, but not that many more, and a few more green lines, and a few less red lines.
None of them felt right.
I kept studying the map in the silence.
Nuovyl appeared. He was wearing armor, carrying his helmet, like me. His face was drawn, his left cheek smeared with dark grease. He coughed several times. He didn’t say anything.
“We’ll be leaving in a bit. I’ll need a slider and a cutter that will open doors.”
“Sir?”
I didn’t answer. I’d found something. There was one part of the megaplex that looked different. I couldn’t explain why. Superficially it looked like all the other interlocking ovals holding towers and canals. It wasn’t.
“Nuovyl, I want to go there.” I pointed.
“Ser Barna… that is almost two stans by slider at full speed. It is late in the day. You know how Professor Henjsen feels about that.”
“That’s where I need to go. I’ll need the equipment necessary to open any doors.” I’d said that before, but it hadn’t registered.
“It’s late, sir.” Nuovyl repeated.
“It’s very late, and we don’t have much time.” I could feel that I’d felt it the moment I’d seen Commander Morgan that morning, and all the crates headed up to the Magellan reinforced my sense that we were running out of time.
“You’ll have to clear that with Dr. Henjsen.”
“Then, let’s take care of that.”
I followed him to the small cubicle off the main lock.
Henjsen looked worse than Nuovyl or Morgan. She was skin stretched over bones, eyes beyond red with purpled half circles under them. Her hands shook, and her left eye twitched.
“Whatever you want, Barna, I can’t do it. You can walk where you want, but no equipment. We can’t spare any equipment. We don’t have much time to find clues to the technology…”
“And you certainly can’t spare it for a mere artist?”
She did not meet my eyes.
“You haven’t had any success. I discovered the windows, and one hidden room. Has anyone else done that?”
“I just can’t spare the equipment.”
“Then we should talk to Commander Morgan.”
“I’m in charge here.”
“Commander Morgan thought enough of my ability to send me down now. Do you want to cross him?”
“You… you think…”
I just looked at her. “You’ve had three months, Kaitlin. I found more in six days than most of your teams found in all that time.”
Her eyes finally dropped. “Morgan’U still have to approve. One day.”
“The rest of today, and tomorrow,” I countered.
She touched a small console. Shortly, Commander Morgan’s image appeared.
“Yes, Doctor?”
“Ser Barna—the artist—has requested a slider and two techs for some explorations. He wants them today and tomorrow. I can’t meet your schedule and spare them.”
Morgan looked up from the small screen at Henjsen. “You’ve had control of all the sliders for three months, Doctor. I think you can spare one slider and the necessary techs for the rest of today and tomorrow for ser Barna. I’m sure you can find a way to meet the schedule without two techs and one slider for such a short period. I think that an extra day on such matters as paleontology and geology will be marginal at best I could be wrong as to which area is of marginal use. I leave that to you.” His smile was wan, almost ghastly. “I do know that ser Barna’s artistic renderings may be as necessary as all the scientific findings, particularly for later funding.”
Henjsen stiffened. “As you wish, Commander.”
“As the captain commands, Doctor.” Morgan’s voice was tired—and cold.
Once the screen cleared, Henjsen looked at me. “Today and tomorrow.”
“Yes, Doctor. I understand.” I doubted Kaitlin Henjsen would ever hold a kind thought about me again, but I had been given, effectively, twelve to fifteen standard working hours. It wouldn’t be enough, but a century wouldn’t have been enough for anyone, not with the size of the megaplex.
Nuovyl was waiting outside. “Sir?”
“We’re cleared. You can check with the doctor if you want.”
“Have Zerobya handle the cutting laser,” Henjsen said from behind me. “Whatever ser Barna wants with you two and one slider until tomorrow night.”
If I could have captured her voice in oils, even abstractly, it would have made a glacier—or the surface of Danann—seem warm.
“Yes, sir.”
Nuovyl said little at all until we were on the slider with the other tech.
“Ready, sir?”
“I’m ready. There’s a duplicate map in the system.” I’d made certain it had been downloaded and linked, to ensure we got exactly where I wanted.
“Ah, yes, sir. I see.”
Nuovyl eased the slider away from the welter of lights behind us where some of the tech crew was completing the loading of the shuttle.
Along the way, I’d only caught one fragment of his conversation with Zerobya. She was a squarish woman who muscled the cutting equipment with ease. Nuovyl must have triggered the wrong channel because his words cut off abruptly.
“He may be an artist, but he’s got enough clout that the ops officer overruled Henjsen. She’d just as soon have us all freeze—”
I could guess what he’d been about to say. He probably did say it to Zerobya.
By the time we were halfway to the area I’d picked out, the alienness of silver-blue towers appearing in the light and vanishing in blackness beside and behind the slider had dulled into routine. Another three-quarters of a stan passed before Nuovyl eased the slider to a halt in front of a tower. In the lights from the slider, blackness looming behind it, the tower looked no different from hundreds of others.
“Think this is it, sir.”
I looked past Nuovyl to check the map again. Expanded on the slider’s small screen, it was obvious. The tower before us was larger, if just slightly. It was also subtly set in the center of those surrounding it. Because of the interlocking arcs, that could have been said of a number of the towers, but the arcs were slightly more pronounced around the tower I had discovered, if only by a few degrees of curvature.
Lifting the imager I had brought, I followed Nuovyl from the slider toward the tower.
“We’re lucky, sir. Looks like someone melted the ramp down to the door. Didn’t open it, though.”
“We haven’t been out here, I don’t think,” Zerobya offered from where she was working to off-load her equipment onto a handslider.
“But there’s a ramp down.”
I looked at the ramp. Although the edges were crisp, it felt old, and the gradient wasn’t as steep as those I’d been down before—except once. Not so old as the towers, but we hadn’t melted it. “We’ll worry about that later.” I eased down the ramp, stepping carefully, but the ice under the armor’s boots didn’t feel any different from any other of the ice surfaces.
The door to the tower was unmarked. I didn’t see any debris anywhere near. If the visiting aliens had melted the ramp, they hadn’t done much more. At least, I couldn’t see any sign of that.
“The door needs to be cut and warmed, Zerobya,” Nuovyl called back. He turned to me. “When are you going to report about the ramp?”