“When we find what I’m looking for—or if we don’t.” I gestured toward the sides of the ramp and the ice underfoot. “I don’t see any signs that anyone left anything.”
“Yes, sir.” Nuovyl’s voice was even and polite. That meant he disagreed, but that could have been because, if I reported the ramp, we were through for the day, and he could head back, rather than working late. Then, too, I was undoubtedly breaking yet another archeological rule.
“You two will need to back off to the top of the ramp,” Zerobya said “There’s not enough room for me to get the equipment past you.”
I edged back up to the top of the ice ramp. There, Nuovyl and I waited at the top of the ramp—and we waited. From time to time, I looked down, but I couldn’t see that much.
Nuovyl didn’t say anything, and I had nothing to add.
“It’s open. But it was a real bitch,” Zerobya finally called.
I tried not to hurry back down the ramp.
Zerobya was replacing a laser cutting head and didn’t look up immediately. “The latch placement was different here, and there were double catches, instead of single ones.” She straightened and turned more directly to me. “Do you want me to open the inside doors, like usual?”
“If you would. If I see something, I may call on you.”
“Yes, sir.”
Once Zerobya was through the door with her equipment, we followed into the foyer. It might have been my imagination, but the oval foyer seemed slightly larger than those in the other towers I’d surveyed. The first level was similar to all the other first levels I’d looked through. Similar, but not identical. I had the sense that there were fewer chambers—even though the tower was larger and each chamber seemed no larger than those elsewhere. But there were no hidden alcoves.
Around each door was a scattering of ice or atmospheric droplets from the heat created when Zerobya had cut and warmed the doors to let them deform themselves open. Some of the droplet patterns were most intricate. I only took a few images, though.
Still, I inspected each chamber, well enough to ensure that nothing obvious was concealed and that there were no hidden alcoves. There were neither.
With our lights cutting through the darkness and creating a silvery light from the largely nonreflecting silvery walls, we made our way to the ramp and headed up to the second level. I was convinced the ramps had once actually propelled the Danannians up and down the towers, but I hadn’t seen reports about any possible mechanisms.
When we emerged on the second level into the upper-level foyer, I turned toward the left branch of the corridor. I had taken only a few steps out of the foyer when I realized I had seen no doors. Also, the corridor swung to the left According to the pattern in all the other towers, the corridor should have curved to parallel the outer wall. Instead, it turned outward.
“This is different. We might have something here.”
“Walls look just the same to me, sir,” Nuovyl replied.
I played the light across the walls and floor. They were no different from any other interior surfaces, except for the lack of evenly spaced doors into chambers. I kept walking. Unlike all the other corridors, this one widened as it continued, then opened into a second foyer. I stopped and used the light to search the foyer. Directly across from me was another entrance, a duplicate of the corridor down which we had walked. To my right was a curved wall, one that roughly paralleled the outside of the tower. It was the only time I’d seen an interior wall of any size on an interior chamber that was convex. In the middle of that wall was one of the flattened circular doors. To me, it looked slightly larger.
“Nuovyl… we’ll need to open that.”
“I’ve already called Zerobya. She went the other way out of the ramp foyer. Said there were more doors that way. She’ll be right here.”
I walked toward the door in the convex wall. It was larger than all the interior doors, even a trace wider than the outer building doors. My light showed no separation between the halves of the door.
“Here’s Zerobya, sir.”
The light from the other corridor strengthened. Behind it came the other tech, pulling her equipment slider. Once she entered the foyer, she stopped as well. “This is different. Haven’t seen one of these with three entrances before.”
“Can you open that door at the side?”
“Hasn’t been one I haven’t been able to open yet, sir.”
Like the main door, the foyer door took longer. It could have been that I was impatient. I didn’t think so.
Finally, the door halves separated, but they came to a halt when they were less than a meter apart.
“This one’ll take more power to get wider, sir.”
“I can see that.” Still, the opening was enough to enter whatever lay beyond. I stepped through into a dark cavernlike chamber. I almost stumbled, because the floor sloped down from the entrance. “Careful. It slants down.”
“Yes, sir.”
I swept the beam from my light across the chamber from left to right. I could sense immediately that the hall was far larger than any interior space I’d seen. Then, as the beam crossed the middle of the dark chamber, light cascaded everywhere, flaring like a fountain up into the domed ceiling that was at least ten meters overhead.
“What the frig…” Nuovyl’s exclamation reverberated through my helmet.
I finished the light sweep of the hall. It looked to be almost forty meters in diameter, and more circular than oval. Then I trained the light on whatever it was in the center of the space. Once more light flared upward, in a spray that illuminated the entire space. The intensity was so great that the helmet filters kicked in, and my eyes had to adjust again.
What stood on a low circular dais in the exact middle of a perfectly circular hall was… I didn’t know what to call it It had two bases—if they could be called that—each silvery gray. There were seemingly perfect and identical spheres. From each sphere, something crystalline swept up in an arc, and the two sweeps joined about three meters from the base. Each of the crystalline arms or arcs was about thirty centimeters across, until they joined. They looked cylindrical in cross section. From where they joined, they extended another meter and a half straight up—then just ended. But when I put the light on either arc, the light filled the arc sad. flowed upward. But it didn’t stop when the crystal did. Instead it focused into an intense single point of light that was both brilliant and black—simultaneously. That tiny light point illuminated the entire hall.
“Frig…” muttered Nuovyl, again.
“What’s…” Zerobya peered through the partly open door. “Oh! What is it?”
I didn’t have the faintest idea. “I don’t know.”
I kept the light on the point where the two arcs joined and tried to study what I saw. After a moment I could see that a black line ran between the two spheres—but it was dark light, not whatever crystalline material made up the arcs.
After a moment, I spoke again. “Nuovyl?”
“Ah… yes, sir?”
“Put your light where mine is. I want to walk down and take a closer look.”
“You think that’s wise, sir?”
“Probably not.” I paused. “Zerobya?”
“Sir?”
“Will you contact Danann Base and get a message to Dr. Henjsen that we’ve found something unique. Give them our location and say that I’ll be in touch momentarily.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll have to move back outside. Signals don’t travel from in here.”
“That’s fine. When you’re done, come back and let me know.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll be going now.”
It might have been my imagination, but I thought I sensed relief as she left.
The light intensity more than doubled when NuovyPs light struck the sculpture. I had the feeling it was a device of some sort, far more man a sculpture. Yet the curves and the lines were so precise, so artistic, and the crystal and gray were so intense, and the light somehow so serene, brilliant as it was, that I couldn’t help but think of it as art.