“I’m fine. I’ll just be glad when this tour is over.” That was true enough.
“It’s been easy for a combat tour. Only one attack.”
“So far,” I pointed out. “They don’t give combat pay without a reason, and one attack isn’t usually a reason.”
“You worry too much.”
I had more than enough to worry about Somehow, some way, I had to get the signaler assembled and stashed on one of the shuttles. I had to get that done soon, and I might just have to take the kind of chances I didn’t like taking. I couldn’t afford to get caught, but if I didn’t get the job done, I’d either be dead—or I’d be on the run from both the Comity and C.I.S. I didn’t want Colonel Traesdale’s crusaders after me, either. Just as important, I didn’t want the Spear of Iblis or the Morning Star in the hands of the Comity. What the Godless would do with such a weapon wasn’t something I ever wanted to think about, and Danann looked to represent a temptation worthy of Iblis. If I failed, none of the alternatives were good, either for me or the Worlds of the Covenant.
“Bond?”
“I guess I do, sometimes.” I gestured toward the aft bay, where both the torps we needed to inspect were and where I’d hidden my signaler components. “Could be I’ve had too much time to think.” I offered a twisted smile.
“Thinking—that’ll get you!” Ciorio laughed loudly.
So did I, even if I didn’t feel like laughing. I could feel time squeezing in on me like a vise. I needed time alone in the armory, and that didn’t happen except when I had the midwatch, and I usually got those on the enddays. I didn’t like waiting that long, but agents who hurried usually hastened their own discovery or death. I wasn’t aiming for that, although I doubted that Colonel Truesdale would have cared, not so long as the signaler was in place and worked.
I liked the idea of reaching the Paradise of Heaven, but I was in no hurry to get there, either.
60
Barna
In the end, I rode the passenger shuttle back up to the Magellan late on twoday. If Kaitlin Henjsen could have found a way to get me off Danann sooner, she would have. I was thankful I’d had the foresight to take all the images of the artifact that I had, because I never got near it again. All the physical scientists were out there—all the ones that were on Danann. I hadn’t heard if they’d discovered anything. In the little more than half a day since they had converged upon my discovery, I hadn’t thought I would.
The shuttle was packed, both with passengers and with cargo. I was tired. So was everyone else, and they were all experts in fields deemed uncritical to investigating the artifact.
Exhaustion didn’t stop Aleya Neison from asking questions. She was in the couch closest to mine.
“How did you know it was where it was?”
“How big is it?”
“Were there any markings that might have been inscriptions or a language?”
“What do you think it really is?”
“Is it possible there are others like it…”
I answered them all, as well as I could, but most of my answers frustrated her, I knew, because, except for how I found the artifact and how big it was, and the fact that I certainly hadn’t seen anything that might have been inscriptions, I couldn’t say anything except, “I don’t know,” or similar phrases.
After the shuttle docked in the big boat bay, I turned in the armor to the techs. I was glad to get out of it. Then I headed back to my minuscule stateroom. Tired as I’d been, I wasn’t sleepy, and it was still well before the evening meal. I showered and dressed in clean skintights, vest, and shorts—practical for shipboard living.
I took the imager to my work space and transferred all the images I’d shot in the last day on Danann. Most were of the artifact, or the hall, with just a handful or so of the tower.
Because I had to talk to someone, I sent several of the best images of the artifact to Elysen’s system. Then I slipped down the passageway to her work-space door. I knocked gently.
“Yes?”
“It’s Chendor. I just got back. I found something that you might be interested in.”
“You can come in. I’m not at my best, but that won’t make any difference.”
She wasn’t. She was sitting behind her console, wearing a pale blue old-style shipsuit. The color should have looked good on her, with her silver hair. It didn’t. On the wall screen was another parade of star regressions. I didn’t try to follow them.
“You’re back rather soon,” she said. “Didn’t you just go down yesterday?”
“I did. I found an artifact. Kaitlin Henjsen wasn’t too happy with me. I neglected to tell her that the visiting aliens had marked out that tower, too. They never entered it, though.”
“Kaitlin can be, shall we say, rigorous… in her defense of the professional approach…”
“And you aren’t?” I still had no idea what her grand discovery might be.
“I don’t recall throwing you onto a shuttle for a disagreement.” Elysen smiled, faintly. Her expression did not remove the fatigue from her face. There was a hint of grayness to her complexion as well—-just a slight touch.
“They’re moving everyone off Danann. She just made certain I was among the first.”
“It’s already coming to that?” Her voice softened. “I was afraid something along those lines might occur.”
“Along what lines?” I had no idea what she meant.
“Tell me about the artifact.”
“I sent you the best images. You can call them up.”
“I didn’t notice.” Her fingers touched the board, and the stars vanished from the wall screen. An image of the artifact filled it. The image was good, but it was fiat. “How big is that? I don’t get a sense of size.”
“Four and a half meters from the bottom of the spheres to the top of the crystal, another meter to the light point. There are three other images on your system.”
She called up the others, looking at each in turn, then returning to the first before speaking. “Amazing… truly amazing…”
“It’s the only artifact down there,” I said.
“You did better than you know, Chendor.”
“You know what it is, don’t you?”
“I might. Cleon and I will have to consult on this, but it sheds some light—as you put it earlier”—that enigmatic smile crossed her face again, almost erasing the worst of the age and the fatigue—”on what we’ve been doing. That is, if my theories are correct.”
“You’re not going to tell me yet?”
“Tomorrow. The day after at the latest.”
She wasn’t going to say, and I’d never been the kind to browbeat people into telling me anything. “A little while ago, you said something about the removal of the team, of it ‘coming to that already.’ What did you mean?”
“Oh, that. I was talking about Pandora’s box, or a version of it, or maybe the ancient myth of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.”
“You think Danann has something like that?”
“It is something like that, and the rest of the human Galaxy either wants the box or the fruit of that tree for themselves, or they don’t want anyone to have it.”
“No one understands most of what’s down there,” I pointed out.
“The rest of the Galaxy doesn’t know that Even if they did know, they wouldn’t want to risk the chance that we might be able to find out.”
“They think it’s a technology treasure hunt.”
“Isn’t it?” she asked archly.
I knew what she meant. “It’s more than that.” What exactly, I couldn’t say, except that the artifact was a key. I had an idea from Elysen’s reaction that it confirmed the Danannians had indeed been a Type in civilization, if not more. I should have seen earlier, but I hadn’t been thinking along those lines.