No one disagreed.
"Comparing the radar pictures and what we can see visually," Richard said a few hours later, "we see a difference: The stasis field's mostly, as we suspected, a sphere, covered with a layer, or if you like a shell, of accreted material. However, at one point on the sphere there's a pocket, a sort of dimple, in the field.
"It looks small by comparison with the big field, but in fact it has quite a large volume: larger than our own hull. Deep-radar shows it's divided into various compartments. Also it contains smaller stasis boxes-a very dangerous set-up-and an odd linear structure. It reminded me at first of a spinal column but on finer resolution it's more like a string of large beads laid out in a row… It has a cover fitting flush with the surface so the spherical outline is not disturbed."
"That would be where that black mark is?"
"Yes. In fact it's a hole. An obvious possibility is that it's where the mechanism for turning off the field was housed. It may still be there. Apart from the access face, which is flush with the sphere's surface, it's surrounded by the field on five sides and well protected."
"Then we examine it," said Charrgh-Captain. "With suitable caution."
Melody Fay remained in Wallaby at the weapons console. Her task was simple: Any slightest suggestion of the Slaver power or other threatening activity, and she was to use the moments she had to strike a button. Wallaby would cut loose with every weapon. That was assuming she could recognize the power before it gripped her. The rest of the expedition embarked in Joey, Wallaby's main shuttle craft. The black mark grew on the surface of the great globe as they approached.
"Not well protected enough," said Charrgh-Captain after a time. "Something has smashed through it. A meteor, perhaps."
"Odd that it should have struck in the one vulnerable spot," said Peter Robinson.
"It is the one spot such a strike would now show," said Charrgh-Captain in a tone of freezing contempt. "The stasis box may have passed through a meteor swarm. Or been bombarded in battle. Even without other explosives, every other hit would have vaporized on impact with the field from its own kinetic energies. That may contribute to the high metal content in the stony plating over the thing."
To have once encountered a meteor-swarm it must have drifted a long way," said Gay. "This part of space is empty."
"We know it has drifted a long way," said Charrgh-Captain. "It has been drifting for billions of your years and ours."
"Perhaps it was deliberately attacked," said Richard.
"We may soon see," said Charrgh-Captain.
The stony surface of the sphere had grown to fill all the lower viewport now. The black mark was a jagged hole, surrounded by the rim of a shallow crater.
Joey's landing legs touched. Natural gravity was negligible, but the craft's externally mounted gravity motors cut in, anchoring it firmly. The old kzinti gravity-planer had been obsolete as a space drive since the hyperdrive ended the First Man-Kzin War centuries previously and given, eventually, both species an open doorway to the distant stars, but kzin gravity technology still had a multitude of uses.
There was no need for ladders to descend. A gentle push and they each floated down, falling slowly through the great hole that meteor or missile had smashed through layers of super-hard shielding. There were edges of twisted metal, but even if these had not been eroded by the eons, they were unlikely to tear the fabric of modern space-suits. The hole narrowed somewhat toward the bottom. They pulled themselves on and down and into what must be the control-chamber. They activated the magnets in their boots. Their lights showed hulking machinery, wreckage and dust.
There was a silence they could sense even through space suit com-links. There were dark looming shapes, and the first beams of their lights illuminated little. Though the chamber occupied only a tiny part of the volume of the sphere, they realized properly now how big it was in its own right. Doors showed it was subdivided.
"I feel no trace of life," said Peter Robinson. He continued after a moment: "I do not know if it is autosuggestion, but the age of this place weighs upon me."
"I feel it too," said Gay. Charrgh-Captain growled. All kzin with their highly developed hunting instincts, even non-telepaths, were more sensitive to atmosphere than humans, but they did not like admitting it in such circumstances.
"Why is the dust swirling?" snarled Charrgh-Captain suddenly. "Have we live enemies?" He was holding a flashlight laser. Gatley Ivor gave a cry of dismay.
"It is the outwash effect our gravity-planer," said Richard after a moment. "We can probably use the effect to blow dust out the hole if we need to clear it further. Luckily the rim of the crater has prevented more dust drifting down here from the surface."
"I am sorry," said Gatley Ivor.
He doesn't seem up to much, thought Richard. This is his job. He should be used to it, more knowledgeable, even more excited, thinking of the papers and books he will get out of this if nothing else. I wonder if there is something phony about him. Then, more charitably: But this isn't an experience you can rehearse for. And this place would put anyone on edge. Unless, perhaps, you have the nerves of a warrior kzin and are on edge all the time.
They turned their lamps to full flood, and looked about.
Wreckage was obvious, and so was decay. Metal once superhard was disintegrating through sheer age. Richard pointed to objects like crazed mirrors, standing deep in dust. "More stasis-fields," he commented.
"Look more attentively," said Charrgh-Captain, "They are thrintun spacesuits. And they are occupied." None of the party found it easy to look at the group without qualms. Six bipedal shapes, about half the size of a man, standing as they had stood for billions of years. Each spacesuit, they guessed, contained a thrint. Indeed it was possible to make out, or to least to fancy, the shapes of their individual features-the squat bodies, the gaping slashes of mouths in prominent jaws, the single disk of an eye, the bulged heads whose brains contained the Slaver Power: projective telepathy.
"These cannot harm us at present," said Charrgh-Captain, "and there are evidently none in a condition that can. If monkey hands stay off them, there is no need for you to fear."
"It isn't exactly fear," said Gay.
"I know," said Charrgh-Captain. His vocal cords were ill-suited for expressing emotion in Interword, but those two words carried a hint of apology. All thinking beings who knew the terrible history of the ancients felt something beyond fear for the Slaver Power. "But they will have switches on those suits, if they have not decayed away entirely, to kill the stasis fields. They will be protruding beyond the fields themselves. I recommend no tampering. At least we know now that it is a thrint stasis box, not a tnuctipun one. I suggest that before we conclude this expedition we drop them into a sun with a long life expectancy. It would be satisfactory if the radiations and temperatures involved operated the mechanism and opened their suits for them then. It might happen. But what is this?"
"More stasis boxes?"
"Some of them are stasis boxes."
A row of spherical objects, each like a large model of the vast stasis field in a pocket of which they were standing. The top of each sphere was about twice the height of the kzinti, who stood in their spacesuits and helmets more than nine feet tall. They were mostly mirror-bright, though in the weak gravity of the chamber, dust had come to rest on parts of them in odd patterns. Gatley Ivor reached up to one and pulled away like orange peel a band of dust particles cemented together by time and vacuum. It had no adhesion to the surface of the field. Charrgh-Captain glared and growled at him. Partway along there was a break in the row. There was a sphere, nearly the same size as the stasis fields, showing not the mirror of stasis, but ancient metal, its top opened and slid aside. It was cracked and shattered. It appeared that its stasis field had been off and it had been involved when the chamber had been damaged. Past it were more metal spheres, stretching away in a line. Some of these were also more or less damaged and all had been opened.