While Gagarin folded up, Russovsky dragged her pack down from above the H2 tank and slung it onto her wiry shoulders. She was not a big woman — not and fly a Midge-class ultralight like the Gagarin! — but she had a lean strength and endless endurance. The pack conformed to her back, belt straps sliding around her flat waist like warm hands. A sharp tug freed the winch from the forward centerline strut. Monofil line whined out of the spool as she backed toward the right-angled darkness in the cliff face.
In the fading light of the wing phosphors, the rock glowed a pasty green. The angle stood out clear and sharp. Half of a trapezoidal opening, faced with cut stone — a door — yawned in the side of the cliff. Russovsky nodded to herself, unsurprised. Ephesus had been a dead, shattered world for millennia, but something had lived here once. Dust was blowing past now, clouding the air. Hurrying, she climbed up into the opening, then flicked a glowbean inside. Pale blue light spilled out like milk from a fallen pail. There was a chamber, a big one, with a canted floor and more sand. It seemed big enough for the ultralight.
Stepping carefully around the edge of the chamber, one hand on the smooth sloping wall, Russovsky slapped the winch-patch onto the wall opposite the door. Outside, the Gagarin was beginning to rock from side to side as wind began to stir in the sandy bowl. Russovsky counted to five, then ran back to the door. At the side of the ultralight, she ratcheted the sand anchor back in, then stabbed the winch control. The little motor woke up with a tinny sound and began to reel in the monofil. Sliding on its landing skids, the Gagarin bumped up into the door. Russovsky paced behind the aircraft, then put her shoulder against the aft cargo door, pushing. Wind-blown sand began to hiss against her back. Breathing hard into her mask, she shoved the Gagarin into the chamber. On the smoother sand inside, the winch continued to whine until the nose of the aircraft touched the opposite wall.
Russovsky ducked in, her head turned away from the canyon. The wind was rising to a monstrous howl, and the lee of the jutting slab was filling with a swirling dance of dust, sand and fingertip-sized gravel. Working swiftly, she uncoiled a length of fil-tube from her belt, then tacked it along one side of the half-buried door. At the top of the tube was a thumb tab. Snapping the tab down and away, across her body with a sharp motion, Russovsky unfurled the filament screen and dragged the gelatinous material against the opposing jamb. Pressing firmly, she ran the thumb tab down the side of the door. The material sheened pearl for a moment, then stiffened. Dust and sand rattled against the polymer, skittering away from the charged filaments. Carefully, Russovsky used the thumb tab to seal off all the edges and corners. By the time she was done, the rattle of sand was a constant drumming.
Russovsky flicked another glowbean against the ceiling, where it spattered and stuck, making a spray of cold cobalt stars. Despite a sudden feeling of exhaustion, the woman moved around the ultralight, checking the exposed surfaces for cracks, wear or abrasions in the silvery composite. The dust on Ephesus had incredibly corrosive properties. At the starboard engine she paused, clicking her teeth together. Her goggles dialed up high into the ultraviolet, revealing the faint glow of pitting on the intake nacelle.
Shaking her head in disgust, Russovsky removed her helmet and the over-goggles, revealing high cheekbones and a seamed, weathered face. She was not young, and the hot sky of Ephesus had given her a steadily deepening tan. Clipping the helmet and goggles to the back of her belt, Russovsky adjusted her bugeyes — it was dangerous to leave the moist human eye exposed to the raw air of Ephesus — and took the big v-cam from a flat pouch on her left thigh.
"Recor…cough!" Russovsky cleared her throat, tasting bitter alkali. She unclipped the suit's drinking tube and took a swallow. Her fingers dug into a pocket on her z-suit and she popped a round, polished stone into her mouth. When her throat had cleared, she started again: "Recording inside a manufactured structure at the eastern end of slot canyon twelve."
She raised the v-cam and slowly panned around, pausing on the door. By now the sun would have risen in the east, but the canyon outside was still pitch-black. The wind was still rising, making the monofil membrane in the doorway shudder. Completing her slow turn, she walked away from the Gagarin to the edge of the light thrown by the glowbeans. The chamber ended in a slick, glassy wall. There was another trapezoidal door cut into the rock.
One-handed, she kept the v-cam up while she flicked a glowbean into the passage.
More blue light filled the space — a corridor with slanted walls, matching the angle of the door. It ended no more than a dozen meters away, abruptly, in rough, uneven extrusion. Frowning with concern — how queerly even — Russovsky advanced gingerly across a glassy, slick floor. The rock here, like that throughout the Escarpment, was Ephesus's particular trademark — a jumbled, compressed, mangled aggregate of sandstone, rhyolite, granite, and flint. She paused at the irregular wall, staring into another chamber opening off to her right.
"Ah…krasivaya devushka!" Russovsky's faded sapphire eyes crinkled up in a broad smile. Her fingers were trembling a little as she set the v-cam down on the sandy floor, letting the camera adjust itself level so it could record the wall in detail. Kneeling, she ran gloved fingers over the rumpled, irregular surface. There were whorls and lumps and patterns familiar in kind, if not in detail, to her experienced eyes. Here, a fluted shape, the outlines of stalklike legs, a curled shell. There, the echo of flat-pressed reeds and tiny nutlike cysts.
Limestone. The muddy floor of a primordial Ephesian ocean. The wall rose up at a queer angle, obviously trapped in the greater matrix of the mountain. Russovsky rose, picked up the v-cam and panned it around, showing the way the passage ended at the shale. A gray eyebrow rose, seeing a set of cylindrical objects scattered near the wall.
Russovsky bent down, examining one. They seemed to be stone, or crusted with ancient fossilized earth. There were three of them, regular in length and width. Sucking cautiously on the stone in her mouth, Russovsky backed away, still recording with the v-cam, and then walked carefully back to the ultralight. The smooth, almost mirror-smooth tunnel floor could have been cut with a plasma torch.
She was exhausted and hungry from the long night-flight. After choking down a threesquare bar Russovsky drank some more water and lay down on the sand under the Gagarin. The suit kept her body temperature within a survivable range and was far too much trouble to shed. The glowbeans were beginning to die, letting soft darkness steal back into the chamber. Russovsky tugged a folded woolen blanket from under the seat of the ultralight and tucked it under her head. Faded red, orange, and black stripes made a repeating series of pyramids on the blanket. The wool was scratchy on her cheek and the woman closed her eyes and fell asleep.
The storm beyond the door roared like a distant sea.
Ctesiphon Station, the Edge of Imperial M й xica Space