Stephen Dedman: Tour de Force

Kalbarri Gorge isn’t as deep or wide as the Mariner Valley, or even the Grand Canyon, but it’s just as beautiful—until you have to rappel halfway down a cliff face at the height of an Australian summer. “No,” I said. “No, you’re kidding.”

“You’re scared of heights?” Kylie asked.

“Not usually,” I assured her. “Only when I’m hanging from a rope with a twenty-meter drop between my ass and a lot of sharp rocks. I thought there was supposed to be a river down there.”

“Not at this time of year.” She sounded apologetic. Barnes was looking scornful, Sergei carefully neutral. We stood there baking for a few seconds, and then Barnes grabbed the rope and lowered himself over the edge. I stood there, waiting for the scream and the splat!; instead, I heard him yell, “Clear!” Damn.

Sergei and I glanced at each other, and then I turned my back to the cliff and took a firm grip on the rope; Sergei is nearly twice my age, and I wasn’t going to let him make me look like a wimp in my own country, even though I’d never been here before. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, stepped back and dropped into nothingness for an eternity. I opened my eyes again, saw the red and pink striations of the sandstone before my face, looked up (down was too scary), and realized I’d descended less than a meter. So much for heroic gestures. Slowly, cautiously, I lowered myself down to the cave entrance, where Barnes was waiting, holding the rope taut. I considered kicking the smug bastard; instead, I carefully swung around him and dropped into the chamber.

I guess I’d been expecting a smooth floor, like you see in the movies and the tourist caves; I’d forgotten what Sergei had said about a sphere. It was remarkably smooth, for sandstone, and I slid feet-first down the inside of the bubble until I hit the ship.

I fumbled in my pocket for the Lagva flashlight that Vpokga(ro)tjj had given me, the same sort she’d used to shoot the Secretary of State, and made sure the beam was defocused and at low power before I switched it on.

My first thought was that it was the first thing I’d seen all day that wasn’t coated with orange dust. It was large and box-shaped, about as aerodynamic as an old Kombi, with sturdy legs and big bowl-shaped feet; obviously designed for vertical takeoff. There was a row of holographic pictures and curvilinear symbols just before my eyes. I’d counted forty-eight distinct characters, thirty-three of them recurring, before I heard, or felt, movement behind me, and turned to see Sergei and Barnes walking carefully down the slope.

“What have you found?”

“Writing,” I burbled. “And these pictures, look.” I traced along the images until I found the two I was after—a spectacularly ringed planet, and a moon dominated by an eye-like crater. “Saturn, and Mimas.”

“Maybe,” said Sergei. “Have you looked inside yet?”

“Inside?” I blinked. “Oh, the window. No, I hadn’t gone any further than this.”

“That’s not Lagvan?”

“No, of course not.”

“Just asking.” We followed Sergei around the craft, and tried to look through the window. Our light-intensifier goggles enabled us to pick out some detail, but shining light on the crystal instantly rendered it opaque, like a one-way mirror. Damn.

The aliens could never have passed as human, even at a Mardi Gras, but they were featherless bipeds; they even had a pair of eyes and a pair of arms apiece, in approximately the right places. They were wearing clothes, too—either that, or their skins were of very different textures and colors and came naturally equipped with pockets. But their heads were too big for their necks, and their eyes lidless and disproportionately small and too close-set; their long arms had too many joints and ended in far too many fingers, their legs only bent the wrong way, and the smaller one had two prehensile-looking tails sprouting from above his/her pelvic girdle. “Light-worlders?” suggested Sergei.

“Probably, unless they’re much tougher than they look. Same goes for the furniture.” There were two strange but identifiable chairs, two couches, and a bench, all quite permanent-looking in a flimsy sort of way. There were also hatches and panels, on the sides only, and a large cylinder at the far end that might have been an airlock, a walk-in closet, a matter-transfer booth, a shower, a toilet, a refrigerator, or all of the above.

Barnes started humming mournfully; we all turned to stare at him, and he blushed slightly. “Pink Floyd. ‘Wish You Were Here.’ My grandparents were hippies.”

I turned my attention back to the mess inside the spaceship. There were dozens of objects scattered over the sloping floor, most of which I couldn’t recognize—hourglass shapes that would have fit their hands comfortably; lumps of unknown substances, some irregular, some symmetrical; lots of paper-thin equilateral triangles about a decimeter on a side, bearing holographs or the curvilinear characters I’d seen outside or both. “Geologists!” said Kylie, suddenly.

“What?”

“Okay, planetologists. Whatever. But that’s a rock collection if I ever saw one—tektites, amethyst crystals, and that looks like petrified wood. I can’t identify the others…” She was almost salivating at the thought of discovering hitherto unknown species of stone.

“They’re not very organized, for geologists,” said Sergei, cautiously.

Kylie considered this. “Just because we can’t see the organization doesn’t mean it isn’t there,” she replied.

Sergei shrugged, and I stared into the mess. “That blue-green thing there’s pretty regular for a rock… looks more like an egg.”

“It could be a geode,” said Kylie, uncertainly, then shrugged. “Or it could be a cassowary egg; a bit big, but it’s the right shape… Maybe they’d never seen hard-shell eggs before.”

“Well, they’re civilians, anyway,” volunteered Barnes. “No weapons, transparent windows, and it’s too damned small for a Q-ship—”

He sounded disappointed as well as relieved, and I suddenly recognized that hint of accent. “West Point?” I asked.

“Yep. Class of ’14, second-worst in my year. I also went to MIT.”

“And Los Alamos?” I asked. He turned to stare at Sergei, who smiled.

“I wish I’d had you working for me thirty years ago, Sara. Yes.”

“The Weapon Shop?” I added.

“X Division,” replied Barnes, dryly. “And now Pine Gap. So what?”

“So what’re you doing here?”

“What if this was a military craft?” he asked, ungrammatically. “Who would you rather got to it first? You said yourself it’s more advanced than the Lagva tech—what if it’d been armed with anti-matter bombs or disintegrators? Can you imagine what would happen if that sort of weapon fell into the hands of Hezbollah, or National Offensive, or the IRA?”

“What about the MIA?” I muttered, and shrugged. “Okay, you’re right. But the force field—are you going to suppress that, too?”

“I don’t know. First we’ll have to understand it. But the force field may have offensive value, too—look at what the Lagva flashlight can do—and what if that thing on the guy’s belt is a sidearm?”

I looked where he was pointing. One of the aliens seemed to be wearing a fanny pack between its slender, keeled chest and its considerable paunch. “What if it’s a remote control?” I replied. “A respirator? A Walkman? His car keys? His lunch? Why would he be carrying a weapon?”

“Most explorers carry weapons,” said Sergei, softly.

“So do spies,” said Barnes.

I heard something hit the sandstone at the entrance, and we all turned around to see a fifth person drop, catlike, into the cave. Looking at the outside world with our goggles proved to be a mistake; we were dazzled, and saw nothing but the blurred silhouette of an athletic-looking man. By the time we’d recovered, he’d found his feet and a large pistol.