Michael Flynn: The January Dancer

“You can feel it,” Maggie B. said, “but you can’t pick ’er up.” Tirasi nodded. “Like grabbing smoke.”

“Why am I not fookin’ surprised,” said O’Toole. He was answered by another outbreak of static.

The second chamber was right beside the pedestal and January idly felt one of the soft, spongy leaves that ringed the entry. It seemed made of the same material as the door of the vault.

At that point, Tirasi and O’Toole noticed their captain’s possession of the sandstone block. “Well, now,” said O’Toole with a glower. “And are ye cutting us out on the only bit of loot we can actually walk off with?”

January, surprised, looked at the sandstone block in his grip. It had fit his hand so comfortably that he had quite forgotten he was holding it. The stone was thicker at the ends now, and curved in a slight arc—and he had not felt even the smallest movement.

It was an exceptional piece, he realized. An exception not only to the beauty of the other items, but also to their immobility. A cuckoo in the nest. And why wasn’t it taken when the rest of this vault was plundered?

Tirasi nudged the pilot. “Greedy sod, ain’t he? C’mon, Slug, let’s explore the rest of this place. Might be there’s more stuff in the next room.”

January suddenly knew. Those fleshy “leaves” were not the petals of a decorative flower that ringed the entrance to the second chamber. They were segments of another of those marshmallow doors. Something had pierced the door in the center, and it had peeled outward in pie-slice sections. From the arrangement of the pieces, the door had been pierced from inside the chamber. And there was nothing inside the chamber but an empty pedestal.

“Wait!” he said, and to his surprise the others stopped and turned expectantly. January looked again at the shredded door. What had sat on that pedestal, sealed off from the other objects? The irresistible force? How long had the door resisted it? Millennia? Eons? But it had failed at last.

Where was it now? It could not have gotten off-planet, surely. No, it must still be loose somewhere on this world.

Waiting for a ship to happen by.

“You’re absolutely right, Bill,” he said. “There may be other relics somewhere in the complex, but for all we know that corridor”—he pointed toward the half-open door at the end of the room, half enticed by the dark at the end of the tunnel, half expecting something irresistible to come pouring through it—“for all we know that corridor leads nowhere but to a dead end deep inside the planet. That would fit, somehow. But we need to get off this world, now.”

O’Toole scratched his ear, cast an uneasy glance at the corridor, and said, “Sure thing, Cap’n. But I hate to leave without getting something out o’ this.”

The lack of objection surprised January. “Something’s happening,” he told them. “Have you been listening to the static on the comm channels? It’s getting stronger. There’s a storm brewing, and a big one. Look.” He wanted desperately for them to understand. “We can’t take these other things with us, but we can still cash in. Think what people would pay to come see them. They have to come through the tunnel, so we can control admission. But…” And here his voice became lower, more urgent. “We must leave now . We don’t have the supplies to stay and explore every pocket in this entire complex. We need to get a stake, so we can come back and do this proper and controlled.”

Maggie B. pursed her lips, thinking. “Who you thinking might stake us?”

January took a deep breath. “The Interstellar Cargo Company…” He hesitated, waited for the objections; then, when none were forthcoming, stammered on. “The ICC’s a damned pack of jackals, and ships like ours only get their leavings; but we may be able to work out a deal with them. If we’re going to do a seismic survey, map the complex, conduct a grid-by-grid search in an orderly manner, document our discoveries, we’re going to need more resources than the poor old Angel can earn in our lifetimes.”

A moment of silence passed. Then Maggie B. said, “Right, then. There’ll be time between here and the Jenjen to cook up a plan to protect our rights.”

Tirasi nodded. “An’ we’ll be able to show ’em that thing”—he indicated the now S-curved sandstone block in January’s hand—“and the videos we took of this place.”

“But if ye show ’em yer rock,” O’Toole warned him, “be fookin’ careful, or they’ll be taking it off ye. That bein’ yer honor’s very own stone.”

The display of unanimity and agreement was so unexpected that January waited a moment longer for the objections. Then Johnny Mgurk cried, “Chop and chel, sahbs. We go jildy. Hutt, hutt! Big dhik.” And the spidery little man led them up the tunnel.

January half expected to find the main door now shut, trapping them inside, but it was still rolled into its slot in the wall. The five of them tumbled out into the rocky cleft, blinking at the light, noticing that it was already dimmer.

Through the growing static on the radio, he heard Micmac Anne calling, “…swer me! Angel ca…Jan…! C…in, Amo…!”

January flipped the responder. “Tell me thrice,” he said three times. The ship’s intelligence could create a coherent sentence by splicing the fragments that got through the static.

“Amos!” said the reconstructed Anne. “There’s storm coming your way, a big one. It started over your eastern horizon, and we’ve been tracking it since…There’s lightning. Lots of lightning. Lots of big lightning. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s coming right down on you. Amos, get out of there now!”

They had already reached the excavation site. Maggie B. began to mount the backhoe, but January said, “Leave it. You heard Anne. The wind won’t be much at this pressure, but the sand can clog our breathing masks. And the lightning…”

He could hear it now. Thunder like galloping hooves. Underneath—a steadier tympani of deeper booms, like the lumbering gait of a giant. Black dust clouds loomed on the eastern horizon and lightning flashed within them like fireworks. The clouds seemed a-boil, rolling toward them. Johnny began to run toward the jolly-boat. “Shikar storm!” he wailed. “Hutt, hutt!”

“Shut yer food-hole, ye Terry slob!” O’Toole cried, bounding past him to the gig. Tirasi had fallen behind, staggering with the molecular sieve in his arms. “Drop it,” January ordered him. “Drop it and run for the jolly-boat.” The system tech threw his precious machine to the sand and sprinted.

Maggie was already firing the jolly-boat’s engines when O’Toole and January reached the gig. O’Toole popped the hatch and clambered in. January paused at the foot of the ladder and looked behind. Tirasi and Mgurk were sealing up the jolly-boat. He nodded and entered the gig.

“We’ll worry about our orbit after we have one,” he told O’Toole as he slid into the number two seat. “Lift! And lift now!”

So, they did.

Both boats reached the stratosphere ahead of the advancing storm front. Lightning crackled below them. Yet part of the storm had broken through the tropopause—dour thunderheads looking for all the world like billowing giants made of smoke. A tremendous bolt arced upward into space. O’Toole cursed.

“Climb, Slugger,” January told the pilot. “Climb as fast as you can. Climb, even if you dry-tank the gig. Annie will pick us up in the lighter if she has to.”

“Aye, Cap’n.” Sweat was pouring off the man. His fingers might leave dents in the pilot’s yoke. “We’re heading east to west, an’ that’s a bad climb f’shure; but we’re stayin’ ahead o’ those sand clouds. ’T isn’t ourselves I’m worrying over, y’ follow, but what that jolly-boat is a slow climber.”