Jack Chalker - Melchior's Fire

“The obsidian cliff,” she told him. “Let’s take a look at that transport, whatever it was, and the area at the base of the cliff. Whoever they were or are, they thought there was something worthwhile over there, too!”

“Besides, I really would like to get a look at that contraption,” Jerry Nagel added.

Queson was still not all that confident on the scooter and tended to keep it just two meters above the ground and at a leisurely clip. The ones behind weren’t thrilled, but they matched pace, and in about fifteen minutes they sighted the strange alien vehicle and pulled up to it and stopped. One by one, they lowered their scooters to the ground, throwing up some ash when the vehicles settled.

Nagel pulled a small pistol out of his pack and just stuck it in his belt. He didn’t think he was going to need it, but it was a precaution. The memory of running across those roofs being paced by detached units of the worm had never really left him.

Close up, the alien vehicle didn’t look as shiny and nice as it had in the probe pictures. In fact, it looked heavily pitted, although nothing seemed to have penetrated it, and one wheel was slightly off its axle due to a rockslide they hadn’t noticed.

“There’s why it’s stuck here,” Nagel pointed to the bum wheel. “They were heading along, either caused the slide themselves or got caught in a mild afterquake from the eruption, and they couldn’t go any farther. Anybody got any ideas about how long this thing’s sat here? I mean, are we looking at days, weeks, years, or centuries here?”

“Months, certainly, from the lack of any tracks and the buildup of dust on the leeward side,” An Li said, looking. “Maybe longer when you look at that pitting.”

“I agree,” Randi Queson added. “Months, maybe a few years, although not a horrendously long time. The pitting shows it’s been stationary a fairly long time, since the particles blowing against it now bounce off, but this slide’s not that old, and the eruption on the opposite side of the mountain is very recent. No renewed growth was visible, although it’s all over elsewhere, and there were no buildups to naturally channel the rain runoff. I’d say a year or two.”

The usually taciturn Sark looked over the tankerlike vehicle. “Where’d they get in and out, and where were they going?” he asked nobody in particular. “No door or window at all that I can see.”

Nagel looked under the tank, between the wheels. In spite of low clearance, he was pretty sure that there was some sort of exit there. “See? In the center. Rounded shape with a beveled edge. Most likely some kind of hatch. Either they were small or low to the ground, but that’s the way in and out for sure. As to how they see, well, maybe they don’t need a window. Maybe viewers are built into the hull of the thing, or it’s transparent when you’re inside and maybe flip a switch or something. Eyegor’s head’s a globe, but he sees.”

“Be funny if this thing wasn’t a transport but a water wagon or something,” An Li commented. “I mean, it looks like a tanker, and in here there are pools of standing fresh water.”

Nagel shook his head. “No, if they built this or had it to carry things, it wasn’t water. No need on this world. No, I think it was their version of our scooters and it just had some real bad luck right here.”

“You want to try and get inside it?” An Li asked.

“I’d love to, but with the dust buildup underneath narrowing the clearance even worse, and with that hatch looking shut, I’m not at all sure it wouldn’t be a long and heavy lifting kind of job. Maybe if we bring the whole C&C down and set up a base camp here, yeah, it’ll be worth doing with the equipment we have. Sark?”

“Dunno what the material is, but if it can be dented by rocks I can pull it apart,” the big man assured him. “Most of our equipment’s still salvage stuff, after all.”

“Then we’ll let it wait. I’m less curious about it and its owners than I am what it was doing here. Doc, any clues on that?”

“Not really, but assuming from the angle here that it was heading towards that notch in the obsidian wall about a half a kilometer on, we might as well see.”

An Li frowned. “Wouldn’t the rockfall have turned it around? Or maybe it was going that way instead of this way.”

The Doc shrugged. “Doesn’t make much difference if it was coming or going from there, that’s the interesting place. The other direction’s going into an older lava plain and then through towards the sea. And if it had been turned much it would have become unbalanced and tipped over on this uneven ground. No, I’m pretty certain that if it was a treasure hunt then the treasure, if it exists, is over there.”

“We’ve only got a few hours until dark,” Nagel pointed out, “and without the C&C and all our equipment and a ground defense perimeter I’m not sure I want to spend twenty hours in the dark here. Let’s follow the Doc’s nose and see if anything smells at the other end.”

“Oh, Jerry, you’re so romantic,” An Li responded sourly, but they all got back on the scooters and headed off in the direction the Doc was sure was the right one.

It was just beyond that notch, in a small rift, that they came upon a glittering fall of shattered but sparkling stones spread in a kind of rock field. They all assumed that they were simply shattered remnants of a dislodged obsidian boulder, but Queson decided to stop anyway and get down and take a look.

An Li sniffed. “Maybe you were right after all, Jerry,” she said. “Through the smell of rotten eggs that’s all over this place I swear I’m getting a strong directional scent of, well, it smells like lemon, or maybe lemon and orange. That’s crazy.”

It might have been crazy, but they all smelled it as they walked up to the field of shattered and glittering stones that lay, fan-shaped, in front of them.

“Whoa!” An Li said suddenly, and seemed to stagger a bit.

“Heat and gravity getting to you?” Nagel asked.

“No, it was, well, something very odd. I’m getting a whole series of sensations. Disorienting, creepy, I don’t know what. It’s getting worse as we come to the stones.”

“I’m feeling it, too, Jerry,” Randi told him. “Not as bad, but it’s there.”

In truth, Nagel had been dismissing some dizziness and occasional blurred vision as just heat and exhaustion and now he knew differently. “Li, stay here. Sit down, or lie down, and just breathe regularly in and out and try and get things back. Everybody else, let’s see what we got here.”

Randi Queson felt increasing effort just to get to the rock field, but she made it, then bent down and picked up several smaller pieces of whatever it was in her hand and examined them. “These pieces are definitely standard ordinary obsidian glass, common to all volcanoes,” she told them. “But these— I don’t know what these are. They seem to be embedded in shards of obsidian, or in one or two cases here entirely encased in it.” She took one, pulled down her mask, and sniffed, then replaced the mask over her nose and nodded. “Uh huh. Very much like lemon.”

“This one’s more orange, and there were a couple here that seemed more like flower scents,” Nagel told her. “What the hell is giving the scents off? Trapped gas that’s now being released?”

“I doubt it. If that were so, it would dissipate as the wind picks up like now, and it’s not dissipating. No, I think something in there, some compound, is actually giving off the odors. Be careful, both of you, about close smells. I got a real weird set of sensations when I sniffed that one.”

“Yeah, me, too,” Nagel agreed. “Li! You feeling better?”