Jack Chalker: Melchior's Fire

“Tag this building and prepare it for dismantling,” Nagel signaled to the salvage team through the intercom. It would take a few hours to fully analyze the site, but then less than two to salvage anything of and in it that might be of value. The robot deconstructors were very efficient once they’d been told what was what.

“Going into the next building,” Queson told them. Even as they progressed, slowly and methodically from building to building and throughout the site, business would be going on behind them. “Achmed, take this sample case back up to the base and have it fully analyzed,” she added, speaking to one of the nearby team. “Then return to us.”

The big man took it and frowned. “Yes, ma’am, Boss Lady,” he responded with a slightly mocking tone. “Um—you don’t think there’s anything dangerous here, do you? I mean, like germs and stuff?”

“Possibly. I shouldn’t worry about it. If it can get through these suits we’re already infected anyway.”

Achmed took the case and hurried off, never sure when she was kidding.

Nagel chuckled. “I love it when you’re so fatalistic.”

“He deserved it. His faith says to accept what happens as the will of Allah. It’s one of the most fatalistic religions we have. I’m doing him a favor, allowing him to test his obviously wavering faith.”

“Maybe he’s just worried where he’s going if his fears pan out,” the engineer noted. “That’s why I keep a hard-nosed atheism inside. The alternative is so much worse than obliteration I find a lack of faith one of my dearest comforts.”

They went through a connecting tube, seals pretty well loose from all the wind outside beating against it and the lack of maintenance, but serviceable to get where they needed to go. From this point, the buildings went in three directions, and they’d have to decide on a route.

The eerie light of their personal torches revealed pretty much a carbon copy of the first building, as they expected. This building, however, still had all its panels in place and so was very much the way it would have been abandoned.

It looked as clean, even sterile, as the first would have been without the hole.

Nagel checked his instruments, and sent three small probes down the wide aisles. He checked his screen and saw nothing he didn’t expect. Even as he was recalling the small probes he said, “Nothing at all here. The stuff’s almost too new, even with a lack of power and maintenance. You think they built these but never got to actually use them?”

“That’s been my thought,” she responded. “But, then, what was somebody doing running out through that last one and blowing a hole in it rather than simply exiting via the door? I don’t know. I’d almost prefer the crumbling rot of ancient vegetation and a dead body or two to what we’re finding. Something here just isn’t right .”

“I agree. Still, we’ve got a long, hopefully boring examination of all these buildings, and sooner or later we should turn up something.

“I’d almost prefer that howling wind outside to walking blindly through here,” Nagel added, sounding uncharacteristically nervous. “I don’t like going down dark corridors blind.”

“Not blind,” Dr. Queson said from in front of him. She put her light on a wall plaque at the far end of the greenhouse, near the connecting tube to the next unit. He walked over to it and stared. The characters meant nothing to him; whatever language it was in was way different from the one he knew. Still, it was very clearly a drawing of the entire complex, and, right near the end, in one of the two units farthest out, there was the drawing of a stick figure inside a circle. The message was universal.

“You are here,” he said, nodding. He looked over at the far end, which extended to and actually inside the cliffs beyond. By that point the greenhouses were twenty across and it would be easy to get lost without maps like this.

“It’s gonna be a week before we get to the living quarters,” he commented.

“Why wait that long?” she responded. “Looks like a standard layout. We should be able to pinpoint the master control building and get any records that might be there. We might even be able to get some power going again. It would make looking through this jungle of empty greenhouses easier and more tolerable. In fact, if you see the finely etched maintenance keys along each unit, and trace them back, I’d say that the control center was about… here .” She pointed to a section almost dead center and embedded in the cliffs.

“Long walk,” he noted. “Want to bring in the shuttle?”

“It’s a good hike, that’s for sure, but we’ve already seen the problems the shuttle has in flying low under these conditions, and it should be all inside. I’m not in the shape I used to be in, but this is eighty-six percent standard gee, and I think the exercise would do me good. Besides, I’m more curious to find out what’s going on here than to keep walking through deserted buildings for days on end.”

Nagel sighed. “Okay, agreed. Sark, you take over here. Buzz if you find something out of whack, otherwise do a survey and mark ’em. We’ll see about turning on the lights.”

“ ’Bout time,” Sark grumbled. “Why didn’t you do that in the first place?”

There were several possible answers to that one, not the least of which was that there simply wasn’t any safe place to put down the shuttle close to the cliffs, between the density of the greenhouses and the tremendous, swirling winds with their sandblasting effects, effects which were magnified close in to the cliffs.

“Stay with me and move fairly quickly,” Jerry Nagel cautioned. “We still don’t know if anything’s inside ahead of us.”

“You worry too much,” she told him. “Anything here is long dead.” But she wasn’t foolish enough not to heed his caution.

Each of the greenhouses was connected by a flexible tube along which metallic flooring had been laid so that humans and robotic units could walk between without having to go outside. The seals had held remarkably well considering the constant buffeting from the outside winds, and the flooring was rock steady.

There had been some initial worry that some of the robotic devices might well still be present, might even view them as invaders or interlopers, but orbital and close-in scans showed no sign that the power grid was active. It was cold and dead, save only well below and inside the cliffs where the fusion reactors were in the process of cooling down. It would take them another few hundred years for reaction to cease completely, though, so turning the lights back on shouldn’t be a problem. The real question was, why was everything turned off?

They walked for some time, stopping only to check that there was still a plaque at each entrance/exit tube showing where they were and where they had to go.

It was eerie, particularly after two hours, to still be walking in those great, dark halls beside empty racks that were designed to be the nurturers of abundant life. Here and there they found signs that once these places had in fact bloomed: not residue, but a wall on which hung protective clothing, rebreathers, and the like used when checking chemical mixtures, testing radiation levels, or doing maintenance on the automated equipment.

Still, there wasn’t the least sign of wear and tear on any of the equipment, rails, robotic arms, you name it. Not even marks and rings where water and nutrient excess would have flowed down into drains to be reseparated and reused. In a sense, the place had the feel of being used but the look of being brand new. It didn’t really make sense.

Before they could safely salvage any of it and take it aboard their ship, though, they would have to solve this puzzle.