Jack Chalker - Kaspar's Box

How long the creatures had been there it was impossible to say. They didn’t show up as a recognized life-form on any of the instruments, yet they had something of a familiar look. And, Ann noted, they were even smaller than she was.

There were six of them, one for each of the humans it was supposed, and they looked identical.

In one sense, they were humanoid. Less than a meter tall, they stood on two thick trunklike legs with massively oversized feet and they had two arms ending in equally outsized hands, three fingers and an opposable thumb that extended opposite the index finger rather than at the end of the hand. Their heads were hairless balls, with two big, round black dots for eyes flanking either side of what seemed to be a massive nose that began almost at the top of the head and extended down and out to the waist, sausage-shaped but with a number of tiny pits at the end rather than a single large pair of openings. Two outsized floppy ears, one on each side of the head, completed the look, as well as earth-tone tunics and pants, leatherlike floppy boots, and light brown gloves.

Most important, each wore a ring on the middle finger that clearly contained one of the Magi stones.

“Silica based,” Nagel commented, checking his readings. “Definitely not the natives here.”

One of the little creatures stepped out from the others and looked at each of the humans in turn. The huge round eyes captured and reflected the pale light, but there was no question that it was examining each of them in turn. Finally, it raised one oversized gloved hand and, with its index finger, it pointed in turn to several of them. Ann, and Maslovic, Queson and Nagel, and then, after a thoughtful pause, it pointed to Joshua and to Murphy. With a dismissive wave, it made absolutely clear that those were the only ones it wanted, period.

“I wonder what would happen if the squad followed us, no matter what the big-nosed bastard wants?” Maslovic mused aloud.

“I don’t think they’d get very far,” Ann responded matter-of-factly. “Any group or power that can keep several high-tech masses on a world by negating their technology and who can play the kind of games they’ve played so far isn’t likely to be overcome by a show of force. These things, or whoever or whatever they serve, most likely built these three worlds and rearranged the furniture of this less than hospitable solar system to maintain it. I don’t know about the other worlds, but you have no idea how advanced one of the other alien colonies is on Balshazzar. They were nonetheless as helpless as we were.”

“ Are ,” Randi Queson reminded her. “I feel about as empowered at the moment as I did sealed in the control room of our salvage station on a different world far from here, hoping that something very alien couldn’t find a crack to ooze through. I have this nasty feeling that I’ve been here before.”

Although the surveys had shown a vast network of caves beneath the surface and some wide entrances to them, the little gnome surprised them by simply going over to what seemed to be a barren rocky knob, which proved to be an artificial hatch of some sort that began to open, first with a hissing sound, then a rush of steam. When the steam floated off into the cold atmosphere of Kaspar, they discovered that it had emerged from a steep set of stairs going down beyond their point of view into the heart of Kaspar. The stairway seemed carved or fabricated out of a single unbroken rock wall and was also scaled better for the gnome than for the much larger party of visitors, but it was manageable. The gnome had no hesitation and jumped in, taking the stairs at a good clip. The humans were much slower, but, one by one, they managed to get down into the hole and, with the aid of a suddenly visible thin but sturdy hand rail, were able to make it, single file.

The top of the stair was also icy, which they hadn’t expected, but the condition didn’t last long and caused only minor discomfort in spite of the depth of the passage. When the last of the party had descended below the surface, the hatch closed behind them and there was another hissing sound as if sealing an airlock, followed by a deep rumble from far below and a rush of much warmer air into the stairwell.

“Temperature’s going up,” Jerry Nagel noted. “This may be comfortable in a little while.” It was already in the mid-twenties Celsius, and the humidity level was going from moist to tropical in a hurry.

“Maybe uncomfortable in a few minutes more,” Ann noted. “I think these little people like hot and wet. I am already thinking of Dante’s Inferno .” Sensing that nobody else seemed to understand the reference, she added, “He was the author of an account, widely believed at the time, of his walking trip to Hell. It went from dull and boring to boiling and beyond.”

“Ah, that’s what I thought you might be thinkin’ of,” Captain Murphy responded, already beginning to sound tired and breathing a little heavily. “And the devil himself was at the bottom, as I recall, chewin’ on the worst sinner of all.”

“Well,” Ann responded, “let us hope that the similarities don’t end there. Dante, after all, walked out of the place safe and sound.”

“I’m just wondering if these little people built all this, or are the natives here?” Nagel said. “They don’t look like planet builders.”

“Looks can be deceiving,” Ann cautioned. “On Melchior we met some creatures that seemed incapable of much at all, yet they were as smart or smarter than we, had built and flown their own spaceships here, and had created quite advanced colonies. One of them saved my life. That in spite of their having lost any belief system they might have had long before they were stuck there, and being pretty cynical. Doctor Woodward is a challenge for them. They have been trying to argue him out of his faith and he’s been trying to convince them of the reality of his for decades now.”

“Any progress?” Queson asked, curious, but also pleased to have something to take her mind off the fact that they were rapidly descending into a place that might not allow them out.

“He has them very worried,” Ann told her. “But they are aliens in more ways than we can imagine. Not even humanoids like these little creatures here. Before you can successfully argue you have to be very clear as to the terminology you can use, and that what you think you are saying is what the other is receiving. We all think that is what’s been going on here as well. The ones behind the Three Kings want to get to know all of us very well.”

“The question there is to what end?” Maslovic noted.

Funny, Randi Queson thought after the exchange. None of us have even considered the idea that these funny little creatures might be the masters. I wonder what that says about all of us?

They reached, if not bottom, at least the bottom of the passage after a few minutes and looked out on a vast cave complex that seemed to stretch and branch in so many directions it was hard to understand how the surface of the moon kept itself from caving in. There was little wonder why the surface had resembled Swiss cheese in the survey scans. The odd-shaped pillars seemed too thin and flimsy to support the whole structure, yet they had to be doing so.

The caverns certainly weren’t dark, either. The whole place had a kind of fluid texture, as if it were wet and glistening, yet to the touch it was merely cool and somewhat smooth in feel. Randi thought of it as “soapy,” although she couldn’t quite say why.

It was, however, a radiator of ghostly light, mostly a dull yellow but occasionally almost lime green or light red. There were spots where the light seemed to run in threads, or veins, creating eerie abstract patterns on the walls, floor, and ceiling, yet visibility was never poor.