Arthur Clarke: Cradle

While they were working, Carol noticed that Nick seemed a little distracted. Right before they left the boat she walked up beside him. “Are you all right?” she said quietly.

“Yes,” he answered. “I’m just trying to figure out if I’ve completely lost my mind. For eight years I have been thinking about what I would do if I ever had my full share of the treasure. Now I’m about to give it all away to some extra-terrestrials from God knows where.” He looked at her. “There’s enough gold here to last three people a long time.”

“I know,” she said, giving him a little hug. “I must admit that I’ve thought about it too. But in reality, part belongs to Amanda Winchester, part to Jake Lewis, most of it to the IRS…” She grinned. “And it’s only money. That’s nothing when you compare it to being the only humans to interact with visitors from another planet.”

“I hope you’re right,” he said. “I hope I don’t wake up tomorrow and feel as if I’ve made a terrible mistake. This entire episode has been so bizarre that I suspect my normal faculties aren’t working properly. We don’t even know for sure if these aliens are friendly…”

Carol pulled her diving mask over her face. “We’ll never have all the answers,” she said. She took his hand. “Let’s go, Nick.”

Troy was first into the water. Nick and Carol followed. It had been agreed before the dive that Carol would take the searchlight and lead the group. She was the most mobile of the threesome because each of the men was dragging a buoyancy bag. The trio had been concerned that they might have difficulty finding the ship and had discussed an elaborate set of contingency plans for locating it. They needn’t have worried. Thirty feet under the Florida Queen, in virtually the exact place where the fissure had been on Thursday, there was a light in the water. Carol pointed at it and the two men swam up behind her. As they drew closer, they saw that the light was coming from a rectangular area about ten feet high and twenty feet wide. They could not see anything except what looked like some kind of material or fabric with a soft light behind it.

Carol hesitated. Troy swam right on by her, into the lighted area, his buoyancy bag trailing behind him. Everything disappeared. Nick and Carol waited. Carol felt herself tightening up. Come on now, Dawson, she thought, it’s your turn. You’ve been here before. She took a deep breath and swam into the material. She felt something like plastic touch her face and then she was in a covered tunnel. A swift current was pulling her to the right. She went down a small water slide and was deposited in a shallow pool at the bottom. She clambered out of the pool and began removing her diving equipment.

Troy was standing on the floor about ten feet beyond the end of the pool. Next to him a warden had already taken the buoyancy bag, opened it, and adroitly separated the gold bars and the lead weights from the information discs. As Carol’s eyes adjusted to the dim light around her, she saw that the warden was now loading the gold on a small platform sitting on top of tank treads about a foot above the floor. Immediately thereafter, the warden placed the information discs and the lead weights on two other platforms. A carpet that had been lying inconspicuously over against the wall on the left then rose up, apparently activated the treads under the platforms, and directed them toward a nearby hallway leading out of the room.

Carol pulled off her mask and finished removing her diving gear. She was in a medium-sized room somewhat like the ones she and Troy had encountered at the beginning of her last dive. The curved wall partitions were colored black and white. There was a small window to the ocean next to the splash pool on her left. The ceilings were low and tight, only a couple of feet above her head, giving her a feeling of claustrophobia. So here I am again, she thought, Back in Wonderland. This time I will take plenty of pictures. She photographed the procession of the carpet and three platforms just as it disappeared from the room. She then changed lenses and took a dozen quick close-up pictures of the warden standing next to Troy. It had the same amoebalike central body as the one she had confronted the day before, but there were only five implements sticking out of its upper half. The warden had probably been customized for its particular job of taking the objects from the trio.

Troy walked over beside her. “Where’s Nick?” he asked. My God, Carol thought as she turned around and looked back at the slide and splash pool. I almost forgot. She chastised herself for not having waited for Nick. After all, he’s never been down here…

Nick’s big body careened out of control against the sides of the slide and he hurtled into the splash pool. The heavy buoyancy bag came down behind him and hit him hard, just above the kidneys. He stumbled to his feet, fell down in the pool, and then stood up again. In his diving apparatus with the thin plastic material from the bag tied around his wrist, it was he who looked like the visitor from outer space.

Carol and Troy were laughing as Nick climbed out of the splash pool. “All right. Professor!” exclaimed Troy. He reached forward to give him a hand. “Good show. It’s a shame we don’t have that entry on tape.”

Nick removed his mouthpiece. He was out of breath. “Thanks a lot for waiting, team,” he stammered. He looked around him. “What is this place, anyway?”

The warden meanwhile had approached him from the side and was already tugging at the bag with one of its appendages. “Just a minute, weirdo,” Nick said, suppressing his fright. “Let me get my bearings first.”

The warden didn’t stop. A knifelike appendage cut the bag below where it was attached to Nick’s wrist. Next the warden took the entire bag, including its lead and gold contents, and somehow pushed it through its own semipermeable outer skin. The bag could be seen intact, adjacent to the rectangular control boxes, as the warden turned and hurried across the floor. It went through the same exit that the carpet and platforms had used earlier.

“You’re welcome,” Nick managed to say as he watched the strange creature disappear with the loot. He finished taking off his diving gear and walked over to Troy. “Okay, Jefferson, you’re the main man here. What do we do now?”

“Well, Professor,” he answered, “as far as I can tell, our job is finished. If you guys want, we can suit up again and jump through that window wall over there. We’d be back in the boat in less than five minutes. If I’ve read the messages right, these alien dudes will be ready to leave very shortly.”

“You mean that’s it? We’re done?” Carol asked. Troy nodded. “This is the most overrated experience since my first sexual encounter,” Carol commented.

Nick was walking across the room, moving directly away from the splash pool and his two friends. “Where are you going?” Troy asked.

“I paid a hefty admission price,” Nick replied. “I’m at least entitled to a tour.” Carol and Troy followed him. They crossed the empty room and walked through an exit between two wall partitions on the opposite side. They entered a short, dark, covered corridor. They could see light at the other end. They emerged into another room, this one circular and significantly larger. It had the high cathedral ceilings that Carol had liked so much on her last visit.

This room was not empty. Sitting in its middle facing them was a gigantic, enclosed, translucent cylinder, about twenty-five feet high altogether and ten feet in diameter at its base. A horde of orange pipes and purple cable sheaths attached the cylinder to a group of machines built into the wall behind it. There was a light green liquid filling the inside of the cylinder and eight gold metallic objects floating at different heights in the liquid. The objects were many different shapes. One looked like a starfish, another like a box, a third like a derby hat; the only thing the objects had in common was their gold metallic outer covering. Upon close inspection of the cylinder, thin membranes could be seen inside the liquid. These surfaces effectively partitioned the internal volume and gave each of the golden objects its own unique subvolume.