Джек Макдевитт - Cryptic - The Best Short Fiction of Jack McDevitt

“When?”

“ You’ve got about eight minutes. I’m postponing the program. ”

“My God, Smitty. Are they going to hit the artifact?”

“ I don’t know. But they’re coming down nearby. ”

I have to admit my first reaction had nothing to do with Jennifer. Or Frank. Or whatever her name was.

“ Can’t be, ” Morgan was saying. “ The thing’s been here for ages. We land, and a few hours later it gets knocked over? That’s just not possible. ”

Chung broke in: “Smitty, what do you recommend? We have the lander nearby.”

“ How long would it take you to get off? ”

“A few minutes.”

“ Forget it. Get inside. Hide under the beds or something. ”

“Okay.”

“ You’ll probably be all right. This kind of thing likely happens all the time. ”

“Okay.”

“ It’s mostly dust. ”

Just like Earth. But Saturn’s neighborhood had a few more rocks, and Iapetus had no atmosphere to dissolve them.

We argued briefly which was safer, lander or shelter, and decided it wouldn’t matter if a serious rock showed up. We settled on the shelter. Steinmetz dropped into a chair and sat staring out at Jennifer. His eyes were wide with frustration and outrage. “Please,” he said, in a voice so low I could just make it out. “Don’t hit the statue.”

I grew up in south Chicago. My folks didn’t have much, and they assumed I’d just get married, so they weren’t big on education. At least not for me. My brothers both went to college. I got through high school, barely, saw nobody I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, got a part-time job as a waitress, and decided the University of Chicago was a better bet than most of the guys who came in looking for hamburgers and whatever else they could get.

Things went better than I could have expected. It turned out I had an affinity for physics, and the one romance that might have sidetracked me crashed and burned. It seemed like a disaster at the time, but it was probably the luckiest break of my life. I received an assistantship at the University of Northern Illinois, and got my doctorate under Edward Harbinger, whose name fit the circumstances. He recommended me for the Athena program, and there I was. Harbinger, I knew, would have given his life to have made this mission, even to hide with us in the shelter while the rocks came down. But he was too old. I don’t know why but I kept thinking about him while I sat feeling the place tremble while the debris field—innocuous term—rained down on us.

We got bombarded for the better part of an hour. Mostly just pebbles. It was a little like being inside during a severe hailstorm. It rattled against the roof, and once or twice the ground shook, so something big must have hit, but I didn’t see it. When it was over, we went out, were relieved to see the statue was undamaged, and did the show.

It went smoothly. Smitty added recorded shots of the approaching meteors—that was the way we referred to the debris field during the show— and we all talked as if it had been life and death. We went on to profess ourselves relieved that the statue hadn’t been damaged. I thought afterward how brave and selfless we must have sounded.

In any case, it was enough for the day. We operated on GMT, and it was early evening in this place where there were no evenings per se, where most of the light was coming from the big planet and the rings. So we retired to the shelter, had a round of drinks, and sat down to dinner.

We spent the evening planning the second phase of the mission. Who were the sculptors? They must have left some indication of their presence, abandoned equipment, tracks, something . We would spread out and have a look. So we went over our images, designated likely spots, assigned responsibilities. And quit for the night.

Morgan and Chung sat down to play chess. Steinitz went back outside to look at Jennifer. I should have gone with him. Technically, you’re not supposed to do anything alone, but I was tired and everything I owned ached. We’d maintained an intensive exercise program on the flight out, but the long period of near-zero gravity had loosened joints and weakened muscles. I retreated to my quarters and fell asleep with the conviction that manned space vehicles would eventually go the way of the big paddlewheels.

We had an early breakfast, most of it devoted to a long debate on the anatomic feasibility of the ice lady. The figure was obviously idealized. It looked toward Saturn with unmistakable longing. And there was something else, some juncture of beak and jaw, some slant of the eyes, that suggested resignation. But reproduction? It was hard to see how. I wondered if my imagination had been playing tricks. Was it maybe something else, neither male nor female? Were there other reproductive arrangements? How often did statuary at home omit the anatomical details?

If we were correct that the snow cover had remained intact, virtually untouched, for thousands of years save for the occasional meteor, then how did we explain that the snow around the statue was unbroken? It looked as if it had fallen yesterday. It was of course possible that Jennifer was inordinately older than we’d supposed. The estimated age was, after all, pure guesswork.

The plain lay wide and flat. The rings were knife‑edge bright. We consulted our maps and headed out, Morgan and Chung to the north, Steinitz and me on the south. The instructions were simple: Find something the sculptor dropped.

The reasoning was that a ship had to have set down somewhere. Devices, at the very least a chisel, had been used. Somewhere, there should be something . Some clue to tell us who had been there.

There weren’t really many places to hide something, other than under the snow cover itself. We poked among groups of boulders, wandered down into occasional craters, and gradually drifted toward the chain of gaping rocks and ice behind which Saturn seemed always about to set.

It was cold and tiring. The snow ranged from about a half meter to God knows how deep. Our suits dragged, and I’ve done nothing in my life more boring than trudging in circles across that dreary surface. Smitty joined the search, circling overhead in low orbit, radioing negative reports every hour. We walked until we were all exhausted.

The following day, we were out again.

A couple hours after we’d started, Morgan called. “ We got it. ”

“What?” demanded Steinitz. “What have you got?”

“ Among other things, ” he said, “ footprints. ”

“Footprints? You sure they’re not your own?”

Chung broke in. “Not unless we’re running around in bare feet. And sprouting really long toenails.”

Chung and Morgan had found the prints in the foothills of the ridge line at the edge of the plain, where it rises into a series of ridges. They were big . And the claws looked very much like the same set Jennifer carried.

The prints didn’t seem to be going anywhere. It appeared that the creature had simply wandered around on the slope. The paw, the foot, was almost twice the size of mine. “The statue’s a self-portrait,” I said.

But they’d figured that out first thing. “At least as far as the feet are concerned,” said Steinitz. He knelt in the snow. “It must have been wearing a pressure suit of some kind. It couldn’t have been out here in bare feet. But it sure looks like it.”

“Probably a very thin suit,” said Chung. “Something molded to the body.”

But it wasn’t the prints that had initially caught their attention.