Jack McDevitt - Ancient Shores

Next of kin? Max knew very little about April Cannon. He would have to check with Colson Laboratories.

Arky paused at the door. “Max, is there anything else about this place I should know?”

“No,” said Max. “At least, not anything that I know about.”

Max listened to the negative reports coming in from the search parties while the first vague streaks of dawn crept into the sky. The little girl with the brown curls was looking at him again from the cabin window. It was a memory he had thought he’d shut away. Buried.

He liked April Cannon, and he couldn’t bring himself to believe she was gone, vanished into a dark never-never land. The image of the fading chair, the vertical lines just visible through its legs and seat, was paused on each of the monitor bank’s four screens.

The lines might have been anything—a defect in the film, a momentary reflection. Or they might have been a glimpse of another place. They looked vaguely like a column. He pictured the wooden chair set in the portico of a Greek temple.

If in fact it was a transportation system, it had to work in both directions. Why, then, had she not come back?

Because the system was old. After all, the smoke had not worked. Maybe she was simply stranded.

There was a test he could run.

Max installed a filter in his minicam, got a spade and collected a pile of snow, and went back to the Roundhouse. It was empty; the search was concentrated on the surrounding hillsides. His boots crunched on the dirt floor, and it occurred to him that it was the first time he’d been alone in here.

He made a little mound of snow in the center of the grid. Then he propped the camera on a chair, aimed it, and started it.

He pressed the wall over the arrow.

It lit up.

Max backed away, watching the pile of snow, counting down without meaning to.

Above the grid, the air ignited. It burned and expanded and threw off a golden cloud that shimmered and grew so bright he had to look away. Then it winked out.

The snow was gone. Not so much as a trickle of water remained.

Okay. He gathered up the camera, hurried back to the van, and loaded the videocassette into the VCR.

He played it through at normal speed first to be sure he had the entire sequence. And there was no doubt that the snow went transparent before vanishing altogether.

He rewound it and began again. When the effect started, he froze the frame and walked it through. The light brightened, grew misty, and expanded. Within the mist, stars ignited. The luminosity seemed almost to seek the pile of snow. Bright tendrils embraced the snow, and then it began to fade. Frame by frame it grew less distinct, without losing its definition. When it was almost gone, no more than a suggestion, another image appeared.

It paralyzed him.

He was looking at her headless torso. She was crumpled, arms dangling.

A sense of loss engulfed him. And as tears of blind rage began to flow, he realized that it might be only her jacket.

Was only her jacket.

Minnesota Twins . He could read the logo. There was no question. But the front didn’t look right. An object, a cylinder, a tube, something, hung from it.

A flashlight. It was the barrel of a flashlight . Minus its cap.

The barrel looked crushed.

It was one of the standard-issue cheap plastic models they had used at the site. But what had happened to it?

He puzzled over it for several minutes. What would he have done if he were stranded over there, wherever there was? He would try to send a message.

I am here .

And…what?

The flashlight’s broken ?

He took a deep breath.

Something’s broken .

The transportation system is broken .

He called Arky. “She made it,” he said. “The thing’s a doorway . A passage.”

“How do you know?”

“Her coat’s on the other side. I’ve got pictures.”

The lawyer seemed to have trouble speaking. Max could picture him shaking his head, trying to make sense of all this. “You’re sure?”

“Yes. I’m sure.”

“So what do we do now?”

It was painfully obvious. “We need a hardware store.”

They got the proprietor out of bed and bought a generator, two gallons of gas, a voltage meter, a one-and-a-half-horsepower industrial-strength drill, and a few additional pieces of equipment and took it back to the Roundhouse. Max used the drill to cut through the rear wall.

The space behind the wall was occupied by a flat rectangular crystal mounted in a frame. It was roughly the dimensions of a sheet of standard-sized stationery and about a quarter-inch thick. It was translucent, and there were several small burn marks. The device was connected to the icons by color-coded cables. “It’s probably a circuit board,” said Max.

Arky looked horrified. “We can’t repair this kind of stuff,” he said.

“Depends what the problem is. If it’s something integral to the crystal, then probably not. But April might just be looking at a loose wire. Or a dead power source.” He shrugged. “I wouldn’t want to build one of these, but it doesn’t look all that complicated.”

“I don’t think it could be the power supply,” Arky said. “If there were no power over there, she wouldn’t have arrived in the first place.”

“That’s probably true, Arky. But who knows? Let’s see what else is here.” He dug into the wall behind the crystal.

There were other cables in back, one running down into the floor, others curving into the overhead. One group was banded together. “One of these has to be the power source,” said Max. “And I’ll bet the cluster activates the transport mechanism itself. Whatever and wherever that is.”

“It’s going to take a while to figure out where these go,” said Arky.

“Maybe we can cut a few corners.” Max knelt on a rubber mat and took hold of the cable they thought might lead to the power source. He tugged on it, gently, and to his delight, it slipped off as easily as if the connection had been cleaned and oiled the day before, revealing a prong. “Okay,” he said. “Hand me the voltage meter.”

It was difficult getting at the cable, and eventually he was forced to make a bigger hole. But he got his reading. “Direct current,” he said. “Eighty-two volts.”

“That’s an odd number,” said Arky.

“They don’t play by our rules, I guess.”

Arky poured gas into the generator tank. He used the regulator to adjust its flux and took a True Hardware cable connector apart and reconfigured it to clip to the back of the crystal. Max pressed the arrow, and the icon lit up.

“Okay,” he said. “I guess it’s time to bite the bullet.”

Max had almost hoped it wouldn’t work. Then he’d have been able to justify in his own mind that there was no point trying to follow. But he was cornered, and he wondered whether he could really bring himself to stand on the grid.

He disconnected the generator and replaced the original cable. Then he put the generator on the grid, plunked a toolbox down beside it, and picked up a legal pad.

“I’m not so sure about this,” said Arky. “If something goes wrong, I could lose my license.” He grinned at Max, and Max suddenly realized he had the lawyer’s respect. It was almost worth it. “What’s the paper for?”

“Communication.” Max held up a black marker. “If we get stuck over there, if this stuff doesn’t work, I’ll post a message.”

He climbed stiffly onto the grid and closed his eyes. Then, deliberately, he opened them again. “Okay, Arky,” he said. “Hit the button.”