Jack McDevitt - Eternity Road

“They had a map with them, and they consulted it and looked a long time at the cape as we rounded it. It was obvious they were hot on the trail now. The map was out every few minutes, and they were taking bearings on passing mountains and rivers and whatnot.

“They found what they were looking for: The coast on both sides was lined with escarpments and bluffs. They zeroed in on one of the bluffs on the eastern shore. It was pretty ordinary-looking, a sheer wall rising about two hundred feet out of the water. We could see thick woods at the top.”

Chaka removed the sketch marked Haven from her vest. “Is this it?” she asked.

Knobby looked at it. “Yeah,” he said. ‘That’s it.

“There was a river on the north side of the bluff, and a pebbled beach. They looked at their map some more, took bearings on a turn in the channel and a saddle-shaped formation off to the west. That was it, they said. No question. And they cheered and clapped one another on the shoulder and broke out some liquor. Endine actually looked friendly. In fact, he shook hands with everyone in sight, including the crew. And everybody got handed a drink.

“We looked for a place to drop anchor. The water was low again, the tide running out, and we planned to be a little more cautious this time. Which meant that we would leave the boat in the middle of the channel and the crew would stay on board except for me. My job was to get Endine and his people to the beach, stay with them until the tide turned next morning, and then return to the Mindar, after which somebody else would go in and take my place.

“The sun had been down two hours by the time we arrived] on shore. They jumped out as soon as we hit land and took off.! They were like a pack of kids. I couldn’t believe it. Just ran off] into the dark. Me, I stayed with the dinghy.

“They came back about midnight, unhappy, and I knew] things hadn’t gone well.

“Tori explained they were looking for a catwalk or a cage! on the face of the precipice. When I asked what would be the! point of a catwalk up there, he just looked up at the cliff. “Tram] station/ he said, and laughed.” Knobby’s eyes locked on Chaka. “You know what a train is, right?

“They used steam engines. Just like the Mindar. But I’m botched if I can figure out how one of them would run across the front of that precipice.

“They bunked down to wait for daylight. I don’t think any of them slept much. They were up again before dawn, stayed! for breakfast only at Endine’s insistence, got their gear together, and walked down to the water’s edge, where they could get the best possible look at the cliff. They weren’t finding what they were looking for. Endine sputtered and stalked back and forth and finally threw up his hands and walked over to where I was standing. ‘The dinghy,’ he said.

“We’d beached it at high tide, and it was a long way from the water now. But we dragged it out through the mud and got it launched. The others jumped in. Take us across the face of the wall,’ he directed. ‘About a quarter-mile out.’

“I don’t know if I mentioned this, but the dinghy didn’t have an engine. Right? It was sails and oars, which is okay when you’re moving around in a river. But not so good in those tides.

“I didn’t like it much but I took them. They were saying things like, ‘It’s got to be there,’ and, ‘Well, I damn sure don’t see it.”

“‘Your train station is missing?” I asked Tori.

“He said it was.

“Now I laughed. I’m not surprised,” I said.

“Well, Knobby,” he said, “there might still be something there to indicate where there might have been a structure. Maybe even a pattern of shrubs.” He said that if a platform or station had been mounted on the rock face, holes would have been drilled. If somebody drills holes, they eventually fill up with dirt. And the dirt sprouts shrubs. It sounded thin to me but I was damned if one of them didn’t think he saw it right away. And somebody else said how there was a piece of discolored rock. That I could make out, although it still didn’t seem like much.

“They were satisfied that was what they wanted, so I took them back in and they disappeared into the woods. They went around to the rear of the bluff, where the ascent was more or less gradual. I saw them again as they came out along the summit.

“They crossed to the edge of the precipice and threw a rope ladder over. Then somebody climbed down to the discolored stone. They were too far away for me to be sure who it was, but I had to admire them. I remember thinking how they’d never get me to hang out over that damned thing. Which shows you, you never know.

“The discolored stone was about fifty feet down. They needed a second climber, and the two of them worked on it for about an hour. Then a door opened up and I could see a passageway. The climbers went inside and the others started down the ladder.

“After they were all inside I waved a green flag at the boat, which told the captain they’d been successful. A little while later the tide turned and started running out. I went back to the Mindar. One of the guys we’d just hired on climbed down as soon as I was out of the dinghy and took it back in. His name was Leap, and I don’t remember whether that was a first or last name. Leap was big, grinned a lot, and always had a kind of silly look on his face. He also scared easy.

“Leap was on the beach for six or seven hours and there wasn’t any sign of anybody coming back out of the door in the cliff. So he went up to the summit and called down and didn’t get an answer. He got nervous. Leap was one of those people who never went near Roadmaker ruins, which I think is a smart idea. Especially now. We didn’t have a preset signal arranged that covered the situation, so he came back to the beach and waved his arms until the captain signaled for him to return to the Mindar. He explained that nobody was answering from inside, that maybe they couldn’t hear him, but that he thought maybe something had happened.

“The captain and me and one of the other hands got some: lamps and got in the dinghy and we took Leap and rowed back j in to shore. There was still no sign of anyone. We went into the j woods and walked around to the back side and climbed up to the summit. It wasn’t a hard climb but it was time-consuming. | Getting up there took the better part of an hour. Of course, the captain wasn’t young even then, so he wasn’t in very good shape and he had some interesting things to say about Endine.

“The woods up there grew right over the summit. We knew that, so we took it easy because you couldn’t see more than a few feet in the shrubbery. But when we got to the edge, we could see where they’d been. And the rope ladder still hung down. It was tied to & tamarack tree. The captain leaned over the face of the cliff and called Endine’s name.

“Nothing.”

He looked at me and looked at the rope ladder and I knew what he was thinking. He didn’t like the height and he didn’t like going into a ruin. But he didn’t have much choice, and he couldn’t very well ask anyone else to climb down until he’d done it. So he grabbed hold of the ladder and pulled on it to make sure it was secure.

“He told me to follow him and was about to start when I remembered how Endine’s people had done it. “Wait,” I said. They’d run a safety line to one of the branches. We tied it around his waist. “Don’t take it off till you’re inside,” I told him. He laughed and started hand over hand down the ladder. Pretty soon he was out of sight.

“A couple minutes later I saw that the safety line was free so I hauled it up and looped it around my belt and went after him. The cliff bulged a little at the top so you had to hang a few feet out from the rock. Down where the door was, they’d secured the ladder with two ringbolts, which made it easy to just step off into the passageway, if you could forget where you were. The captain was waiting for me, but there was no sign of anybody else.”