The Trilisk Ruins (9 page)

Telisa almost asked about their
progress but realized that she could check for herself. She
examined the map in her mind, her current position indicated by
Thomas’s navigation equipment. She could see that they were almost
upon the site of the unusual power emanations. Magnus must have
been cognizant of the same thing, as he slowed their progress,
scanning the area ahead carefully.

“
I can see a ruin directly
ahead,” he reported.

Everyone followed him closely, eager to
see for themselves. Telisa made out a large gray building overgrown
with the local trees and shrubs. Telisa couldn’t tell what it was
made of. It surface remained smooth despite its age. She guessed it
could be constructed of some metal or ceramic.

They approached one seamless wall and
then paralleled its course. When they turned the corner, Telisa saw
that the wall had been breached. Some kind of root system or
underground plant had shattered the wall long ago. The hole was
large enough to climb through.

Magnus fished out his flashlight and
peeked inside. He turned around and shrugged.

“
Looks alien to me. Maybe
Telisa should take a look.”

Telisa took her own flashlight and
stepped up to the opening.

The disc of light fell upon dusty
pieces of equipment larger than a human. The materials and angles
looked right for Trilisk origin, but the dust was too thick and she
was too far away to be sure.

“
I’m getting a closer look,”
she said, and without waiting for a reply, she switched the
flashlight to her left hand, unclipped her stunner with her right,
and went in.

Jack and Thomas walked up to her as she
brushed the dust off the nearest device. It didn’t seem to have any
levers or buttons, which was a good sign right off. Trilisk
artifacts never did. Most human theories on the subject indicated
that they were used through mental interfaces. There were flat
black plates built into the gray metal surface. That was another
good sign. The plates were display ports, made to show information
about the state of the device, like the front panel of a
chronometer. Presumably the readouts could provide their
information via a mental interface as well, but the Trilisks seemed
to prefer having the panels on their equipment too. No one really
knew why.

It looked dead. Perhaps all she had to
do was find out how to activate it. Unfortunately, Trilisk devices
never had anything as simple and primitive as a power
switch.

“
Amazing. We’re the first
humans to look at this. Real Trilisk artifacts.”

“
So it is Trilisk. Any idea
what it does?” asked Thomas.

“
I have no idea. But I need
to—”

“
Let’s take a tour of the
place first,” Jack suggested. “Don’t settle on anything just yet.
That thing you’re looking at is probably too heavy for all of us to
even pick up. You see what I’m saying?”

Telisa looked up from the mysterious
cluster of equipment. Magnus was across the room, looking into the
end of a giant tube that descended into the floor.

“
I guess you’re right. I
want to look at everything of course, but our time is limited. And
as you pointed out, we can’t carry this thing.”

Thomas nodded. “We’re excited too. I’m
glad you can see the bigger picture though. A Trilisk can opener
could net thousands of ESC. We don’t need a big piece of factory
equipment or whatever this is.”

Telisa scanned the floor for something
smaller. Dirt and dead vegetation lay scattered around on the
floor.

“
This goes deeper into the
installation,” Magnus said, calling to the others from the mouth of
the giant tube sticking up out of the floor.

“
And that appears to be the
only other way to go,” Jack said. “So let’s follow him.”

Magnus extended a hand and helped the
others up into the tube. Telisa took out her flashlight and shone
it farther into the round tunnel. The passageway was empty. It
extended as far as she could see, angling off to the right and
descending deeper into the ground. It gave Telisa a rather eerie
feeling. She didn’t normally suffer from claustrophobia, but being
in a dark, dusty underground tube made her a little nervous. She
realized that their ignorance held great danger. For all she knew,
they could be walking into a giant machine that could turn on and
grind them up at any moment.

Magnus trudged forward and Telisa
followed. The tube curved in a long circle, leading them deeper
into the planet. Telisa wondered why such a thing had been built.
The answer probably wouldn’t come from guessing without more
information. Understanding aliens could be a tough
business.

They came around a last curve and the
tube ended with a metal rim around its entire circumference, with a
flat black hole through the center large enough to for a
hippo.

They walked up to the rim. Both Magnus
and Telisa shined their lights into the hole, trying to see beyond
the low barrier.

“
It’s not just dark,” Jack
noted. “It’s pitch black. The light’s not going in
there.”

“
Or no reflected light is
coming out,” Thomas said. “Our ship’s stealth device uses
technology a little like this to shield us from orbital
scanning.”

Telisa walked forward, pointing her
light at the edge of the zone of blackness. The light just ended at
the border, giving no reflections.

“
It’s wonderful!” Telisa
exclaimed. “And beyond our current technology. We can’t make a
blackfield of this efficiency, can we?”

“
That’s not all,” Magnus
said. His eyes had a faraway look. Telisa realized he was accessing
the mental interface of his military scanner. “There aren’t any
gravitons emerging from it either.”

Thomas whistled. “I wish we had
equipment that could check for neutrinos. Surely it wouldn’t be
that perfect...”

Telisa looked at Jack. “If we could
bring whatever it is that generates this field back with us, it
would be enough to pay for the whole trip,” she told him. “Enough
to make us all super rich.”

Jack looked around the circular
perimeter of the opening. “Let’s try. I’m not sure we’ll be able to
find and carry it, but let’s try. The sooner we can grab something
really valuable and get off this planet the better.”

Magnus shrugged. “Stick your finger
through,” he suggested.

“
You’re nuts. What if it
takes it clean off? Or instantly kills all the cells in
it?”

Magnus rolled his eyes. “Then we’ll
grow it back when we get to Earth,” he said exasperatedly. He
walked past Thomas and flicked the end of his little finger through
the blackfield.

“
It’s fine,” he said,
holding up the finger for all to see. Then he stuck his arm through
the blackness. He pulled it back, moving the arm and testing the
feel of it. “Seems harmless so far,” he said.

“
Wait a minute and see if it
bruises,” Jack suggested. But Magnus had already walked
through.

Telisa moved up to the edge of the
field. “Magnus? Can you hear me?”

There was no answer. She examined the
edge of the opening carefully, looking for any details they may
have missed. Telisa didn’t like the idea of just walking through to
see what happened. She valued her life a little more than that.
After a few more moments Magnus stepped back from beyond the
field.

“
Come in here. You’re not
going to believe this.”

Chapter
Six

Another automatic door opened before
Joe. He peeked into the room.

“
More of the same,” he said.
So far he and the two Series Sevens had traveled perhaps a hundred
meters into the complex, searching for inhabitants. He had found
room after room of labs, meeting areas, supply closets, and other
mundane facilities, but no people.

Joe checked the services that were
broadcast to his link chip from the building. There were two
general information ports and a maintenance port available. So far
all of Joe’s attempts to link to the installation’s services had
resulted in odd errors after very short interactions.

He tried again, connecting to the
maintenance port. A menu came up in his mind’s eye, showing local
water, power, and atmospheric controls. Further access was
restricted, and he didn’t have valid identification codes to
continue. He unlinked from the maintenance port and tried another
general information one. Joe requested the route to the nearest
restroom. A map came up of the local corridors, showing the path in
red. He panned the map view slowly to the right. The image wavered
and the link was broken.

“
The information computers
are hopelessly trashed,” Joe complained. “Two, have you had any
luck getting maps of this place?”

“
I do not have sufficient
access to get that information. I have multiple errors logged as
well. The system is highly unstable.”

Joe was frustrated, but he came to a
decision.

“
Let’s get back to the
entrance. This is an amazing place, we should report it. Its
presence here proves that someone beat the UNSF to the punch. In
fact, now that I think about it, that explains the ship we
encountered. I wondered how they got here so fast. But the truth
is, they may have been here all along.”

Joe knew that people resisted the world
government, formed secret societies and rebel groups, but he had no
idea that they had these kinds of resources. To scout out a Trilisk
planet before the UNSF and to create a base here... they were
stronger than he realized. Then another thought occurred to
him.

“
Hrm, I may be making some
bad assumptions here. Maybe this is a UNSF base that I don’t have
clearance to know about. But that means Mailson must not know about
it either, or he wouldn’t have sent me.”

The robots listened to Joe’s
suppositions without comment. Joe turned back and retraced their
route through the underground complex. He led them through a series
of rooms and walked down a flight of stairs. They exited the
stairwell and walked down a long corridor. Joe slowed, looking back
over his shoulder.

“
One. I’ve become
disoriented. Where’s the entrance?”

“
We are at entrance
location. The door has been obscured by a new wall,” the robot
said.

“
A new wall? Two, do you
agree with this analysis? Someone built a new wall
here?”

“
This is the entrance
location. However, there is no evidence to support the theory that
this is a freshly constructed wall. It may be that a wall
constructed at an earlier time has been moved to obstruct the
exit.”

“
Wonderful. But how do we
get out? Maybe we’ve been fooled into thinking this is the same
spot,” Joe said. He reached his hand out and felt the wall. It
seemed solid.

“
Something could be
interfering with our inertial sensors,” Two said.

Joe nodded. “Let’s test that idea. Two,
return to our deepest point in the complex and then walk back here.
See if there’s any discrepancy in the inertial navigator
readings.”

Two tramped away dutifully. Joe stood
thinking as he waited for it to return. After a minute there was a
scraping noise, and Joe saw that the orange creature on One’s leg
was beginning to move downwards on the metal column.

“
One, don’t move. Let that
stupid thing run off to wherever.”

“
Acknowledged.”

The crablike thing crawled down to the
metal foot below it and hesitated. Eventually it abandoned its post
on the leg and crawled away down the corridor, bumping into the
wall periodically. Two returned, walking carefully around the
orange creature.

“
The test is complete. The
inertial locating system is showing no errors,” Two
said.

“
Okay. First thing, help me
smash through this wall. I want to see if the entrance is behind
it.”

The robots worked with Joe to break
through the wall. Its surface was made of fairly flimsy materials
with a reinforcing honeycomb structure behind. Joe had a hard time
with this support material, but the robots ripped it methodically
to pieces, revealing the space beyond. Joe looked through the
hole.

“
It’s just another room. The
entrance really isn’t here,” Joe said.

“
The entrance has moved,”
Two agreed.

Joe shook his head. “We’re missing
something. The inertial systems seem to be working, but the
entrance has been moved. Or closed, or hidden, or something. Let’s
move out in a right-handed maze search of the entire place. I want
to find the exit as fast as possible.”

Joe indicated One to lead. The Series
Seven moved out, keeping the wall at its right side. They moved
into a room with long tables and chairs in the middle with numerous
metal cabinets lining the walls. Joe resisted the urge to search
through the cabinets. He wanted to find the way out quickly. He
felt trapped in this strange place. He would come back and search
more once he had returned to the surface and made his
report.

They moved through another series of
rooms typical of what they had already seen. They reminded Joe of
an emptied university or research center. The trio had just walked
up a stairwell when One came to a halt in front of him.