Earth Star (41 page)

I gave a last look, and backed off to the tag support sled again. ‘Amalie, Krath, go ahead.’

I watched as the next rocks were lifted away, one by one, and nodded. This was working. I’d carefully left one large boulder untagged, and it was now the one thing holding up a whole bank of earth and rocks. When that was removed …

‘I hope you aren’t going in close to tag that, Jarra,’ said Fian.

‘I’m planning to distance shoot it,’ I said, ‘but you may still have to yank me out of trouble if that lot moves before we’re ready.’

I raised my tag gun, took careful aim, held my breath and fired. Tag guns aren’t the most accurate things in the world, and I didn’t want to have to take a dozen shots and look an idiot in front of the vid bees that hovered around the sleds. Fortunately, the boulder was so large it was hard to miss.

I retreated to safety again. ‘Amalie, shift the boulder.’

Her lift beam moved out, locked on to the tag, changed from white to red as the power increased, and the boulder soared upwards into the air. Below it, earth and rocks cascaded downwards, and I was startled to hear applause on the broadcast channel.

‘This is Site Leader Pereth. Beautifully judged avalanche there, Major.’

I felt the heat of embarrassed pleasure at such praise from a true expert, and swapped temporarily to broadcast channel to reply. ‘This is Major Tell Morrath. Thank you. I think we’ll need at least two more like that, so let’s hope they go just as well.’

I let the heavy lifts do a cautious drag net next, to remove the worst of the loose earth and pebbles, then tagged the bigger stones for removal. That went smoothly, and so did the second avalanche. It was on the third and final one, that I misjudged the stability of a key boulder. It gave way early under the strain, and Fian pulled me out just in time to save me from the torrent of debris. As I dangled in midair, being smoothly swung back towards the tag support sled, I had a perfect view of the hillside. I felt a stab of excitement as I saw a dark opening.

I spoke on broadcast channel. ‘That’s cleared part of the tunnel entrance. There’s still a mess of loose rocks below it, but I’d rather not risk using lift beams closer to the tunnel. We can climb over the rubble and get inside.’

I glanced around for a moment. ‘It’s getting dark, but that won’t make any difference when we’re inside the tunnel. Turn the floodlights on now, please, Dalmora. Captain Eklund and I will get our equipment set up, and then the rest of my team had better pull back to join the crowd by the Earth Rolling News dome.’

‘Can’t we stay?’ asked Krath, on team circuit.

‘Sorry, but no,’ I replied. ‘There’s no point in risking more than the two of us. If we do something wrong, or even if we do something right, we’ve no idea what may happen.’

He gave a heavy sigh, but shut up. Playdon came over and helped Fian and I with the extra equipment. We’d decided to take the minor risk of wearing impact suits and hover belts as we entered the tunnel, though we’d keep the hover belts turned off unless we needed them. Logic said the protection of the impact suits outweighed the danger of them being affected by alien technology. My skin wasn’t entirely convinced by logic, and was busily screaming away, but I promised it I’d be out of my suit in record time if there was the slightest sign of a problem.

As well as impact suits and hover belts, we needed lights of course. We attached those to our suits, together with special small sensors, and relays for the vid bees. I’d grudgingly agreed to take two of the nosy little vid bees with us, not for the benefit of the Earth Rolling News audience, but so the Military could see exactly what was happening and advise us. Dalmora and her father, Ventrak Rostha, would be controlling the vid bees remotely via the relays.

Finally, Fian and I picked up two flexiplas cases. Inside were some special gadgets, which were designed to induce electrical currents. If I’d been right about an alien device being temporarily powered up by the solar super storm, this equipment should reproduce the effect. I was having last-minute doubts about that part of my idea, but in a sense it didn’t matter. We’d found something here. It might not be exactly what I’d predicted, but there was something, and that was a merciful relief.

We were ready. Dalmora, Amalie, Krath, and a very reluctant Playdon, left through the portal. Fian and I were left alone in a dark landscape, looking at a hillside where a jumble of rocks and earth were harshly lit by the glaring floodlights. I opened a private circuit to Fian.

‘Last chance to change your mind about coming.’

He laughed and shook his head, so I started climbing up the hill towards the tunnel. The slope was steep enough to make me use both hands and feet, but I made it, stopped at the entrance to look around, and found Fian already beside me. I opened Military command channel.

‘Sensors still clear?’

‘We’re not detecting any active technology, just an abnormally high metal content in the rocks,’ replied Commander Leveque, who was co-ordinating advice and instructions.

I slowly entered the tunnel. The lights on my suit illuminated rock walls on both sides, and I paused to examine a white strip running at head height. ‘What’s that?’

‘It appears to be some sort of crystal,’ said Leveque.

I reached out a finger to touch it, and instantly snatched my hand back. ‘It feels cold! How can something feel cold through an impact suit?’

‘It must be a highly effective conductor of heat,’ said Leveque, ‘though it seems unlikely that’s its primary purpose.’

I made a mental note not to casually prod anything else, and moved on a few steps to where something utterly black blocked my way. ‘That’s not a stasis field is it? It’s black enough, but it doesn’t have the fuzzy effect.’

‘It seems to be a door,’ said Leveque. ‘Sensors indicate it’s a form of glass, with highly unusual properties.’

‘It doesn’t look like glass. What sort of properties?’

‘Unclear. The sensor reports of its physical characteristics are impossible. That may be a failing of either our sensors or our current knowledge. In any case, our optimal course of action is to open the door, rather than break it down or bypass it. There’s a separate area to the right which is probably a control panel.’

‘That’s completely black as well,’ said Fian. ‘Shall I try one of our gadgets?’

Leveque didn’t say anything. If he knew any reason why we shouldn’t, then he’d tell us. I was Field Commander, so the decision was mine.

‘Try it,’ I said.

Fian opened his case, and took out a weird, pyramid-shaped object. He put it on the floor next to the black door. ‘Better back off.’

I wanted to stay, but dutifully did as I was told. If he got in trouble then it was better if I didn’t and was in a position to help. I watched nervously as he twiddled the top of his little pyramid. An area of the black door suddenly glowed in a complex pattern of scrolling symbols and colours, Fian scampered to join me, and we stood there, tensely watching. After two minutes had passed, with no apparent threat, I allowed one of the vid bees in to take a closer look. It was a further minute before Leveque spoke on the Military command channel.

‘Threat team predicted several possible scenarios on entering the tunnel, and this appears to match our highest probability case. Extremely gratifying, since it indicates our improved understanding of the alien methodology. Our society’s level of development is being tested before we’re allowed entry. The displayed pattern is repeating in three phases. The red phase seems to be teaching us their numeric symbols.’

I studied the red phase and could see what he meant. Each symbol had a set of dots next to it, and they made sense up until …

‘They’re working in base eight then,’ said Fian.

That explained what had been worrying me. I was no mathematician, but I vaguely understood the idea of working in base eight. ‘That could mean they had eight fingers instead of ten, or just that they chose not to include thumbs when counting.’

‘Agreed,’ said Leveque. ‘The green phase is showing us a sequence of the first eight prime numbers. Our theory is we’re supposed to continue the sequence in the blue phase, presumably by touching the correct combinations of symbols.’

I was an obsessive historian who’d quit studying maths and science as soon as she could. Fian might be a disappointment to his high achieving family, but he still understood this much better than I did.

‘Captain Eklund had better enter our answers,’ I said.

I stood watching while Fian conferred with Leveque and then stepped up to the panel. He waited for the blue phase to appear and tapped some symbols. The pattern stopped scrolling upwards, and flashed for a moment.

‘First answer accepted,’ said Leveque’s voice.

The flashing stopped and Fian entered the next set of symbols, which was again accepted. After the fifth answer, I started to wonder how long this would take. Fian entered another three answers before the panel suddenly went dark and the door swung open. The aliens worked in base eight, and wanted eight correct answers. Well, that made sense.

I stepped up to the door, and my light showed the tunnel continuing ahead with the same curious horizontal white crystal line. ‘I see another door ahead.’

I walked on down the tunnel, with Fian beside me. We’d taken six or seven steps, when I heard a sound overhead and instinctively looked up. I saw the darkness of the ceiling move, a shaft of light where there shouldn’t be one, and then rocks crashed down on me. My impact suit triggered hard in response, freezing me like a fly trapped in amber, and sending me into the darkness of impact suit blackout.

I woke up, unable to move or see. There was the usual second of disoriented panic after impact suit blackout, before I worked out where I was and what had happened. The suit material was clamped tight around me making it hard to breathe, my comms had gone to emergency mode and were squawking Mayday codes, and there was the sound of Colonel Torrek’s tense voice. I remembered the panic when Drago’s fighter was hit by the sphere’s meteor defence, and gasped out a few urgent words.

‘Cave-in. No attack. Repeat, cave-in.’

‘Major Tell Morrath, you’re sure you haven’t been the target of a hostile action?’ asked Colonel Torrek.

‘Perfectly, sir. I saw the ceiling coming down. What comms channels am I speaking on?’

‘You’re on command and auto distress channels, Major Tell Morrath,’ said Leveque. ‘We still have your suit telemetry but we’ve lost sensors and vid bees. What is your status?’

‘I’m buried under rocks,’ I said. ‘The tunnel ceiling was probably weakened by the landslide, and opening that door made it collapse. Captain Eklund, are you conscious yet?’

‘Yes. I seem to be in one piece but buried too.’ Fian’s voice sounded breathless but calm.

I relaxed. ‘Good to hear that. Can someone please patch our comms into site broadcast channel?’ I heard the comms note change as someone did that. ‘This is Major Tell Morrath. What’s our suit pressure looking like?’

‘This is Dig Site Command. Both your suits are green, except for your left leg, Major. That’s green flickering amber, indicating increased pressure from a sharp edge of rock, but still within safety margins. We have a lot of teams volunteering to assist you.’

‘This is Major Tell Morrath. Thank you for the offers. We’ll need to use some non-standard methods on this, because I still don’t want to risk lift beams too close to alien technology.’

‘This is Commander Leveque. Major Tell Morrath is correct to avoid the use of lift beams. The Science teams’ initial analysis indicates the control logic for the doors is encoded into the glass control panel and might be disrupted by a lift beam.’

I’d actually been worried about the alien technology hurting us, not the other way around, but it would be better not to break anything.

‘This is Colonel Torrek. Although I want to avoid damaging the alien technology, I also want my officers out from under that rock fall. How do we handle this, Major Tell Morrath?’

‘This is Major Tell Morrath. We need the assistance of the correct experts, sir.’ Thankfully, I knew exactly who to call on in this situation. ‘Are Rono Kipkibor and Cassandra 2 listening to this?’

‘This is Rono,’ said a familiar voice. ‘Cassandra 2 are in the volunteer queue.’

‘This is Major Tell Morrath. Captain Eklund and I were injured by a magnetic hazard at an old research laboratory on Eden Dig Site. I believe your team went in there to deal with it, working without sleds or lift beams, so you’re probably the best experts in this situation. I saw light from the floodlights outside as the roof caved in, so we have an opening in the tunnel roof.’

‘This is Rono. If the opening is big enough, we can set up a block and tackle and use ropes to lower people down to you. They may be able to move the rubble aside by hand. If necessary, we can shift larger rocks using ropes and some of the harnesses we normally use for stasis boxes.’

‘This is Major Tell Morrath. Given my current limited view of events, I’d better leave you to organize this, Rono.’

‘This is Commander Tell Dramis. Major Weldon and myself have suited up, and are ready to be lowered down and follow instructions on moving rubble.’

There was a brief argument, with Drago taking the view that the Military should take any and all risks in the universe, and Rono pointing out the archaeologists on dig teams did this sort of thing all the time. The Colonel stepped in and ruled in Drago’s favour, since archaeologists didn’t usually work in tunnels dug by aliens. I stayed out of the argument since I had my own problems. I’d been fine when I came out of impact suit blackout, but now I was starting to panic.

For the next forty-five minutes, Cassandra 2 worked somewhere above me, setting up ropes and pulleys. They sent vid bees down to examine the rock fall, and then lowered down Drago and Marlise. Most of the rubble could be shifted aside by hand easily enough. A couple of large boulders were lifted out in harnesses.

I spent the time fighting my own private war in the darkness. I’d been buried on dig sites lots of times, but it had never been like this. I’d always had a deep inner belief that I couldn’t possibly die because I was only 18.