“Ankor, Cole,” Lopé snapped. “Stay on watch here at the entry. Don’t come in, and don’t leave. Anything out of the ordinary shows itself—I mean anything else out of the ordinary—you tell us pronto.”
No argument was forthcoming from the two privates, who were more than happy to be ordered to remain outside. Raising his carbine, the sergeant clicked on its laser sight and moved inward, letting the red beam dictate their path.
Reaching an even larger open chamber, they paused to examine their surroundings. Laser scopes and lights cut through the darkness to reveal the extent of the room. Stepping on something that moved slightly, a startled Daniels let out a small gasp and drew her foot back. Shining her light on the floor revealed fragments of broken material. Raising the beam showed that the shards had once formed some kind of black urn.
Others stood upright nearby. Not all had fallen over or been shattered. Some remained intact. Nor was all the detritus in the room hard and unyielding. Some of it had turned soft with age. Spread out among the desolation were carpets of what appeared to be black mold. Embedded in the moldy masses were tiny clusters of larger, more solid objects.
Extending a finger, a curious Hallet bent toward one. He was immediately enjoined by a stern Lopé.
“Hey.” The sergeant shook his head slowly. “Don’t. Touch.” Having delivered the order, he moved on.
Hallet straightened to follow when… movement caught his eye. Had one of the tiny ovoids stirred slightly on its own? Or was it just the wind rippling through the chamber? He hesitated. This could be significant. He might even get credited with an important discovery.
“Guys…”
Everyone else had moved on, following Lopé’s lead. Still, Hallet lingered, debating what to do. Surely something so small couldn’t present much of a danger. The thought of being the first one to make a major discovery on this new world, beating out even the scientists, was seriously tempting.
His companions were out of sight now, but their lights were still visible, probing walls and floor. Easy to follow.
He leaned down anew, crouching…
The murky interior of the ship was devoid of internal illumination, but not of water. It ran down the uneven levels in thin, almost silent rivulets. In places it gathered to form shallow pools. The team ignored them, splashing occasionally through deeper accumulations.
In another corridor they came upon a row of what Daniels at first thought were sculptures. Closer inspection revealed them to be suits. At first glance there was no way to tell if they were space suits, survival suits, suits for carrying out daily activities, or suits for performing actions she could not imagine. What was more intriguing than their function was the inescapable fact that the bodies they were manufactured to fit were far larger than those intended for humans. The shapes were generally humanoid. Bisymmetricaclass="underline" two arms, two legs, a skull, and generally human proportions.
But much, much bigger.
Walter joined her, scrutinizing silently, making notes and taking readings without the aid of external instrumentation. He offered no comment, nor did she solicit any. As usual, if he had anything of consequence to offer, he wouldn’t need to be prodded to voice it.
Oram regarded their dank surroundings with an increasing look of unease. Reaching into a pocket, he withdrew his worry beads and began to roll them between his fingers. The sharp click-click proved even more unnerving than the silence they interrupted.
Still lingering behind them, Hallet thought better of his actions. As long as he had been a member of the Covenant’s security team, there hadn’t been a time when it had been wise to ignore Lopé’s instructions. Tempting as it was to see himself credited with an important finding, maybe in this case it was better to leave such probing to those with more experience.
After all, he would still get credit for pointing it out to the scientists when they traced their path back through this chamber. So he took a step backward, away from the small rotund object he had been examining. As he did so his foot inadvertently brushed against another one that was half buried in the mold behind him.
It dissolved into a cloud of motes.
Rising, they swiftly coalesced into a microscopic form that would have been difficult to see even in bright sunlight. In the darkness, it was essentially invisible. Hallet’s beam might have been strong enough, but it was turned the other way as he prepared to catch up to the rest of the team.
The mote-shape hovered for a long moment near his head, as if in contemplation. As if studying. Then it darted forward abruptly, slipping into one nostril. An ovipositor-like tube formed. A function engaged, not quite imperceptible.
Unconcerned, Hallet rubbed the side of his nose.
A figure returned to meet him. It was Lopé, and his concern quickly switched to irritation.
“Hey, Tom, keep up!” he barked. “Do I need to put you on a leash?”
“Yeah, sure. Sorry, Sarge. I was just looking around.”
“We’re all ‘looking around.’ That’s why we’re here instead of back on the ship. Let’s just make sure we keep in sight of each other while we look around, okay?” He lowered his voice in a conspiratorial, comradely tone. “The brains tend to wander off on their own. I don’t need one of my own people doing the same. Especially you, Tom.”
No more was said. They hurried to rejoin the others.
The next chamber they entered was enormous. Unlike those through which they had come, this one had a rounded, dome-like ceiling supported by curving walls. The walls themselves showed no signs of joints, welds, seams, or internal support of any kind. A gently sloping ramp led to a huge platform that rose from the exact center of the floor.
It fronted a console that curved around an impressive device that might equally have been a weapon, a telescope, or some kind of instrument whose purpose was not immediately apparent. There was a chair, and as they approached it, their footsteps clicking on the ramp, they saw that it was unoccupied.
Spaced equidistantly around the chamber they found four huge pods. Closed and covered with deeply inscribed indecipherable writing, they appeared to grow out of the floor of the platform. It was much too soon to tell if they were analogs to the hypersleep shells like those on the Covenant, or intended for some other purpose, yet their similarity was near enough to give Daniels chills. One obvious difference was size. They dwarfed those on board the mother ship. She wished fervently she could read the script on their sides.
As Rosenthal played her light over the artifacts, Oram mounted the central console to investigate the sweep of inactive instrumentation. There were no buttons, switches, monitors, or any other recognizable controls. Only multiple imbedded hemispheres of varying sizes hinted at a means of activation. Though he was careful to touch nothing, his caution was misplaced. The engineering behind the console had not relied on anything as primitive as actual physical contact.
Oram’s hand passed over a matte inlay and…
A holo appeared, flashing to life exactly where Rosenthal was standing. Startled, she jumped clear, allowing the image to fully reveal itself. Though blurry and indistinct, it was clearly a human woman. The imagery was accompanied by audio. Audio that was by now as familiar as it was mystifying… and disturbing.
“Country roads, take me home, to the place I belong… West Virginia, mountain momma, take me home, country roads…”
As he strained to parse the lyrics, Oram couldn’t keep from sensing the underlying sadness in what ought to be a positive tone.