“I’d like that,” said April.
The only other person Max could think of who had been so honored by a tribe was Sam Houston. Not bad company. “Me too,” he said.
“So what’s next?” asked Arky, gazing pointedly at the balloons.
“We want to see what else we have.”
The balloons sported the legend Fort Moxie and a picture of the Roundhouse. Two long strings dangled from each. Max, enjoying center stage, pulled over two chairs and set them on either side of the grid, outside the perimeter. He tied one of the balloons to the chairs so that the balloon itself floated directly over the grid.
“What are you trying to do?” Arky asked.
“We don’t want to clog the system,” said April. “If we send a chair and nobody moves it off the receiving grid, that’s the ball game. We lose that channel. We need to send something that won’t stay put.”
Arky nodded. “Good,” he said.
“Ready?” asked April, who was now standing beside the icons.
Max focused on the balloon and started the videotape. “Running,” he said.
April pressed the rings icon.
Max counted twenty-three seconds and watched the balloon disappear. Two severed pieces of string, one on either side of the grid, dropped to the floor.
“I’ve got a question,” said Arky. “What happens if somebody isn’t all the way on when the thing activates? Does half of you get left here?”
April looked like a kid caught with her hand in the cookie jar. “That’s a good question, counselor,” she said.
They repeated the process with the final icon, the G clef, and returned to the control module to see the results.
The rings had implied, to Max, an artificial environment. Here, at last, they might come face to face with someone.
And perhaps they would. There was a secondary exposure, a ghost in the photo. The ghost was a wall with a window. The wall was plain, and suggested perhaps a vessel or military installation. The window was long, longer than the image. And it seemed to be night on the other side.
“Indoors, I think,” said April.
Arky was sitting on the work table. He leaned forward, trying to see more clearly. “How do we respond if someone’s there?” he asked.
“Say hello and smile,” said Max.
The lawyer frowned. “I think we need to be serious about this. Listen, this station, terminal, whatever, has been out of business for a long time. But it doesn’t mean the entire system is down. We need to decide how we’re going to respond if someone shows up.” He looked reluctant to continue. “For example, should we be armed?”
April shook her head slowly. “Seems to me,” she said, “the last thing we’d want to do is start a fight with whoever put this thing together.”
“He’s right, though,” said Max. “We should be careful.”
Arky slipped into a chair. “Why don’t we take a look at the other one?”
The G clef. Max let the videotape run ahead to the second sequence.
Again they watched the balloon fade. This time the background image appeared to be a carpeted room. The walls might have been paneled, but they were bare. No furniture was visible. “Light coming from somewhere,” said April.
“What do you think?” asked Max.
“It might be just another Roundhouse.”
April was ready to go. “Only one way to find out.”
Max hesitated. “I think we should leave it alone,” he said. “If someone really is over there, we are going to screw it up. Let’s use that committee of yours to figure out how to do this stuff.”
“That’s six days away,” said April. “The more information we can get for them, the better able they’ll be to do their work. Anyway, what kind of experts would you want for a project like this? I mean, it’s not as if anyone has any experience.”
“I can see where this is leading,” said Max.
“Nevertheless, I agree,” said Arky. “No one is equipped for this kind of meeting. If anyone goes, it might as well be us.” Max noticed the pronoun.
April did, too. “Arky,” she said, “no offense, but we don’t need a lawyer along. Let us try it first.”
He got visibly taller. “I don’t think so,” he said. “The tribe should have representation.”
“You’re kidding,” said Max.
Arky smiled. “I never kid.”
Max assembled a travel kit, which included a generator, a tool box, two flashlights, two quarts of water, and the now-standard writing pad with black markers.
Dale Tree (who was acting security chief while Adam was leading the survey of Eden) handed a.38 to Arky.
“How about me?” said Max.
“You qualified?” asked Dale.
“Not really.” Max had never fired a weapon in his life.
“Then forget it,” said Arky. “You’ll be more dangerous than anything we might meet.” He glanced at April.
“Me, neither,” she said.
Dale looked concerned. “I think you should let me go along,” he said.
“We’ll be fine,” said Arky.
April looked disgusted. “This is probably somebody’s living room. I don’t think we’re likely to need a lot of firepower.”
Max set his travel kit in the middle of the grid and laid a spade beside it. “When we get there,” he told Dale, “I’ll try to send the spade back. Give me a half-hour or so, in case we have to repair something. If nothing happens by then, send sandwiches.”
“We’ll put up a message if we get stuck,” said April. “Nobody comes after us unless we ask them to.” She glanced at her companions. “Right?”
Arky nodded. Max did, too, but less decisively.
They walked onto the grid. Dale stood by the icons. “Are we ready?” he asked.
April said yes.
The room smelled of musk. The walls were covered with a light green fabric, decorated with representations of flowers and vines. A pallid illumination radiated from no particular place, much in the style of the Roundhouse.
They did not move for a few moments, other than to glance around the large, bare chamber in which they found themselves. Max could hear no sound anywhere. The grid on which they stood was of different design but of the same dimensions as the other two. He stepped down onto a red carpet and pulled his foot back in surprise when it sank beneath him.
“What the hell kind of floor is this?” said April.
He tried again. It supported him, but the walking was going to be difficult. Who, he wondered, would be comfortable here?
In front of him, the light brightened.
The room was L-shaped, half as long on one side as on the other. There were two exits, located at either end of the stem, both opening into shadowy passageways. On the wall behind the grid, Max saw the by now familiar set of icons. They were located in an angled panel. There were nine this time, motifs set inside disks that were inserted smoothly in the wood. One of them was the stag’s head. None of the others duplicated anything Max had seen before, either in the Roundhouse or on Eden.
April stood a long time, examining them. “World without end,” she said.
Max nodded. He put the spade on the grid and tried the stag’s head. The icon glowed warmly.
The spade vanished in a swirl of light that was green rather than gold. “Matches the decor,” April said, impressed.
“Well,” said Arky, “it’s good to know we can get out of here in a hurry if we have to.”
The ceiling was high, and sections of it were lost in shadow behind a network of beams. “The balloon’s not here,” Arky said. But a look of surprise had appeared on his features, and Max followed his gaze. There was a rectangular hole in the ceiling, through which they could see into another room.