They were twenty meters from the tower.
Hutch turned the lander's lights on it. Pocked and beaten by long winters, it was circular, not more than three stories high. Although she was thinking in human terms. It wasn't wide: She could walk around it in a minute.
There were eight windows, all at different levels, each looking in a different direction. The lowest would permit easy access. The top of the tower was circled by twin ring cornices projecting just above the uppermost window. A convex roof capped the structure.
She activated her e-suit and felt the familiar push away from the seat and the back of the chair as if a cushion of air had formed around her. Kellie ran a radio check with her and nodded. Okay. She pulled on a utility vest and asked Toni to pass up the microscan from the backseat. She clipped it on and put a cutter into a pocket.
"What are you going to do?" asked Nightingale. He looked worried.
"Historic moment. It's worth preserving." She popped the inner airlock hatch, set the cabin air pressure to match the outside level, and got out of her seat. "Everybody please get into your e-suit. Set the breather for conversion mode." That would allow the system to work off the environment so they didn't have to wear air tanks.
Kellie passed out the Flickinger generators. They attached them to their belts and activated the suits. The converters kicked in and commenced moving air.
"Mine won't work," said Toni.
Kellie looked at it, made an adjustment, and reset it. "Try it now."
The field whispered on and Toni held up a thumb. "Okay."
"I thought," said Chiang, "we were going to wait until morning."
"We are. Chiang, I'd like you to come stand in the airlock."
"Okay," he said, joining her. And after a moment: "Why?"
"In case of screwups, surprises, whatever." She checked the time. "We're about two hours from sunup. Soon as we have light, we'll go into the building."
"Nothing's going to sneak up on us out there," Chiang said. "Why don't we just take a look now?"
"When we have daylight." She trained the sensors to do a sweep along a patch of forest. It was the only place she could see where a predator might hide. Other than the tower itself.
Green lights flashed, and the outer hatch opened. "Anything moves out there," she said, "I want to know about it." She climbed out onto the ladder.
Chiang produced a lantern and played its beam across the snow. "Looks like Christmas."
Hutch climbed down, tested the ground, and sank in about halfway up her shins. The field kept her feet warm and dry. "Snow's a bit soft," she said.
"So I see."
The tower loomed over her. Morgan was a bright green star in the western sky, where its brilliance washed out even Deneb. It was 84 million kilometers away, and the two worlds were rushing toward each other at a combined velocity of just under seventy kilometers per second.
The tower itself was singularly dull. A pile of stone blocks and not much more. She took its picture. Took it again.
She kept an eye on the line of trees. Somebody, Nightingale, she thought, undiplomatically asked whether Kellie knew how to fly the lander.
Hutch heard no response. Kellie, she suspected, had answered with a glance.
She faced the spacecraft, providing the scan with a good look, gave it a moment to adjust to the lighting, and took the lander's picture also.
"That's good," said Kellie. "Come on back now."
There was still a picture she wanted, one she would hang in whatever future quarters she might occupy. She moved to the far side of the vehicle, got far enough back until she had both the nose of the spacecraft, its Wildside designator, and the tower, all in the frame. "Perfect," she said.
Dawn broke gray and listless.
The sun was larger than Sol. But it seemed dusty and not quite tangible, almost as if it were one of those solar illusions called sun dogs one sees from North America's Great Plains.
Deepsix had a rotational period of nineteen hours, six minutes, eleven seconds. It was a few million kilometers closer to its sun than Earth was to Sol, but Maleiva was older and cooler.
There was snow on the tower roof. Hutch wondered who had lived in the building, how long ago, where they had gone.
It was possible that the tower marked the site of a climactic battle, or a place where opposing forces had come together to establish an alliance. A Plato might have conducted discussions on this hillside, in warmer times. Or a Solon laid out a system of laws.
Who knew? And no one ever would, except for what little she could salvage.
They descended from the lander, checked their gear, and began trudging through the snow toward the ground-floor window. The merest whisper of wind was audible around the tower. The snow was crusted, and it crunched loudly underfoot, breaking the general stillness.
Two birds appeared in the distance, well out to the northwest. Nightingale turned to look at Hutch, and a chill passed down her spine. But he said nothing.
The birds were flying in great slow circles, wings out, riding the air currents.
The ground-level window had a frame, in which remained a few shards of what might once have been glass. Inside the building they saw a room, utterly bare save for some wooden sticks and debris.
Through an open doorway, a narrow wooden staircase ascended between beams into the ceiling. The steps were close together, far too close to accommodate human feet.
Hutch set her scan to record everything, hung it around her neck, and climbed through the frame. There was just enough clearance for her head. The floor seemed solid. Beneath a layer of snow and earth, it was constructed of planks. She examined a plaster wall, stained and crumbling, punched full of holes. Several sets of shelves had been built into it.
The ceiling was low, not quite two meters. Not enough to allow even Hutch to stand up straight.
She looked into the other room, the one with the stairway, and saw a third chamber.
The stairway apparently rose to the top of the tower. And down several levels to the bottom. It was made of wood.
Hutch signaled the others to come in.
Chiang pushed on the ceiling. Dust drifted down.
The chambers above and below also had one window each. They appeared identical to the one at ground level, save that the windows were in different locations.
They climbed to the room above, and then to the level above that. They were all scrunching down to avoid hitting their heads. "Marcel was right about these folks," grumbled Kellie. "They were a little on the short side."
After the initial inspection they went back to the lander and Hutch distributed gear luminous cable and chalk to mark off areas where finds were made; bars and lamps, compressed air dusters, whatever else she'd been able to think of. Find anything unusual, she told them, call me. And almost anything you find will be unusual.
As the day brightened, they spread out through the tower. There were eight levels above ground. They counted six more going down. The topmost space consisted of a single chamber with a surprisingly high ceiling, enough to allow everyone except Chiang to stand upright. There was a hook up there, and they found two objects on the floor: one that might once have been a piece of chain, and a smashed wooden tripod.
"What do you think?" asked Toni.
"Maybe," said Kellie, "it was used to sharpen axes. See, you could put a stone in here."
They found at each level a charred niche that must have been a fireplace. In addition, at the bottom of the structure, a door opened out to the north. Into the interior of the city. It was closed, warped, and it wouldn't budge. They decided to finish examining the building before taking it down.
The rooms were empty, save for a chair arm that one would have described as a child's furnishing, a flat piece of wood that might once have been a tabletop, a few rags, a shoe, and some other debris so far corrupted that it was impossible to know what it might once have been.