"You're the mission commander, I take it?" he asked, extending his hand.
She shook it perfunctorily. "I'm Hutchins," she said.
He introduced Casey and Wetheral.
"Why don't we talk inside?" Hutchins turned on her heel and marched off.
Delightful.
They clumped through the snow. MacAllister studied the tower while he tried to get used to the e-suit. He should have been cold, but wasn't. His feet, clad in leisure shoes, sank into the drifts. But they stayed warm.
The tower loomed up through the storm. At home, it would have been no more than a pile of rock. Here, amidst all this desolation, it was magnificent. But the Philistines had punched a hole in the wall. "Pity you chose to do that," he told Hutchins.
"It made egress considerably easier."
"I quite understand." He did, of course. And yet this tower had obviously stood a long time. It should have been possible to show it a bit more respect. "I don't suppose we have any idea how old it is?"
"Not yet," she said. "We don't have an onboard facility for dating. It'll take a while."
The storm caused him to speak more loudly than necessary. He was having a hard time getting used to the radio. Hutchins asked him to lower his voice. He did and focused on trying to keep it down. "And there's nothing else?" he asked. "No other ruins?"
"There are some scattered around the planet. And there's a city buried down there." She pointed at the ground.
"Really?" He tried to imagine it, a town with houses and parks and probably a jail under the ice. "Incredible," he said.
"Watch your head." She led him through the entrance they had made. He ducked and followed her into a low-roofed chamber with a table on which were piled some cups and darts. He had to stay bent over.
"Tight fit," he said. The small-gauge stairways caught his eye. "The inhabitants were, what, — elves?"
"Apparently about that size."
"What have you learned about them so far?" He wandered over to the table and reached for one of the cups, but she asked him, if he would, to avoid handling them. "Forgive me," he said. "So what can you tell me about them?"
"We know they favored blowguns."
He smiled back at her. "Primitives."
Hutchins's people drifted in to meet him. They struck him as by and large a forgettable lot. The other two women were reasonably attractive. There was one young male with a trace of Asian ancestry. And he recognized the second male but couldn't immediately place him. He was an elderly, bookish-looking individual, with a weak chin and a fussy mustache. And he was in fact staring at MacAllister with some irritation.
Hutchins did the introductions. And the mystery went away. "Randall Nightingale," she said.
Ah. Nightingale. The man who fainted. The man carried relatively uninjured out of battle by a woman. MacAllister frowned and pretended to study his features. "Do I know you from somewhere?" he asked with benign dignity.
"Yes," said Nightingale. "Indeed you do."
"You're…"
"I was the director of the original project, Mr. MacAllister. Twenty years or so ago."
"So you were." MacAllister was not without compassion, and he let Nightingale see that he felt a degree of sympathy. "I am sorry how that turned out. It must have been hard on you."
Hutchins must have sensed the gathering storm. She moved in close.
MacAllister turned to his companion. "Casey, you know Randall Nightingale. A legendary figure."
Nightingale took an aggressive step forward, but Hutchins put an arm around his shoulder. Little woman, he thought. And a little man. But Nightingale wisely allowed himself to be restrained. "I haven't forgotten you, MacAllister," he said.
MacAllister smiled politely. "There, sir, as you can see, you had the advantage of me."
Hutchins drew him away and turned him over to the Asian. Something passed between them, and he coaxed Nightingale out of the chamber and down the child's staircase.
"What was that about?" asked Casey.
"Man didn't like to read about himself." MacAllister turned back to Hutchins. "I'm sorry about that," he said. "I didn't expect to find him here."
"It's okay. Let's just try to keep it peaceful."
"Madam," he said, "you need to tell that to your own people. But I'll certainly try to stay out of everyone's way. Now, can I persuade you to show us around the site a bit?"
"All right," she said. "I guess it can't do any harm. But there's really not much to see."
"How long have you been on the ground, if you don't mind my asking?"
"This is our second day."
"Do we know anything at all about the natives, the creatures, who built it? Other than the blowguns?"
Hutchins told him what they had learned: The natives were of course preindustrial, fought organized wars, and had a form of writing. She offered to take him to the top of the tower. "Tell me what's up there, and I'll decide," he said.
She described the chamber and the levered ceiling which apparently had opened up. And she added their idea that the natives might have owned a telescope.
"Optics?" he said. "That doesn't seem to fit with blowguns."
"That's our feeling. I hope we'll get some answers during the course of the day."
MacAllister saw no point making the climb. Instead they descended into the lower chambers, and Hutchins showed him a fireplace and some chair fragments.
Near the bottom of the tower they looked into a tunnel. "This is where we're working now," she said.
The tunnel was too small to accommodate him. Even had it not been, he would have stayed out of it. "So what's back there?" he asked.
"It's where we found the blowguns. It looks as if there was an armory. But what we're really interested in is finding writing samples and maybe some engraved pictures. Or possibly sculpture. Something that'll tell us what they looked like. We'd like to answer your question, Mr. MacAllister."
"Of course." MacAllister looked around at the blank walls. "We must have some idea of their appearance. For example, surely the staircase is designed for a bipedal creature?"
"Surely," she said. "We're pretty sure they had four limbs. Walked upright. That's about the extent of what we know."
"When do you expect to be able to determine the age of this place?"
"After we get some of the pieces back to a lab. Until then everything is guesswork."
Wetheral was still standing by the chair fragments, trying to catch Hutchins's attention. "Yes?" she said.
"May I ask whether you're finished with these?"
"Yes," she said. "We've already stowed a complete armchair in the lander."
"Good." He looked pleased. "Thank you." And while she watched, clearly surprised, he gathered the fragments, a beam, and a piece of material that might once have been drapery. And he carried everything up the staircase.
"The ship hopes to salvage a few pieces," MacAllister explained. His back was beginning to hurt from all the bending. "Anything that might interest the more historically minded passengers."
She showed no reaction. "I can't see that it'll do any harm." "Thank you," said MacAllister. "And if there's nothing we missed"-he turned to Casey-"this might be a good time to go outside and, if the weather will allow, do our interview."
VIII
The results of archeologcal enterprise at home are predictable within a set of parameters, because we know the general course of history. Its off-world cousin is a different breed of cat altogether. Anybody who's going to dig up furniture on Sinus II or Rigel XVII better leave his assumptions at the door.