Bangalore and Taj were even more insistent with the Coalition pair.
There had been no further change in the environment, aside from a general sense that he was getting heavier. (How heavy, ultimately? If they reached the equivalent of Earth gravity, they would barely be able to move; the EVA suits weighed more than a human being. Rover Buzz wouldn’t move far, either. Its suspension had been engineered for lunar gravity.)
The same “paving stones” lined the floor of the cleft. The walls and ceiling had the same scraped look. How long ago had this been carved? Zack wondered. Ten thousand years ago? About the same time human beings were figuring out how to cultivate crops?
A hundred thousand? When humans were barely out of Africa?
A million? When there were no recognizable human beings on Earth?
Maybe ten million—maybe longer!
He could hear Lucas and Natalia patiently debating their situation with Taj in Brahma, and Nayar at Bangalore. “How can we stop here? What have we learned?” Lucas said. The young Brazilian clearly had not absorbed the astronaut rule book, either about admitting fear or having open debates with mission control.
But Zack was glad he was along. Every group needed someone who would say what the others secretly thought.
More troubling, it appeared that Natalia’s EVA suit was overheating, a common problem with the Russian-built unit. So far it was likely to be an inconvenience rather than a disaster for the EVA.
Zack motioned Pogo forward, almost beyond the range of Buzz’s lamps.
“Houston, Venture, Zack. How do I read?”
“I’ve got you,” Tea said. A few seconds later, there was a static burp, presumably Houston.
“Tea, what would you be doing if you were here?”
“Call me chicken. I might camp out in the rover.”
“I hear you, but I’m too wound up to get any real rest,” Zack said. “While our friends are catching up on news from home, I think we’re going to recon this junction.”
Pogo was so excited he trotted ahead of Zack. “Take it easy, cowboy.”
“Come on, Zack! I mean, look at the situation: Keanu slows down and goes into orbit. It’s got a big old entryway at the logical landing site. Doesn’t it all add up to them wanting us to say hello?”
Zack had known Pogo for almost a decade—knew him to be religious, a straight arrow . . . and also, in spite of his physical chops and manly skills, a bit of a geek. The Air Force jock had read far more sci-fi than Zack, who gave up quickly on movies and books when presented with space battles that looked like aerial engagements from World War II. “I’ll give you this,” he said, huffing and puffing. “It’s what we signed up to do.”
They were deep into the junction now, a terminus of sorts where the main shaft ended, and at least four passages branched off at different angles. Pogo suddenly disappeared around the right one, leaving Zack alone and, except for his helmet light, in the dark.
“Pogo, you can’t get ahead of me like that—”
Zack found him a few meters into the next passage, frozen in what struck Zack as an awkward posture, his head tilted back as far as it would go in the suit. “Okay,” Zack said, catching his partner and tapping him on the shoulder.
Pogo only said, “Look up there.”
Directly in front of them stood a marker of some kind, a stone plate embedded in the wall of the passage several feet above eye level.
All Zack could say was, “Oh.”
The plate showed a gauzy helix of some kind, monochrome, at least as far as they could tell by their helmet lights. “If you move your head, it changes,” Pogo said. Zack did better than that . . . he actually stepped to one side.
The helix seemed to expand. “It’s 3-D,” he said. He raised his hand, hoping to see it pass through the image, if that was what it was. But he couldn’t reach it.
“It looks like a model of a galaxy,” Pogo said.
This was Zack’s area of expertise, and he knew that current galactic models were less helical and more spherical. But they had changed once in his lifetime; no reason to assume they wouldn’t change again. Besides—
“Is that a marker of some kind?” If you accepted the idea that the 3-D image showed a galaxy, a bright dot was placed halfway between the end of one spiral arm and the fuzzy center.
“Maybe it’s their version of the Voyager record.” One of the first deep-space probes back in the 1970s had carried a laser disc filled with music, art, samples of what passed for human culture . . . just on the slim chance some alien intelligence might pick it up.
An alien intelligence that also possessed a laser disc player, which would put them far ahead of anyone on Earth. Zack knew all about the challenges of creating any sort of message that would last hundreds or thousands of years . . . it wasn’t just content, it was delivery system. “Maybe they’re telling us where they came from,” Zack said.
“Who, exactly, is ‘they’ ? ”
They heard voices on the radio—Lucas and Natalia were trying to catch up. “We’re in the right passage,” Zack told them, just as flickering shadows alerted him to their arrival.
They stopped and stared. “Welcome to the next sign,” Pogo said.
Lucas sounded annoyed. “What sign?”
Zack explained, “He just means, the next bit of evidence that we are encountering an alien life-form.”
“Ah, evidence of life-form,” Lucas said. “Not the life-form itself.”
“Not yet,” Pogo said.
“What do you see?” Zack asked the new arrivals.
“It almost looks like DNA helix,” Natalia said.
Now that Zack stood back, he recognized Natalia’s suggestion as a possibility. He had grown up with DNA models that consisted of tiny colored balls arranged in a double helix . . . but suppose a more advanced view was more complex and chaotic? Might a DNA model resemble a galaxy?
“Nah,” Pogo said. “A galaxy makes more sense.”
“To us, maybe,” Zack said. “But if it’s DNA, it might be a way of saying, ‘If this is you, come on in.’” He suddenly wished for direct, real-time communication with Houston and the Home Team. Wait until they see this—
As Natalia carefully recorded images from every possible angle, Lucas jumped, trying to touch the marker. Top heavy, in low gravity, he really only waved at it, but one thing startled Zack.
He thought he heard a faint scrape as Lucas’s boots reconnected with the pavement. Sound? Impossible!
He stomped his own boots on the pavement. All he learned was that it made his feet hurt. “Did anyone hear anything?”
“Why would we be able to hear?” Pogo said.
“Because we have a trace atmosphere,” Natalia said. She was holding a small instrument that reminded Zack of a light meter—a portable barometer! “Still some way to go before it gets as dense as that of Mars, but measurable.”
“Composition?”
“This only shows me pressure.”
“Could it be from the rover?” Rover Buzz’s pressurized module would leak some of its air; other pieces of equipment, such as the fuel cells, inevitably emitted gas, too.
“Not unless your rover has a serious leak,” Natalia said. “Even then, I think this space is too large.” She was being kind. A moment’s rough calculation proved to Zack that there was no way the rover’s outgassing—or a dozen rovers’ outgassings—would account for a pressure reading of any kind.
“Hey,” Pogo was saying. “Do you see anything strange on the plate?”
He had moved from spot to spot, experiencing the changing views possible from different angles and heights. “Our marker has been damaged.”
Zack looked closely. The plate behind the 3-D projection appeared to have been partially eaten away, as if splashed with acid. The edges of the damaged area were unexpectedly regular, however. “That’s strange. Someone’s been naughty here.”
“Maybe we aren’t the first to find this sign,” Natalia said.