Nightfall_at_Algemron

While he was waiting for Helm and Delde Sota to come down, Gabriel took out the stone and walked a little way up the canyon, trying to see if he could find any other indication of a way in. In his hand, even through gloves, he could feel the stone buzzing and stinging in a generalized kind of way.
The going was difficult, strewn with boulders and jagged rocks of every kind, some rounded as if water had passed there, and some sharp, the cracked remnants of rockfall. Gabriel picked his footing carefully, tried to keep his attention on the stone—
It stung him. At the same moment he tripped and whacked his shin against the sharp edge of a fallen shelf of stone in front of him.
"Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow," Gabriel said, in too much pain for the moment to even swear properly. When he had recovered a little, he looked at the stone in his hand. It was pulsing softly, the light hard to see in the bright day here. He looked around, trying to make out what it might have been reacting to.
Off to his right on the far side of the canyon, a glint of light reflected off something polished. Not stone.
Glass?
"Gabriel," Helm shouted at him, the sound thin in the frigid air, "come on!" "No," he yelled back, "over here!"
Gabriel made his way over to the bright spot through the boulder-tumble and the cracked rocks, and finally came up to it. It was about three meters above the lowest level of the canyon and barely visible, just a ragged, partially obscured patch of glassy stuff about a meter across, more or less the shape of an
oval laid on its side and pale green in color. It was perfectly smooth and unscratched, like a mirror.
The others came along. Helm, fully armored and looking like an aggressive mobile gun rack, brought up the rear. The big gun in his hands was a Ric ZI stutter cannon, and Gabriel felt much better and also started wondering where he had been keeping that one.
"Look at this," Gabriel said.
They gathered around the patch of glass. Those tall enough to reach it touched it. "That's something," Helm muttered, "but how did that get inside all this?"
Delde Sota looked around her. "Analysis: all sedimentary," she said. "Original stone. Not later accretion."
"You mean," Angela said, "that someone built this facility here, and then the seas rose and deposited all this silt here, and the silt settled out into these layers and turned to stone, and then the sea dried up, and all this got carved away over time.?"
"Open-ended assessment: fifty or sixty million years total, give or take a million," Delde Sota replied.
They all were quiet for a moment or so, thinking about that. "Well," Angela said at last, "can we get in through this?"
"No telling," Gabriel said. "This might be just a wall. I remember them having to shock the glass at High Mojave, trying to make it flow or create an opening. Sometimes it took them months to find the way in."
He stood up on a nearby boulder, took the stone in his hand, and laid it against the glass.
Nothing.
"Well, come on," he said irritably. Nothing happened.
Gabriel closed his eyes, concentrated on the stone, thinking opening thoughts as hard as he could. He opened his eyes again. Nothing whatsoever had happened.
"Perhaps electricity would work better," Enda said, "since that was what they were using at High Mojave.?"
"Or maybe." Helm said. He started to sling the stutter rifle over his shoulder and go for the other piece of heavy armament he was carrying.
"'No!" Gabriel shouted. The forcefulness of the objection surprised even him. Is the stone starting to get into the act now? he wondered.
"No," Gabriel said, as the others all looked at him. "I don't think that's it. Come on," he said, "let's look up and down the canyon at this level. We may find another piece that is an access."
"One we do not have to climb to," Grawl said enthusiastically.
They spent the rest of the morning and all that afternoon walking up and down the canyon, trying to find more glass or an access to the northern cliff, but there was none. Gabriel spent the second half of the
afternoon simply sitting with the stone, trying to coax some more useful response out of it, but he had no luck. The canyon had fallen entirely into shadow when he finally looked up at Helm and Enda, who were coming back up the canyon toward him.
"Getting kind of late, Gabe," Helm said, looking around him. Above the canyon, twilight was beginning to fall, and the darkness would follow fast. Helm always wore a distrustful look at times like this, but with the evening drawing on, that look was now more distrustful than usual.
"Yeah," Gabriel said and looked down at the stone. "This thing isn't helping me much at the moment. Maybe we should call it a night."
Helm looked around. "I'll check the instrumentation when I go back in," he said, "but I don't think anything alive or mechanical has come near us all day, and I don't think anything's going to. Enda?"
She paused a moment then shrugged. "We may as well stay here," she said, "as leave and have to go through this whole operation again tomorrow. Additionally, I would dislike to attract too much attention to our goings and comings."
"Right," Helm said. "We can leave the cliff for tomorrow. Come on, folks, let's get ourselves back up to the ships and have some dinner."
Half an hour later, it was dark, and they were all inside Lalique, having dinner there—nothing fancy, just hot-packs shoved into the little galley oven. Everyone's appetites were sharp. Whether it was the cold, the exercise or the excitement that was responsible, they all ate twice what they normally would have, so that dinner took a good while. Some of them got sleepy afterward, out of all proportion to the exertion.
"Gonna go back and have my nap now," Helm said. "I'll take the late watch. Doctor?"
"Status: not weary at the moment," Delde Sota said. "Will stand this watch until 0200?"
"0300 would do better," Helm said. "Gabe, leave your comms on when you go back." He headed off, taking his various guns, and Delde Sota went after him.
"I will stand watch over on our side of things," Enda said. "There is no sleep in me tonight, I am afraid."
Gabriel nodded, for he knew why. He was all too able to hear how Enda heard the stone's buzzing as a tiny endless nagging noise, annoying like some little singing night insect singing a note specifically designed to drive you and no one else crazy.
He went back to Lalique s galley and got himself another cup of chai, not wanting anything stronger tonight. Gabriel wanted all his senses undulled, though he wasn't sure what he hoped would happen.
Angela was cleaning up the dining area when he got back. "This is so frustrating," Gabriel said, sitting down on one of the sofas. "The whole thing was supposed to just pop open and spill its guts when I arrived."
She laughed at that, taking the last of the plates and bowls away. "Might be you have to go up that cliff, whether you want to or not," she said from the galley.
"Grawl won't thank you for that assessment."
"Probably she won't," Angela said. She came back in and sat down on the lounger that was cattycorner to Gabriel's. She looked at the wall display, which was showing a view of the canyon, centered on the "glass spot," and augmented for IR and movement. Nothing was happening out there. Starlight shone.
The wind blew. Nothing more.