One of the women giggled.
Collingdale couldn’t suppress a smile himself, and yet despite its comic aspect, the creature displayed a substantial degree of dignity.
There was an inscription on the base, a single line of characters, executed in a style reminiscent of Old English. It was probably a single word. “Its name?” someone suggested.
Collingdale wondered what the subject had done. A Washington? A Churchill? A Francis Bacon? Perhaps a Mozart.
“The architect,” said Riley, short and generally cynical. “This is the guy who built the place.” Riley didn’t like being out here, but needed this last mission to establish his bona fides with the University of Something-or-Other back home. He’d be an inspiration to the students.
It was odd how the intangibles carried over from species to species. Dignity. Majesty. Power. Whether it was seen in an avian or a monkey, or something between, it always had the same look.
His commlink vibrated against his wrist. It was Alexandra, who’d arrived two days before on the al-Jahani with a cargo of nukes, which she’d been instructed to use in an effort to blow away the cloud. Nobody believed it could be done, but no other course of action offered itself. The cloud was simply too big, thirty-four thousand kilometers in diameter. A few nukes would have no effect.
“Yes, Alex. What’ve you got?”
“It’s still slowing down, Dave. And it’s still on target.”
“Okay.”
“It’s coming in on your side of the world. Looks as if it’s homed in on your city. We’re going to set the bombs off tonight. In about six hours.”
The omega was slowing down by firing jets of dust and hydrogen forward. Riley thought it might also be twisting gravity, but there was no evidence yet to support that idea. The only thing that mattered was that, however it was managing things, the cloud was going to arrive right on top of Moonlight.
THEY WANDERED FOR hours through the underground. There was a network of smaller chambers connected to the large area. They found an endless number of chairs, bowls, radios, monitors, plumbing fixtures, conference tables. Artifacts they couldn’t identify. Much of it was in surprisingly good condition. There were boxes of plastic disks, undoubtedly memory storage units. But electronic records were fragile. Early civilizations carved their history onto clay tablets, which lasted virtually forever. More advanced groups went for paper, which had a reasonable shelf life, provided it was stored in a dry place and not mishandled. But electronic data had no staying power. They had not yet been able to recover a single electronic record.
There were some books, which had not been stored properly. Nevertheless, they gathered them into plastic containers. They’d been in the area several weeks, but there was a special urgency about this visit. The cloud was coming. Anything they did not carry off today might not survive.
The walls were covered with engravings. Collingdale assigned one of his people to record as many of them as she could. Some of it was symbolic, much was graphic, usually with bucolic themes, leaves and stems and branches, all of which, when the sun came back, might grow on this world again.
Stairways and shafts rose high into the structure and descended to lower floors, which were encased in ice. “But that might be a huge piece of good luck,” Collingdale told Ava MacAvoy, who looked unusually attractive in the reflected light. “It should survive the cloud, whatever happens to the rest of the city.”
They went back outside. It was time to leave, but Collingdale delayed, taking more pictures, recording everything. Ava and Riley and the others had to pull him away.
The cloud was setting by then, and Collingdale wished it was possible to halt the planet on its axis, keep the other side between the omega and the towers. Hide the city.
Damn you.
He stood facing it, as if he would have held it off by sheer will.
Ava took his arm. “Come on, Dave,” she said. “It’s getting late.”
THEY RETREATED TO the dome, which had served as their base for the better part of a month. A lander waited beside it. The dome was small, cramped, uncomfortable. They’d brought out too many people, and could in fact have brought several shiploads more. Everyone had wanted to come to Moonlight. The Academy, under time pressure, had tried to accommodate the requests as best it could. It should have said no. That was partly Collingdale’s own fault for not demanding they cut things off.
They’d filled the dome with artifacts and shipped them topside to the al-Jahani, which now carried a treasure trove of mugs and plates and table lamps and electronic gear, and materials far more esoteric, objects whose function defied analysis. Other pieces were now being loaded. There was more than the lander could handle, but they’d stacked the rest in the dome, hoping that it would be safe there.
Collingdale waited until everybody else was on board—there were seven of them, excluding the pilot—took a last look around, and climbed in. The omega was almost down. Only a black ridge of clouds was visible in the west, and a few streaked plumes soared above the horizon. The pilot started the engines, and the lander rose. Nobody said much.
Jerry commented how scary it was, and Collingdale couldn’t restrain a smile. He himself was of the old school. He’d started his archeological career in Iraq, had been shot at, threatened, deported. When archeology went interstellar, as it had a half century ago, it had become, curiously enough, safer. There were no deranged local populations defending sacred tombs, no warlords for whom the security payment might be insufficient, no national governments waiting to collapse with dire consequences to the researchers, who might be jailed, beaten, even killed. There were still hazards, but they tended to be less unpredictable, and more within the control of the individual. Don’t take foolish chances, and you won’t get burned. Don’t stay too long in the submerged temple, as had famously happened to Richard Wald twenty-some years earlier, when you know the tidal wave’s coming.
So Collingdale was getting his people out in plenty of time. But it didn’t prevent them from thinking they were having a narrow escape from something dire. In fact, of course, at no time were they in danger.
He was looking down at the receding city when the pilot informed him he had an incoming transmission from the al-Jahani. He opened the channel, turning up the volume so everybody could hear. Alexandra’s blond features appeared on-screen. “We’ve launched, Dave,” she said. “All twelve running true. Detonation in thirty-eight minutes.”
The missiles were cluster weapons, each carrying sixteen nukes. If the plan worked, the missiles would penetrate two thousand kilometers into the cloud and jettison their weapons, which would explode simultaneously. Or they would explode when their electronics failed. The latter provision arose from the inability of researchers to sink probes more than a few kilometers into the clouds. Once inside, everything tended to shut down. Early on, a few ships had been lost.
“Good luck, Alex,” he said. “Give it hell.”
The lander, powered by its spike technology, ascended quickly, traveling west. The cloud began to rise also. The flight had been planned to allow the occupants a view of the omega when the missiles reached the target.
Collingdale ached for a success. There was nothing in his life, no award, no intellectual breakthrough, no woman, he had ever wanted as passionately as he wanted to see Alexandra’s missiles blow the son of a bitch to hell.
They climbed into orbit and passed into sunlight. Everyone sat quietly, not talking much. Riley and Ava pretended to be examining an electronic device they’d brought up, trying to figure out what it was. Jerry was looking through his notes. Even Collingdale, who prided himself on total honesty, gazed steadfastly at a recently recorded London conference on new Egyptian finds.
The cloud filled the sky again.
“Three minutes,” said Alex.
THEY COULDN’T SEE the al-Jahani directly. It was too far, and it was lost somewhere in the enormous plumes that fountained off the cloud’s surface like so many tendrils reaching toward Moonlight. But its position was known, and Bill, the ship’s artificial intelligence, had put a marker on the screen. They could see the cloud, of course, and the positions of the missiles were also marked. Twelve blinking lights closing on the oversize gasbag. Collingdale amused himself by counting the weapons.
“Thirty seconds to impact,” said the pilot.
Collingdale let his head fall back. He wondered whether one could achieve impact with a cloud.
Ava watched the time, and her lips were moving, counting down the seconds.
“They’re in,” she said. Someone’s hand touched his shoulder. Gripped it. Good luck.
Riley adjusted his harness.
Collingdale, knowing his foster parents would have been proud, muttered a prayer.
“They’ve gone off.” Alexandra’s voice. “Too soon.”
There were a few glimmerings along the surface of the cloud. But he saw no sign of disruption.
“It might take a while before we can really see anything,” said Riley, hopefully.
The hand on his shoulder let go.
“You’re right,” said one of the others. “I mean, the cloud is so big.”
“The bombs had to do some damage. How could they not?”
“Maybe just screw up the steering mechanism. Hell, that would be enough.”
The glimmering got brighter. Collingdale thought he saw an explosion. Yes, there was no doubt of it. And there. Over there was a second eruption of some kind. They watched several patches grow more incandescent. Watched the cloud pass overhead. Watched it begin to sink toward the rim of the world.
The explosive patches darkened.
On a second orbit, they were still visible, smoldering scars on the otherwise pacific surface of the omega.
“I don’t think it’s going to work,” said the pilot.
ON THE THIRD orbit, they rendezvoused with the Quagmor, the vessel that had transported them to the system. The mood on the ship was dark, and everybody was making comments about having made a good effort. Just so much we can do.
Alexandra reported that the omega was still on course for Moonlight. “We didn’t get much penetration. There’s still a chance we might have done some damage that just doesn’t show. I mean, if we blew up the internal skunk works, how would we know? So don’t give up, Doc.”