Penny, hastening to follow him, gathered up her stuff. The room was suddenly full of muttered conversation, hostile glares between renewed rivals. Penny had no diplomatic antennae to speak of, but the change in mood was obvious. She remembered Earthshine’s deep suspicion of the Hatch and the kernels and whoever was behind those mysteries on Mercury, and their malevolent effect on human affairs. Now here was another intervention of the same kind: another bizarre miracle on Mercury, perhaps, another gift from some unknown benefactor from which the Chinese were once more excluded.
She wondered what the hell had really happened on Mercury. And how come her sister was involved, as evidenced by the glares directed at her.
She looked for Jiang, seeking a way out of here.
Chapter 62
The astronaut, Colonel Stef Kalinski, shepherded the newly arrived Arduans out of the pit from the stars.
One by one they climbed the short fixed ladder. Yuri went first; it was easy in the low gravity. Once out of the pit Yuri looked back and saw an open cover, tipped up, just like the one he’d seen on Per Ardua. Remarkably, on the outside face of the lid there were not builder body-plan grooves, but indents to take human hands. And now he recalled the builders who had been their guides, so to speak, through the hatch from Per Ardua. He glanced down into the pit, past his companions, but the builders were nowhere to be seen; maybe they’d taken the chance to run back home, and he couldn’t blame them for that.
As soon as they were out Kalinski shepherded them through this rocky cavern to an elevator. It was a smooth but fast ride upwards. Kalinski, smiling, told them they were rising up through hundreds of kilometres. Yuri neither believed nor disbelieved that; he couldn’t take it in.
When they emerged from the elevator Yuri looked around, increasingly bewildered, trying to get his bearings. He found himself under a dome. Clear ceiling panels admitted the ferocious light of a sun above, which looked at least twice the size it had from Earth—not as big as the apparent size of Proxima from Per Ardua, but much, much brighter, even as seen through the evidently heavily filtered dome panels. He saw open doorways leading to transparent tunnels, no doubt connecting this dome to others on the surface. He knew the logic of this; it was just as he’d got used to on Mars, sealed up in the domes of Eden.
The dome itself was cluttered with white-box science and computing gear, and what looked like atmospheric control equipment of the kind he remembered from Mars. The interior seemed brilliantly clean to Yuri, even sterile, like a hospital. There was no need for artificial light under that huge lowering sun, but floods stood on tripods around the pit, into which cameras peered, presumably day and night. Colonel Kalinski, in her black-as-night astronaut uniform, was the only person here—her, and the four arrivals from Proxima Centauri.
Beth quailed from the brilliant sunlight overhead. And she threw up, suddenly, spewing the rich food she’d eaten in the substellar base half-digested onto the clean floor of the dome. Some kind of servo-robot, a more advanced model than Yuri had seen before, came scuttling out to scoop up the mess with quick vacuum sucks.
“I’m sorry,” Beth said, sounding distressed. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
“That’s OK,” Kalinski said. “Do you need to clean up? We can give you fresh clothes from the stores, of course…” She hesitated, listening to a comms unit at her ear. “My administrators are scrambling to put together some kind of response to this situation. For a start I’m to drive you over to the hab domes. I’m sorry to be disorganised, we’re not prepared for this, as you can imagine.” Her accent sounded vaguely American, Yuri thought, but with a twang he couldn’t quite place.
Mardina said, “This must be strange for you too.”
“Kind of. But the Hatch is the reason I’m here, on Mercury. I’m a theoretical physicist. Since the Hatch was uncovered, I’ve seen a lot of strangeness. Believe me, you four walking through from Proxima doesn’t even top the list.” She grinned, somewhat ruefully, Yuri thought. “But I’m sure glad I was here to see this, to see you arrive. Once I saw the images of your Hatch on Prox c, matching the one here on Mercury, I knew it had to be something like this.”
Yuri frowned. “Like what?”
“A lightspeed transit system. Like a subway. I mean, you got here at lightspeed, nearly, we established that already. A four-year transit time. With no subjective time lag at all—am I right?”
“A lightspeed subway?” Yuri asked. “Built by who? And why?”
Beth said now, “And I show up in the middle of this cosmic wonder and throw up all over it.”
Kalinski laughed and took Beth’s hand. “Don’t worry about it. Somehow it seems appropriate… You know, Beth Eden Jones, you’re the first human born on Proxima c to have returned to Earth. Think of that.”
Mardina grunted. “She’ll be famous.”
“For better or worse, I think that’s true.”
Tollemache seemed to like the idea of that. “Famous, eh?”
“Oh, yes. The images you sent back of the Hatch twin on Proxima c have been a sensation.”
Tollemache hefted his sensor pack. “Images taken with this very pack. Look, I need to speak to people.” He thought it over. “My superior officers. Hell, an agent—”
Kalinski held up her hand, and pulled her chiming slate from her belt. “I’m sorry, sir, we’ll have to talk later. I’ll escort you to the rover, and then to Dome Z where we’ll all go through decon.”
Mardina raised her eyebrows. “Decontamination?”
“Well, yes. This whole dome is a secure environment. It has been since the Hatch was discovered. We’re dealing with an alien artefact here—or at least that’s the best guess we have—with unknown properties. Every time I come out of here, or my twin—”
Beth looked interested. “Twin?”
“Long story. I have to go through decon too. And now you’re here, and who knows what little passengers you’ll have brought back from Proxima c with you? Then, I’m afraid, you’re going to face a barrage of questions, tests, by doctors, physicists… Look, we’re making this up as we go along. You may be facing days of processing. I’m sorry.”
Tollemache grinned. “The price of fame. God, I’m looking forward to seeing Earth again.”
At least Yuri could tell what he was thinking. Mardina’s look was complicated, calculating; Yuri had no real idea what she had made of this strange turn of events.
And Beth, who had been born under the light of a distant star, who had grown up surrounded by an alien intelligence, who had walked fearlessly into an alien pit on Per Ardua, looked frankly terrified.
Chapter 63
Kalinski led them through an airlock directly into a rover, more or less of the kind Yuri was used to from Mars. Once they were all strapped in, Kalinski sat in the left-hand driver’s seat and murmured instructions to an onboard AI.
The rover pulled away from the dome and rolled off. As they did so Yuri glimpsed another rover heading back to the Hatch dome, faces peering through the windows. More scientists on the way in case of more arrivals, perhaps. And Peacekeepers, probably. That would be a characteristic response.
The ride was bumpy, on a road roughly cut through rocky terrain. The windows were very small and looked downward, so you could never see the horizon, let alone the sky with that huge baleful sun. But the light gleamed back painfully from exposed rock faces and the few human artefacts, way marks, signs, small science set-ups.