I felt better having a Bumbler… not that its sensors revealed anything useful. The three remaining buildings gave off no special readings. In particular, there were no IR hot spots big enough to indicate human life — just a few patches of mild warmth, probably from the afternoon sun shining through windows and raising the temperature of objects that could absorb heat. The Bumbler showed no notable sources of other types of energy: no tachyons, no terahertz, no radio or microwaves. I’d seen more interesting readings from a patch of ragweed.
So it came as no surprise that we found nothing noteworthy in the first building we entered — the survey team’s laboratory. It was a prefab design, with a single corridor down the center: two rooms to the left and two to the right, all four labs of equal size. One was devoted to plants, animals, and soil samples; another was obviously where team members studied microbes (with microscopes, petri dishes, and DNA sequencers); and the last two labs were both dedicated to technological artifacts that must have been retrieved from Drill-Press.
Most of the artifacts were typical products of high tech: nondescript boxes made of plastic and other artificial materials. Las Fuentes apparently liked their gear in earth-tone colors — every box was some shade of brown, from light biscuit to dark umber, sometimes in mottled combinations like desert camouflage — but apart from the color scheme, I drew no other conclusions. I certainly couldn’t guess what the devices might do.
Perhaps the Unity had figured out the machinery’s purpose, but there was no way to tell. A brief search showed the survey team had kept no notes on paper or in any other hard-copy form. That didn’t surprise me — Unity people all had wireless computer links embedded in their brains. Why scribble notes in a journal when they could download their thoughts directly to a computer?
At least Team Esteem stored their data in bubble chips that used long-chain organic molecules to encode information. Such molecules weren’t damaged by EMPs. Therefore, whatever the surveyors had learned about Fuentes technology could eventually be recovered.
But not by us. We couldn’t read the bubble chips without a computer… and all the computers in Camp Esteem had been EMP’d into uselessness.
Quite possibly, the earth-toned Fuentes devices had also been killed by EMPs… if they hadn’t already gone dead in the fall of Fuentes civilization, or in the millennia that followed. All these fancy machines were probably as defunct as my tightsuit.
But I didn’t put that to the test by trying to turn them on.
The next building was a repair shop/garage: a single large space that housed the usual equipment required to maintain an installation like Camp Esteem, plus a pair of antigrav vehicles built for strength rather than speed. The AGVs probably couldn’t go faster than 50 kph, but they looked powerful enough to lift twenty times their own mass. Good for making trips into Drill-Press and bringing back heavy artifacts. The artifacts I’d seen in the camp had all been small, light enough to be carried by hand. But the Unity always planned for contingencies, and if the survey team needed to drag a forty-ton hunk of Fuentes machinery back to camp, they had the horsepower to do it.
Too bad the AGVs had been EMP’d like everything else and were now just giant paperweights. We left them where they were and went on to the last building.
The sign on the building was a pictograph of stacked boxes, indicating general storage. The door was locked.
"The Unity is always so damned anal-retentive," Festina muttered. "Why the hell would they lock the door on a planet with no other intelligent beings? A simple doorknob would keep out animals. But no, they installed a big-ass lock."
I said, "Maybe some team members weren’t allowed in here. Restricted access to prevent pilferage."
"Stupid," Festina grumbled. "They should trust their own people."
I raised an eyebrow. "The way you trusted Tut and me when you locked us out of the equipment room last night?"
"Oh. Yeah." She stared at the closed door in front of us. "Anyone good at picking locks?"
She was joking… trying to lighten the mood after her gaffe. It had been centuries since anyone manufactured locks that could be picked. Broadcast dramas still showed thieves opening doors with piano wire and crochet hooks, but no modern lock could be opened so simply. Lock-cracking these days required extremely sophisticated equipment — ultrasound projectors, nanite bafflers, protein synthesizers — and we’d brought nothing like that with us.
In search of another way in, we walked around the building. It had no windows; it had no second door. Tut tentatively kicked a wall, but his foot made no impression on the surface — the building was made from silver-gray plastic, probably tough enough to survive a hurricane and whatever other hazards Muta might dish out. Short of cannon fire, the walls were impregnable.
"This is annoying," Festina said as we finished back at the front door. "Doesn’t it feel like the answer to our questions might be inside this building?" She paused. "Of course, if we do get the door open, we might regret it."
"Yeah," Tut agreed. "Like VR adventures where you bust your ass getting into a locked room, then find the room has a monster inside."
"Exactly. This is too tempting not to be dangerous." Festina stepped back and examined the building again. "Still, if there were a way in…"
"There may be," I said. "Why don’t you puny humans step aside and let Balrog-girl show you some moss power."
In truth, I didn’t know what moss power might do. Navy files said the Balrog had earthshaking telekinetic abilities, but I didn’t know whether the spores would be willing to help smash a locked door. If I was the moss’s Trojan horse — if it was hiding inside me so someone or something didn’t know the Balrog was on Muta — then my alien hitchhiker would avoid revealing its presence with showoff tricks. The Balrog might also consider me presumptuous for acting as if I could command it to open doors. Still, this door had "Clue to the mystery" written all over it… and if the Balrog wanted our investigation to make progress, it would help us get inside.
Therefore, I closed my eyes and reached within myself as if lowering my body into dark water. Balrog, I thought, can you do this? Can you help me do this?
No answer. Not in words. But I got the impression I’d phrased my request incorrectly. A moment later, I realized what I had to say. I don’t know if the answer came from my own intuition or if the knowledge had been planted in my mind; but I knew what the Balrog wanted to hear.
I took a deep breath… knowing I was moving another step down the path toward my own oblivion. Balrog, I said silently — feeling scared, feeling excited, feeling as if I’d once more been seduced into something against my better judgment but also feeling no desire to resist the heat of temptation — Balrog, I will let you do this through me. I’ll surrender to you that much.
Seconds passed. I felt no change. I’d imagined I might be possessed, feel my body moving without my will. Possibly I’d hear triumphant laughter echoing through my brain, the demonic exaltation that always comes when the foolish maiden succumbs to the devil in some bad melodrama. I was even prepared to black out… then to wake up who knows where, who knows when… if I ever woke up at all.
But nothing like that happened. Nothing discernible changed… except that my sixth sense returned. Even that was no great transformation — more like opening my eyes after having them closed for a few minutes. I could be blase about it: once again perceiving the auras of Festina and Tut, as well as the microbial world and a few pseudolizards hiding in nearby shadows. I couldn’t perceive life signs inside the storage building, nor did I have any mystic "X-ray" intuition about the door lock. My sixth sense told me nothing I hadn’t already seen with my eyes: the lock was metal; the door was the same tough silver-gray plastic as the rest of the building; the hinges were on the inside; there was no obvious point of vulnerability.