“Before we can see how Marglotta do in a city, At, first we gotta find us one.”
“But we have found one already. It is here.” The trumpet horns on Atvar H’sial’s head swiveled around. “The Marglotta, like many beings of good sense, chose to preserve the surface of their world for other purposes. The city is underground, and it is all around us. In certain places, my ultrasonics have detected the presence of large cavities or caverns. Our task is merely to discover some access point. Logically, one or more should be present close to the city center, where the main roads converge.”
The Cecropian turned and made her way steadily back toward the flagpole. Louis trailed after her. This was the other side of the story. Now it was At who could see what they needed, while Louis and Sinara were blind. Before you started to feel sorry for a Cecropian, you had to remember that there was more than one way to define “vision.”
When they reached the pinnace, Claudius was standing outside it. Either he had recovered from his hangover or his greed was stronger than his discomfort.
“Fifty percent,” he said as they approached. “Remember? Fifty percent of everything we find.”
“Right.” Louis was watching Atvar H’sial, who seemed to have discovered some kind of downward ramp by one of the major roads. “I think we just found a way to explore underground. You can go first and earn your fifty percent.”
He knew there was little chance of that. Polyphemes were as cowardly as they were mendacious. He left Claudius behind and followed Atvar H’sial down what began as a steep ramp and rapidly became a dark tunnel.
“Black as a Rumbleside scad merchant’s heart. Hope you can see your way in here.”
“I can indeed see, most excellently. I judge this to be the entrance to some municipal building rather than to a residence. That would be consistent with its size and central location.”
“So unless everybody works in the dark—I’ve known whole governments seemed to operate like that—there oughta be a way to turn on lights.”
They were approaching a wide pair of doors. Atvar H’sial swung them open. Louis, using the light of his suit and of Sinara’s who was walking beside him, searched the wall for some kind of switch or bar. He saw nothing, and went on, “Guess we’ll have to rely on you, At.”
But as he spoke, the darkness ahead was slowly relieved. Light, dim at first, bled in from fixtures in a low ceiling. Atvar H’sial was forced to stoop far over, while even Nenda had to dip his head.
“Motion sensitive.” Sinara waved her hand, and the lights brightened. “Smart design. When everyone leaves, the lights fade automatically.”
“Or when everything stops movin’. Nobody’s left this place for quite a while.”
They had entered one end of a huge room. Its low ceiling, although ample in height for the diminutive Marglotta, made the other walls seem even farther away. Big machines of unfamiliar design and purpose stood in long rows, connected to each other in complex ways. One or two Marglotta stood by, apparently responsible for each production line.
“Dead.” Sinara spoke in a whisper. “Hundreds of them, and every one dead.”
“But that is not the most striking element of this scene.” Atvar H’sial, forced to bend far over and walk on all her legs, was almost too wide to fit between the rows of machines. She crept forward along one of the aisles. “Observe the postures. Every one died while engaged in routine operations. They had no warning, no suggestion of what was coming.”
Louis examined each Marglotta as he passed down the aisle behind Atvar H’sial. One studied some kind of read-out, another was employing a tool with a clawed end. A third stooped at the end of one machine, in the act of picking up or putting down an empty black container. He, Sinara, and Atvar H’sial had entered a busy factory, full of life and action, frozen at a single moment of time.
“You’re right, At. All without warning, and all at once.” Louis halted. “Unless you think there’s more to learn in some other room, I’d say we’re about done in here.”
“I agree.” Atvar H’sial could find no space big enough for her to turn, so she was forced to retreat backwards along the aisle. “What they were producing is unclear, but that knowledge would probably tell us little or nothing. Also, although this machinery appears of sophisticated design and enjoys a high level of automation, I see nothing that we might wish to remove for our own commercial advantage. These machines confirm the notion that Marglot supported a civilization with good technological capability. However, when disaster came, that technology was unable to save the life of even a single Marglotta.”
Sinara had been unusually quiet. Now she said, “Louis, are we in danger?”
“Not right this minute. Whatever did for the Marglotta here has been and gone. But we’d better be real careful when we go other places. I’m ’specially thinkin’ about those bursts of radio noise we picked up from orbit. They sounded like gibberish, but nothing I’ve ever seen in nature produces that kind of output.”
“One of those sources is close to E.C. Tally’s location. He has probably had dealings with them. Won’t we need to do the same?”
“Yeah. That’s a real comfort. We should get rollin’. Tally’s across at the opposite edge of the warm side. We’ll take a look as we go, an’ see if there’s anything interesting at lower altitude that Archimedes didn’t spot from orbit.”
What they saw was mostly nothing at all. Louis hadn’t thought through the tangled geometry of Marglot. Twenty minutes after they were airborne they were still flying over the warm hemisphere, but they were coming to the day/night dividing line. Louis stared down as twilight faded to night and the landscape below became a pale shadow. It might be warm down there, even hot, but soon it would be lit only by the “moonlight” of the sun’s radiation reflected from the giant world of M-2.
He could just about make out the difference between land and water. The image intensifiers on board the pinnace had not been designed for this kind of work, and they did little better than human eyes. Claudius’s great single optic would probably see more, but the Polypheme remained at his most uncooperative. Despite Nenda’s assurance that nothing valuable had been found in the underground Marglotta factory, it was obvious that Claudius did not believe him.
As the pinnace sped around the curve of the planet toward the Hot Pole, clouds covered everything below. Somehow that lessened the level of frustration. Seeing nothing because you were not trying was better than peering, guessing, and cursing.
“I receive suit signals,” Atvar H’sial said suddenly. “Six of them, and all derive from the same location.”
“Yeah. I guess they can’t go any place. We’re pretty close to passing over the Hot Pole. Halfway to Tally.”
“Will they be able to detect our presence?”
“I don’t think so. They’ll be sending like mad, but not able to hear much. But how the blazes did Tally get so far away from all the others?”
“I would like the answer to a different question: What strange skill or luck brought them here ahead of us, when there is no sign of a ship, either on the surface or up in orbit?”
“I’m tellin’ you, At, Marglot is one weird place. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear the whole place had to be a Builder artifact itself. Four poles, and a bigger magnetic field than any planet has a right to.”
“You are making an unwarranted assumption, namely, that Marglot is not an artifact. Since we arrived here, I have been of the opinion that Marglot either is itself a Builder artifact, or it is intimately related to one.”
“How come you never bothered to tell me that before?”