Marcus grinned at that. “Maybe the natives could get around faster than us,” he offered, but that didn’t seem sufficient.
“I have a different idea,” a miner with a young voice said. “I keep looking at this weird corridor, and I’m listening to that thump-thump-thump, and… I know this sounds crazy but… I can’t help thinking we’re in a great big vein. Like maybe it’s designed to pump us around to wherever the ship wants us.”
“That’s not bad,” Juliette said. “Not bad at all. So how do we convince her to take us somewhere?”
“I don’t know, ma’am.” The miner sounded dejected, as if he’d just failed a pop quiz.
Marcus smiled and patted him on the shoulder. “No worries. If you came up with all the answers, I’d be out of work.”
Not that he would have minded a couple more answers just then. A lot of good ideas had come out of the discussion, but there wasn’t anything actionable. There was nothing Marcus could work with, yet he knew there had to be some answer. He refused to believe the tunnel went nowhere and connected nothing.
He started thinking back to Iris Charlie, which they’d passed through only an hour before. Was it really his proximity that opened the door, or was it something else? He played back the event, trying to recall every small detail. In the memory, he floated closer and reached out his hand, then the iris melted away from his touch.
A fraction of a second after the memory ran through his mind’s eye, he heard a strange noise. At first, he didn’t pay it any attention.
“Doctor Donovan,” Faulkland said. “Tell me you did that.”
Marcus looked up and realized that one of the walls had vanished, revealing a branching tunnel identical to the one they were in. “I don’t… think I did.”
There was an idea running through his head, but it sounded too ridiculous to be true. It wouldn’t be silenced, though, and there was only one way to test it. He tried to imagine the opening of the iris in reverse, the fluid material of it sliding back into place. As he did so, the wall closed almost exactly as he imagined. He repeated the process several more times, now imagining the wall itself opening and closing, and each time it did just as he imagined. It was even growing more responsive.
“I did that,” Marcus said quietly to himself. “Acid-trip kaleidoscopes and crystal balls. Son of a bitch.”
“How?” Juliette asked.
He needed a moment to think, and held up his finger to pause the team’s questions. How far did this go? He imagined the wall closing only half-way, and sure enough, it moved to match, leaving a round hole in its center. How about words? He ran the word “open” through his mind as clearly as he could, but there was no response.
“Doctor St. Martin, do me a favor and imagine the wall opening, just the way it has been.”
“You’re joking, right?”
“Do I look like I’m joking?”
She closed her eyes and a moment later, the wall slid open. When she opened her eyes, she looked like a child who just unwrapped a bicycle on Christmas morning. “Did I do that?” she asked.
“You did.”
Without a pause, Juliette started performing the same tests Marcus had a moment before, until she was thoroughly convinced that she was in control of the wall. She finished her tests with a flourish, twisting the surface of the wall into a spiral before finally closing it.
“My God…” she said breathlessly. “The ship can read minds. Do you understand what this could mean? Not only does it support the existence of psychic phenomena, but there are bigger implications. Stranger ones. The ship can understand us even though we’re not the original inhabitants. That could mean sentient thought constitutes a universal language.”
While Juliette flew off into the theoretical, Marcus was starting to dig into the practical. What other images would the ship respond to, and how would she respond? He had an idea how to tell her where he wanted to go, and there was no time like the present to try it out.
Marcus closed his eyes and focused on their camp site near Iris Charlie. No response yet. He ran through every detail, calling to mind images of their equipment on the floor and the mission transponder. Nothing. He decided to go global, imagining the entire ship, and then zoomed in on Iris Charlie itself.
Then it began.
“Marcus?” Juliette asked in a worried voice.
He opened his eyes, and realized he was floating in mid-air. He had been concentrating so hard that he completely missed the feeling of being lifted off the ground, and now he was suspended perfectly in the middle of the passage. The lighted walls started to pulse, beating a pattern back toward where they came from. The heart-beat thump of the tunnel grew louder and more fierce.
“What’s going on, Doctor?” Faulkland shouted.
“I don’t know, but I think I’m about to find out,” Marcus said.
As the last word came out of his mouth, he was away and falling down the tunnel at unimaginable speed. It took every ounce of his will-power not to scream as he plummeted down the passageway, only to come to a halt seconds later. He was back at the camp site.
“Jesus Christ! Marc? Are you there? Marcus, respond damn you!”
The tunnel lowered him back down, and he allowed himself to collapse. Lying on the floor with his arms outstretched and his heart racing so fast and hard that it rocked his whole body, Marcus Donovan began to laugh. He laughed until tears ran down his cheeks, and he didn’t stop until he was exhausted.
“I’m fine,” he finally managed to say. “I’m great. All the way back at Iris Charlie.”
This changed everything. Their original plan to map out the interior wouldn’t work. In fact, it didn’t make sense anymore. They would need to conceive a whole new style of exploration, where the destinations came first. The survey information was a pretty good place to start, along with the original scans from the observatories. With any luck, they’d be able to communicate pieces of her anatomy in images she could understand.
“Donovan to all teams. I’ve made a discovery you might find interesting.”
Chapter 12:
Exterminators
As Jack and his team pressed on through the raging dust storm, he continually had to remind himself they were still on Earth. Hour after hour revealed nothing but devastation, and the once blue skies were hidden from view. All they could see was the cracked and withered land beneath their feet, while a brown fog, thick with debris, blotted out everything beyond.
The world was unrecognizable except for the fallen trees that littered the ground. It might as well have been Mars, or the ninth ring of Hell for that matter.
They followed the twisting ravine, breaking every hour for a rest that Jack kept short. He knew they had to keep up their momentum as long as they could, and cover as much ground as possible before night fell and reduced them to total blindness.
Each one was carrying dry rations and two liters of water in their service-pack, which meant food for a week and water for a day. Considering the kind of strain they were under, he didn’t want to estimate how long they’d last without a fresh source of water. In normal circumstances, their supplies would have been more than enough, but no one had ever imagined a situation like this. It was a grave oversight which Jack was paying for, and their only hope for survival lay in Nikitin’s hunch.
As they went, the cycling sound of the alien cuttlefish never ceased. Jack could always hear at least one of them nearby, moving in circular patterns. He knew from experience they were search patterns, and he did his best not to imagine what was happening every time they stopped. Each time, it was just long enough to unleash a volley of their screaming weapons before continuing on.