Linser replies. I get him to show me exactly where on a map, then thank him for his help before going off to see if I can steal a crawler. It is a surprisingly easy task to accomplish.
Just kilometre after kilometre of brick-lined tunnels. To begin with I stop at a few side chambers but find them all depressingly the same. A map screen inside the crawler shows my current position and just how far I have to go. A quick inspection of the mapping index gives me files filled with thousands of such pages, and directories filled with thousands of such files. Linser told me they had mapped but a fraction of the system. I have to wonder if there is any point in continuing — it obviously covers the entire planet and is much the same everywhere. While I am studying this screen a message flicks up in the corner and is also repeated over my coldsuit com.
‘Alright everybody, we’re not going to find him before conjunction. I want you all back at base by twelve hundred, Linser out.’
I look at the message in the corner of the map screen and realize that the only reason I have not been caught is that a lot of crawlers are out being used in the search for Duren. It only occurs to me now that all the crawlers must have some sort of beacon on them, some way they can be traced, and that Duren must have disabled it on his own. I immediately try to use the crawler’s computer to find out more about the beacon. On the menu I get beacon diagnostics and a hundred and one things I can do with said beacon. I cannot find where the damned thing is though.
‘Number 107, didn’t you get my message?’
Linser sounds a bit peeved. I ignore him while I continue to try to locate the beacon.
‘Ah, I see,’ says Linser. ‘That crawler is not your property, Mr Gregory.’
I decide it is time for me to respond. ‘I’ll return it to you in one piece,’ I say.
‘How very civil of you. You do realize you’re heading directly for the nearest fault line; an area that is going to become very dangerous in only a few hours from now?’
‘Yes, I do know,’ I reply. ‘I’m sure that’s where Duren is.’
There is a pause, then when Linser speaks again it is with a deal of irritation.
‘So you think we have not already searched Duren’s most obvious destination?’ he asks.
I feel a sinking in the pit of my stomach, but stubbornness prevents me from turning the crawler round.
‘You may have missed him,’ I say.
‘Well,’ Linser replies. ‘If you are intent on getting yourself killed then that is your problem. We will bill Netpress for any damage to the crawler and for the recovery of your body.
Good day to you Mr Gregory.’
He manages to make me feel like a complete idiot and I nearly turn back, but the stubbornness remains. It has been pointed out to me that stubbornness is not strength. It is in fact a weakness. I keep driving. Two hours pass and the first tremor hits. As the tunnel vibrates and little flecks of ice fall onto the crawler’s screen, I replay the conversation I’d had with Duren as we walked back to his crawler after viewing the dead alien.
‘Most people would wonder if they are in cryostasis,’ I had said.
‘They’re not,’ Duren replied. ‘They are decayed, even though they were pickled in brine before that brine froze.’
‘Were they all preserved at the same time?’ I asked.
‘Oh yes.’
‘How do you account for that then: a hundred million of them going into their sarcophagi at the same time?’
Duren was silent for a while. I didn’t push him.
‘I did say that they are not in cryostasis,’ he said. ‘I did not say that some attempt may not have been made to put them in such.’
‘Is that what you think?’
‘It’s one possibility. Other possibilities include mass murder and mass suicide. It’s weird, it’s an anomaly, and it just is.’
A lump of ice falls from the ceiling and bounces off the screen of the crawler. I nearly fill my pants.
‘You’ve got a lot of seismic activity out there,’ says Linser over the com.
‘No shit,’ I reply.
Just at that moment a big one hits and the crawler slides a couple of yards to one side. I steer back central and note a huge crack dividing the icy ceiling and exposing rock a couple of metres above. Something occurs to me then, and I wonder if I will get a reply that will again make me feel stupid.
‘Hey, Linser.’
‘Yes.’
‘They’ve been here for three quarters of a million years, I make that about a thousand conjunctions. How come I haven’t seen any old damage in these tunnels? That’s a thousand earthquakes.’
Again there is that long pause and I await Linser’s slapdown. It does not come.
‘That is an interesting question, Mr Gregory. There is no damage in the area where you are and that area is an unstable one. You must remember though that we only recently acquired the low-energy scanners and that area is the only unstable area we have mapped so far.’
‘Yeah. Wouldn’t it have been an idea to have mapped some of the other unstable areas before the conjunction?’
‘For what purpose?’ he asks.
‘To find out if there’s any old damage there.’
‘I’m sure such information would be of interest to a planetary geologist, but we are here for the archaeology,’ he says.
He either doesn’t get it or is trying to give me the brush-off.
‘If there’s no damage there that will be because the damage has been repaired. Oh, by the way, you got any other crawlers in this area?’
‘To answer your question: no we do not have any other crawlers in that area.’
‘Then it looks like I’ve found Duren … Tell me, Linser, have you found any evidence, other than the tunnels and the sarcophagi, of their technology?’
‘No, we have not.’
‘Funny that,’ I say, and get out of the crawler.
Duren is inside a large chamber that contains three sarcophagi. He has strung up lights all around and as I walk in through the round door he has his back to me. He is using a cutter to slice open a sarcophagus. There seems nothing scientific about what he is doing. It looks like vandalism. I speak to him over private com.
‘Duren,’ I say.
He turns and holds the business end of the cutting unit in my direction. The disruption field only has a range of a couple of centimetres. I have no intention of getting within that range.
‘You. . what are you doing out here?’ he asks.
It strikes me that he does not sound particularly irrational.
‘I’ve come to see what you are trying to prove,’ I say.
Duren stares at me for a long moment then abruptly turns back to cutting open the sarcophagus. I move round to a position where I can better see what he is doing.
‘You know, it was this place being frozen that led us astray,’ he says. ‘First you think of cryostasis and expect the bodies to be perfect. We found decayed bodies in thick frozen brine and thought it was cryostasis gone wrong. When we found no sign of their technology we then assumed this was some kind of burial.’
‘What is the truth?’ I ask.