“How large is the whole structure?”
“Everything you saw above ground, plus another twelve meters below. Aside from the rooms, it looks like just solid foundation and walls.”
Kira nodded, thinking. Whoever had made the structure, they had built it to last.
Then Marie-Élise said, in her high, flutelike voice, “The building you found doesn’t seem like the same sort of work as the Beacon. That is, it’s such a small thing in comparison.”
The Great Beacon. It had been discovered out on the edge of explored space, 36.6 light-years from Sol and 43-some light-years from Weyland. Kira didn’t need to check her overlays to know the distances; she’d spent hours upon hours as a teen reading about the expedition.
The Beacon itself was an amazing artifact. It was, quite simply, a hole. A very large hole: fifty kilometers across and thirty deep, surrounded by a net of liquid gallium that acted as a giant antenna. For the hole emitted a powerful EMP burst every 5.2 seconds, and with it, a blast of structured noise that contained ever-evolving iterations of the Mandelbrot set in ternary code.
Attending the Beacon were creatures that had been dubbed “turtles,” although Kira thought they looked more like ambulatory boulders. Even after twenty-three years of study, it still wasn’t clear if they were animals or machines (no one had been foolish enough to attempt a dissection). The xenobiologists and the engineers agreed it was unlikely the turtles had been responsible for the Beacon’s construction—not unless they’d lost all their technology—but who or what was responsible was still a mystery.
As for its ultimate purpose, no one had any idea. The only thing they knew for sure was that the Beacon was around sixteen thousand years old. And even that was merely a rough estimate based on radiometric dating.
Kira had an uncomfortable suspicion she might never find out whether or not the makers of the Beacon had anything to do with the room she’d fallen into. Not even if she lived for several hundred more years. Deep time was slow to surrender its secrets, if ever it did.
She sighed and dragged the tines of her fork across the side of her neck, enjoying the sensation of the metal tips on her dry skin.
“Who cares about the Beacon,” said Seppo, hopping down from his table. “What really bothers me is that we can’t even make any money off this mess. Can’t talk about it. Can’t publish. Can’t go on the talk shows—”
“Can’t sell the entertainment rights,” said Ivanova in a mocking tone.
They laughed, and Jenan called out, “As if anyone would want to see your ugly face.”
He ducked as she threw her gloves at him. Chuckling, he offered them back to her.
Kira hunched her shoulders, her sense of guilt strengthening. “Sorry for the trouble, everyone. If there was anything I could do to fix this, I would.”
“Yeah, you sure dicked things up good this time,” said Ivanova.
“Did you have to go exploring?” Jenan said, but he didn’t sound serious.
“Don’t worry about it,” said Neghar. “It … it could have…”
A cough interrupted her, and Marie-Élise finished what she’d been saying: “It could have been any of us.”
Neghar bobbed her head in agreement.
From the wall where he was sitting, Mendoza said, “I’m just glad you weren’t too badly hurt, Kira. You and Neghar. We lucked out, all of us.”
“We still lost the colony,” Kira said. “And our bonuses.”
A sharp glint appeared in Mendoza’s dark eyes. “Somehow I think your find will more than make up for those bonuses. Might take years. Might take decades. But long as we’re smart, it’ll happen, sure as death and taxes.”
CHAPTER IV. ANGUISH
1.
It was late, and Kira found it increasingly difficult to focus on the conversation. Most of the words slipped past her in a stream of meaningless sound. At last, she roused herself and glanced over at Alan. He nodded, understanding, and they extricated themselves from their chairs.
“Night,” said Neghar. One-word responses had been all she could manage for the past hour or so. Anything more and the coughing cut her off. Kira hoped she wasn’t getting sick; everyone in the group would probably catch the same bug then.
“Night, chérie,” said Marie-Élise. “Things will seem better tomorrow. You’ll see.”
“Make sure you’re up by oh nine hundred,” said Mendoza. “The UMC finally gave us the all-clear, so we blast off at eleven for the Fidanza.”
Kira raised a hand and stumbled off with Alan.
Without discussing it, they went straight to his room. There, Kira pulled off her fatigues, dropped them on the floor, and climbed into bed, not even bothering to brush her hair.
Four weeks of cryo, and she was still exhausted. Cold sleep wasn’t the same as real sleep. Nothing was.
The mattress sagged as Alan lay next to her. One of his arms wrapped around her, his hand grasped hers, and his chest and legs pressed against her: a warm, comforting presence. She uttered a faint sound and leaned back against him.
“I thought I’d lost you,” he whispered.
She turned to face him. “Never.” He kissed her, and she him, and after a time, gentle caresses grew more eager, and they clung to each other with fervent intensity.
They made love, and never had Kira felt more intimate with Alan, not even when he had proposed. She could feel his fear of losing her in every line of his body, and she could see his love in every touch, hear it in every murmured word.
Afterward, they stumbled over to the narrow shower at the back of the room. Keeping the lights dim, they bathed, soaping each other and talking in lowered voices.
As she let the hot water beat across her back, Kira said, “Neghar didn’t sound too good.”
Alan shrugged. “It’s just a bit of cryo sickness. The UMC cleared her. Fizel too. The air in here is so dry—”
“Yeah.”
They toweled off, and then with Alan’s help, Kira slathered lotion across her whole body. She sighed with relief as the cream went on, soothing the prickling of her skin.
Back in bed, with the lights turned off, Kira did her best to fall asleep. But she couldn’t stop thinking about the room with the circuit-board patterns, nor what her discovery had cost the team (and her personally). Nor the words Fizel had thrown at her.
Alan noticed. “Stop it,” he murmured.
“Mmm. It’s just … What Fizel said—”
“Don’t let him get to you. He’s just pissed and frustrated. No one else feels that way.”
“Yeah.” But Kira wasn’t so sure. A sense of injustice wormed inside her. How dare Fizel judge her! She’d only done what she was supposed to—what any of them would have. If she’d ignored the rock formation, he would have been the first to call her out for shirking. And it wasn’t as if she and Alan hadn’t lost plenty because of her discovery, same as the rest of the team.…
Alan nuzzled the nape of her neck. “Everything is going to be fine. Just you watch.” Then he lay still, and Kira listened to his breathing slow while she stared into the darkness.
Things still felt wrong and out of sorts. Her stomach knotted even more painfully, and Kira screwed her eyes shut, trying not to obsess over Fizel or what the future might hold. Yet she couldn’t forget what had been said in the mess hall, and a hot coal of anger continued to burn inside her as she fell into a fitful sleep.
2.
Darkness. A vast expanse of space, desolate and unfamiliar. The stars were cold points of light, sharp as needles against the velvet backdrop.