Video replay ended with a ping and a motion-ceasing glyph.
"That's a hard thing to watch," rumbled a voice at Gretchen's shoulder. Sergeant Fitzsimmons was standing beside her, his black Marine z-suit blending into the dimness of the room. He had a bundle in his hands. "Sorry to bother you, ma'am, but I thought you might need something for the cold." He grinned. "But that's a prettier hat than I had in my ruck. I like the…ah…reindeer?"
"Oh." Gretchen touched the thick, felty plush of the cap on her head. "My mum makes them for all the kids," she said, tugging at the brightly-colored, shapeless mass. "Thank you for the thought, Sergeant. But Ugarit had its own bad weather, and Mars was bitterly cold. I've plenty of warm things."
Gretchen managed a smile, thinking of trudging across the brittle, rocky permafrost to the Polaris site, stiff in a triply-insulated z-suit and respirator. The Marine had a gray-green service wool cap and a pair of gloves, also a foul olive color, in his hands. Good enough for our slowly heating ship, she thought with a hidden frown, but not good enough to keep your hands and ears attached on Mars.
"Good," he said, stuffing the cap and gloves into a cargo pouch on the front of his suit. "Do you need help getting that vault door open?"
Gretchen started to shake her head – she had a video of McCue's keycode – but then realized refusing the offer might be rude. Might need a big, brawny Marine sometime. She stood up, snugging the sherpa cap under her ears. "Thanks," she said, "I don't think there'll be any trouble, but you never know…"
The vault door proved to be hidden behind a standard wall panel. Gretchen supposed the panel had slid down automatically during the power failure. Fitzsimmons's combat bar made a suitable lever to pop the panel free from the floor, and then he rolled it up with one hand. The vault hatch was closed, and Gretchen stepped in – lips pursed in concern – to find the keypad in ruins. All of the pressure surfaces had eroded away, leaving only a contact panel and some pitlike holes where wires, perhaps, had once run.
"This is just fine!" Gretchen rapped the panel without result.
"Ma'am, let me try," the Marine waited politely until Gretchen stepped away, then drew a v-pad from his belt, unfolded a set of waxy-looking stems from the back and – humming softly to himself – matched them up with the holes. After a moment the v-pad beeped and the schematic of a keypad appeared on its glassy face. "Try this," Fizsimmons said, suppressing a pleased grin.
Gretchen tapped in the code recorded by the surveillance cameras. The vault door made a chuff sound, then rolled silently away into the overhead. The vault room was entirely dark. "Very handy," she said, handing the device back to the sergeant.
"We try," he said in a particularly dry tone, flicking a glowbean against the far wall. "Sister bless, do they make such a mess all the time?"
Gretchen stepped into a crowded room, now lit by a pervasive blue glow. Doctor McCue's g-box was sitting on the deck amid a wild jumble of straw-shaped mineral core samples. She stepped carefully around the striated tubes – most had broken apart, leaving a wash of grit and sand on the floor – and picked up the controller for the g-box. It hummed to life, and the box lifted up and drifted to an empty section of deck.
"No," Gretchen said absently, "the core samples will have been in packing material and a cargo crate – they're just stiffened cellulose and a sealant – very tasty, I imagine." She keyed the box to open, and the top latch released with a clank. Kneeling, she lifted the lid and shone her hand lamp inside.
"Oh, now…" She let out a long, low whistle of surprise. "That is beautiful."
Warily, Fitzsimmons leaned over. Inside the box was a chunk of stone – perhaps half a meter long and ten centimeters thick – a deep sandy red streaked with cream, glowing in the light of Anderssen's lamp. Gretchen brushed a fine layer of sandstone dust away, revealing a handsbreadth-wide whorl. A tapered tail of ribbed shell curled around the impression of stalklike legs.
"See, Sergeant? The fruit of some ancient Ephesian sea, preserved by chance in sandy mud, along with our…friend."
Most of the fossil was buried in the stone, and lying alongside the ancient cephalopod was the unmistakable shape of a machined metal cylinder. Like the artifact in the isolation lab, the cylinder was crusted with limestone aggregate.
Gretchen bit her lip gently, tracing the outline of the device with a gloved finger. "Russovsky's geological survey found wonders."
Fitzsimmons stood up, his face pale. "Ma'am – I know you won't like to hear this – but we should jettison this thing right away. What if it goes off like the other one?"
Gretchen looked up, face pinched with distaste. In that moment, she suddenly knew exactly how Clarkson had felt, clutching the prize close to his chest, rushing to make the first analysis. He would see what no one had seen in three million years – he alone would look upon mystery revealed and he alone would learn truth… But the open fear on the Marine's big, bluff face was too real to ignore. She looked back at the cylinder, at the marvelous piece of shale, at the delicate beauty of the shell and its ancient inhabitant, all trapped together by circumstance. The most beautiful, most striking, most wonderful thing I've ever seen. How did McCue keep from taking this to her laboratory, subjecting it to her experiments? Russovsky had the very luck to find this. If the cylinder is a First Sun device…my god.
"Ma'am?" Fitzsimmons touched her shoulder, gently, shaking her out of the reverie. His voice was soft and insistent. "Doctor Anderssen, we have to isolate this weapon. Right now."
"You're right," Gretchen stood up, shaking her head. She felt a little shaky. "Let's close up the g-box and put it in an airlock we're not using. That should hold the eaters if they escape, and we can vent the lock to space if necessary."
"Doc, listen to me." Fitz stood as well, towering over her. His dark brown eyes were filled with worry. "There's no way to know if this cylinder holds the same kind of nanomechs as the other one – this one could be an explosive, a nuke, an antimatter bomb, anything. Poking something like this, even with a really, really tiny stick, is bad, bad business. Procedure says put the whole box on a carryall and have the Cornuelle boost it into the sun."
"No, I don't think so!" Gretchen stepped between the Marine and the box. "This artifact is worth my entire career, Sergeant. Worse, it's worth an enormous amount of money for the Company and for the Company's primary contractor – which is the Imperial Navy." She stopped, searching his face. He looked back, so plainly worried for his own safety, for her life and the others on the ship, her anger drained away as quickly as it had flared.
"I'm sorry, Sergeant, I've no business shouting at you." Gretchen put her hand on his arm. "Like you, I'm under pretty strict orders – and my first order is to make sure things like this are brought back intact and well documented. So even if we talk to Captain Hadeishi, the answer is going to be the same – the cylinder stays and comes back to Imperial space with us."
Fitzsimmons's eyes narrowed, and one hand made an abortive movement to his comm pad, but then he nodded, taking a long look at the battered, rusted box on the floor. "Are you going to try and study it on the ship?"
"I…" Gretchen paused. Why lie? He'll know, and you'll look like an idiot. "Yes, I have to try. But – I'm not going to try anything invasive, or high energy, and I'm going to run passive scans on this thing for a day or two first."
Fitzsimmons gave her an arch look and she blushed. "Really, Sergeant. And we'll be sure to evac the airlock of any atmosphere. I'll be careful!"
"Sure, ma'am," he said, picking up the g-box controls. "Why don't you call Parker – or Bandao if our coffee-drinking man is still horking up his lunch – and have them get the number three airlock ready, while I angle our little friend here out of this place?"