I couldn’t believe it, but I was suddenly wishing for the presence of the very same bureaucrats I had been endlessly cursing before.
Restraining a morbid laugh, I typed: “Take us to your leaders.”
The Travelers quickly passed us and headed towards the solid wall we had been studying, unflinching as a large triangular section retreated a few centimeters and silently slid aside just as it looked as our guides were about to run into the wall.
Lazz waved a hand, the signal flash from his teeth clear even through two helmets as he grinned silently, bidding me to go first.
I did, and we hunched down to follow the Travelers up a claustrophobic hallway, their twin figures swaying back and forth like unsteady bowling pins.
It wasn’t long before we came into a large room with six other Travelers perched in pairs on odd, low stools around the edges of the room. In the middle there was a raised platform with two slightly more elaborate stools occupied by another pair of Travelers who reflected differently: they were denser. As Lazz and I entered, they stood up and the one on the right let out a rapid run of speech as it faced the others.
Whatever was said wasn’t translated, but all the other Travelers immediately got up and filed out, leaving the four of us alone in the room. As the door slid shut, the Traveler on the left spoke.
“I guide this vessel. This unit is…” An untranslated squeal I tagged as ‘One’. “And—”
“—and this unit is…” the one of the right finished with a different squeal I tagged as ‘Two’. The numerical designations would be spoken now, whenever the Traveler names were used.
I thought quickly and reached down to type: “This unit is Mitch and the other unit is Lazz. We combine to see, to learn.”
“You are the witness,” One and Two said simultaneously.
“Witness to what?” I asked.
“To my journey,” the chorus responded and I was reminded again that there was no difference between any of the personal pronouns; the singular or plural you, ‘me’ and ‘us’, or ‘our’ and ‘my’. But they had individual names. I wondered if the collectivization was due to the increasing focus on species survival rather than individual survival towards the end.
Lazz must have been thinking along the same lines, because he leaned over to whisper: “I just thought of something. They only have one arm and hand. Maybe that’s why they’re always in pairs?”
“That’s a chicken and egg issue,” I decided. “They were always in pairs in the pictures. I just wonder if they are breeding units also, or if they are working pairs that breed differently. They never answered any of the questions about their biology.”
I also wanted to know more about their “journey”, but my question about that was ignored.
“You are here to see and learn about us,” was the only response I got. “An environmental chamber has been prepared from your directions. It has been sterilized and filled with gases compositionally equivalent to your sea level atmosphere. Follow.” They turned and headed for the right wall, part of which also slid aside obligingly for them, and remained open for us.
“I think I’ve got it,” Lazz whispered as we entered another tight corridor. “They found us, and they can obviously see we don’t have any place for them, so before they go on, they want us to learn as much about them as possible. They want to open the door to later contact when they do find a new home. Look at how intent they were on finding other life. And it would explain the eye bit, too. They want us to see them, and their ship, with their eyes so we can understand them better.”
“Could be…” But something didn’t feel quite right. “I wonder if there isn’t more to it. This pod alone could hold a lot more than the few Travelers we’ve seen. Even if this is a sleeper ship, don’t you think there would be more up and around for something like this? All their lives they’ve been searching for alien life, and now that they’ve found it, they don’t seem too terribly excited.”
“You think these might be the only ones left?” Lazz fell silent for a moment, but I could almost hear his mental circuits firing.
“Depends on how long they’ve been traveling. We don’t know if they have any kind of ‘hyper’ drive, or if they’ve been traveling sub-light—”
“In which case this almost has to be a sleeper ship,” Lazz interrupted.
“Exactly. Maybe they’ve had problems?”
I was feeling totally morbid. Death had been circulating in my mind a lot for the past few months. My fears about having my eyes removed had sparked a desperate and failed attempt to reach out to Janice, and then misplaced guilt over that had brought back all the horror of losing Ellen, and now I was confronted by a species having fled a dying star.
But Lazz felt it too. “You think they’re close to the end, and they want to pass this on to us before they die.”
I nodded. “It would fit, and it would explain why there aren’t more of them around.”
I turned to the Travelers and reached down to type: “What is in the other rotating pods?”
“Those who lived,” was the immediate answer from ahead of us.
“Bingo,” Lazz offered. “You were right.”
“Yea, whoopie,” I grumbled. “I wish I wasn’t.” But as we approached an intersection of hallways to stop in front of an obviously jury-rigged airlock, I wondered which of us really was right. I had to be careful not to assume they would behave the way we would. Maybe what we were seeing was their version of jumping up and down with joy. And “those who lived” didn’t have to mean “those who died”.
“Enter,” one of the Travelers commanded as the outer airlock door opened.
“’Come into my parlor’, said the spider to the fly,” Lazz mumbled. “Maybe instead of worrying about whether or not they look like something edible, we should be worrying about how edible we look. Maybe they’re out of food and this is the fridge… just kidding,” he added in a hurry as I punched his arm and pulled him into the airlock.
The door closed behind us, and our suits started billowing wildly after a moment as the air pressure dropped. We were briefly blasted with heat and a strange intense light, and then the suits settled down and the far door opened to reveal a large room with a wide wall panel that reflected in a strange way. An uncomfortable-looking bed had been added over against one wall.
“Sanitary facilities are in the next room as specified,” a disembodied voice announced as we entered the room and the airlock door closed behind us. “Your suits and this chamber have been sterilized since you fear contamination.”
“Uh, Kimosabe, we’re not working on the seniority system here, are we?” Lazz sounded a little nervous. “I’m worried enough about the air, but I really don’t want some alien Montezuma’s revenge hitting my system when I don’t even know what a bathroom looks like here.”
“Relax,” I offered. “Even if Traveler germs could survive in our systems, the waste systems in the suits can handle even that. But you heard them—”
“Yes: we’ve been sterilized,” Lazz grumbled.
“I’ll go first.” I reached up for the release catches on my helmet and cracked the seal. Pulling my head free, I wrinkled my nose as the neck seal got caught on it, ripe with the sweaty smell of damp rubber. Lazz hissed expectantly and I realized I was holding my breath. Feeling my pulse race a bit, I breathed out and then drew in the room air tentatively to find myself inhaling scentlessly clean and cool air.
“Come on in, the air is fine.” I slapped Lazz on the shoulder as I turned off the now needless air regulator for my suit and took some cleansing breaths to clean out the taste of canned air.
A panel slid open on the wall, revealing a spare set of air canisters.