Three hours later, when he had exhausted his film canisters and was beginning to tire, he headed back. The network of corridors was a simple but space-saving web of spherical shells, intricately intersected, and he had no difficulty finding his way out.
“I’m back in the cabin,” he said, sighing with a leaden fatigue.
“My God, where have you been, Nigel? Hours without a peep—I was almost ready to come in after you.”
“There was rather a lot to see.”
“Houston’s patched through—and mad as hell, too— so start talking.”
He took them through it all, describing the small rooms with elaborate netting that might have been sleeping quarters, the places like auditoriums, the ceilings with dancing lights, all the similarities he could find.
And the strangeness: spaces clogged with an infinitely layered green film that did not dissipate into the vacuum around it, but rippled as he passed by; rooms that seemed to change their dimensions as he watched; a place that gave off shrill vibrations he felt through his suit.
“Was there any illumination?” Dave said.
“Nothing I could see.”
“We picked up a strong radio pulse several hours ago,” Dave said. “We guessed you were trying to transmit from inside.”
“No,” Nigel said. “I couldn’t raise Len or anything else on suit radio, so I packed it in and simply looked about.”
“The signal wasn’t on our assigned frequencies,” Len said.
“We missed recording it—only lasted a second or so, and all our monitoring is in the telemetry bands,” Dave said.
“Never mind,” Len said. “Look, Nigel, it’s just abandoned in there? No signs of occupants?”
Nigel paused. There were things he wanted to tell them, things he had felt. But how could he convey them? Earthside wanted facts.
Nigel had a sudden image of himself blundering ham-fisted through those strange stretching corridors. The sphere. That humming. Had he accidentally triggered something?
“Nigel?”
“I think it’s been vacant for a long time. There are big open vaults inside, hundreds of meters on a side. Something must have been in them—maybe water or food—”
“Or engines? Fuel?” Len said.
“Could be. Whatever it was, it’s gone. If it was liquid it probably evaporated when this vent opened.”
“Yes,” Dave said, “that could be what made the cometary plume, the Flare Tail.”
“I think it was. That, and the atmosphere that blew out through the crack. There’s a lot of disorder inside— things ripped off the walls, strewn around, some gouges in the corridors that could have been made by things flying by. I picked up some of the smaller stuff lying around and brought it out.”
No one said anything for a while. Nigel put a hand to the cabin wall near him, feeling the wholeness of it. He looked out at a burnished rock shelf and sensed the problem before him. It was something he could hold in one palm and turn to watch its facets catch the light, much as he had once seen in his mind Icarus slipping silently toward the Earth at thirty kilometers a second, himself and Len arcing out to meet the tumbling mountain, administer the kick, race home. That had been a clean problem with easy solutions, but now it crumpled and fell away from him, replaced by another, darker vision that slowly formed, coming to clarity in his mind—
Just before he had entered the dust plume, while Len was still in view, Nigel had taken a sighting on prominent stars to fix his inertial gyros. It was a simple process, easily done in the allotted time. Before swinging the telescope away from the port, a point of light caught Nigel’s eye and he focused on it. It swelled into a disk, blue and white and flat, and he realized that he was looking at Earth. A featureless circle, complete and serene. Alone. A target, unnoticing. Its smooth, certain curve seemed more than a blotch on a star background; no, it was the center. A hole through which light was pouring from the other side of the universe. Complete. He had looked at it for a long moment.
Through scratchy static, Dave said, “Well, we can give you the time for another trip inside, Nigel. Haul out everything you can, take some more photos. Then you and Len can rendezvous and get clear of the Egg and—”
“No.”
“What?”
“No. We’re not going to set off the Egg, are we, Len?” “Nigel—” Dave started, then paused.
“I don’t know,” Len said. “What have you got in mind?”
“Don’t you see that this changes everything?”
“I wonder,” Len said distantly. “We’re trying to save millions of lives, Nigel. When Icarus hits it’s going to wipe out a big chunk of territory, throw dirt into the air and probably change the climate. I kind of—”
“But it won’t! Not now, anyway. Don’t you see, Icarus is hollow. It has only a fraction of the mass we thought it did. Sure, it’ll make a pretty big blast when it gets to India, but nothing like the disaster we thought.”
Len said, “Maybe you’ve got something there.”
“I can estimate the volume of rock left—”
“Nigel, I’ve been talking to some people here at Houston. We started reevaluating the collision dynamics and trajectory when you found the core was hollow. We’ll have the results pretty soon, but until we do I just want to talk to you about this.” Dave paused.
“Go ahead.”
“Even if the mass of Icarus is a tenth of what we thought, its energy of impact will still be thousands of times larger than Krakatoa. Think of the people in Bengal.”
“What’s left of them, you mean,” Len said. “The famine cycles have killed millions already, and they’ve been migrating out of the impact area for over a year now. Since the Indian government broke down nobody knows how many souls we’re talking about, Dave.”
“That’s right. But if you don’t care about them, Len, think about the dust that will be thrown into the upper atmosphere. That might bring on another Ice Age alone.”
Nigel finished chewing on a bar of food concentrate. He felt a curious floating tiredness, his body relaxed and weak. The stimulants he had taken left him alert, but they could not wash away the lassitude that seeped through his arms and legs.
“I don’t want to kill them, Dave,” Nigel said. “Stop being melodramatic. But we’ve got to admit that what we can learn from this relic may be worth some human life.”
“What do you propose, huh? What jackass scheme have you got?”
“That we stay here for a week, ten days, stripping the inside of whatever we can. You fly us additional air and water—use one of the unmanned intercepts that’s carrying a warhead right now. We’ll get clear of Icarus in time for the other interceptors to home on it, and we’ll use the Egg, too.”
“Sounds like it might work,” Len said, and Nigel felt a surge of anticipation. He was going to do it; they couldn’t turn him down.
“You know those interceptors aren’t reliable in that dust cloud—that’s why you guys are out there now. And the closer to Earth we hit Icarus, the less the net deflection before zero hour. If anything screws up at the last minute it might still smack into us.”
“The risk is worth it, Dave,” Len said.
“You’re really going along with him, Len? I had hoped—”
“We’ve got hopes, too,” Nigel said with sudden feeling. “Hopes that we might learn something here that will get the human race out of the mess it’s in. A new physical concept, some invention that might come out of this. The beings who built this were superior to us, Dave, even in size—the doorways and corridors are big, wide.”
“The risk, Nigel! If the Egg doesn’t do the job and—” “We’ve got to take it.”
“—we sent you men out there to do a job. Now you’re—”
Nigel wondered why Dave sounded so calm, even now. Perhaps they had told him to be deliberately cool and not provoke anything more. He wondered what his parents thought of this, of his taking a stand for exploration at the cost of people’s lives. Or whether they knew of it at all—NASA had probably stopped news coverage as soon as they knew something was wrong; it wasn’t just a heroic life-saving mission any more. He noticed his hands were trembling.
“Wait a minute, wait,” Dave said. “I didn’t mean to blow up that way, you guys. We all know you think you’re doing the right thing.” He paused amid the quiet burr of static, as though marshaling his words.
“Something new has come into the picture, though. I’ve just been handed the recomputed trajectory, allowing for the reduced Icarus mass. It makes a difference, a big one.”
“How’s that?” Nigel said.
“It was coming in pretty oblique to the top of the atmosphere already, you remember. With less mass, though, it’s going to skip a bit—not much, but enough. It’ll skip like a flat rock on a pond, and then drop. That takes it clear of the Indian subcontinent, and moves the impact point west.”
Nigel felt a thick weight of dread form in his stomach. “The ocean?”
“Yes. About two hundred miles out.”
The finality of it consumed him. An ocean strike was vastly worse. Instead of dissipating energy as it ripped through the mantle rock, Icarus would throw up from the sea floor a towering geyser of steam. The steam jet would fan out across the upper atmosphere, leaving a planet swathed in clouds, driving great storms over a sunless world. The tidal wave splashed up would smash every coastal city on Earth, and most of civilization would vanish in hours.
“They’re sure?” Len said.
“As certain as they can be,” Dave said, and something veiled in his voice brought Nigel back out of his contemplation.
“Cut off Houston for a minute, Len,” he said.
“Sure. There. What is it?”
“How do we know David isn’t lying?”
“Oh…I guess we don’t.”
“It seems a little funny. A big rock skipping on the top of the atmosphere—one of the astrophysicists mentioned it in a briefing, but he said for a mass as large as Icarus it couldn’t happen.”
“What about for a tenth of that mass?”
“I don’t know. And—damn it!—it’s crucial.”
“An ocean strike…If that happens, billions of people…”
“Right.”
“You know…I don’t think I want to…”
“I don’t either.” Nigel paused. And something flitted across his mind.
“Wait a second,” he said. “Something odd here. This rock is hollow, that makes it lighter.”
“Sure. Less mass.”
“But that will make it easier to fragment, too. The chances of having a big chunk of rock left around after we set off the Egg is less, too.”
“I guess so.”
“But why didn’t Dave mention that? It makes the odds better.”
A silence.
“He’s lying.”
“Damn right he is.” Saying the words made Nigel sure of it.
“So our chances are good.”
“Better than Dave says, anyway. They must be.”
“If the Egg goes off at all. We’ve hauled it all this way, maybe it’s crapped out by now. They told us there would be a seven percent probability of that even before we left, remember? The thing might not work at all, Nigel.”
“I’ll bet it’s going to, though.”
“How much?”
“What?”
“How much will you bet? The lives of the rest of the human race?”
“If I have to.”
“You’re crazy.”
“No. The odds are good. Dave is lying to us.”
“Why would he do that?”
Nigel frowned. Len’s doubts were beginning to reinforce his own. How sure was he? But he shook off the mood and said, “They don’t want any risk, Len. They want two heroes and a lot of lives saved and no worries. They want to just keep it simple.”
“And you’re after—”
“I want to know what this thing is. Who built it. How they propelled it, where they came from—”
“That’s a lot to expect of a bunch of artifacts.” “Maybe not. I saw some panels and consoles in there, I think. Could be the computerized records they used are still around.”
“If they used computers at all.”
“They must’ve. If we could get to some of the storage units—”
“You really think we could?”
Nigel shrugged. “Yes, I think so. I don’t know—nobody does. But if we can find out something new here, Len, it could pay off. New technology could get us out of the mess the world is in.”
“Like what?”
“A new power source. Maybe something with higher efficiency. That would be worth the chance.”
“Maybe.”
“Well …” Nigel felt his energy begin to drain away. “If you’re not with me, Len…”
There came a silence.
Ping went the capsule, stretching with the sun’s uneven heating. A metallic voice, asking tick ping its own questions. Could he really do it? No, absurd. Pointless. For what, after all? Why this comical risk? (Why leave England? Why go into space? Ping.) His parents had wondered that, he knew, though they’d never said it. Worried, even as they nudged him onward, where it would lead. And what was he going to look for in there? New wine, in this rocky old bottle? Or had humanity had enough wine already, thanks, hand held flat over the mouth of the glass, no. No, absurd. He was being impolite. All this stuff he’d done, all the work, really, you see, what was the point? Very well to search, but who pays the bill? Did he know—here his hands clenched, whitening—did he know what he was looking for? Step aside for a moment. Look at this matter. Was it rational? No. Absurd. No. He couldn’t. He spun from tick the voice but could not escape it. No. Ping. He spun… spun…
Nigel wet his lips and waited. The sun lay hot on the rock rim above. Its light reflected in the cabin and deepened the lines of strain in his face. He found he was holding his breath.
Then: “Nigel… look… don’t put me on the spot like this.”
Nigel sealed his suit again, automatically. He reached up and popped the hatch cover.
“I… I’ve got to go with Dave, buddy. This thing is too big for me to—”
“Okay,” Nigel said abruptly. “Okay, okay.”
“Look, I don’t want you to feel—”
“Yeah.” He reached up and pulled himself through the hatch, into the full glare. Looking up, his inner ear played a trick and he suddenly felt as though he was falling down a narrow canyon and into the sun, drawn by it. Automatically he clung to the hatch and twisted himself out, letting his equilibrium return with the sense of motion. He felt curiously calm.
“Nigel?”
He said nothing. Halfway along the module’s length was a flat brown box the size of a typewriter. He went for it hand over hand, legs free, his breath sounding abnormally loud. The clamps around the box opened easily and with one hand he swung it to his side and clipped it to his utility belt.
“Nigel? Dave wants to know—”
“I’m here. Wait a second.”
He found the extra food and air units to the aft of the module—emergency supplies, easily portable. He felt clumsy with all of them clinging to his waist, but if he moved carefully he should be able to carry them some distance without tiring. Sluggishly he made his way to the brownish-black rock below.
“Nigel?”
He checked his suit. Everything seemed all right. His shoulder itched around his suit yoke and he moved, trying to scratch.
The irony was inescapable: the blowout of gases through the vent made the cometary tail flare out from this ancient vessel, causing him and Len to come here and discover it—but that same eruption deflected Icarus enough to strike the Earth, and made necessary its destruction. Fate is a double-edged blade.
“Nigel?”
He started toward the vent and then stopped. Might as well finish it.
“Listen, Len—and be sure Dave hears this, too. I’ve got the arming circuits and the trigger. You can’t set off the Egg without them. I’m taking them into the vent with me.”
“Hey! Look—” Behind Len’s voice was a faint chorus of cries from Houston. Nigel went on.
“I’m going to hide them somewhere inside. Even if you follow me in, you won’t be able to find them.”
“Jesus! Nigel, you don’t under—”
“Shut up. I’m doing this for time, Len. Houston had better send us more air and supplies, because I’m going to use the full week of margin I think we’ve got. One week—to look for something worth saving out of this derelict. Maybe those computer banks, if there are any.”
“No, no, listen,” Len said, a thin edge of desperation in his voice. “You’re not just gambling with those Indians, man. Or even with everybody who lives near the seacoasts, if you even care about that. If the Egg doesn’t work and Houston can’t reach that rock with the unmanned warheads, and it hits the water—”
“Right.”
“There’ll be storms.”
“Right.”
“Enough to keep a shuttle from coming up to get us back into Earth orbit.”
“I don’t think they’d want to bother, anyway,” Nigel said wryly. “We won’t be too popular.”
“You won’t.”
“The search will be twice as effective if you come down here and help, Len.” Nigel smiled to himself. “You can gain us some time that way.”
“You son of a bitch!”
He began moving toward the vent again. “Better hurry up, Len. I won’t stick around out here for long to guide you in.”
“Shit! You used to be a nice guy, Nigel. Why are you acting like such a bastard now?”
“I never had a chance to be a bastard for something I believed in before,” he said, and kept moving.