Thunderbird (31 page)

Never greet a stranger in the night. He may be a demon.

—
The Talmud
, c. 200
B.C.E.

W
HEN
THEY
ARRIVED
on the space station, the galaxy was directly in the center of the long window. Lynda and Patrick couldn't stop staring at it. April understood and was in no hurry to move on. Brad took more pictures, and finally stopped to ask Patrick if there was any way to know for certain whether it was the Milky Way. The answer was the same one he'd heard before.

“I wish there was. If it's not the Milky Way, and it's something even farther, that just makes it still more of a mindbender.” Patrick looked down at the deck. “The artificial gravity's another shock.”

“There's more to it,” said April. She explained about the inconsistency. “Whatever generates it is apparently broken.”

After another several minutes of stargazing, they returned to the grid, wondering where they'd go from here. “Lynda,” April said, “pick an icon.” She indicated the three that were active.

Lynda studied them for a moment before replying. “The turned E.”

April looked over at Patrick. “That okay with you?”

“Let's go with it,” he said.

George was to lead the way. He pressed his fingertips against his helmet as if making an adjustment, approached the wall, the bulkhead, whatever it was, and got on the grid. “Good luck,” said April. She pushed the turned E. The phosphorescent glow formed and gradually enveloped him. Then he was gone, and the light diminished and went out.

They waited. The glow came back and a pen appeared. “Okay,” said April. “We're good.” She picked up the pen and stepped onto the grid. John climbed up beside her, and they transported out. Patrick and Lynda went next, leaving Brad alone in the station. A sobering moment. It occurred to him that he was light-years from the nearest human being.

He pressed the icon, watched the luminous cloud form, and stepped into it.

•   •   •

H
E
ARRIVED
IN
a place that looked like the interior of the Cupola except that the walls weren't transparent. It had two windows, at ground level on opposite sides of the dome. They were filled with sunlight. Boots was looking at the images in the wall, satisfying himself that the rings icon was there to take them back to the space station.

“Do we need the suits?” asked April. Brad knew she wanted to be free of the encumbrance so she could taste the air and enjoy the sun.

“Keep it on,” said Melissa. “It's hot. And there's not enough oxygen.”

“So we're not on Eden,” said John.

April opened the door. The sunlight was blinding. “I don't think so.” She looked across a landscape composed of sand and rock. Gravity felt about Earth normal.

“Everybody lower your outer visor,” said Boots. It was tinted, and Brad was happy to see that it blocked off the worst of the glare.

They walked outside into a desert filled with the remains of ancient structures. Plazas, domes, and low, curved buildings with collapsed rooftops were scattered across the landscape. Off to their right, the ground
gave way to a crevice. A structure that might once have been a temple had collapsed into it. There were gasps and profanity as they looked around them. “My God,” said Lynda. “What kind of place is this?”

Brad stared at the wreckage. So much for the theory this is a series of tourist spots.

There was no sign of life. No birds flew through the skies. No serpents crawled among the rocks. No tree, or bush, or blade of grass was visible. Brad couldn't believe anyone would ever have tried to live in such a place.

They started walking. “Be careful, everybody,” said Melissa. “The ground's rough. If you fall and tear the suit, it will be bye-bye baby.”

The sun was a swollen yellow giant. It was approaching the horizon, or maybe rising. No way to know yet. “Temperature's over a hundred degrees,” said Boots. “Centigrade.”

Brad did the math: That came to more than two hundred degrees Fahrenheit. “Where are we?” he asked. “Mercury?”

“I doubt,” said Melissa, “they ever had any cities on Mercury.”

There was no sign of water anywhere. The chamber in which they'd arrived was different from the surroundings in that it was in relatively decent condition. There was nothing else that hadn't at least partially broken down and been to some degree swallowed in the ground.

April knelt to look at a piece of rock or concrete, something, that had once probably been part of a building. “It's been a long time,” she said.

George stood beside her. “How long do you think?”

“Can't tell. Millions of years, probably. Right, Patrick?”

“Looks like it,” he said.

“Incredible.” Lynda put a hand on Brad's arm as if she needed support. “I don't think there's likely to be anything alive here.”

Maybe. But neither George nor John showed any inclination to dispense with the rifle.

The ruins stretched across the parched land in all directions. Off to the right, a few miles away, a rocky ridge rose to several hundred feet. Some buildings had been crushed by it, pushed aside as if the thing had
marched across the desert. Everywhere else, the land, except for the wreckage, was flat.

They looked at the broken walls and columns, hoping to find any sort of clue that would reveal something about the builders. Occasionally, they found a remnant of a chair or table, large pipes jutting out of the ground, melted vehicles lying dead in the sand. It was all so degraded, it was impossible to be sure about anything. Patrick stood staring at something that might once have been machinery. Beside it was a box-shaped piece of corrosion that might once have been a computer. Or an air conditioner.

“A TV,” said Brad, trying to lighten the moment. But nothing about this place was funny. They came across a stone pillar that had fallen into the sand, carved to display something with wings. It was surrounded by a rock ring that suggested it might at one time have been a fountain.

“How could this be?” asked John. “How could anyone have lived here? This place is like a boiler.”

“Conditions have changed,” said Lynda. “I'd guess we're on a world that's gotten its orbit screwed up. It's probably dropping into the sun.”

“And they all cleared out?” said Brad.

“If they were lucky.” April raised her hands, indicating the ruins. “They probably had plenty of time to go somewhere else.”

“Of course they did,” said John. “They had the technology. Hell, they had a Roundhouse.”

“I doubt it,” said Lynda. “The Roundhouse—the one on the ground here—is in good shape. It hasn't been around nearly as long as this other stuff.”

They fell silent for a moment. Brad was thinking how North Dakota had never looked so good.

•   •   •

T
HE
RIDGE
WAS
puzzling. Broken pieces of buildings were scattered at its base. Why would anyone build at the bottom of a cliff? It would be an oppressive place to live, and dangerous as well. It looked as if it might
have risen directly out of the ground, pushed up possibly by an earthquake. Was that possible? “I've no idea,” said Patrick. “Not my field. But I'd love to get the age of this place.”

George and John were peering through their telescopes. “Nothing out there,” George said. “The ruins just look as if they go on forever.”

They wandered through the desolation for two hours, taking pictures, shaking their heads, wondering whether the inhabitants had gotten clear. The sun gradually sank below the horizon. Stars were appearing in a moonless sky. Patrick was also carrying a telescope, a larger one than the Sioux had. He began using it.

“Recognize anything?” asked April.

“No,” he said. “Not a thing.” As the darkness advanced, the stars directly above them brightened and formed a river. On the other side of the sky, another vast arc of glowing stars was becoming visible. “Well,” said Patrick, “that should be the Milky Way.”

Brad looked for the Big Dipper. But he saw nothing he could recognize.

“So what's
this
thing?” asked April, indicating a cluster overhead.

“Never saw anything like that,” said Brad.

“My God,” Patrick said. “It has spiral arms. And look.” He gave her the telescope.

She peered through it. “It's spectacular,” she said.

“You notice the two clouds on either side of it?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know what they are?”

“I've no idea.”

They passed the telescope to Brad. The sky was being taken over by three circular groups of stars. “They look like galaxies,” he said.

“Exactly,” Patrick said. “I can't be sure, but I'd bet the big one is Andromeda. The other two are satellite galaxies.”

Brad's astronomical knowledge was limited, but he knew Andromeda was the galaxy next door to the Milky Way. “We're pretty close to it,” he said. “Where the hell are we
this
time?”

Lynda broke in: “That
can't
be Andromeda,” she said. “You can't see it with the naked eye, can you?”

Patrick spent the next half hour watching it, until finally April said she couldn't see much point in hanging around any longer. “I don't think there's much left to look at here.”

“Can we stay on for a while? A few hours?” asked Patrick.

“Why?”

“Maybe we could figure out where we are.”

“Will the suits be able to stand this kind of heat for that long?” John asked. It had gotten dark, but it was still hot.

“No problem,” said Boots. “They'll take the heat. But we've got less than three hours of air left. That's the real issue.”

“Can you tell me what you're looking for, Patrick?” April said.

“I'm not sure. But I keep thinking about that star cluster.”

“All right,” April said. “Let's give it another hour. But I can't imagine what could happen here that would have any effect on those stars.”

The hour passed. Andromeda, and the rest of the sky, moved westward. Patrick eventually sighed and put the telescope away, and it was time to go. They started back toward the transport station, but had gone only a short distance before John tripped over something, a rock jutting out of the ground. He went down hard. Melissa hurried to his side. She inspected the suit, and asked if he was okay.

“Yeah,” he said. “I'm fine.”

“You've got a tear. You're lucky. It's only a small one.” She produced some tape and put two strips of it across his right knee. “That should take care of it. Everybody, please be careful.”

Brad spent more time now watching the ground instead of the collapsed buildings. He was disappointed. Was everything dead out here? He was suddenly aware that George was pointing off to the west.

Something was moving. An aircraft. It was low and it was coming in their direction.

They were passing a partially collapsed wall. “Get behind it,” said John. “Everybody out of sight.”

Patrick's voice broke in: “You don't think we should try to make contact? This might be the only chance we get.”

April responded by pushing him forward. “Move,” she said. “Everybody get down.”

Brad agreed. They huddled behind the wall. The aircraft continued in their direction, losing altitude as it came. “Maybe they saw us,” said Lynda and Melissa simultaneously.

“Couldn't have,” said Brad. “We were too far away.”

“I don't think we need to worry,” said April. “There's no place they could land.” There was no smooth ground anywhere.

Boots grunted. “That thing is
slow
. The way it's moving, I doubt it would need a landing strip. It might be a helicopter.”

The wall was broken in several places, so they could watch without having to show themselves. “It looks kind of strange,” said Melissa.

“How do you mean,
strange
?” asked George.

“I can't tell what kind of propulsion it has. But Boots is right: It's a chopper.”

But it
wasn't
. They could see that much.

“They might be tourists,” said Boots.

“Are you serious?” John laughed. “I bet the tickets are cheap.”

“People love ruins,” Lynda said.

“Listen, guys.” George sounded worried. “We don't know that they aren't picking up our radio transmissions. It might be a good idea if we all shut up for a few minutes.”

Brad was not happy. If they actually had to run for their lives, he knew he wouldn't have much chance in the space suit. The plane kept coming, and, while they held their breath, it passed almost directly overhead. Patrick started to stand, but April grabbed his arm and pulled him back down.

“It doesn't look very big,” said Brad.

It continued forward and finally disappeared over the top of the ridge.
April pointed toward the station. Let's go. Brad was happy someone had kept track of its location. For him, it was lost amid the piles of rock.

They moved out. Melissa held up her hands, trying to indicate caution. Uneven ground. Take it easy. But despite all attempts to keep calm and watch his step, Brad came very close to breaking into a run. So did the others. No reason to panic, he told himself. Even if they'd been seen, the occupants of the aircraft were not likely to be hostile. And they were probably safe in any case since they should be able to get back to the transport station before anyone could reach them. Nevertheless, they were all keeping their eyes on the ridge as they hurried across the battered landscape.

George and April led the way while John stayed in the rear. April used her radio: “Everybody please slow down.”

They did. Slightly. And eventually the station came into view, its round dome rising out of the rubble, gleaming in the starlight. At that point all hope of restraint disappeared. Brad kept telling himself to take it easy, but he rumbled along at his best pace. George reached the place first, opened the door, and stepped aside. April waited outside waving the others forward.