Guardsmen Of Tomorrow Part 21

Roz nodded. Then she stood up and walked to the window. Through its protective coating and quadruple panes, all regulation thick, she saw dust particles floating like schools of fish. The Millennium could handle small particles of debris like that-it was built to withstand all sorts of s.p.a.ce junk-but she knew that too many trips through a nebula would make microscopic fractures too small to measure, and eventually, something on the ship would buckle."It doesn't bother you that it'll take us forever to get back?" Ethan asked the question a bit too loudly.

"It bothers me," she said, "but I'm not going to worry about it right now."

"What are you worrying about?" Tom asked.

She rubbed her arms. "Getting to that planet. Finding the universal translator."

"I can't believe you're going to go through with the mission!" Ethan said.

She turned. The staff were all staring at her, waiting for her answer. "What do you want me to do?"

"We could contact the Ba-am-as, and ask for pa.s.sage out of the Corridor on the Alliance side," Ivy said.

"After the lie I told them?" Roz asked. "You think they'll buy that?"

No one answered her.

"And if we do return, then what? Do I put Galland on report?"

"Sarcasm doesn't help, Roz," Belle said softly.

"No, I suppose it doesn't," Roz said. "But you're not coming up with any solutions."

"Maybe we should turn ourselves in," Ivy said softly.

Ethan cursed and kicked the nearest chair. It shuddered on its post, and nearly toppled off.

"Don't go breaking the ship," Tom said to him. "We might have to live here for the next two years."

Ethan cursed again.

"Let's see what Galland wants so badly," Gina said. "I'm with the captain. We might have blackmail material here."

Roz looked at her sideways and smiled. "That's the kind of response I need from my staff. Blame me all you want, but let's come up with some creative solutions to get us out of this mess."

"Blackmail is creative?" Belle asked.

"It's the best thing I've heard so far," Roz said.

"Yeah. After we go to some stupid planet no one has ever seen before, and then take a route two years out of our way to get home." Ethan sat in the chair he had just kicked. The chair groaned under rus weight. "By then, all this might not matter."

"It'll matter," Roz said softly.

"To whom?" Ethan asked. "For all we know, by then Galland could have retired."

"It'll matter to me." Roz shoved her hands in the pockets of her uniform. "It'll always matter to me."

They emerged from the nebula into a portion of s.p.a.ce that Roz had only been to briefly, during her last encounter with the Ba-am-as. This time, like last, she didn't have any time to explore. She had to fulfillher mission.

She couldn't articulate to her staff anymore why she felt she had to fulfill this bizarre quest. She had a hope, one she hardly expressed even to herself, that she would find something that would allow her to get some kind of revenge on Galland-or, at least, that would restore her good name.

Since the aliens who had informed Galland of the planet hadn't bothered to name it, and since it was uncharted-at least by the Alliance-Roz's crew had taken to calling it "Xanadu." They all giggled when they said it, and then looked at her sideways, as if afraid she would get the joke. She didn't, and she really didn't care.

The route they had been given took them into a new solar system. Most of the planets were not marked on the map. The exploration urge hit her again, but she ignored it.

She headed for Xanadu, hoping against hope she would find something she could use.

Xanadu turned out to be an Earth-type planet with oceans and six continents-three habitable to humans.

The atmosphere had enough oxygen to sustain human life, which was not a surprise, given the makeup of the planet itself.

Roz had studied her chart enough to know that the creatures she was seeking lived on the small third continent. It reminded her of Australia, where she had been on her one trip to Earth at the age of fifteen.

From s.p.a.ce, it had looked like an island, but she knew that the land ma.s.s itself was vast.

She had her senior staff review the alien interviews- with all the blackouts-hoping for a clue to what she was seeking. She also had the computer scan the surface, looking for signs of a s.p.a.ce-faring civilization.

It found nothing on the surface so, in a moment of frustration, Ethan asked it to scan below the surface.

There the computer found catacombs that went on forever-all of them carved out of rock and supported by metal beams: not anything that would have occurred naturally.

It took three days to locate an entrance to the catacombs. Then Roz plotted the away missions, breaking protocol again and deciding to go herself. She wasn't going to orbit the d.a.m.n planet waiting for news. If there was something below that she could use-or even if there wasn't-she wanted to see for herself.

The fact that her crew was even on this mission was her fault; the least she could do was shoulder all of the responsibility herself.

She went down in the first shuttle, along with ten crew members. Ethan stayed on board, protesting the entire time. Roz took Ivy, Gina, two other security officers, Tom and two of his most scientifically minded engineers, and a medical officer handpicked by Belle.

Despite the atmosphere readings, Roz insisted they all wear environmental suits. She hated the helmets and the clear faceplates as much as anyone else, but she wasn't going to lose a person on this mission.

She wasn't going to take any unreasonable chances.

A second shuttle was supposed to disembark five hours later if hers didn't return. She never said it would be a rescue mission, but both she and Ethan knew it was.

Ivy piloted the shuttle down and balked when Roz ordered her to remain on board. But Roz didn't listen to Ivy's arguments; instead she hustled the rest of the team out of the shuttle and into the bright light on the planet's surface.They had landed on a flat rocky area near the spot the computer had located as the entrance to the catacombs. The rocks were rust-colored, but the soil beneath, peaking out in various areas, was a dark brown. There were no plants here, but she hadn't expected any. The plants were two kilometers below them, in a valley that she could barely see from where she stood.

The environmental suit's cooling unit clicked on after informing her that the surface temperature was barely tolerable for human beings. The shuttle had read the ambient temperature of the air and had said it was cool enough to go without suits. But apparently the shuttle's equipment didn't measure how hot the surface got with the large sun overhead baking the strange red rocks.

Roz led her team to the coordinates for the opening to the catacombs. She had expected something elaborate carved into the rocks jutting up like cliffs. Instead, a metal box stood on the rock like a sign pointing toward the hiding place below the surface.

The box had a door on one side, and the door was open. Roz glanced at Gina, who shrugged.

"Might always be like that," Gina said. "No way of knowing."

Still, she motioned to the members of the security team, and they all went in first. Roz and the rest of the landing party waited until Gina gave an all clear.

Then Roz led the way inside.

Immediately, her suit's cooling unit shut off. The air was cooler in here and, her suit informed her, more oxygen rich. The ceiling glowed, creating a cool, unnatural light that illuminated the path before them. The floor sloped down-ward, a gradual slant so that even the most clumsy could keep their footing.

"This is weird," Tom said.

Roz nodded, but said nothing. She walked just behind the security team, noting the metal beams and the way the support structures disappeared into the rock.

The deeper the team went into the catacombs the wider the caverns got. Instead of getting darker, the path got lighter. The same material that had been on the ceiling above illuminated the floor below.

"Cautious creatures, aren't they?" Roz asked.

"If they were cautious," Gina said, "they'd've greeted us already."

"Says who?" asked Marek, one of Tom's scientists. "We have no idea how they operate."

"Or even if they exist at all," said Brock, the other scientist.

"Someone exists," Roz said. "Or existed. This didn't just appear by itself.

The catacombs opened even farther and up ahead, Gina whistled. It took Roz a moment to catch up to her. The path created a T where Gina had stopped. At the top of the T, someone had built a wall that came up to Roz's shoulders.

When Roz looked over the wall, she whistled, too. Above her, a carved ceiling glowed as bright as daylight-only this light was cool like the light that had illuminated their path- not red and furious like the planet's sun.

Beneath that domed ceiling was a cavern that seemed to extend for kilometers. And on every centimeter of that cavern floor were buildings and streets.A city, made of white stone. The splotches of color came from paintings on the sides of buildings, from fabric spread on rooftops, and from the river that flowed through the city's center. She could smell the water up here, fresh and spicy and cool, and she could hear it as well as it churned its way past all the buildings.

Branches of the river flowed through the center part of the city like streets and it took Roz a moment to realize what she had taken as roads before weren't. They were calm branches of the river, their surface so flat that they shone.

"My G.o.d," Tom said. "I've never seen anything like this."

None of them had. It was stunning and unsettling at the same time.

Roz checked her system's clock. They'd been underground for two hours. She couldn't check in from this far below the surface. Which meant that she and the team had only an hour to interact with whatever lived below.

"Gina," she said, "send one of your team back to the surface. Tell Ethan to delay the second shuttle by five more hours."

"Yes, sir," Gina said. She relayed Roz's order, and one of the security members branched off, heading back the way they'd come.

Roz felt a slight pang, wondering if she should have sent a pair above, but so far she had seen nothing hostile.

"Does anyone see how to get to that city?" she asked.

"Either side will take us down," Tom said, pointing to the other side of the cavern. The paths followed the walls, slanting downward until they met directly across from where the team stood now, in what looked like a giant slide that led into the city.

Roz nodded. It would take them another half hour or more just to traverse the width of the cavern. But she saw no other choice.

This time, she led the team. The downward slope was much steeper here, and she had to hold onto the wall to keep her balance. So did the rest of the team. All the way down she watched for some form of alien life, and saw nothing. When they finally reached the far side of the cavern, Gina swore. Roz looked ahead.

What had looked like a giant slide from the other side looked more like a waterfall encased in stone on this side. The only way down it was to rappel or to slide down.

The stone waterfall ended in one of the pools that had branched off the river.

"Great," Tom said.

Strangers, a voice boomed.

Roz looked at the rest of her team. They looked as startled as she did.

State your business here.

Roz felt a shiver run through her. That was English- and, so far as she knew, the creatures in this place had never encountered any humans before, let alone those from the Patrol, those that spoke Englishalmost exclusively.

"Urn." She stepped forward. "We're from the Galactic Alliance, a loosely-based a.s.sociation of worlds on the other side of the nebula near here."

Tom was frowning at her. Did she sound as uncomfortable as she felt.

"We had heard that you had a universal translator. We were sent to check out the rumor."

The voice was silent.

Roz looked at her team. Gina shrugged. The other security members hung back as if the strangeness surprised them. The scientists were looking for the source of the voice, and the medical officer was frowning.

We do not allow strangers into the city, the voice said after a moment. One of our representatives will meet you.

Roz felt her shoulders relax, She really didn't want to face that frozen waterfall.

Then she heard a loud splash and a strange whirring. A creature whirled out of the pool below them, and rose to their level. It landed, shaking water off as it did so.

It was small, mammalian in appearance, with forearms and webbed feet like a duck. It also had a beak.

Its eyes were dark and had no whites. It seemed to be breathing the air, but it also had gills along the sides of its neck.

We have never heard of a Galactic Alliance. The little creature's mouth-or what Roz took to be a mouth-did not move.

"We've been around for nearly a hundred years," she said. "If you want, I could brief you on it."

Perhaps later. It folded its small forearms over its belly. It had what looked like six-fingered hands at the end of those forearms and it threaded the fingers together. First we would like to hear of your universal translator.

"Actually," Roz said, "we heard you had invented one."

We have no use for such a thing, the creature said.

"Yet you're speaking to us in our language."

The creature made a chittering sound. / am not speaking.

Telepathy. She had heard that there were creatures all over the galaxy that had it in one form or another.

"How do you understand our language, then?"

/ do not know. Only that we overheard your speech, then used what pieces of it we could find to create our own responses.