City of Ruins

TWELVE



The chamber looks no different when we return. The lights are still on.

The numbers run on that screen ten consoles down the wall. The screen above me shows that weird spacescape. The consoles glow.

I am more convinced than ever that we shouldn’t touch anything. But now I’m willing to fan out just a little. I let Rea handle the middle of the room with DeVries beside him. I send Seager and Kersting to the space to the right of the door. They’ll never make it to the far wall—not today—but at least we’re moving.

After about an hour, I look up from my examination of the second console. Something has changed, although I don’t know what it is.

Then I realize that the screen above the first console has gone dark. I stare at it, and realize that I’m wrong. The screen isn’t dark. It’s showing complete blackness.

The dark screens have a different look and texture. This one is showing a view of someplace completely without light.

In spite of myself, I shudder. Then I glance at the other screen—the numbers screen. I can’t tell for sure, but it looks like they’ve changed too.

I turn toward the rest of the crew to tell them and see Rea a few meters from me in that broad expanse of floor.

He must catch something in my body language, because he says, “It’s easy to map a floor and emptiness.”

I nod. He’s right, of course. But he’s doing something besides mapping, something that he stopped doing as I turned.

“You were moving funny,” I say. It’s just a guess, but that’s the sense that I had, that he was making odd movements.

“Flapping my arms.” There’s a smile in his voice. I wish I can see his face. “I figure if our movement triggers the lights, maybe my movement will trigger some lights buried in the floor.”

“What’s in that floor might be what the ancients called danger,” I say.

“Or not,” he says. “So far, I have had no results.”

“Well, stop it,” I say. “Just map.”

He sighs, but lets his arms fall. He’s going to listen.

I start to turn back toward the console when the air waves. Like heat mirages. The air is actually rippling.

My breath catches. I turn toward Rea and realize that the rippling is stronger near him. Has he created it? Or is something happening there?

“Rea!” I yell. “Run!”

He doesn’t seem to understand.

“Get out of here!” I yell.

The others head for the door. I do too. Rea moves a little slower. The rippling gets worse. He looks like a video that’s falling apart. Then he slides out of the area and gets to the doorway.

Something whooshes behind me.

I whirl and blink, unable to believe what I’m seeing.

A Dignity Vessel is parked in that broad expanse of floor. An intact, clean, vibrating Dignity Vessel.

I murmur something—a curse maybe, or just a sound of awe. I’m aware of making noise, but not of what kind of noise I’m making. Rea pushes up against me.

DeVries says, “Oh, my ...”

No one else speaks.

“Was there something solid on that floor when you were there?” I ask Rea.

He shakes his head.

“I was standing there,” he says. “I would’ve been crushed.”

The ripples. That Dignity Vessel became visible. We just saw the transition between stealth mode and nonstealth mode. Or something like that.

I glance at the numbers screen. It has stopped on the last set. Nothing runs. Then I look at the other screens. The one that had gone black now shows a black room with little white figures in it. Human-shaped.

It takes me a moment to realize those figures are us. We’re seeing ourselves in our suits staring at the screen.

Looking away from the camera. Which has to be on the Dignity Vessel.

It wasn’t in stealth mode in this chamber. It had been somewhere else until a little while ago. Somewhere with that strange patch of space.

“We triggered it,” I say.

“What?” DeVries asks.

“I think we summoned it back here.” I make myself record everything— the screens, the changes in the console.

“What do you mean, we summoned it?” Rea asks.

I shouldn’t say this, with all my lectures about theories and suppositions. But I do. “We entered the chamber and it came alive. When it did, it must have sent some kind of message—maybe that someone is here. Maybe that the chamber is functional again. It called the vessel here.”

“Called it home,” DeVries says softly. “Ilona was right. This is where they were built.”

I shake my head. “She’s right about the stealth, and she’s right that Dignity Vessels are connected here. But look at this chamber. The vessel fills this part. There’s no room to build. This is an arrival port or a maintenance unit.”

“Or both,” Rea says.

“That’s why the danger,” I say. “No one can stand where you were. There’s not enough warning to get out of the way.”

No klaxons, no bells. I glance up. The ceiling didn’t open. Nothing changed except the vessel appeared here.

“I’ll bet there’s a death hole on the surface,” I say.

“Above us?” Kersting asks.

I shake my head. “Maybe around us. Behind us. Horizontal. Taking some of the force of that extra stealth energy.”

“That’s what death holes are?” Rea asks.

“It’s a guess,” I say. It’s all a guess. Until we can examine everything.

I walk forward. A functioning Dignity Vessel. Probably with some kind of homing program, some way to come back here to this base.

If our entry has called one vessel home, how many others will come?

Maybe not many. Of all the Dignity Vessels we’ve found, none have been functional.

This one is, by some miracle.

This one is.

* * * *

SECTOR BASE V

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