Page 20 of Stellar Drift
Sairy had been afraid the ledge would be too shallow to go more than a few meters, but she was wrong.
“Amazing,” said Houyen.
A cave yawned in front of them like the open mouth of a gargantuan viper.Cracked vertical columns of basalt on the sides looked like long teeth, adding to the illusion.
Sairy turned on her own wrist light and played its beam across the cave floor.It was surprisingly wet and smooth, and covered with the hard, pale shells of hundreds of dead wuzzy-bug corpses.At least she hoped they were dead.
“Well, now we know where the nymphs in the lake came from.”He aimed his light toward the back of the cave and turned it to full brightness.The dead bugs made a river pattern that appeared to continue into the darkness.“They washed through here and into the lake below.”
“Yes, but I don’t think they lived here.Phen said they feed on roots, and there aren’t enough here for that many mouths.”She tried not to think about what that would look like.
Unexpectedly, Kyala made a low whine and stared intently at the back of the cave.When Sairy connected with her, she saw what had caught her eye.“Houyen, let’s kill our lights for a moment.Kyala saw something blinking.”
In the semi-darkness, Sairy shut her eyes and connected deeper with Kyala’s senses.“She’s still seeing it.Plus, unless you know of something natural that emits three-tone stutter beeps at ten-second intervals, there’s human tech back there.”
She turned her light back on, and so did he.
“Like I said, this is out of my starlane.”He blew out a noisy breath.“Far, far out of my starlane.”
His gauntlet chimed with the tones she’d come to recognize as signaling contact from Brannezzo.
She jumped a little when Elkano’s tone sounded in her earwire a second later.She turned and moved several steps away so she wouldn’t be distracted by Houyen’s conversation.
“Go,” she subvocalized.
“I found a match for your location and our records.”His voice sounded unhappy.“But not in the entry images.”
“Where, then?”
“In the exodus instruction set, under a subtag named ‘Target.’”
She stilled as her mind raced.They’d been over those records a hundred times and never found any images.“Why haven’t we seen it before?”
“I don’t know.Because you needed it fast and I wasn’t busy, I did a comprehensive image-compare across all the records.”
Ordinarily, he’d never have devoted full resources for one task, but as he’d said, he’d had nothing else better to do.“Anything else under that subtag?”
“One other image and a thirty-character string, and a partial ref-key that I’m tracing now.”
Behind her, Brannezzo’s baritone voice sounded increasingly querulous.
Sairy slid away one more step.“Send me what you’ve got.”
Behind her eyelid, a momentary flash of a blue symbol signaled that her controller had received the records.As much as the implants made her as experimental as her ship, she was grateful for their superior capabilities.“We’re near the top of the mountain in a small basalt cave.I’ll keep you posted.In the meantime, see if the new image pattern-matches to any other untagged images, or that ref-key fragment.”
“Will do.”
She used her percomp to display the image, which was a one-angle still holograph of a large, shiny-smooth metal door.It reminded her of an old-style airlock with fanciful design references to ancient submarine hatches.The glowing keypad embedded in the smooth wall next to it was boringly utilitarian by comparison.The code string looked like random numbers and letters to her, but ferreting out possible meanings was more Elkano’s specialty than hers.
She flicked off the display, then turned to listen to Houyen.
“...still not following, Brannezzo.You lost some dogs?”
“No, damnit, they’re not mine.The team that came with me got lost following them, and I don’t know where they are.Why weren’t you here at the geomarker to meet us?Where are your airsleds?”
“I told you before, it’s not my expedition.The locals just let me tag along on theirs.You didn’t call this morning, so we split up for the day and planned to meet tonight at sunset.I don’t know where the airsleds are, and we haven’t seen any dogs.You said you came up by flitter?”
“Yes, the small one.Hang on, I’m getting another comm.”
