The Trilisk Ruins Part 20

Magnus stooped and put his hands on his knees. "You're a laugh a minute, s.h.i.+ny," he said, his voice strained.

The doors moved to their maximum dilation, and the mechanical sounds stopped. s.h.i.+ny moved out, heading straight down the lower door, which formed a ramp to the outside floor.

"We're inside the station, I a.s.sume," Telisa said. She checked the sensor feed through her link and saw that she'd guessed correctly. She saw their position within one of the large spheres that formed the body of the base.

"Should we follow him or what?" she asked Magnus.

They walked side by side to the edge of the bay, staring out into the alien room. It looked like a natural cavern, lined with pockets of the now familiar formations of dull beige shapes littered with green rods. s.h.i.+ny was just disappearing down a side corridor.

"Ah, I guess not," Magnus said. "Unless you want to sprint after him."

"Yeah. He's in a hurry or something," she said.

"It's just like back in the Trilisk installation," Magnus noted. "All this cave stuff is going to look alike."

"Yeah. I'm using my link to map it. This stuff might be a little different. Before it was a poor copy, remember the reports we read in the fake office place? This should all be real."

They walked down the bay ramp, looking in all directions. Telisa walked up to a bank of cubes.

"It all looks connected. s.h.i.+t, don't any of these aliens have a civilization where they keep a lot of junk lying around?"

Magnus laughed. "So you can take anything that's not nailed down?"

"Exactly."

"Well, as things get more advanced... stuff just starts getting smaller and more remotely activated... for all we know, there's furniture embedded in the floor, factories waiting in every wall, who knows what."

Telisa stared at the intricate blue panel. She didn't dare touch anything since it was a complete mystery.

"Where are the other s.h.i.+nies? Aren't they curious about the new visitors?" she wondered aloud.

"I'm getting a little nervous," Magnus admitted. "Let's go see if we can catch up with him, since there isn't anything just lying around for us to collect."

Telisa nodded. She led the way, heading out the tunnel that s.h.i.+ny had raced down a minute ago.

"Well, we won't have any trouble finding him," Magnus said. Telisa looked at the floor where Magnus indicated. She saw an intricate trail of tiny footprints, each little more than a round impression the size of a thumbnail.

"Hrm, I would expect some sort of automated cleaning system in a place this advanced."

"Maybe it was shut down to save power, or because there aren't any other s.h.i.+nies here right now," Magnus guessed.

"Or maybe they just like living with this dirt or sand on the floor. We removed dirt from our inside environments. This sandy stuff looks pretty clean, though. It may be sterile."

They followed the trail through three chambers and a long, rough corridor before finding s.h.i.+ny. The alien worked on a bank of cubes at a feverish pace. Several of his legs held blocks of the material that laced the walls, and his attendant spheres danced in and out, fusing things together almost faster than the eye could follow.

"s.h.i.+ny, where are the others of your kind? You aren't the only one here, are you?"

s.h.i.+ny swiveled around and spoke with an orb that buzzed against the wall. "Singular. One. Only."

"There's only one of your race?"

"One, here, sanctuary. Others, elsewhere, distant," s.h.i.+ny said.

"Is it unusual that others aren't here?" asked Magnus.

"Unusual. Unexplained. Mysterious," s.h.i.+ny said. The many legged alien turned back and skittered down the pa.s.sageway. Telisa and Magnus jogged after, trying to stay close.

"Hey s.h.i.+ny, are there any... pieces of equipment around here that aren't attached to the walls? I want something to bring back with me. Is there something here that you wouldn't miss?"

"Telisa maintains objective: collect artifacts," s.h.i.+ny said.

"Yes! That's me. You're getting better at speaking our language all the time," she said.

"Collect artifacts. Begin. Commence. Select alternate location."

"Hrm, ahhh, so you mean, take what I want... just don't take it from what ya got here, huh?"

"Affirm. Correct."

I will ask Telisa desist, cease, if critical equipment is confiscated.

The voice came to Telisa in her head, across her link. It was the smooth voice of a man. Telisa glanced around.

"Whoa... who is that?" Telisa asked.

"Who's talking?" Magnus asked. "My link says it's... s.h.i.+ny. I guess that's why some of the authentication information is missing."

Abandoned primitive methods. Now communicate through your more advanced system.

"Umm," Telisa wondered if she should complain. "s.h.i.+ny, could you use your real voice? I mean the way you used to speak, well, I've a.s.sociated you with the buzzing voice from your... helper spheres."

I will comply.

This time the voice in her head sounded like the buzzing voice s.h.i.+ny had used with them before. It sounded much better to her than the strange man's voice, which Telisa didn't want to think of as coming from s.h.i.+ny.

"Thanks, s.h.i.+ny," Telisa said.

"Yeah, that's a lot better. It sounds like you really sound. Well, I mean like you... never mind," Magnus said.

"Alright, then. We have permission from an owner. Let's take a look."

Magnus laughed and nodded. "Lead the way."

Telisa consulted the maps in her head. "Let's move deeper into the sphere."

They chose a corridor at random and walked through the fine sand. Telisa couldn't see any real difference between these caverns and the ones they had encountered while trapped underground on Thespera Two. The light came from the exposed cubes hanging from walls or rising from the floors.

They took a side branch, looking for a more interesting room.

"Too much of this stuff all looks the same to me," she said. "I think a human station would offer more variety."

"A human city would," Magnus said. "But the insides of the Iridar look pretty much the same throughout."

"Hrm, yeah I guess so."

"When did you first become obsessed with alien artifacts?" Magnus asked.

"Well, that's a change of subject," Telisa said, but she was secretly pleased. "Let's see. I remember one time when I was a kid poring through my dinosaur books. My father brought home a Talosian water compa.s.s. At first he let me play with it, and I remember being amazed by the thought that it had been created by creatures that weren't people. He told me stories the few times a year that he showed up after that, and I became hooked. I sought out artifacts in museums and traveling displays wherever I could find them."

"You haven't mentioned your father before," Magnus said carefully.

"One day years later, he showed up and took the Talosian back to the government. He told me to forget about the artifacts until I joined the s.p.a.ce force. I was upset but I didn't grow apart from him until later, when I joined a civil rights group in high school."

Telisa became silent for a moment. They both realized at the same moment that a noise like rus.h.i.+ng water came from a branching in the corridor on their right.

"What's that sound?"

Magnus shrugged. "Stop. Before we go check it out, tell me what happened with your father."

Telisa sighed. "The government kept taking rights away. They made it illegal for us to own artifacts. They stopped telling us about the new discoveries. They kept information about aliens from the academic community. At the same time, I was starting to get a mind of my own, and I became ashamed that my father was part of the force. I rebelled against my mother and I gave my father the riot act, until he exploded. He hit me for the first time ever, and told me I wasn't his daughter. It was the worst argument of my life."

Magnus listened carefully.

"Sounds to me like you're strong and independent. Got a head of your own. Your father and your mother would be proud of you now, if they only knew."

"A smuggler? Running around with an alien behind his back? I don't think so. I told my mother I was going on vacation in the Mediterranean. She's separated from him, now. At least I still visit her now and then."

"But they would have to be proud of your resourcefulness, and the fact that you're a survivor. You're stronger now than before, tougher."

They shared another moment of silence. Telisa heard the background sound again, like a distant waterfall.

"C'mon, enough talking about that s.h.i.+t. We're on an alien s.p.a.ce outpost!" Telisa said.

They walked toward the noise. Telisa wondered if the sound emanated as noise from speakers, like a radio tuned to an empty frequency.

They came into a larger circular chamber, with hundreds of cubes lined up along the walls. The sound came from a large hole in the wall that ejected a steady stream of sand into a bay that ran along half the circ.u.mference of the room. The sand flowed evenly through the bay until leaving from another portal in the wall on the other side from where it entered.

Telisa laughed. "It's s.h.i.+ny's version of an escalator, or a conveyor belt," she said.

Magnus raised an eyebrow. "Hrm. Yeah, I suppose it could be. Or maybe it's a system that cleans the sand."

"We should dive in and take a ride."

"Not so fast. What if it's a garbage disposal? What if you jump in and you can't stay above the sand? You could suffocate."

Telisa bent down onto her knees and peered down the tunnel. "It doesn't look dangerous from here... but I suppose you're right. Who knows where it ends up going?"

"There could be machinery under the surface that could chop you up into little pieces. I wouldn't even stick my hand in it. But we should toss something in and see where it goes."

"Something bright that we would see easily if it comes back around."

Telisa took out her pack and rummaged through it.

"Well..."

"You have something?" Magnus asked.

Telisa looked up sheepishly, holding a small piece of red fabric in her hand.

"What's that? Oh," Magnus said, and smiled. He had realized it was a bright red pair of undersheers. "Let's hope it doesn't gum up the works. An advanced alien outpost, brought to its knees by a s.e.xy undergarment."

Telisa tossed the undersheers into the flow and they watched it get whisked away into the exit tunnel. They waited for the red fabric to reappear in the stream for several minutes, but they didn't see anything but the smooth flow of the tiny tan particles.

"I have a new idea," Telisa said. "This could be a s.h.i.+ny restroom. When they regurgitate those bricks, they could throw them in here to be taken away and... recycled, or whatever."

"Well we can ask s.h.i.+ny about it later," Magnus said. "Let's keep looking."

"Sure thing," Telisa said. "Oh wait. Or if our links can connect, we could ask him right now." Telisa connected with Magnus sent a message to s.h.i.+ny.

s.h.i.+ny?

Present. Listening. Ready.

Magnus and I have found a room... there's a lot of sand moving around, sand like on the floor. We're curious, what is it? A transport system, or does it clean the sand...or is it a restroom?

There was a pause.

System you inquire about fulfills all of those functions.

I see. Thank you, s.h.i.+ny.

The connection was dismissed.

"Ah...all of those. Well, there we go," Telisa said.

Magnus grimaced and shook his head. "That's... well, alien."

Chapter Twenty Four.

Two days later, Telisa trudged back up the ramp into the Iridar. The weight in the sack she carried caused her to slow and wobble.