haven’t found any clues as to what they needed that many gravitons for. If all of their buildings used the same hydrogen wiring as the Nest, that would account for a few of the towers. But not twenty.”
She rubbed her eyes. The chem lab was bright, the lights harsh and true white. “I need to get back to analyzing the new items we found. Some malformed block metal.”
“Still nothing like the Babbage Engine on the Nest? No computers, no archives?”
“Nothing. They cleaned up real good when they left. It’s spotless, almost like a crime scene. They rolled up all but the sidewalks.”
“Isn’t that strange?”
She shrugged. “If someone handed an alien a fork, a zither, and a hookah, how accurate do you think their assumptions would be? I feel like that’s the level we’re working on. We have nothing, we know nothing. Our only real hope of understanding them is in those maps. If we don’t find the keys here, we just have to prep for the next stop.”
There were seven more X’s in all on their alien map. The farthest away was a gravitational mega cluster—was it the Nataré home system?
That’s what many were speculating, although it wasn’t the only theory. There were so many possibilities now that they knew evidence was out there, that the maps were real!
He looked concerned then, like she’d just said something that undermined his entire world view. “Caz, you’re assuming …”
She cocked her head, wary of his tone. “What?”
“You’re assuming there is a next stop. The board committed to coming here, but if there’s nothing related to the Web, no instructions, no hint at its engineering, origins, or purpose, then … You know it all has to come back to LQ Pyx to be seen as worthy of convoy attention.”
He can’t be serious.
She pushed her goggles onto her forehead. He was about to protest, but she barreled forward. “That was before all this,” she said excitedly. “That was when we weren’t sure there would be anything to find. But look at this.” She stabbed the glove box, leaving a fingerprint on the otherwise pristine surface. “So simple, so basic, yet brilliant in its design and range of application. When we find a real settlement, a place they truly lived and died, think of what we could uncover. There’s no way the board is going to turn down the opportunity to chase after an entire civilization’s worth of learning in favor of a single construction project.”
His expression didn’t change. Something unsettling snaked its way through her stomach, but she held fast to the evidence before her.
It would take them centuries to hit all of the X’s, and they would have to travel light-years upon light-years in the opposite direction of the Web.
But why should that matter? What was one alien artifact to an entire alien history?
This was bigger, better, surely the board—hell, every last crew member—could see that.
Dr. Baraka saw it, long before anyone else.
With a sigh, Diego removed his hands from the glovebox. “You know the official mission statement doesn’t mention the Nest, or the Nataré.”
Because those points were kept secret from Earth, to ensure they wouldn’t interfere. “So?”
“So, you might find that means something to some people. That they don’t see the omission as subterfuge so much as emphasis—on what’s really important.”
“You know what’s important?” she asked firmly.
“What?” He raised a skeptical eyebrow.
She kissed the top of his head. “You, me, and our girls.”
“Nice subject change.” He laughed. “Smooth.”
OCTOBER 25, 122 RELAUNCH 5279 CE
Anticipation made Caznal’s head light. Today she’d lay out the Nataré team’s final conclusions about the alien history of the planemo, and her plan for which X on the map to travel to next.
There was a gravity well closer than her intended destination, but she wanted to journey to where two X’s were less than three light-years apart. It would give them the biggest bang for their buck, to employ an old saying. As a personal bonus, they would still arrive before her retirement, allowing her to play the greatest part in Nataré research for the maximum amount of time.
Dossiers had already been distributed. She’d take final questions, and then it would be onward.
Navy-colored uniforms shuffled in—all of the ship’s captains and their seconds in command—followed by at least one uniform of each other color. Many handshakes and smiles propagated throughout the gathering. There was a buzz in the air, and a buzz in their bellies as copious amounts of coffee, tea, and yerba maté were passed around the long marble table.
“Are we ready to begin?” asked First Officer Joanna Straifer. She was a direct descendant—the biological granddaughter—of a Reginald Straifer clone and a Nika Marov clone, and shades of both of them could be seen in her face and hair. Everyone aboard knew those lines well. There was a special hall on Aesop wallpapered with portraits of the clones who’d had a great impact on the convoy, and Joanna was the product of not two, but three. Her biological mother, Esperanza, had spearheaded the initiative that saved I.C.C. from Earth’s interference. “Caznal,” she continued, “you have the floor.”
Screens took up each wall, but Caz chose to use the holographic projector in the center of the table for diagram viewing. She brought up a model of the planemo, then zoomed in on Crater Sixty-four.
“First off, I’d like to say how great it’s been working with everyone on this project these past few years. We’ve been able to learn so much, it’s—it’s been exciting.” A small pang of guilt hit her. Dr. Baraka sprang to mind, his face flush with joy. Now, he was as he’d been when they’d first arrived: dreaming. Lending his processing power to the Nest, to the department he’d cared so much for. And yet, he had no idea what lay kilometers below his sleeping form. She shook his ghost from her mind, then continued.
“These are the layers of excavation.” She gestured at the changing hologram. It displayed a cross-section of the crater, with a flag indicating where each item of interest had been found over a fifty-six-square-kilometer area. “The top layer was explored mainly in months one through three, the next in four through seven, the third in seven through sixteen, and so on.
“The third layer is where we first found definitive evidence of the domed structures. And it was the fifth layer where we uncovered the three-mile-long metal scaffolding.” The image shifted at her command, displaying only the scaffolding in its unexcavated form. It was a series of long crushed beams—more log-shaped than steel girder–shaped—tangled and twisted, but clearly once the skeleton of a structure. “At first we believed it represented a horizontal building, but we now conclude …”
With a few artful flicks of her fingers, she repositioned the holographic pieces. Like the fossilized bones of a dinosaur rising from a tar pit and finding new life, the digitized framework pushed itself up, hammering out its own kinks and mending its breaks. It sat up tall, its narrow, topmost point jutting away from the planet’s surface.
“It was a single vertical tower,” she said. “Likely the foundation point of a space elevator. Models indicate that it’s likely many of the domed buildings were actually attached to the elevator—as temporary living quarters, workstations, or lift pods, we don’t know. What the elevator could have been reaching toward is also a mystery.
“But