difficulty from the start, and Hutch had to go get her. When they got back to the airlock, she helped her inside, where the environment was less upsetting. 'You okay?' she asked.
Maggie crumpled into a ball. In a weak voice she reassured her rescuer.
'I hope this is worth it,' Hutch said. 'It is,' Maggie said feebly.
They came over one by one. The sunlight was strong, and everyone used filters. They climbed rapidly into the lock, anxious to gain the security of an enclosed space.
The inner passageway beckoned. Maggie recovered quickly and claimed her privilege, stepping through into a bare, high-ceilinged chamber. Bilious orange walls were lined with empty bins. One was cluttered with debris, pinned by the motion of the station. There were instruments, and a giant boot, and plastic sheets and semiflexible material that might once have been clothing.
'Maybe they left the airlock open,' said George, 'to preserve the interior. If they really wanted to maintain this as a memorial, I don't know a better way. Let the vacuum in, and nothing will deteriorate.'
Janet was fascinated by the boot. 'They were big, weren't they?'
Carpeting still covered the deck. Passageways that dwarfed even George opened off either end of the chamber. They were lined by windows on one side and closed doors on the other. The doors were quite large, possibly four by two meters.
When Hutch, who was the last one through the airlock, caught up with them, they were examining the equipment. George thought he recognized some of it—'this is a recharger, no question' — and Maggie had already begun to collect symbols. Carson picked a passageway at random and moved into it.
None of the doors yielded to gentle pressure, and they would not of course break in, short of necessity. The outer bulkhead consisted mostly of windows. Outside, they could see the sun and the shuttle. One of the windows had been punctured, and they found a corresponding hole a couple of centimeters wide in the opposite deck. 'Meteor,' said George.
They clicked along awkwardly in their magnetic shoes, staying together, not talking much, moving like a troop of children through strange territory. Hutch noted a vibration in the bulkhead. 'Something's going on,' she said.
It was like a slow pulse.
'Power?' asked Truscott.
George shook his head. 'I don't think so.'
More deliberately now, they advanced. The sun moved past the windows and out of sight. The corridor darkened.
Sill produced a lamp and switched it on.
The heartbeat persisted. Grew stronger.
The planet rose and flooded the passageway with reflected light. Its oceans were bright and cool beneath broad clouds.
Ahead, around the curve, something moved.
Rose. And fell.
A door. It was twisted on a lower hinge, but still connected to the jamb. As they watched, it struck the wall in time to the vibration, moved slowly down and bounced off the deck.
They looked through the doorway into another, smaller chamber. A crosspiece set at eye level resolved itself into a rectangular table, surrounded by eight chairs of gargantuan dimensions. The chairs were padded (or had been: everything was rock-hard now). Hutch entered, feeling like a four year old. She stood on tiptoe and directed her lamplight across the tabletop. It was bare.
George had a better angle. 'There are insets,' he said. He tried to open one, but it stayed fast. 'Don't know,' he said.
The furniture was locked in place. 'It looks like a conference room,' said Janet.
Cabinets lined the bulkheads. The doors would not open. But, more importantly, they were inscribed with symbols. Maggie made for them like a moth to a flame. 'If it is the
Monument-Makers,' she said, after a few moments, 'they aren't like any of the other characters we've seen.' She was wearing a headband TV camera, which was relaying everything back to the shuttle. 'God, I love this,' she added.
There was another doorway at the rear of the room, and a second, identical suite beyond.
Hutch turned off the common channel, and retreated into her own thoughts. She watched the shifting shadows thrown by the lamps, and remembered the lonely ridge on lapetus, and the single set of tracks. Who were these people? What had it been like when they gathered in this room? What had they talked about? What mattered to them?
Later, they found more open doors. They looked into a laboratory, and an area that had provided support functions to the station. There was a kitchen. And a room filled with basins and a long trough that might have had an excretory use. The trough was about as high as the table. They saw what might have been the remains of a showering facility.
Daylight came again. Forty minutes after it had passed out of the windows, the sun was back. At about the same time, they came to an up-ramp which split off the passageway.
'Okay,' said Carson. 'Looks like time to divide. Everybody be careful.' He looked at Maggie. 'Do you have a preference where you want to go?'
'I'll stay down here,' she said.
He started up. 'We'll meet back here in an hour. Or sooner, if anybody finds anything interesting.' Truscott and Sill fell in behind him, and the plan to have Hutch watch them collapsed. Carson grinned, and signaled for her to forget it. Hutch, delighted to be rid of what had promised to be onerous duty, rejoined George and Maggie.
They continued along the lower level, and almost immediately found a room filled with displays and consoles half-hidden by lush, high-back chairs. 'Computers,' breathed Maggie.
There were photos on the walls. Faded. But maybe still discernible.
Maggie was trying to get a look at a keyboard, but the consoles were too high. She glowed with pleasure. 'You don't think they'd still work, do you—?' she wondered.
'Not after a few thousand years,' said Hutch. 'If it's really been that long.'
'Well, even if they don't, the keyboard will give us their alphanumerics. That alone is priceless.'
Then George got excited. He'd found a picture of the vehicle they'd seen in the shuttle bay. It was in flight, and the space station was in the background. 'Glory days,' he said.
A second photo depicted Beta Pac III, blue and white and very terrestrial.
Eager to have a look at the consoles, Maggie moved in front of a chair and pulled off one of her magnetic shoes, planning to float up onto the equipment. But she became suddenly aware of something in the chair. She half-turned, and screamed. Had she been successful in removing both shoes, she would probably have launched. As it was, one foot remained locked in place, and the rest of her anatomy careened off at a sharp angle. She pitched over, and crashed into the deck.
The chair was occupied.
Carson's voice erupted from the commlink. 'What's happening? Hutch—?'
Maggie stared up at the thing in the seat, color draining from her face.
'We've got a corpse,' Hutch said into the common channel.
'On our way,' said Carson.
The occupant of the chair was a glowering, mummified thing.
'This one, too,' said George, trying to steady his voice, and indicating the next chair.
Two of them.
Maggie, embarrassed, stared up at the corpse. Hutch walked over and stood beside her. 'You okay?'
'Yeah,' she said. 'It just startled me. I wasn't expecting it.'
Its eyes were closed. The skin had shriveled to dry parchment. The skull was dust-brown, lean, narrow. Ridged. Long arms ended in large hands that retained a taloned appearance. The gray-black remains of a garment hung around its waist and clung to its legs.
'There must have been air here for a while,' said George. 'Or the bodies wouldn't have decomposed.'
'I don't think that's so,' said Maggie. 'Organisms are full of chemicals. They'd cause a general breakdown whether the corpse is in a vacuum or not. It would just take longer.'
