It was belted into its chair.
Had been belted in when the airlocks were opened.
Its dying agony was still imprinted on its face.
What had happened here?
Maggie gingerly touched its knee.
Hutch stood in front of it, and knew the thing. Recognized it.
Carson and the others filed in.
They spread around the room, moving quietly. 'Is it them?' Truscott asked. 'The creatures from lapetus?'
'Yes,' said Carson. He looked around. 'Anybody disagree?'
No one did.
'Sad,' Maggie said. 'This is not the way we should have met.'
Sill was just tall enough to be able to see the work stations. 'It's their operations center, I think,' he said.
George turned back to the photos. They were encased and mounted within the bulkhead. Most were too blurred to make out. But he saw a cluster of buildings in one. He found another that appeared to be a seascape. 'That could be Maine,' said Sill, looking over his shoulder.
Hutch could not look away from the corpses.
Strapped down.
Had they been murdered? Unlikely. The restraining belt did not look capable of holding anyone who didn't want to be held. Rather, they had stayed here while someone opened the airlocks and let the void in.
The station was a mausoleum.
They found more corpses in spaces that seemed to have been living quarters on the upper level. They counted thirty-six before they stopped. There would undoubtedly be more. The bodies, without exception, were belted down. They understood the implication almost from the start, and it chilled them. // was a mass suicide. They didn't want to get thrown around or sucked out by decompression, so they overrode whatever safety features they had, tied themselves in, and opened the doors.
'But why!' asked Truscott. Carson knew the director to be tough and unyielding. But she was shaken by this.
Maggie also seemed daunted. 'Maybe suicide was implicit in their culture. Maybe they did something wrong on this station, and took the appropriate way out.'
In the aftermath of their discovery, they roamed aimlessly through the station. Adhering to the spirit of Carson's safety concerns, or maybe for other reasons, no one traveled alone.
Maggie commandeered Sill and stayed close to the operations area. They prowled among the computers, and took some of the hardware apart, with a view to salvaging data banks, if they still existed.
George and Hutch went looking for more photos. They found them in the living quarters. They were faded almost to oblivion, but they could make out figures wearing robes and cloaks. And more structures: exotic upswept buildings that reminded Carson of churches. And there were two photos that might have been scenes from a launch site, a circle that resembled a radio dish and something else that looked like a gantry. And a group photo. 'No question about that one,' said George. 'They're posing.'
Carson laughed.
'What's funny?' asked George.
'I'm not sure.' He had to think about it before he recognized consciously the absurdity of such intimidating creatures lining up for a team picture.
In another photo, two of them stood beside something that might have been a car, and waved.
Carson was moved. 'How long ago, do you think?' he asked.
George looked at the picture. 'A long time.'
Yet the place did not evoke the weight of centuries, the way the Temple of the Winds had. The operations spaces might have been occupied yesterday. Things were a little dusty, but the station was full of sunlight. It was hard to believe that the sound of footsteps had not echoed recently through the long corridors. But there was an easy explanation for that: the elements had not been able to work their will.
George found a photo of the four moons strung out in a straight line. 'Spectacular,' he said.
'Maybe more than that,' said Carson. 'It might give us the age of this place.'
Maggie found the central processing unit. It appeared to be intact. 'Maybe,' she said.
Sill folded his arms. 'Not a chance.'
Well, they would see. Stranger things had happened. She would remove it, if she could figure out how to do it, and send it back to the Academy. They might get lucky.
Three hours after their entry, they regrouped and started back to the shuttle. Maggie had her CPU, and they carried the photo of the four moons. They also had taken a couple of computers.
Hutch was preoccupied. She watched the shifting light and said little as they clicked back through the passageways.
'What's wrong?' Carson asked at last.
'Why did they kill themselves?'
'I don't know.'
'Can you even imagine how it might happen?'
'Maybe they got stuck up here. Things went to hell planetside.'
'But there's a shuttle on board.'
'It might not have been working.'
'So you'd have to have a situation in which, simultaneously, your external support broke down, and the onboard shuttle also broke down. That sound likely to you?'
'No.'
'Me, neither.'
Priscilla Hutchins, Journal
Tonight, I feel as if someone took an axe to the Ice Lady. The Monument-Makers seem to have vanished, to be replaced by pathetic creatures who build primitive space stations and kill themselves when things go wrong. Where are the beings who built the Great Monuments? They are not here.
I wonder if they ever were.
0115, April 12,2203
23
Beta Pacifica III. Tuesday, April 12; 0830 GMT
The shuttle glided through the still afternoon above a rolling plain. The windows were drawn halfway back, and fresh air flowed freely through the vehicle. The smell of the prairie and the nearby sea stirred memories of Earth. Strange, really: Carson had spent all those years on Quraqua, on the southern coastline, and he'd never once felt the sting of salt air in his nostrils. This was also the first time he'd ever ridden a shuttle without being sealed off from the outside environment.
First time with my face out the window.
There were occasional signs of former habitation below: crumbling walls, punctured dams, collapsed dock facilities. They were down low, close to the ground, moving at a hundred fifty klicks. The sky was filled with birds.
They came up on a river. It was broad, and mud-colored, with sandy banks, and giant shrubs pushing above the surface close to shore. Lizardlike creatures lay in the sun.
And more ruins: stone buildings in the water, worn smooth; a discolored track through forest, marking an ancient road.
'They've been gone a long time,' said George.
