Nyna motioned for me to follow her while she leaned left and right to check behind me. If anyone would understand her caution, it would be me. If I was right, she was holding on to a secret that any leader would kill for. The worst of them would want to use the starship to dominate the entire planet. The Martian government could use the technology to enhance our own struggle against the Xeno. It could turn the tide of the war.
The door slid closed, just as silently as it had opened, and everything went black. For a moment I wondered if I’d been struck blind, if the Lakunae hadn’t wanted me to see the interior of their temple, after all. But immediately the ceiling of what turned out to be a three-foot-wide cylindrical room illuminated and cast an eerie light over us.
“Hold on to me,” Nyna said as she took my hand in both of hers. “In a second, we’re going to—”
Too late. For a second, the floor fell out from under me, and I braced myself against the wall—we were moving down into the bowels of the ship fast enough to make my stomach feel weightless.
We fell for what seemed like a full minute before the elevator came to a stop and the door opened onto—darkness. Nyna walked comfortably and confidently out into the ink ocean as though it was bathed in the same eerie light as the elevator. She was home.
On her second step, lights began to flicker to life, revealing a wide room with a collection of shelves, boxes, and artifacts I couldn't even begin to guess the purpose of, along with tables and woven baskets. The room smelled musty.
In the far corner to my left there was a bed that appeared to be made of sticks and twigs, expertly lashed together. The mattress was a collection of furs and blankets woven in the same pattern I‘d seen among the Ish-Nul. Boxes on the floor were festooned with bits and pieces of technology. Some appeared to be discarded bits of trash Nyna may have acquired from a junkyard. Others were most definitely Void-tech.
“This is my home,” Nyna said. “It’s not much to look at, but it’s safe. You saw what it took to get down here. Nobody’s going to figure that out by accident.”
“What did you do back there?” I asked. “How did you get the door to appear?”
“Oh, that? The door has always been there. That’s why I’m safe and snug. The lift is here with me, so nobody can follow me down, as the villagers told you. I’m not sure how many tried, but someone must have or they wouldn’t say it, right?”
I shrugged. “Sounds right to me. Another thing they said… how do you communicate with the Void Gods?”
Nyna giggled, then stopped and covered her mouth when she noticed my serious expression. “Oh, you didn’t listen to Timo-Ran, did you? He’s got it in his head that I have some way to just chat with the Void Gods or something. You know, like we’re old friends and like to garden together and swap recipes.” She socked me playfully in the shoulder. “Don’t be disappointed. I do have a bunch of their stuff. Look!”
She walked over to the shelf that ran alongside her bed and picked up three small objects before handing them to me. One was tube-shaped, about five inches long, and had a complex-looking pattern of thin filaments inside, all made of the same black Void-tech material Ebon was made of.
The second was a pyramid of about the same size. It was a lot lighter than it looked, but I couldn’t see inside to determine whether it was hollow.
The third looked like an ordinary spoon, except for the fact that it was made of Void material. I turned it over several times and held it up to the light, but didn’t discover anything new.
“I call that one a plud,” she said. “I don’t know why. It just seemed like the name fit, you know? One of those things that seems to go together.
“This one,” she said, pointing to the pyramid, “I call the pyramid. I haven’t thought of a better name for it yet—but it’s kind of a dull thing, so I don’t look at it a lot. It’s light, right?”
“Yeah,” I said, trying to disguise my disappointment. “But, I thought I’d be able to come here for answers. Like, where my people are.”
Nyna frowned and set her backpack on her bed. “There’s a lot here to look at, a lot I don’t understand. Maybe the answer can be found somewhere among all this?” She waved her hands at her collection of Void-tech.
“Maybe.” I glanced around the room. “But tell me: what do you know of the temple itself?”
“Not a lot, I guess. I know it’s old, and it’s been here a long time—long enough to grow those dust-covered crystals on the surface that look like pylons. But they could be part of the temple too. It has one room—this one—and, well, that’s about it.”
“I think it’s something more,” I said. “Do you know what a starship is?”
She shook her head.
“It’s like a hovership, only bigger, faster, and far more powerful. Starships are able to leave the planet. Sometimes, they have massive weapons their crew can use to defend themselves or destroy their enemies. Nyna—this is a starship.”
She turned around slowly, hands on her hips. “If it’s a starship, it’s not very big. How big did you say they were supposed to be?”
“There must be other rooms somewhere,” I said. “A hidden doorway or something like that. There might be a control panel somewhere, and all we have to do is flip a switch to power the rest of the ship. It could be a power connector that’s come loose, or a display panel you haven’t found yet.” I paused. “How did you find the entrance to the temple
