Jupiter Project

Lt. Sharma would confer with the Commander and obtain permission to go in closer. One of the men behind me was running a portable television camera so they could follow what was happening back on the Sagan.

The hole remained black. We went in closer. One kilometer, then a half, then four hundred yards. One of the scientists checked the radiation level and found nothing more than the usual background count. I aimed the Roadhog’s headlights off to the side and got back a few sparkling reflections from the distant walls. The sides of the pit seemed to be fused and melted here and there.

Lieutenant Sharma asked for permission to go into the pit. The Commander argued a little and then granted it.

I took her down. The yawning crater swallowed us in shadow.

The radio was quiet now. No one had anything more to say. Just before we went in I looked to the side and saw the rim of the crater rise up. Then it was blotted out by the edge of the pit. Behind us the Sagan jockeyed to stay within our line of sight; otherwise, we would lose radio contact.

There still wasn’t much to see. The pit walls were far away and most of the rock could have passed for coal; it was dark.

“Lieutenant! I am registering an increased magnetic field.” one of the men behind me said.

“What’s that?” my father asked, pointing. I turned the craft to bring the headlights toward the walls of the pit. A dim coppery ribbon lined the wall. I rotated the Roadhog. The band formed a thin ring completely around the pit. We were passing through the center of the ring.

“What is it?”

“Looks like metal.”

“Impossible.”

“Quiet,” said Lieutenant Sharma, and spoke to the Commander.

I didn’t slacken our speed. Another ring came into view. As we passed through it I thought it looked a little closer to the shuttle. I wondered how such a natural formation could come about. Something to do with the evolution of the asteroid belt? Veins of metal? The rings were at least half a kilometer in diameter, larger than the diameter of the Can.

We came to another. And another. They were getting closer together. Smaller, too. The pit was narrowing.

“Something is reflecting light ahead,” Lieutenant Sharma said, breaking a long silence. His voice was a dry rasp.

I slowed the shuttle. It was hard to make out any detail. We coasted through a chain of rings, each a little smaller than the last. I was beginning to get a creepy feeling.

Something metallic lay ahead; it looked like the same mottled coppery stuff as in the rings. I brought us up to it slowly, ignoring the radio conversations. It wasn’t until we were quite close that I saw that the pit had ended; the metal object was sitting on a wall of dark rock.

We hung about a hundred meters away from the wall. The coppery object was a hemisphere without any visible markings, about ten meters across.

I glanced at Lieutenant Sharma. He was looking off to the side, squinting. He pointed toward the walls of the pit. “That way,” he said.

I was more interested in the metal dome, but I followed orders. We coasted along parallel to the pit floor. Then I saw a blotch ahead that resolved into a rectangle of white.

“Hey!” someone said.

Suddenly the pit floor was gone. I looked down and saw nothing but blackness. There was an opening below us. Lieutenant Sharma pointed at it and nodded to me. I took the Roadhog into the hole, fumbling nervously with the attitude jets.

The walls in this hole didn’t narrow. There was a clearance of about twenty meters. A moment passed before I realized that walls existed only on two sides, the left and right. In the other directions there was only darkness.

What we had thought was the floor of the pit was only something blocking it, like a cork that doesn’t fill the neck of a bottle. Now we were inching around the cork.

Something loomed ahead, and I slowed the shuttle down.

“Looks like a pipe,” someone said.

“Yes, it does,” my father answered. “About five meters in diameter. It comes out of the wall on the right.”

“And connects into the rock on the left,” Lieutenant Sharma said. He pressed his lips together as he studied it.

I inched us around the pipe. In the shuttle’s pale headlights it looked flexible. Where it joined the wall there were folds in the material. Beyond this pipe we could see others, evenly spaced.

“Let’s go back,” Lieutenant Sharma said. “I want to have a look at that white thing.”

There was some argument, but I was taking orders only from the Lieutenant. Eagerly I backed us out, into the clear. The enormity of this thing was just starting to hit me.

When we came out I steered us toward the white rectangle I had noticed before. It was set into the wall of the pit, flush with the rock, and measured about a hundred meters on a side.

There were odd-shaped openings in it, some with curlicues of metal standing beside them. I found it hard to get my bearings as we approached. Piloting in that vast inky dark was unnerving.

I stopped about ten meters from the face of the thing, and Lieutenant Sharma turned around and pointed out two men to go with him. They cast off together and coasted over, using their suit jets. Not until they had touched down on the surface of the thing did I recognize one of them as my father.

There was an eerie stillness about the place. No one talked. They examined the surface for a few minutes. Then my father said it seemed like aluminum but was stronger. They conferred about their next move and decided to go into one of the openings.

Something that looked like an abstract metal sculpture was set in next to the nearest opening. They carefully clipped a line to it. Then the Lieutenant disappeared from sight over the edge of the hole. The opening was as big as the Roadhog and seemed to have smooth sides. My father snaked in after the Lieutenant, following the line. The third man hung at the edge, looking down and holding a hand flashlight for illumination.

We waited. As soon as Dad and the Lieutenant were out of sight we lost radio contact with them. The other men started talking, but I ignored them. I was busy watching the mouth of the opening and looking for anything coming at us from the darkness all around. Nothing moved. A distant circle framed glowing stars; that was the mouth of the pit. We must have come seven or eight kilometers into J-11, at least.

Minutes crawled by. It was spooky, sitting there in nearly total darkness. It seemed as though my father had been gone a long time. What could they be doing in there? I wondered if Commander Aarons knew how long they had been in. Maybe he hadn’t noticed—

The man at the edge waved to someone below. A moment later my father coasted out, holding the line. The Lieutenant followed. They touched helmets and gestured back at the opening.

After a moment Lt. Sharma looked our way and said over radio, “Why don’t three more come down. I’m sure you all have measurements to make.”

I didn’t wait for the three to be picked. I swarmed over the side and flew across on jets. The white metal rang faintly under my boots as I landed. For a few minutes I helped set up cameras and other gear. Then I drew Dad aside.

“How long are we going to be here. Dad?” I said. “I’d like to have a look inside.”

“Not long enough. I don’t want people haphazardly wandering around, anyway. Could be dangerous.”

I looked around at the warped and tangled fingers of metal. I shivered. Standing here among them I felt a cold strangeness.

“Well, okay. But—who were they?”

“The people who built this?” He shook his head. “No way to tell. From the size of the doorways inside—if that is what they are—I would say they were large, at least twice as tall as we are.”