We were ready. Dalmora, Amalie, Krath, and a very reluctant Playdon, left through the portal. Fian and I were left alone in a dark landscape, looking at a hillside where a jumble of rocks and earth were harshly lit by the glaring floodlights. I opened a private circuit to Fian.
‘Last chance to change your mind about coming.’
He laughed and shook his head, so I started climbing up the hill towards the tunnel. The slope was steep enough to make me use both hands and feet, but I made it, stopped at the entrance to look around, and found Fian already beside me. I opened Military command channel.
‘Sensors still clear?’
‘We’re not detecting any active technology, just an abnormally high metal content in the rocks,’ replied Commander Leveque, who was co-ordinating advice and instructions.
I slowly entered the tunnel. The lights on my suit illuminated rock walls on both sides, and I paused to examine a white strip running at head height. ‘What’s that?’
‘It appears to be some sort of crystal,’ said Leveque.
I reached out a finger to touch it, and instantly snatched my hand back. ‘It feels cold! How can something feel cold through an impact suit?’
‘It must be a highly effective conductor of heat,’ said Leveque, ‘though it seems unlikely that’s its primary purpose.’
I made a mental note not to casually prod anything else, and moved on a few steps to where something utterly black blocked my way. ‘That’s not a stasis field is it? It’s black enough, but it doesn’t have the fuzzy effect.’
‘It seems to be a door,’ said Leveque. ‘Sensors indicate it’s a form of glass, with highly unusual properties.’
‘It doesn’t look like glass. What sort of properties?’
‘Unclear. The sensor reports of its physical characteristics are impossible. That may be a failing of either our sensors or our current knowledge. In any case, our optimal course of action is to open the door, rather than break it down or bypass it. There’s a separate area to the right which is probably a control panel.’
‘That’s completely black as well,’ said Fian. ‘Shall I try one of our gadgets?’
Leveque didn’t say anything. If he knew any reason why we shouldn’t, then he’d tell us. I was Field Commander, so the decision was mine.
‘Try it,’ I said.
Fian opened his case, and took out a weird, pyramid-shaped object. He put it on the floor next to the black door. ‘Better back off.’
I wanted to stay, but dutifully did as I was told. If he got in trouble then it was better if I didn’t and was in a position to help. I watched nervously as he twiddled the top of his little pyramid. An area of the black door suddenly glowed in a complex pattern of scrolling symbols and colours, Fian scampered to join me, and we stood there, tensely watching. After two minutes had passed, with no apparent threat, I allowed one of the vid bees in to take a closer look. It was a further minute before Leveque spoke on the Military command channel.
‘Threat team predicted several possible scenarios on entering the tunnel, and this appears to match our highest probability case. Extremely gratifying, since it indicates our improved understanding of the alien methodology. Our society’s level of development is being tested before we’re allowed entry. The displayed pattern is repeating in three phases. The red phase seems to be teaching us their numeric symbols.’
I studied the red phase and could see what he meant. Each symbol had a set of dots next to it, and they made sense up until …
‘They’re working in base eight then,’ said Fian.
That explained what had been worrying me. I was no mathematician, but I vaguely understood the idea of working in base eight. ‘That could mean they had eight fingers instead of ten, or just that they chose not to include thumbs when counting.’
‘Agreed,’ said Leveque. ‘The green phase is showing us a sequence of the first eight prime numbers. Our theory is we’re supposed to continue the sequence in the blue phase, presumably by touching the correct combinations of symbols.’
I was an obsessive historian who’d quit studying maths and science as soon as she could. Fian might be a disappointment to his high achieving family, but he still understood this much better than I did.
‘Captain Eklund had better enter our answers,’ I said.
I stood watching while Fian conferred with Leveque and then stepped up to the panel. He waited for the blue phase to appear and tapped some symbols. The pattern stopped scrolling upwards, and flashed for a moment.
‘First answer accepted,’ said Leveque’s voice.
The flashing stopped and Fian entered the next set of symbols, which was again accepted. After the fifth answer, I started to wonder how long this would take. Fian entered another three answers before the panel suddenly went dark and the door swung open. The aliens worked in base eight, and wanted eight correct answers. Well, that made sense.
I stepped up to the door, and my light showed the tunnel continuing ahead with the same curious horizontal white crystal line. ‘I see another door ahead.’
I walked on down the tunnel, with Fian beside me. We’d taken six or seven steps, when I heard a sound overhead and instinctively looked up. I saw the darkness of the ceiling move, a shaft of light where there shouldn’t be one, and then rocks crashed down on me. My impact suit triggered hard in response, freezing me like a fly trapped in amber, and sending me into the darkness of impact suit blackout.
37
I woke up, unable to move or see. There was the usual second of disoriented panic after impact suit blackout, before I worked out where I was and what had happened. The suit material was clamped tight around me making it hard to breathe, my comms had gone to emergency mode and were squawking Mayday codes, and there was the sound of Colonel Torrek’s tense voice. I remembered the panic when Drago’s fighter was hit by the sphere’s meteor defence, and gasped out a few urgent words.
‘Cave-in. No attack. Repeat, cave-in.’
‘Major Tell Morrath, you’re sure you haven’t been the target of a hostile action?’ asked Colonel Torrek.
‘Perfectly, sir. I saw the ceiling coming down. What comms channels am I speaking on?’
‘You’re on command and auto distress channels, Major Tell Morrath,’ said Leveque. ‘We still have your suit telemetry but we’ve lost sensors and vid bees. What is your status?’
‘I’m buried under rocks,’ I said. ‘The tunnel ceiling was probably weakened by the landslide, and opening that door made it collapse. Captain Eklund, are you conscious yet?’
‘Yes. I seem to be in one piece but buried too.’ Fian’s voice sounded breathless but calm.
I relaxed. ‘Good to hear that. Can someone please patch our comms into site broadcast channel?’ I heard the comms note change as someone did that. ‘This is Major Tell Morrath. What’s our suit pressure looking like?’
‘This is Dig Site Command. Both your suits are green, except for your left leg, Major. That’s green flickering amber, indicating increased pressure from a sharp edge of rock, but still within safety margins. We have a lot of teams volunteering to assist you.’
‘This is Major Tell Morrath. Thank you for the offers. We’ll need to use some non-standard methods on this, because I still don’t want to risk lift beams too close to alien technology.’
‘This is Commander Leveque. Major Tell Morrath is correct to avoid the use of lift beams. The Science teams’ initial analysis indicates the control logic for the doors is encoded into the glass control panel and might be disrupted by a lift beam.’
I’d actually been worried about the alien technology hurting us, not the other way around, but it would be better not to break anything.
‘This is Colonel Torrek. Although I want to avoid damaging the alien technology, I also want my officers out
