Tonight on the news there had been a report about one of the tattooed New Sons who had finally covered his entire body with design work. The plan had been that the work would be done slowly, so that the last lines would be completed near the time of the man’s death. But this one had hurried the job and then cut his throat, willing his body to be skinned, tanned and presented in a frame to the Bishop as a sacrifice to the truth of the New Revelation.
Mr. Ichino shuddered and turned back to the cabin. A man was standing with his back toward Mr. Ichino, looking through the cabin window. Mr. Ichino stepped forward. Amid the falling snow it was hard to see him clearly, but the man was big and did not move. He seemed bent over in order to see something on the side wall of the cabin. Yes, that would be Graves. The bed was not on a direct line of sight through the window.
Mr. Ichino came closer and something must have given him away. The man turned swiftly, saw him and moved with startling speed around the cabin corner. The figure moved smoothly despite the thick drifted snow. In an instant he had melted into the shadows.
When Mr. Ichino reached the ground outside the window the snow had already begun to obscure the man’s tracks. If they were boot marks they were of an odd sort—strangely shaped, unusually deep and at least sixty centimeters long.
Mr. Ichino followed them a way into the woods and then gave up. The man could easily get away in the blackness. Mr. Ichino shivered and went back to the cabin.
TEN
“When did the pressure fail?” Nigel said into his throat microphone. Nikka had just resumed contact.
“About forty minutes ago. I got a warning from Engineering that the plastiform had ruptured while they were rigging emergency power in the passage above this one. There was enough time, so I crawled out to the lock, got some air bottles and dragged them back in here. There’s an emergency pressure seat under the console but somebody forgot to issue bottles for it.”
“Are you in the seat now?”
“No, they found the leak. Pressure is rising again.” Nigel shook his head and then realized she couldn’t see the gesture. “Merde du jour. I’ve got some bad news about some of our stored data. Several days of our logged material, the stuff we’ve been transmitting to Alphonsus for links to Earth, is gone.”
“What?”
“While you were off the line I got a polite little call from Communications. Seems they fouled some of their programming. The subroutine which transmits stored tape data to Alphonsus was defective—it erases everything before it transmits. Alphonsus was wondering why they were getting long transmissions with no signal.”
“That’s ridiculous. Everything from Site Seven has been lost?”
“No, only ours. Each team has its own file number and something happened to ours alone. We’ve lost quite a bit of material, but not all of it.”
It was the first time Nigel had ever heard Nikka sound genuinely angry. “When we get off this watch I want to go see Valiera.”
“Agreed. As far as I can figure out we’ve lost those pictures of what looked like molecular chains and most of everything from yesterday. But look, those can be recovered. Let’s have a go at the photograph you found just before Engineering called.”
Nigel studied the image when it formed on the screen before him. The alien photograph showed land of a dark, mottled brown, the oceans almost jet black. Somber pink clouds laced across the land and still eddies caught in the rising mountain peaks. At the shore a slightly lighter line suggested great breakers thundering against the beaches. There were traces of shoals and deep currents of sediment.
“What part of Earth is that?” Nikka murmured. “Can’t say. Reminds me of some map I’ve seen, but I can’t remember which. I’ll log this for transmission to Alphonsus. Maybe they can find a contemporary shot of the same place.”
The next few sequences yielded nothing. There followed complexes of swirling dots, and then a pattern that remained fixed. “Hold that,” Nigel said. “That’s a three-dimensional lattice, I’m sure. Look, the little balls are of different sizes and colors.”
“It might be a molecular chain model,” Nikka said. “Or maybe a picture of the real thing.”
“Precisely. I’ll log that, too. And I’m going to tell Communications to not transmit anything until I have a chance to look over their programs. We don’t want these lost as well.”
“Wait a second, Engineering is calling—” Nikka broke off.
Nigel waited, drumming his fingers on the console. He hoped the message he had sent to Kardensky wasn’t intercepted. He needed the information and photos Kardensky could provide.
“There’s another damned leak,” Nikka said suddenly over the speaker. “Engineering threatened to come in here and drag me out—I’d like to see them do it—if I didn’t come. I’ve got enough air in the bottles but—Oh, my ears just popped—”
Nigel threw down his pencil in disgust. “Never mind, come on in. You and I are going to see Valiera.”
“It was an impossibly dumb thing to do,” Nigel concluded. He glared at Valiera. “If for some reason the images were erased by the alien computer when we read it out on the screen, that material is lost. Forever.”
Valiera made a steeple with his fingers. He tilted his chair back and glanced at Nikka and Sanges. “I agree the situation is intolerable. Some of our hardware isn’t functioning right and I think it’s mostly due to the fact that everything is disorderly around here. Remember, we are just setting up Site Seven and mistakes are bound to happen. Victor, here, is looking into the entire Communications net and I expect his recommendations shortly.” Valiera looked significantly at Sanges.
“Yes, I expect I can get things in order soon,” Sanges said.
“I don’t think this should be taken so calmly,” Nikka said abruptly. “It’s possible that we have lost some irreplaceable information from the wreck’s computer bank.”
“And it’s not as though Mr. Sanges has suffered a great loss, is it?” Nigel said with a thin smile. “Team One hasn’t made much headway on their inventory search.”
Sanges bristled. “We have been working as hard as you. I see no reason—”
“Now, none of that,” Valiera said. “True, Team One is only now getting its footing, but you must realize, Nigel, that their task is much harder. They are compiling an inventory, using the alien script. Until they have cracked the code and know what the script means, they will not have any solid results.”
“Then why do they not abandon the use of script and try to find things by pictures?” Nikka asked mildly. “That’s the path we are following and it seems to work.”
“Why, what have you found?” Valiera unconsciously narrowed his eyes slightly with a new alertness.
For a long moment there was only the thin whine of air circulation fans in the room. “Some things that look like molecular chain models, photographs of Earth from orbit, a picture of some early primate, apparently,” Nigel said slowly. “A few other things, and of course that large rat.”
“I have seen most of what you refer to in the briefings,” Sanges said. “I would dispute your interpretation of several of them, but of course that can be worked out in time.”
“Quite so,” Nigel said. “Nikka and I are trying to uncover as much as possible so we will have some idea of how the computer works, and what’s available through it. I will be interested to see what the experts say about that rat, particularly.”
“Well,” Valiera said distantly, “that will of course take some time to work out.”
“What do you mean?” Nikka said.
Valiera pursed his lips and paused. Nigel studied him intently. He had seen this sort of administrator before. Valiera had apparently been an excellent pilot but somewhere along the way he had acquired the bureaucrat’s habit of judging every statement’s impact before it was uttered. There was an air of calculation about the man.
