“What we should do is beat it out of here and notify the proper authorities,” Hawkins insisted.
“We shall, old chap, we shall.” Follingston-Heath had moved to stand behind the serving robot. “In due course. You don’t have to eat if you don’t want to.” He tapped the robot on the edge of its bulky torso. “You picked this meal so I presume we’ve not much of a selection.”
“A well-balanced meal chosen at my discretion,” Ksarusix admitted. “Energy-packed, as you specified. Bearing in mind the average senior’s digestive limitations, of course.” A tray popped out of his back.
Follingston-Heath removed it, folded his legs in front of him, and sat down with his back against the slick alien wall. As he carefully peeled back the biodegradable sealer, steam rose from the food beneath. Shimoda took the next tray, started to take a second, then thought better of it and assumed a lotus position nearby.
Iranaputra waited politely for Gelmann to help herself, whereupon he accepted the next tray. Outvoted in deed as well as word, Hawkins shrugged and helped himself to some food. Besides, the aromas rising from the heated trays were making him salivate.
Follingston-Heath spoke as he chewed, running his long dark fingers over the silvery, vitreous surface behind him. “Most peculiar. It looks like polished metal, but it feels almost sticky, like a warm plastic.” He rapped his knuckles against it and was rewarded with only a slight thumping sound.
“I’ve never seen anything like it.” Shimoda spooned up potato. “That doesn’t mean much, though.”
“I’m surprised we haven’t found any windows or streets,” said Gelmann.
“Why?” Hawkins ripped the cover off a disposable cup, waited for it to chill. “You build underground, there’s no need for windows. Streets could all be enclosed. Protection from rockfalls.”
“Quite so,” agreed Follingston-Heath. “Avenues for moving from one part of the city to another are likely as not to be solely of the interior variety.”
“You can let me know.” Hawkins gestured with his spoon. “Me, I ain’t going in there. If this was some sort of secret military base, there might be booby traps all over the place.”
“I doubt they’d still be functional after so many years, dear.” Gelmann returned her empty tray to the back of the robot. Ksarusix hummed as its internal recycler went to work. “It would be a shame, you should excuse my saying so, to leave when we’re on the verge of making a great discovery.”
“We’ve already made a great discovery.” Hawkins jammed his tray into the robot’s back, ignoring the whine of protest it produced. “Let’s let some other fools do the scut work.”
“Well, I, for one, am not leaving until we have had at least a cursory look inside.” Follingston-Heath rose, straightening his trousers. “Who knows what we might find?”
“Like a bottomless shaft,” Hawkins muttered maliciously.
“Piffle! We shall take reasonable care and proceed with caution. We most assuredly will not march blindly into any gaping pits, bottomless or otherwise.” He stepped into the dark opening. “I will take upon myself the burden of assuming the lead.”
Hawkins offered no comment beyond an indecipherable grunt. He begrudged the Colonel his assumptions, not his choice.
“All ready, then?” Follingston-Heath eyed his friends expectantly. Shimoda reluctantly deposited his scoured tray in the robot’s back and rose to join the others. “Let’s go.”
Iranaputra and Gelmann followed close behind the Colonel, with Shimoda and Hawkins bringing up the rear. From time to time Hawkins flashed his beam back the way they’d come, but no ghosts, alien or otherwise, were trailing in their wake.
The new passageway turned out to be surprisingly short. It soon opened into a large, domed room which in turn led to a vast flat-roofed chamber. So capacious was the roughly rectangular arena that their beams barely reached the ceiling. The room itself was virtually featureless save for a few unidentifiable protrusions and one large oval recess of indeterminate purpose set high up on the far wall.
“Some kind of warehouse or storage chamber.” Shimoda knelt to examine the floor, which was fashioned of dark, unpolished material.
“There’s something over here!” The excitement of discovery gave emphasis to Gelmann’s announcement.
A large dark green plate secured billboardlike halfway up one wall was filled with oversize abstract etchings. The curves and straight lines suggested writing meant to be read from a distance.
“Doesn’t suggest anything to me.” Shimoda was the closest thing they had to a philologist, which wasn’t saying much. “Except that we may, just may, have truly stumbled into a buried alien city, as the robot claims.”
“Blowing horns and banging cymbals, reason arrives.” Ksarusix made a vaguely impolite mechanical noise. “About time too.”
“I still think it may be an old military facility.” Follingston-Heath was as yet unwilling to abandon a favored theory. He indicated the oversize inscriptions. “That may be some kind of military code, or simply decorative abstractions.”
“Boy, are you stubborn,” the robot commented. “You’ll learn.”
“That is what we are here for, old thing. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs.” Follingston-Heath was studying the wall. “Not a weld, a seam, not a bolt. It might as well have been poured whole and complete straight from the mold.”
“Over here.” Shimoda was standing off to their left. They moved to join him.
With a thick finger he traced barely visible lines in the wall. One ran along its base while another soared upward perpendicular to it. “Could this be a door?”
With his monocled eye Follingston-Heath tracked the vertical line upward. “Possible. Be one hell of a door. Quite suitable for admitting large military equipment or other sizable machinery.”
“Admitting it to where?” Shimoda wondered. “Anything large enough to need a door this size could not leave this room by any other way. Certainly not via the passage we used.”
Hawkins was shining his light back the way they’d come. Now he jogged halfway across the spacious floor, stopping in the middle. “Speaking of that passage.”
“Yes, dear?” Gelmann prompted him.
“I think it’s gone.”
“Gone? What do you mean, ‘gone’?” Holding his light out in front of him, Iranaputra hurried over to rejoin his friend. “As the Sivanmandra says …”
“Bugger the Sivanmandra,” Hawkins muttered, “and all the rest of your Pandalian philosophy. What does it say about being screwed? ‘Cause that’s what we are.”
Advancing together, the five of them retraced their steps until they were standing before the opening through which they’d entered. Ksarusix hung back, cackling most unrobotically.
“Higher intelligence. Just goes to show, you never know. Higher intelligence.”
“Shut up or die,” Hawkins informed it pleasantly.
