“
What? Huh? What? Oh.
”
Ashdin blinked, sat up, and looked around.
“
I
’
m sorry. I drifted out for a while.
”
“
Anything that passes the time,
”
said Norla.
“
Go ahead and take some water.
”
Ashdin nodded and sucked greedily at her suit
’
s water tube. Norla looked at her worriedly. Wandella Ashdin was a mess. A dirty, sleepless, hungry, frightened mess. Norla knew she and Koffield didn
’
t look any better.
“
We
’
re going to get through this,
”
she said.
“
We
’
re almost there. Just a little while longer.
”
“
This is Research Dome Control. One minute to blowout. Stand by for explosive decompression. Commence all safety precautions.
”
“
Like what?
”
Norla asked.
“
Just hang on,
”
said Koffield.
“
Hold on and make it through, that
’
s all.
”
“
Thirty seconds.
”
Silence that surely must have lasted far longer than ten seconds.
“
Twenty seconds. All charges primed and armed. All safety circuits off.
”
And again, a wait that lasted far too long.
“
Ten seconds. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five.
”
It was going to happen. Suddenly the moment they had wished for so devoutly these last twenty-four hours seemed far too close. .
“
Four. Three. Two. One.
”
“
Ze—
”
The world was shattered by a thousand blasts of thunder, booming, rumbling, roaring all around them. Even through their helmets, the sound was impossibly large. The ground shook, bucking and heaving. The sky outside the tomb lit up as if jolted by a sky full of lightning, as the dome was literally split asunder in a thousand places. The first of the shock waves hit them, a wall of compressed air that punched through the entrance of the tomb and slapped them back against the marble globe. Clouds of dust erupted from every corner of the tomb, and the globe itself rocked back and forth ever so slightly, just enough to provide Norla with the terrifying image of the giant weight rolling over on top of them.
The globe held steady, but the rest of the world did not.Bits of marble bounced and pinged around the tomb as the walls and floors suddenly sprouted new cracks and stress breaks that were not part of Oskar DeSilvo
’
s sterile, platitudinous geometry.
The explosions went on and on, and did not truly end, but instead were merely subsumed into a new and more terrifying sound, the screaming, roaring wail of megatons of air blasting its way out into cold space. New shock waves shook and rattled the tomb as jets of air went supersonic in their rush out of the dome. Norla watched in horrified fascination as cyclones sprouted out of nowhere and marched across the landscape, ripping up everything in their paths. Two of the twisters collided and blew each other apart.
The wind screamed and howled and bellowed, and the air was full of debris that flew in all directions. A massive tree dropped to the ground directly in front of the tomb entrance, and a violent gust of wind threw branches, sticks, mud, and gravel into their faces. They raised their arms to protect their faceplates. One piece of gravel zinged into Norla
’
s helmet, starring the armored transplex, but not breaking it.
Water precipitated violently out of the air as the pressure dropped and the cold of space struck at the dome
’
s interior. Sheets of rain slammed into the superheated ground and immediately erupted into columns of steam and water vapor.
Then, somehow, the terrifying chaos began to subside. The last of the wind and air howled away. Sound itself faded away as the air that bore the sound jetted out into space.
The violence of air in motion gave way to the stillness of vacuum—and the silence of the tomb.
“
Are we ready?
”
Koffield asked.
“
Ready as we
’
re going to be,
”
said Wandella Ashdin.
“
Not like we have much else to do for the next month,
”
said Norla.
“
All right then,
”
Koffield said.
“
Let
’
s get started.
”
In spite of the rigorous decontamination scrub-down they had gotten while still in their suits, and then once again when they were out of them, Koffield, Norla, and Ashdin had been put under a thirty-day quarantine. They had been shut away in a bioisolation bunker connected to, though at present sealed off from, Research Dome. None of them liked it, but there was little they could do about it.
The funerary urn itself, and everything else they had brought back from Founder
’
s Dome, had been sealed in with them. The decontamination crews had run the urn through a chemical decontamination, but that could only sterilize the exterior. Obviously, since they had no idea what might be in it, they couldn
’
t risk heat-sterilizing it. Just as obviously, no one could know for sure what was inside it, and after going through the trouble, expense, and trauma of blowing a dome, the good people of Research Dome were not interested in taking needless risks. If it were going to be opened, it would be opened in quarantine. After a day spent cleaning up and recovering, not only from two days in overheated pressure suits but from the decontamination process itself, it was time to do the job.The urn was a simple cylinder about thirty centimeters in diameter and sixty centimeters deep. They had set it at the center of a worktable in Research Dome
’
s quarantine facility. After a brief examination, it was obvious that the urn opened by simply unscrewing the flush-mounted lid. Anton Koffield carefully put his hands on the lid and began to turn it. It resisted for a moment, then began to turn smoothly, if not easily.
Koffield glanced over at Ashdin, standing on the other side of the table, ready to assist. Norla was working a long-watch camera, making a permanent, unerasable record of whatever they found, moving in and around the table to get close-ups as needed.
“
It
’
s coming,
”
Koffield said.
“
The threading is very tight, but it
’
s coming. Dr. Ashdin, if you could come around the other side and help me lift it off. It
’
s quite heavy, and I want to do it carefully.
”
Wandella came over, took one side of the lid, and helped Koffield turn it through the last few windings of the thread. The excitement, the tension in the room was almost palpable. Koffield looked at Norla, and she looked back at him. He saw a strange blend of anticipation and fear in her eyes and had no doubt he wore the same expression.
“
Here we go. That
’
s got it loose,
”
he said.
“
Lift it away on my count. One, two—three.
”
They lifted the heavy lid up away from the urn and set it to one side on the table.
They all three looked down into the urn. Disappointment slapped at Koffield. Ashes. After all that, nothing but ashes.
“
Dammit!
”
Norla cried out.
“
It can
’
t be.
”
“
It isn
’
t,
”
Koffield said, holding himself calm. It was the slightest of setbacks, he told himself, and one that he had more or less expected. It had to be merely one more disguise, one more layer of trickery. He peered into the urn and saw what he was searching for.
“
Look more carefully. Those are ashes, all right—but they don
’
t take up more than a quarter of the cylinder
’
s depth. There
’
s a false bottom. Dr. Ashdin, bring that bowl over here if you will. Set
it down on the table, and help me pour out whoever, or whatever, these ashes are.
”
“
You think those might not be DeSilvo
’
s?
”
Norla asked.
“
I
’
ve given up believing anything I can
’
t prove,
”
Koffield said.
“
Take the other side of the cylinder, Doctor. Easy now.
”
The ashes poured out into the bowl. For the most part they were fine and powdery, but there were a few bits of incompletely burned bone here and there, as well as a tooth. Koffield examined the ashes thoughtfully.
“
Very interesting indeed. Norla—Officer Chandray. Get a good close-up on that tooth. It
’
s definitely not human. I
’
m no expert on animal dentition, but it looks as if someone cremated a large mammal of some sort—a pig, I do believe— and then failed to sift the ashes properly. Someone didn
’
t cover his tracks quite as carefully as he should have.
”
Koffield ran a wipe-down cloth over the interior of the urn. It was plain to see now that the upper chamber took up very little of the volume of the urn.
Ashdin peered into the interior, then pointed at a set of five dark ovals that looked very much like blobs of near-ancient sealing wax, set into the base of the chamber in a radial pattern, each sealed across what might very well be the edge of an inner lid.
“
Those look like memory polymer resin thumbprint seals,
”
she said.
It was the same sort of seal that had been used to seal up the personal property chamber on Koffield
’
s cryotank. If the proper thumb pressed down on the resin, it would dissolve away, but it would only respond to the preprogrammed prints, or to whatever other criteria had been set into it.
“
So they do,
”
said Koffield thoughtfully.
“
So they do. I wonder if I could get you and Officer Chandray to try them.
”
Ashdin was obviously hesitant about putting her hands into a funerary urn, but it seemed she could not think of any logical reason for refusing. She tried both of her thumbs, and then all her fingers, on all five of the seals, without result. Norla handed off the camera to Koffield and tried herself, but nothing happened.Koffield handed the camera back to Norla.
“
Let
’
s see if I have any better luck. I wish we could get Marquez down here to try him as well, but I don
’
t think anyone is going to be patient enough to wait for that. Make sure you have a good clear field of view with that camera.
”
Anton Koffield pressed his right thumb down onto the first seal and held it there for a few seconds.
And the seal crumbled away.
Ashdin gasped.
Norla let out a low whistle and shook her head.
“
I
’
d call that pretty convincing evidence that you were expected,
”
she said.
“
Yes,
”
said Koffield.
“
Oh, yes indeed.
”
Slowly, purposefully, he pressed his thumb down onto each of the remaining seals in turn. All of them dissolved as neatly and perfectly as the first. Koffield took another wipe-down cloth and cleaned the seal residue out and examined the interior again.
“
See that?
”
he said.
“
Get a good shot of that. There were latches under the seals.
”
He reached in and flipped each of the latches open, one by one. The lid popped up as the last latch came free.
And Anton Koffield lifted out the inner lid of the urn.
“
It looks as if there
’
s—there
’
s a stack of things in here,
”
he said for the benefit of the camera
’
s recording.
“
Each in its own padded receptacle. The first is a datacube.
”
He lifted it out, his heart pounding, his fingers trembling. He removed it from its padding, and read the label.
“My
datacube,
”
he said quietly.
“
The one I thought I was traveling with when I came to Solace.
”
He reached into the urn again, removed the next item, and took it out of its padding. But the first had been more than enough to tell him what the second was.
“
The printed book version of the same data,
”
he announced.
“
Again, the copy I thought I was carrying.
”
Koffield looked at Norla, holding the cube in one hand and the book in the other.
“
I don
’
t know what to say,
”
he told her.
“
Does this, do these
vindicate
me? I
’
m glad to have them, but why did DeSilvo—
send
them to me after stealing them from me?
”