He led the way. Lucinda followed. Max brought up the rear, stepping carefully over the charred ground. The deadly grass stood on both sides of the path, looking innocent under the bright blue sky. Lucinda moved slowly ahead of him.
They entered the forest. Max peered into the green hues between the tall trees and spotted the outcropping.
“I wanted to ask you,” Lucky said as they approached it, “why you were so angry when we found you, as if you knew exactly to whom you were speaking.”
“I thought you were aliens,” Max said. “And for all we knew, you could have been. I felt they were playing with us.”
“I understand,” Lucky said as they came to the foot of the rocky incline.
He led the way up, with Max bringing up the rear. At the opening, Lucky turned and said, “There’s a flashlight in each of your side pockets.”
Lucinda pulled hers from the pocket on her pack and shone it into the dark opening. Max turned on his beam, and together they went into the outer cave.
“I hope it’s open,” Lucinda said as they neared the square portal.
They stepped in together and approached the point where the barrier had been—and bumped into it.
“Still there, huh?” Lucky said behind them.
Max felt a moment of panic as he realized that he and Lucinda might live out their lives in the Centauri habitat. They would never see their homes and parents again. It would take more than four years for a radio signal just to tell Earth what had happened to them, but how would anyone get a message to the imprisoned habitat? And it would take just as long for a reply—nine years, at least, before he and Lucinda learned what had happened to the habitat, assuming anyone had been able to find out.
“No one at home may ever know what happened to us,” Lucinda said softly.
“We’ll wait,” Lucky said. “Maybe the power surges were a sign of opening and closing, and not just of your coming through. It’s possible the system has to recharge.”
“I’ve noticed one thing,” Max said. “When the barrier is up, the passage seems dead. There’s no sign that it’s doing anything, The S-curve and the feeling of blackness pressing in are gone.”
“Where would the power come from?” Lucinda asked as she took off her pack and sat down on it.
Lucky set down his light so it would cast its beam upward, then dropped his own pack and sat against it. “It might be channeled from a star somewhere.”
“From a star?” Max asked as he put down his pack and sat down against the barrier.
“Enormous amounts of energy would be needed to roll up space-time the way these passages seem to do when they join up distant points. The limits of space-time are not easily overcome, not with the safety this system shows.”
“You’ve been thinking about this,” Max said.
“I may be wrong about the source being a sun, but this system does eat huge amounts of power, at levels we can’t even measure properly. Maybe only a sun can provide the power needed, and the surges are transient. They don’t originate from a source that we can pinpoint, so I conclude that the power flows in from elsewhere, through some form of shortcut link, pumping power out of a sun, or some other suitably large source. I hope we’ll be able to go through.”
“The best we can hope for is to connect directly with the habitat,” Max said, “wherever that is, but we’ll probably come out in a long series of other places. I hope something wants us to get back.”
“There’s an advanced civilization behind all this,” Lucky continued, “and we’re sitting in one of its artifacts. When we received the message from Earth telling us that they were picking up alien tachyon communications, I thought that was all we’d ever find out, that the signals would remain indecipherable, and there would be no alien Rosetta Stone to help us read the language, but the message turned out to be in pictures, a diagram warning us about the infall of cometary objects from the outer Solar System, and nothing else. The message proved the existence of alien senders, and this may be their interstellar transport system.”
“We can’t be sure that there is an alien civilization,” Lucinda replied. “This system may be all that’s left of them, running on automatic, trapping people. Maybe even the signals Earth has received are automatic transmissions, sent out by machines.”
“I hope you’re wrong,” Lucky said. “It would be sad to find that the most important discovery in all human history is a relic, and that you were lured out by a blind program.”
Lucinda said, “Maybe we triggered something—a kind of mental manual for teaching people how to use the system, their way of making contact with younger races. They wait until the civilization is advanced enough, then take a sample of its people and put them through a maze.”
“Some manual,” Lucky said.
“I wonder if this alien civilization could be dangerous to us,” Max said.
“I don’t want to believe that either,” Lucky replied. “With all this accomplishment, I don’t see that there’d be anything they’d want from us, except to find out how we thought about things, how we regard the universe. They wouldn’t want to roast and eat us.” He laughed.
Max grimaced, even though he knew that the man was only trying to break the tension. “There are a lot of things no one wants to believe—but they may still turn out to be so.” He could not believe that Emil would die, but it still might happen.
“I’ve got to go outside,” Lucky said as he stood up. “Can’t get a radio signal in here on my headset. We have to know if the shuttle is picking up anything from this place. Don’t go away.” He laughed again.
Max watched his light recede and disappear through the square exit.
“Sometimes he irritates me,” Max said when they were alone.
“It’s just his relaxed style, Max. Don’t be fooled, he seems smart. My father’s like that.”
“Do you think he’s telling us everything he suspects?” Max asked.
“I don’t know. He’s thinking very hard about all this, and he is worried about us.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Max said. “Dad once told me how your father joked around when they were young. Dad never liked wise guys. I guess I got it from him.”
“Sober Sorby—that’s what my father called yours.” She tried to laugh, but her voice broke. She clasped his hand, and her fears were his own. Emil would die, and they would never find their way home.
“Look!” Lucinda cried and let go of his hand.
He pushed away from the barrier and turned around. It was glowing a deep yellow. He scrambled to his feet and put on his pack.
“Lucky!” Lucinda shouted as she got up and slipped on her pack. “Hurry!
Max watched the pulsing barrier. “Get ready! It may be now or never.” Vague forms moved behind it. They seemed to have two hands and two feet. He came up close and tried to see through. A face seemed to peer back at him, but he wondered if it was his own, distorted by the glow. Then a large eye blinked at him, and he knew that it was not his own. He wanted the barrier to come down, but feared that now the aliens were waiting to bar the way home. A second face appeared next to the one in front of him. The masklike expressions seemed to be set in a look of curiosity. He put up his right hand to the barrier, and a hand raised itself to meet his, as if in a mirror. Abruptly, the figures retreated beyond visibility.
“Lucky!” Lucinda called from far behind him. “Max, he can’t hear me. I’ll get him.”
“No! We may get separated. Are you ready?” He pointed his light.
“Yes,” she said, coming up beside him. “Lucky, come back now!”
The barrier flickered, as if there was a fire on the other side.
Max took a deep breath. “Lucky!”
“Lucky!” Lucinda called again, but got no answer. “He must have gone back to the shuttle for something.”
The barrier glowed brightly. Max turned off his light and closed his eyes against the sudden glare. There was no heat. He opened them to darkness.
“Is it down?” Lucinda asked.
He grabbed her hand and they went ahead slowly. Again, the strange darkness flowed around them as they followed the S-curve, and he saw the glow of the exit. They hurried to it and stepped out into the brightness of a blue station. Max looked up at the massive column rising above them, its inner storms still churning. There was no sign of aliens anywhere.
“Lucky will follow us,” Max said, “as long as the way stays open.” They sat down with their packs against the column and waited. “I think I saw them,” he said. “Did you?”
“No, it was too bright.”
“You were too far back,” he said. “There were alien figures behind the barrier.”
Lucinda rummaged around in one of the side pockets of her pack. “We should mark these passages. If the next one takes us home, Lucky will know how to follow us from Centauri. We’ll leave messages for those who might be looking for us. Here’s a marker.”
Max said, “What’s keeping Lucky?”
They got up and went inside, hurrying through the darkness. “It’s glowing!” Lucinda exclaimed as they passed the turn and came up against the barrier. Alien figures were again moving on the other side.
The glow diminished and died. Lucinda flicked on her light. Max touched the wall, feeling its hardness once again. “We’re cut off from Centauri,” he said, turning his light away.
“What do we do now?”
“Try the next entrance.” He felt defeated.
“We’re on our own again,” she said.
He said nothing as she pointed her beam up and looked at him. “Max, what is it?”
“Nothing.”
“Get hold of yourself,” she said firmly, sounding like the old Lucinda—precise, ready to cut him down if he gave her an opening, except that now she was on his side. “We could have all marched into that grass. Our job is still to get home. We don’t have a choice anyway. We can’t wait here until this thing goes down again. Come on.”
They went back out into the station. Lucinda wrote a message on the smooth surface of the column: IF YOU COME OUT ON AN OCEAN WORLD,
BEWARE OF BIG SNAKES—
Max and Lucinda
She went to the next entrance and wrote:
THIS ONE GOES TO ALPHA CENTAURI FOUR,
BUT IT’S CLOSED SOMETIMES—
M and L
“It’s the best we can do,” she said. “Let’s hope the messages stay with each portal when it spins.” She put the marker in her shirt pocket. “If the next portal takes us home, we’ll come back and mark this entrance.”
“If we can,” he said.
They faced the next portal and stepped in together. Her hand slipped into his as they went forward. Max felt the familiar curve of the passage, and wondered why he could feel the turn. Even with a light in his hand, there was a sense of guiding curvature. Light-years were nothing to these shaped bridges.
He peered ahead and saw a pale glow in the exit. They came to it and looked out on a strange vista of terraces set in the side of a great mountain. Lakes of glass glistened on each terrace.
They stepped out into warm, humid air, under a mountainside terrace. The sky was gray-white and motionless, as if it were a painted ceiling.
Lucinda pointed. “Look there!”
Something had broken through the surface of a lake far below and was moving toward the edge. The thing was large, reminding Max of whales from historical holos. It growled deeply, as if it had become aware of them.
“What is it?” Lucinda asked.
The growl echoed between the mountains. They retreated from the vista, resisting its fascination. The strange thing rose from its lake and floated upward as they backed into the portal.
“That was weird,” Lucinda said as they followed the curve back into the blue station.
Max shuddered at the way the alien thing had menaced them from afar, like something in a bad dream, and wondered if they had come upon it by chance, or if it had been a warning. Again he wondered about the possible dangers of contact with aliens.
Lucinda took out her marker and wrote:
TERRACE WORLD
BE CAREFUL OF ALIEN
They entered the next portal.
“I can’t see the way out,” Max said, feeling uneasy.
“Might be a long passage,” Lucinda answered.
“None has been this long, Max said as they hurried on through the darkness. “I see the exit,” he said finally. They came to it and looked out into a blue station.
“The color’s right,” Lucinda said as they stepped out into the brightness and started across the floor. “Wait,” she added, and hurried back to the column to mark the exit:
THIS PASSAGE CONNECTS WITH A BLUE STATION
THE MARKED ENTRANCE THERE CONNECTS WITH
CENTAURI A-4
“I think that’s clear enough.”
“Those markings had better stay with the columns,” Max said.
“We haven’t seen the columns spin the last few times. It’s as if they wanted us to get lost, and now they want us to get home. Let’s wait a few minutes and see if the column spins.”
As they waited, Max thought of Emil and wanted to say something to console Lucinda, but nothing seemed right. He knew that she was blaming herself, even though it wasn’t her fault. No one could look out for another person forever.
“It’s starting to spin,” Lucinda said as he looked out across the station. He turned around, and they watched the column blur and whine, and finally stop. They went up to their exit and saw Lucinda’s sign. “That’s a relief,” she murmured. “We can rely on our markings.”
Then, as they went out into the station and searched for the mountainous shape of the habitat, Max realized that nothing would be as it had been. The life he had loved was over, even if they got back. He felt closer to Lucinda now, but wondered how she might feel toward him later.
“I hear voices,” she said.
Max stopped and listened. “I hear them, too.” His pulse quickened. It didn’t seem possible that they had found the right station in the vast alien web.
They ran forward. The habitat loomed up before them in the brightness, still frozen in the alien floor. Several figures were out by the forward manual lock.
“Hey!” Lucinda shouted to them.
Max hurried after her, feeling strangely detached, as if this weren’t happening.