City of Ruins - By Kristine Kathryn Rusch Page 0,87
for this trip, one of two that we made. We agreed that if the Dignity Vessel was here we would proceed with caution. DeVries, Rea, and I would search for a way into the vessel. Kersting and Seager would go to the first section of equipment and take readings off of it, recording as much as they could so that our linguists and scientists ran figure out what’s going on here. Most of what we got the last time was distorted by our own movements.
Quinte and Al-Nasir will explore the area near the door, to make sure that there are no hidden ways to lock us in or activate something that we don’t want to activate.
Their instructions specifically warn them not to touch anything.
They were both happy with both parts of the instruction: the fact that they’d be looking and not touching, and the fact that they would be closest to the door in case something went wrong.
I get the area near the door. DeVries goes toward the back where the ship’s wings stretch out. Rea is going to walk beneath the curved front of the ship—or what I think of as the front—and see if there is a hatch anywhere. On half of the Dignity Vessels we’ve found—or I should say, on the half we’ve round with an intact front—we’ve found hatches.
That was one of my first clues that not all Dignity Vessels are exactly alike. They were altered, either by time or convention or need or all three.
We move cautiously, as if we are diving. That was my instruction up top, and I plan to live up to it down here, despite my own excitement. We’re also running on a time limit: six hours, which might feel extra long, considering now much oxygen we’re using.
We’re all nervous and excited. The causes may be different—I think Al-Nasir is frightened enough for all of us—but the result is the same.
If we were actually in space, I’d worry about our oxygen use rate. I’m less worried about it here.
We’re taking more readings from the air and the particles. We can breathe here if we need to. It’s not the oxygen that’s the problem; it’s those particles. And with the groundquake, the rescue, and all of the things that followed, our own team of scientists hasn’t had a chance to adequately test anything we brought back from our last trip.
We’re proceeding exactly the same way in this one as we did the last time, because we have no new information.
I move slowly across the floor, stopping after each step and looking around, just like I would on a dive. The others do as well. It looks like we’re doing a particularly well-timed ballet, but we need to be cautious.
Part of me feels as if something has changed here, but I have no idea what that would be. And I can’t really trust my feelings at the moment. They might be based on excitement or expectations or sheer nerves, nerves I’m not entirely admitting.
Still, I have a sense that we’re being watched.
I force myself to concentrate on the ship as I walk toward it. The laser sears are as I remember them; the door is in the same place, and it is closed.
But there is a difference.
A vast difference.
One that makes my breath catch.
The exterior of the ship is different. The color is richer. The score marks look deeper, more damaging. The outline of the door is clearer.
And the ship itself glistens as if it’s waiting for us.
As if it’s waiting for me.
* * * *
FORTY-FOUR
T
hey’re back.” Anita Tren sounded excited. She blew up the real-time image of the exterior of the Ivoire without Coop’s permission. Suddenly all of the screens on the bridge were filled with images of the abandoned sector base.
Coop shifted in his command chair, turning toward the full wall screen on the left side of the bridge. That screen showed the door leading into the sector base.
The door was easing open.
He almost corrected Anita, but didn’t. His breath had caught, and he felt just a little redeemed. He had thought the outsiders would return.
And now they had.
This time there were seven, not five.
“Compare, would you?” he said to Dix. “I want to know if any of those people are the same ones who were here forty-eight hours ago.”
Dix didn’t answer. He had been unusually quiet since getting the news about the sector base. He seemed shrunken in on himself, exhausted, as if he couldn’t sleep.