They entered a moderately sized chamber, with shelves and cabinets lining the bulkheads. Everything was a bit higher than convenient. Rudy tried to open some of the cabinets, but the doors were stuck fast, and Hutch had to cut into them. Inside they found fabric and tools and lumps of something that might once have been food.

Jon moved smoothly through the zero-gee environment, surprisingly agile for a big guy, occasionally reaching out to touch a bulkhead or one of the objects they found—on one occasion, a gauge—much as one might handle a relic.

They passed into a corridor. Some debris was loose, afloat, drifting in an orderly fashion around the interior as the station continued its slow tumble. “There don’t appear to be any remains here,” Hutch reported.

Antonio was quiet throughout. Matt suspected he was on his private channel, recording his impressions.

They spent several hours in the station. Hutch reported back that the circuitry, the power links, everything was fried. “Looks as if they had an accident of some sort. Or were attacked.”

“Maybe somebody tried to seize the place?” suggested Matt. “And things went wrong?”

“Don’t know.”

“And no bodies? Nothing that looks like a corpse?”

“Nothing like that, no. It’s hard to tell, but I’d say whoever was here did not get taken by surprise.”

Jon broke in: “Hutch, I think we’re looking at some data storage. This was an operational center of some sort.” They’d wandered into an area filled with screens and black boxes.

“My God,” said Rudy. “You think there’s any chance at all we could recover something?”

“I suppose there’s always a chance, Rudy. But you’re talking about electronic storage. How long does that last?”

Matt knew the answer to that one. If you want data to survive, carve it in rock.

“Anyhow”—Jon was examining the equipment—“this stuff looks burned out. All of it.”

The furniture, chairs and tables and a few sofas, suggested that the inhabitants were bipeds. They were somewhat large. When Hutch sat down in one her feet didn’t reach the deck.

They broke into narrow compartments that must have been living quarters. They found a system that had provided food and water. “Also burned out,” said Jon. “Something odd happened here.” He started taking electronic equipment apart, moving from chamber to chamber. “It’s the same everywhere. It’s all so old it’s hard to be sure, but everything looks fused to me.”

“What would cause something like that? asked Rudy.

“An electrical surge.”

And, finally, Hutch’s voice: “Lightning.”

Matt understood. The omegas.

“That would also explain,” she continued, “how it got blown out here.”

There were telescopes, although nobody could see through them because the lenses were coated with dust that had become permanently ingrained.

There were a concourse and meeting rooms. Four globes had once occupied choice locations. They were about three stories high and had been filled with water. All were shattered. Where one had stood, an icy sphere remained intact. The others had apparently broken before the water froze. The deck around them was still icy.

ANTONIO’S NOTES

The station is the most utterly lost place I’ve ever seen.

—Friday, January 18

chapter 29

THEY SPENT THREE days looking for the right place to send down a landing party. Hutch insisted they stay away from forests and jungles. Too easy to get ambushed by Far Silvertri’s efficient-looking predators. They also wanted a site that provided a relatively recent target. And, finally, a place where they wouldn’t have to do a lot of digging.

The ruins were not as widespread as had at first seemed to be the case. “It doesn’t look as if the population ever got that large,” said Jon.

They sat around in the McAdams, the five of them, searching the displays, discarding all suggestions for one reason or another. Too old was the most common complaint. Probably been there for thousands of years. Or it didn’t look like a place that would provide information. Or it looked like too much work to get in.

Toward the end of the third night, Antonio spotted something along the southern extremity of the turkey continent.

On the side of a snow-covered mountain, about a quarter of the way up, a broken tower jutted out of the ground.

And nearby, buried—

“There’s a building.”

It was a three-story structure, seemingly intact, the roof just about even with the snow cover.

The top of the tower was missing. Parts of it lay scattered under the snow. There was no way to know how high it had been. It was squat and heavy, rectangular, with sharply defined corners, and a stairway leading to a platform.

Below it, the mountain sloped away in a long, gradual descent to a plain that appeared utterly lifeless save for some scattered vegetation and a few birds.

RUDY WASN’T AS excited about making the descent as he pretended. The place looked wilder than the chindi world had. The forests were darker, the rivers more turbulent, the skies more ominous. Where the chindi world had cities and even traffic lights, Far Silvestri had ruins and vast empty plains, and the only light on the nightside came from electrical storms. It was strange: He’d expected ultimately that Hutch would say that a mission to the surface was too dangerous, but she seemed caught up with the general fever, too, had changed, had become in all the strangeness someone else, someone he didn’t really know. So when he’d voiced his enthusiasm for going along she’d said okay, and, of course, the others had joined in. No one was ready to get back inside the ships and start the long voyage to the black hole at Tenareif. They needed a break. So they were going down, and he’d made all the noise, done it because it was expected of him. He was the researcher on the mission, the scientist. Jon was a specialist, a physicist. He’d done his work with the Locarno. His reputation was forever secure. When this journey was recorded, became epic material for future generations, he knew it would be Jon who would stand out. For good or ill. Whether Rudy liked it or not, that was the truth of it.

But it was okay. Rudy was part of it, had come closer to realizing his dreams than he’d ever thought possible. So his role was to suck it up, strap on the belt and activate the Flickinger field, and pretend not to notice the strangeness, but just help dig his way into the building below the snow cover.

Dig his way into history.

Antonio admitted that, to tell the truth, he’d rather stay with the ship because it looked hostile on the ground, but he’d go anyhow. “Have to,” he told Rudy, admiring Rudy’s willingness, once again, to venture onto what he called another dark street. “This doesn’t feel the same as going down to talk to Smitty,” he continued. “But it’s my job. So let’s go look at the tower. And whatever else is on the slope.”

Matt held Hutch to her promise. He would pilot the lander. Rudy admired that. If Matt felt any concern about going down, he hid it well.

Jon was blasé about it all. He wasn’t really excited about a building on a mountain slope. It wasn’t like crossing over to a derelict station that might have been ten thousand years old. In fact, he told Matt, he thought it was dangerous. But he understood why the others wanted to go, and if they wanted him along, he’d be glad to accompany them.