“How will he know?”

“Just tell him. He’ll accept your command.”

It occurred to her that Hutch was showing a lot of trust in her judgment. “If you get inside,” Alyx said, “leave the imager on. Or something. So I can see what’s happening.”

“I will. And listen, Alyx, there’s probably nothing to worry about.”

Right. Sure. We do stuff like this every day.

Heywood Butler, the horror king, would have loved this situation. And she found herself conceptualizing the plot for him. The heroine remains behind while the landing party goes over. But they drop out of sight over there, and something else comes back.

A chill worked its way up her spine.

THE MOONSCAPE PASSED slowly beneath them.

Hutch had timed the rendezvous to coincide with the chindi’s departure from the storm. They had pictures of its docking facilities, but everything was closed up and there was no trace of a launch-and-recovery capability other than a couple of hatches. She moved the lander in close and touched down briefly, to see whether the ship would respond. She blinked lights and requested, in English, permission to come aboard.

“Not very friendly,” grumbled George.

“Do you want to rethink breaking in on these folks?” Hutch asked.

Well, minds had been made up. So George and his colleagues had no difficulty coming up with seven or eight reasons to go ahead. She sensed that, individually, none of them wanted to do so. But a group mentality had taken over.

So in the end, she circled back to the topside area, intending to use as their entry point the small round hatch between the two low ridges. It was an arbitrary choice, or maybe she selected it because it was well away from the launching and docking sections. In a more quiet neighborhood.

“I’ll secure as best I can,” she said. “If the thing starts to move after we’re out on the surface, get back inside in a hurry. I make no guarantees that it’ll be possible to wait for anybody.

“Now, answer a question for me. After we knock, and nobody comes to the door, what are we going to do?”

George looked as if he’d been giving the matter considerable thought, as doubtless he had. It was, she thought, the most likely outcome. “If they don’t answer, we are going to draw the obvious conclusion.”

“Which is?”

“That nobody’s home.”

“I see.” Hutch’s eyes narrowed. “So then we are going to…” Her voice trailed off, inviting him to finish.

“…look for a way to open the hatch ourselves.”

“Okay. What happens if there is no manual?”

“Hutch, we can’t just let this thing go away. One way or another, we have to get into it.”

“Which means…?”

“…if we have to we’ll cut our way in.”

“Cut our way.”

“Yes.”

“That presents a danger to the occupants.”

“Surely we can do it in a way that opts for safety.”

“Not easily,” she said.

“Well, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, shall we?”

The target hatch was in a plain bordered by two ridges that angled in on it. Pointing forward to the bow. Between the ridges lay a section of flatland. Good place to bring down the lander. Behind it, about fifty meters, the ridges joined.

“Hutch.” It was Bill. “You’re being tracked by one of its sensors. It knows you’re coming.”

GEORGE HAD NOT gotten past Herman’s death. Never would. The images from that terrible moment on the ground at the place they called Paradise were a knife in his heart. He would never forget how those creatures had turned, how their beatific appearance had shifted, the gentle eyes gone demonic, the amiable smiles hungry. They’d come for him, and Herman had tried to intervene as he always had, but he’d gone down beneath the talons and claws. One of the things had sunk its teeth into Herman’s neck and Herman had looked to him for help that one time, but George had been fighting off his own nightmare.

Hutch had almost persuaded him that the mission had been successful, despite the losses. But now, as they settled toward the chindi, he knew that was a lie, a deception, a piece of motivational manipulation. What after all had they found? An abandoned moonbase near a decimated world, a group of primitives, and an empty house.

The gray bleak landscape was growing larger. He could see the proposed landing site. And the hatch.

This was the real prize. Herman would not have wanted him to sit on the Memphis and wait for Mogambo to come and knock on the door. Because that’s what he’d do. He would establish communications with whoever waited inside, and they would talk about science and God, about why the universe existed, about the future relationship between the two species. And the world would forget Safe Harbor, which had died stillborn, and the killer angels, and the Retreat. Herman and George would become a footnote to the real story.

No. This was his chance, for himself and for Herman, and for everybody who’d trusted him. He pictured himself with the pilot of the alien ship, somehow seated in front of a blazing fire, downing beer and pizza.

And he thought: If I could do that, if I could have an hour with him, I wouldn’t care if the damned thing took off with me on board. I really wouldn’t care.

From short range, it was hard to see how anyone could miss the obvious fact that the chindi was shaped rock. No natural object. And no attempt to make it look like one, although he could see it had not been turned out of a mold. This was a vessel that LeTurno might have created, or Pasquarelli. A piece of art rather than an engineering product. And there was something ineffably mournful about the design.

He did not mention his impressions to the others in the cabin, none of whom would have understood. Nick and Hutch were good people, but they were essentially superficial creatures, unable to grasp the poetry of the moment. And Tor, who might have perceived the implications of the chindi’s architecture, was probably too distracted by the captain.

They crossed the terminator, and the chindi broke into blinding sunlight. Hutch did something at the controls, and they moved closer.

They hovered over the flat patch of land, gray and level and unspectacular save for the silver coin at one end, the hatch, the door into the future. He checked his harness with easy familiarity, as if he were a veteran jumper.

“Don’t forget,” Hutch said, “this place will have no gravity. Keep together. And no sudden moves.”

Yes, Maw.

George picked up the wrench he’d brought along and looked at it. Historic wrench. Maybe wind up in the Smithsonian one day, after he used it to bang on the hatch.

The chindi filled the viewports, and George’s pulse pounded in his ears.

WITH A SLIGHT jar, the lander set down. Hutch did things, and the lights came on, the electronics changed tone, and the cabin began to depressurize.

“Welcome to the chindi,” said Tor.

George got up and stood by the airlock. Hutch looked out at the rockscape as if to make sure there weren’t savages approaching. They connected their tether, George at one end, Hutch at the other.

“Got your line ready?” Nick asked George.

“What do you mean?”

“Your remark for history.”

“This isn’t a world, Nick. It’s just a hollowed-out rock.”

“I still think you should say something. Something a little more rousing than last time.”

“Okay,” he said. “I will.”

The air pressure went to zero, the outer hatch cycled open, and George looked out across the rocks. The hull of an alien ship. A tiny world. He floated out the door, got hold of the ladder, and pushed himself down. Nick appeared in the hatchway.

George’s feet touched ground. But he had to hold himself down. “Well,” he said, “here we are.”

Nick gazed at him. “That’s it?”

“It’ll have to do.”

Nick began to get farther away. The lander was floating off the surface. Then the thrusters blipped, and it came back. “Everybody out,” said Hutch. “Let’s move it.”