“No. The electronic signature is different.”

“Is it coming toward us?”

“No. Unless it changes course, it’ll go beneath the chindi. In fact I think I see a bay opening up for it.”

“Okay. Thanks, Bill. Let me know if anything changes.”

“We should be on the other side of this rock,” said Tor. He and George began discussing the possibility of getting back into the lander and circling the ship. Meanwhile Hutch broke through and saw no evidence of air pressure. “It’s a vacuum,” she said.

They stared at one another. “How can that be?” asked George.

Hutch looked at him, you know as much as I do. She began a long horizontal cut. “Make yourselves comfortable, gentlemen,” she said. “This’ll take a few minutes.”

“What do you think about going back to where the bays are, Hutch?” asked Tor. “They’re going to take the bottle on board. We could maybe go right in with it.”

“I think it’s safer to do it this way.”

“Why?”

“I don’t think we want to take a chance on falling into the works. Let’s just be patient.”

She heard a sigh from somebody, but they didn’t argue the point. It became moot almost immediately when Bill reported that the chindi had taken the bottle aboard and closed up again.

Hutch cut a piece big enough for George to get through, and pushed on it. After some resistance, it broke free and dropped. It was dark down there. But the intriguing thing was that it fell.

“Gravity inside,” she said.

Nick put a light down into the hole. There was an airlock, although the inner hatch was open. And a ladder descended through it down into a passageway.

ALYX WAS HORRIFIED to watch George disappear inside the hull. He was wearing an imager on his vest, but everything was dark, and his lamp didn’t help much. He was on the ladder, and the floor looked about six meters down. She knew, absolutely knew, this was going to have a bad end.

She’d had some respect for Hutch until this last hour or so. But watching her stand there like an idiot while George hammered on the hatch had literally driven her up the wall. She’d half expected it to open and some ungodly creature to snatch them all inside. But she’d resisted getting on the link and telling them what she thought. She tried to console herself by translating the scene to choreography, as she’d done so often on this flight.

Too many sims. How many times over the last four hundred years, in books and theater, had humans made contact, only to discover the aliens were either vastly superior mentally, or were primarily interested in having people as snacks. The culture was saturated with the twin premises, and it was hard to shake the notion that one or the other had to be true.

Hutch, I really wish you wouldn’t do this.

She watched them climb down past the inner lock. They stepped off into the passageway. It was unlighted, it ran in both directions, and it looked like nothing more than a tunnel with walls hewn out of rock. A few doors lined the walls. The doors appeared to be metal. Each provided a gripping ring, or an ornamental ring—it was difficult to know which—bolted about head high.

“Which way?” asked Tor.

She saw George hesitate, trying to make up his mind. He mentally flipped a coin and turned right, toward the after section of the ship. The others fell in line behind him. And the images got fuzzy.

“Losing video, Hutch,” Alyx said.

“How’s the sound?”

“Some interference. Otherwise okay.”

“All right. We’re going to go in a little way. I’ll let you know if we find anything interesting.”

“I hope you don’t.”

The closest door was on the left, about fifteen paces.

“—They look airtight—,” Hutch said, between bursts of noise.

“Hutch, I’m losing you.”

“—loud and clear—.”

“Say again, Hutch. I can’t hear you.”

Hutch came back toward the ladder. “Your signal’s breaking up,” she said. “Sit tight. We won’t go far.”

GRAVITY WAS AT about a half gee. The corridor was wide enough for ten people to walk abreast, and the overhead would have been out of Tor’s reach had he stood on George’s shoulders.

The walls had a textured feel, not unlike sandstone.

They stood in front of the first door. It was rough-hewn, but it was set inside a frame and appeared to be airtight. Tor pushed on the ring, then pulled it. It didn’t budge, and nothing happened.

“Why do you think this is vacuum down here?” asked George. “Are they all dead?”

It had been Tor’s first thought. He wondered whether whole sections of the chindi had been abandoned. “I don’t think it necessarily means that,” Hutch said. “This is a big ship. Trying to keep it warm and pressurized would need a lot of energy.” Of course, this area was capable of providing life support. The airlock at the entrance, and the door in front of them, demonstrated that.

But it raised a question: Why was the chindi so big? What was this thing, anyhow?

Chindi.

That was Alyx’s name for it. The elusive spirit. It was odd to think of any object as massive as this thing in those terms. You could very nearly fit Seattle inside it.

There was something Greek in its lines. Its exterior possessed no decorative parts, no raised bridge or swept-back after-section or anything else intended to draw attention. Rather it was a model of simplicity and perfection. Tor knew that some quick-witted vendor would convert it into a sales property, that eventually the chindi would show up in cut glass and on decanters and in pewter.

Nick pointed at the frame. A small oval stud was set into the rock. They looked at one another, and George touched it, pressed it, mashed the heel of his hand against it.

Something clicked. George pushed on the ring, and the door swung open.

Tor was ready to bolt. Silly, considering the fact they were in a vacuum. Nobody could be hiding in there. He glanced over at Hutch, lovely in the lamplight. She had, probably without realizing it, retrieved her cutter, and was holding it in her right hand.

They looked into the interior, and their lamps illuminated a large empty chamber. The walls curved into the overhead, which itself was slightly concave.

“We’ve lost contact with Alyx,” said Hutch. “There’s a dampening effect in here.”

Tor tried to call Bill, but got only static.

George stood looking around the room. “Not much to see,” he said.

Hutch squeezed Tor’s arm. “Lights out,” she said. “Quick.”

The lamps all went off. “What is it?” asked Tor.

“Somebody’s coming,” she said.

“HOW CAN SOMEBODY be coming?” Tor asked. “We’re in a vacuum.”

“Something then,” Hutch said. And, to George: “Still want to say hello?”

He didn’t respond. Hutch’s own heart was racing. She could feel a vibration through the floor. Something was out there, out in the passageway. Her fingers closed on the grip of the cutter and she instinctively pushed up against a wall.

“What are you going to do?” asked George. Despite the fact that he was talking over a radio link and couldn’t be overheard, he whispered.

That was a pretty good question. She wondered why suddenly she was in charge. “Depends what happens,” she said.

They moved to either side of the door. Gradually, the corridor brightened.

“Everybody keep back,” said Hutch, her own voice a whisper.

The vibrations stopped.

A beam of light flashed into the chamber. It arced around the room.

First contact between an advanced civilization and a group of intrepid explorers.

She could hear them all breathing.

“Maybe,” began George, “we should—”

“No,” said Hutch. “Stay put.”