He thought of his wife and four-year-old daughter living in Barstow, and a variety of scenarios stacked up behind their faces. Heroic dead father and lifetime benefits. Actually, he wasn’t clear on the benefits. He should be. He vowed to check that out immediately when he got back. Much better thought: heroic live father and retirement at twenty years and going into some business, defense contract consultant maybe, though he had never thought of that before. First man inside an alien spaceship. Real estate was more likely. Not in Barstow, however. San Diego, maybe, though being ex-Navy or ex-Marine would be more help there.

He began to climb, rubber-soled boots grabbing the rock and hands bracing against the opposite wall. A foot at a time. No damaging the spacecraft; not even a scratch. He heaved himself up with a grunt, again locking his boots and hands against the rock. Smooth surface, nothing like lava. Featureless and gray, amorphous. Astronauts had been trained in geology when they landed on the moon. No need to train an Army colonel. Besides, this wasn’t a natural place; what good would geology do?

At least it wasn’t slippery.

He had climbed fifteen feet when he paused and shined his light forward. Another bend above him, beyond which they had not probed with the pole-mounted cameras. Truly unknown. Rogers conjured up the few science fiction movies he had seen. He had never been a big fan of science fiction movies. Most of his buddies had enjoyed Aliens when they watched it on a VCR just out of boot camp. He tried to forget about that one.

The Guest was dead. What if that made the others angry? What if they knew, somehow, and were waiting for him?

He was still calm, still slightly high, eyes wide, pupils dilated in the dark, face moist with exertion. Up, up, and then over the lip of the bend. He rested in the nearly level tunnel beyond the bend, shining his light into impenetrable darkness. Pulling out his notebook, he worked quickly to figure angles and distances. He was about fifteen or twenty feet from the outer surface. Shining his light on a notebook page with the chart of the interior, he drew in the level tunnel. His path resembled a dogleg tire iron, thirty feet into the mound at an upward angle, then straight up twenty feet or so, and now horizontally into the interior.

Silence. No sounds of machinery, no voices, no air moving. Just his own breathing. When he had rested a few minutes, he crawled, flashlight strapped to one wrist sweeping the tunnel with every motion.

Ninety feet ahead, the tunnel opened into a larger space. He did not hesitate. Eager to be out of the confinement, Rogers scrambled forward and grabbed the lip of the tunnel with both hands, pulling his head out. He played the light across the enclosed volume.

“I’m in a cylindrical chamber,” he said aloud, “about thirty feet long and twenty across. I’m probably in the middle of the mound” — he referred to his sketch — “below the peak maybe sixty or eighty feet. The walls are shiny, like enamel or plastic or glass. Dark gray, with a bluish tint. The tunnel opens near the rear of the cylinder, and at the front” — he consulted his chart — “pointing northwest, there is another space, even larger. No sign of quarters or inhabitants. No activity.”

He stood up in the cylinder, testing the surface with his boots. There was still enough traction to walk easily. “I’m going forward.”

Rogers walked to the edge of the cylinder, keeping his light shined ahead. Then he opened his chest pack and pulled out two superbright torches. Holding them away from his eyes, he flicked the switches on both.

Mouth wide open, Rogers surveyed a cavern at least a hundred feet long and eighty feet high. The cylindrical chamber was squarely in the center of one end, placing him about twenty feet above the bottom. “It’s full of shiny facets, like a gem,” he said. “More like glass, not mirrors but shiny. Not just facets, either, but structures — beams, supports, braces. It’s like a cathedral inside here, but made of blue-gray glass.” He took several dozen pictures with the Hasselblad, then lowered the camera and just stared, trying to impress the memory and make sense out of what he was seeing.

From the end of the cylinder to the ornate gleaming surface below was a drop of at least thirty feet. No rappelling down; there was nothing to tie the rope onto, and he would not even try to hammer a piton into place.

“I can’t go any farther,” he said. “There’s nothing moving. No place I’d call living quarters. No machinery visible, even. And no lights. I’m going to turn off the torches and see if anything glows afterward.” He plunged himself into complete darkness. For a moment, his throat constricted and he coughed, the sound breaking into a chatter of echoes.

“I don’t see anything,” he said after a few minutes of darkness. “I’m going to turn the torches on to take more pictures.” He reached for the switches and then paused, squinting. Directly ahead, burning dimly and steadily, was a tiny red light, no more than a star in the vastness. “Wait. I don’t know if the video can pick that up. It’s very weak. Just a single red light, like a pinprick.”

He watched the gleam for several more minutes. All motions it made were easily explained by optical illusion; it changed neither in position nor brightness. “I don’t think the ship is dead. It’s just waiting.” Then he shook his head. “But maybe I’m jumping to conclusions, just because of one little red light.” Turning on his wrist flashlight, he mounted a telephoto lens on the Hasselblad and set the camera to a long exposure, then rested it on the lip of the cylinder, facing the red light. With a remote button, he opened the camera lens. When the exposure was complete, he reset for even longer and shot another. Then he turned on the torches and sat down to fill his memory with as much detail as he could. “It’s still silent,” he said.

After fifteen minutes, he got to his feet and instinctively brushed off his pants. “All right. I’m going back.”

To his enormous relief, nothing interfered with his return journey.

19

Edward Shaw learned of the Guest’s death two days later, when they all received a visit from Colonel Phan. After a ten-minute warning, in which time Edward quickly dressed, the curtains were drawn and all four of them faced the small, muscular brown man in his pin-neat blue uniform, standing in the central laboratory.

“How long have we got, Doc?” Minelli asked. He had been getting more and more flippant, less predictable, as the days passed. He talked often of the President and how they would soon be “outta this dump.” His speech more and more resembled a comic imitation of James Cagney. Minelli had never reacted well to overbearing authority. Edward had heard of a time, years before Minelli came to Austin, when he had been jailed on a minor dope charge, and had bloodied his face against a jailhouse door. Edward worried about him.

“You are all healthy, with no signs of contamination or illness,” Phan said. “I plan no more tests for you. You have heard from your duty officer, I believe, that the Guest is dead. I have finished the first level of autopsy, and found no microbiologicals anywhere within its system. It appears to have been a completely sterile creature. This is good news for you.”

“No bugs, m’lady,” Minelli said. Edward winced.

“I have recommended that you be released,” Phan said, staring levelly at each in turn. “Though I do not know when they will do so. As the President said, there are security concerns.”

Edward saw Stella Morgan through her window and smiled at her. She did not return the smile; perhaps the light was wrong and she did not see him; perhaps she was feeling as depressed as Reslaw, who seldom said anything now.