I realized then that she was right. There was something down there. Could it possibly provide life and sustenance for the rest of us? That was unknown.

  Lt. Quinn pondered these possibilities. “We’ve been chased out of the Teklution ship, and we’ve been ordered not to return. There are hostile individuals inside the ship. However, it’s also true that those hostiles were alive. They were breathing. They were eating something—even if it was each other. In fact, they somehow survived for months aboard that ship…”

  He stared at the Teklution ship for perhaps a full minute, thinking. During this time, Dr. Sharaf continued to prattle on about her recommended sacrifices. I couldn’t help but notice that low-ranked marines were high on her list of expendables. Ledbetter topped the list, and he was scowling at her and fingering his carbine’s trigger.

  Finally, Quinn spun around and took a step toward her. She took a step back in concern. I couldn’t blame her. She was probably used to people wanting to kill her after a rather short amount of time in her company.

  “You’re right,” he said. “We’ve got to decide now. We’ve got to make our move—right now. Either we go inside the Teklution ship, or we go down into this cave.”

  “We could do both,” Corporal Tench suggested. “Half of us go one way, half of us go the other.”

  Quinn thought about that, but he finally shook his head. “No, we’re going to stay together. If we run into a fight like we did aboard that ship, we want to have all of our strength in one place.”

  “More foolishness,” Dr. Sharaf said. “If we split in half, one group is more likely to survive.”

  “Yes, well, we don’t know much about the thing in the ice cave, but we do know what we saw aboard the Teklution ship. There are hostiles there, and very little in the way of supplies. We might be able to survive for a few days, maybe a week, but there are a lot of us.”

  Dr. Sharaf brought up her lottery idea again, but Quinn wouldn’t listen to it.

  “Forget that. If we’re going to have a chance to survive—possibly for months before rescue—we’ve got to have more than what I saw aboard that ship. Our only hope is to get lucky with the hatch below. At the very least, we’ll get to see what’s inside.”

  “A gambler,” Dr. Sharaf said, “you’re a madman gambling with all of our lives.”

  “You, Doctor,” he told her, “are free to go where you wish. You can come with Red Company, or you can go on into that Teklution ship and make some new friends. It’s all up to you.”

  With that, Quinn turned and began marching down the tunnel. We followed, and soon the dark ice cave swallowed every marine. There was a bit of grumbling and a lot of bemoaning of fate, but in the end, everyone followed us—even Dr. Sharaf and her minions.

  I’ve got to say, I was sorry to see the dim sun disappear once again as we entered that tunnel. The jagged ice looked like white daggers overhead, or perhaps the teeth of a monster as we walked into its mouth.

  We wound around and around, and it seemed this time that it took longer than ever to make the trip to the bottom. That was probably due to Dr. Sharaf and her team. They were inexperienced, stumbling, and slow. They were technical types, science nerds who rarely got out of their lab aboard Borag.

  Every mining ship had a team such as this. They rarely did anything as adventurous as go outside and check out anomalies deep under the ice of an unknown dwarf planet. Normally, they simply worked on geological issues, like deciding the best way to dig into a big chunk of rock and extract its ore with maximum efficiency and speed. They were somewhat out of their league today, but they were game, I had to give them that.

  Fifteen minutes later, we finally made our way to the top of that odd hill of ice deep underground and found the hatchway. It was still sealed as it had been before.

  Lt. Quinn was jostled when Dr. Sharaf rushed over the ice to see the hatchway. “Amazing,” she said. She’d been saying that the whole way down.

  “Dr. Sharaf?” Quinn asked. “What exactly happened to the people aboard the Teklution ship?”

  She glanced at him, but she didn’t answer. Then, she began climbing down to the strange, sealed hatchway. She got down on her hands and knees in the end, crawling into the hole and running her fingers into every crack and cavity she could find.

  At least, I thought to myself, she had some spirit. I knew quite a few of the marines right here in Red Company who wouldn’t want to do what she was doing right now.

  She spoke over her shoulder to us as she searched for a way in. “The ship is sealed tight,” she said, “as if it’s waiting for some kind of attack. My instruments indicate the metal is quite thick—I doubt we can burn our way inside.”

  We sent messages and tapped on the hatch, but we weren’t able to communicate with anyone inside—if there was anybody in there.

  “No transponder systems, no the emergency code transmitters,” Dr. Sharaf said, consulting with her team. They had a variety of instruments the rest of us didn’t carry. “If there is someone inside, they’re either staying quiet, or they died some time ago. If the hatch has lost power completely, we’ll never be able to get in.”

  “Can’t we just cut our way in?” Quinn asked.

  She shrugged. “I just said your weapons and my tools aren’t up to the task.”

  “Um… sirs?” Charlie said, daring to speak up for the first time.

  The foreman, who still held onto his leash, shook the chain and glared at him.

  “I have a suggestion,” Charlie said.

  “Let’s hear it,” Quinn replied, waving the foreman back.

  “Maybe we could use one of the laser drill-bots. I bet I could burn a hole in that hatchway.”

  “If we do that, we risk depressurization,” Quinn said. “We need that air.”

  “Yes, but if we can’t get inside, we’re dead anyway.”

  Lt. Quinn nodded, acknowledging the truth of Charlie’s words. “We don’t know who built this thing, or if they’re still alive inside. If there are any survivors inside, we’ll pretty much kill them on the spot. I’ll consider that as a final drastic option.”

  Charlie and I exchanged glances. To our minds, it was high time to try something drastic. Whoever was inside there, after all, had obviously been in there for at least six months, the time that it took us to fly this far. More likely, they’d been there for closer to a year. They were probably dead by now.

  But it wasn’t my job as a simple grunt in a marine attachment to second-guess the ship’s chief scientist, so I kept my mouth shut.

  Eventually, Dr. Sharaf gave a little squall. While we were arguing, she’d spent her time working on the hatchway.

  We rushed to the frosty rim of the opening, aiming our carbines and our flashlights into the hole after her. We illuminated her from a dozen directions at once.

  “Turn off those damn lights,” she complained. “I’m not hurt, but I found something.”

  “What?” Quinn said. “What’d you find, Doctor?”

  “It’s strange… but this edge, I don’t think it’s just an edge. I think there are tiny grooves in the metal. And I think that if I touched a series of these contacts in the right order, an electrical charge would...”

  As she was saying this, she was fooling around. She had a number of instruments deployed. Some of these had logic probes, small needle-like tips of metal that were wired to something that looked like a voltmeter. I thought the instrument must be more complicated than that, because there were at least six probes and wires going back to the thing, not just two.

  Whatever the case, while she was fooling around with the dials and the other instruments on her device, the outline of the hatchway lit up. Suddenly, it rose right under her feet, pushing her up at least a foot or so higher than the surrounding ice.

  It began to slowly slide away, pushing ice aside. Dr. Sharaf made a squawking sound and bounced out of the hole. Due to the low gravity and her panic, she leapt a good five yards into the air and landed in a heap on the ice outside the hole. We caught her and stood her up.

  To our utter surprise, the hatch began to open. As nothing came out immediately to attack us, we edged closer.

  “Oh my God, it’s opening up!” Sharaf exclaimed. “I got it to open!”

  A puff of vapor rose up from a small revealed chamber.

  “That’s an airlock. It has to be!”

  Encouraged by this welcome development, we began to crowd around. The hatchway continued to slide open, revealing a dark and ominous interior. Our team of marines and scientists hesitated for a moment, unsure of what they might find inside.

  Charlie had no such qualms. He bounced inside and explored the interior. “I think it will hold all of us—if we squeeze.”

  Quinn stepped forward, shining his flashlight into the opening. “All right,” he said, his voice firm and resolute. “There’s no point standing around out here in the ice. Let’s do this.”

  The group followed him into the ship, stepping cautiously over the threshold. The air was musty and stale, and the darkness seemed to press in around us.

  We cycled through the airlock until all of us were in a mysterious passageway. It was not flat and even with the surface of Eris. It slanted down rather sharply instead. We followed it along, and I realized after a bit that we were hearing the clank and clatter of our boots on metal decks.

  “Air…” I said. “We’ve got pressure, Lieutenant.”

  Sharaf and her sidekicks began testing the atmosphere. “The pressure is low. Give it minute. It appears to be cycling up.”

  “Do a chemical analysis,” Quinn said. “Can we breathe this mix?”

  “What do you think I’m doing, fool?” Sharaf grumbled. She worked her instruments and she slapped at her minions until they came back with a solid verdict.

  “It’s breathable,” she said at last. “The argon, the nitrogen, the percentages are off a little from Earth normal, but it’s nothing dangerous. The oxygen content is actually a little too high. Don’t breathe too deeply, you might actually become hyperventilated.”

  “Great!” exclaimed Quinn.

  “But,” she warned, even as Lt. Quinn reached up to open his helmet, “be forewarned, there might be some kind of contaminant.”

  He looked at her. “Like what?”

  “I don’t know, something we can’t measure. A toxin, a biotic pathogen. There are lots of tiny things that our instruments will not detect—things that could kill us all.”

  Quinn shrugged and took off his helmet anyway. He breathed deep and then snorted with his nose a few times. “It smells kind of lemony,” he said. “Not bad, really…”

  Then he sneezed. Everybody took a step back, and he laughed.

  “It’s just dust,” he said. “At least, I think it is.”

  “Are you really going to leave your helmet off and breathe this stuff?” Corporal Tench asked.

  “Yes, in fact, I’m going to order all of you to do the same. As long as we’re breathing in our helmets, we’re actually wasting oxygen that could be used out on the surface. We can’t go out on the surface of Eris without oxygen in our tanks. We’ve got to save every puff of what we’ve got.”

  “He’s right,” Sharaf said, taking off her helmet next. “At this time, we don’t have a way of recharging our tanks.”

  “But you were talking about possible contaminants,” Corporal Tench complained.

  Sharaf shrugged. “If this air is dangerous, we’re all dead anyway. I judge it worth the risk.”

  Reluctantly, everyone opened their helmets. Soon, big plumes of steam poured from everyone’s mouth as we breathed. The air was frigid. It had to be below zero. It burned the nostrils and throat with every breath.

  To deal with the cold, we soon put our helmets back on and only cracked the face plates open to let in life-sustaining oxygen, but not to let out any more of our heat than we had to.

  “Electricity,” Tench said, almost talking to himself. “That’s our next problem. Power, then water—if we last long enough.”

  “Come on,” Quinn said, “let’s find out what else we’ve got here.”

  He marched deeper into the ship, and the rest of us followed him. We didn’t know where we were going or what we would find, but we had no choice.

  Chapter 28: The Aliens

  For once, Ledbetter and I weren’t on point. That honor went to Corporal Tench and his team, and I was glad to see it.

  We hadn’t taken fifty steps into the tomb-like spacecraft before someone began shouting far up ahead of us. As we were curious, we did a little crowding and got up close enough to hear what was happening at the front of the group.

  A human boot. That’s what it was. The word traveled quickly back down the ranks.

  “They found something.”

  “Someone’s been in here—someone besides us.”

  Of course, it only made sense that someone had been here. The Teklution crew had gone somewhere, hadn’t they? But when I caught sight of the boot, I saw that it had indeed been torn loose from the bottom of a spacesuit. There was plenty of bloodstains around the tear, which was about mid-shin.

  I suddenly felt as if we were a little bit crazy to have come in here at all. Sure, there were strange mutants and not much power, water or food aboard the Teklution ship, but whatever had destroyed them had almost certainly originated from this place.

  “Talk about walking from the frying pan into the fire…” I said.

  “I think we’re in the fire right now,” Ledbetter agreed.

  “This has got to be the weirdest spaceship I’ve ever seen,” Lt. Quinn said as we trudged along. “Look at this strange, singular passageway. It seems to be running farther than what’s reasonably possible. And who the hell builds a ship with slanting passages, anyway?”

  “That’s because it’s not a spacecraft, Lieutenant,” Dr. Sharaf said.

  Quinn halted, and we all halted with him. He stared at her, and we joined in the staring contest. “If it’s not a spacecraft, and what the hell is it? And who built it?”

  Dr. Sharaf threw her hands high in defeat. “A base? A laboratory? An installation built by… someone…”

  “Yeah, who?” Quinn asked, “and how do you know all this?”

  “I don’t know anything. I’m making logical deductions.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  She glared at him for a moment, but he didn’t back down. At last, she bared her teeth and seemed to come to a decision.

  “All right,” she said. She paused and sighed, studying the strange deck under our boots. “I guess we might as well talk more clearly now, as we seem to be trapped, and we’re probably going to meet our deaths within these metal walls.”

  “Yes, I think that’s a good idea, Doctor. Clue us in. What’s going to kill us, and why?”

  “The caretakers of this place, most likely. This is an alien laboratory stationed here to monitor and perform experiments upon humanity. At least, I think that’s what its original purpose was.”

  Quinn squinted at her. “I gather this isn’t the first such installation we’ve discovered?”

  “No, it isn’t,” Dr. Sharaf admitted. “When your captain took on this very special mission, the colonel informed me. I told him I was checking out—but he ordered me to continue serving aboard Borag. I didn’t want to go on this expedition, any more than any of the rest of you wanted to come out here. But like all of us, I owe the banks.”

  Quinn grunted with amusement. “You owe the banks, huh? Even the great Dr. Sharaf?”

  “Yes, scoff if you must. I’ve had a few mistakes in my career. There have been a few… blemishes. Some of the grant money I was given didn’t return the results I’d promised. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Interplanetary Excavations owns me just like it owns the rest of you. That’s all you need to know.”

  “All right, all right, Doctor. What are we facing? Violence? Starvation or possibly dehydration? You’re not answering my questions.”

  “All in good time. During my tenure as a lab director working for Interplanetary, I’ve come into contact with places like this before—but I’ve never seen one this big, this complex—and most importantly, never one that’s active and alive. But I’ve seen places like this long after their destruction.”

  “Destruction?”

  “Yes, usually when we find an installation like this one, it has been gutted out, burned, and destroyed.”

  “But by whom?” Lt. Quinn asked.

  Ledbetter and I exchanged frowns. Dr. Sharaf was giving us all fresh concerns.

  “We don’t know,” she said. “All we know is we didn’t do it.”

  “Huh…” Quinn said, thinking that over. His jaw worked in the air. All of us were trying to chew on the information that she was giving—and no one liked the flavor of it.

  “So,” Quinn said at last, “let me get this straight. There are some aliens around who built installations like this one around the Solar System. The government boys back on Earth are keeping that quiet. But these aliens must also have enemies of their own? We’re talking about two sets of aliens? Maybe more?”

  The doctor shrugged. “Whatever the case, in every installation we’ve located they’ve all been dead and their installations destroyed—until we discovered this one on Eris.”

  “Where are the others?” Corporal Tench interjected. He couldn’t help himself, and I couldn’t blame him for that. We all wanted to know more.

  “In various hidden sites,” she said. “One of them was discovered on Mars, in fact. We found it a long time ago, nearly thirty years back now. It was just a buried enclave like this one, full of passages inside an ovoid-shaped shell of metal. It’s buried beneath the surface of the planet at the southern pole, the coldest place on all of Mars. They seem to like the cold, for some reason.”

  “Mars, huh?” Quinn asked. “Other places, too?”

  She nodded. “Europa, Ganymede, a few other sites. They seem to favor lower gravity—lower than Earth-normal—and cold. Other than that, they’re able to thrive in an atmosphere somewhat similar to ours. I believe their computers automatically filled these chambers with the gases we need to breathe because it sensed our presence.”