Lungfish

8

Maybe Gavin is growing up, Ursula hoped silently as she flew down the narrow passages—lit at long intervals by tiny glow bulbs from Hairy Thunderer’s diminishing supply.

They had worked together much better, the last few days. Gavin seemed to understand that their reputations would be made with this discovery. On returning to the ship this time he had reported his own findings with rare enthusiasm, and even courtesy.

Clearly they were getting close to the heart of the habitat.

It was her turn to go down into the bowels of the asteroid, supervising the excavations. Ursula arrived at Gavin’s flag, showing the limits of his most recent explorations. It was a three-way meeting of passages. At the intersection, five or six ancient machines lay jumbled together, as if frozen in a free-for-all wrestling match. Several bore scorch marks and loose metal limbs lay scattered about.

Either these machines had taken refuge down here, from the catastrophe that had taken place on the planetoid surface, or the war had come down here, as well.

Ursula felt funny walking past them, but dissection of the alien devices would have to wait for a while. She chose one of the unexplored passages and motioned her own silent drones to follow her into the darkness.

The tunnel ramped steeply downward in the little worldlet’s faint gravity. Soon, the faint glow of the bulbs faded behind her. She adjusted the beam on her helmet and stepped lightly over the wreckage of yet another ancient airlock, peering into the pitch-blackness of the next yawning chamber. Her headlamp cast a stark, bright oval onto what had not been exposed to light in aeons.

The rock wall sparkled where her beam hit the facets of sheared, platinum-colored chondrules—shiny little gobs of native metal condensed out of the very solar nebula nearly five billion years before. They glittered delicately.

She knew full well (in her forebrain!) that nothing could still be alive down here. Nothing could harm her. And yet, with brain and guts evolved on a savannah half a billion miles away, it was small wonder she felt a shiver of the old fight-flight fever. Her breath came rapidly. In this place it almost seemed there must be ghosts.

She motioned with her left hand. “Drone three, bring up the lights.”

“Yesss,” came the response in a dull monotone. The semisentient robot, stilt-legged for asteroid work, stalked delicately over the rubble, in order to disturb as little as possible.

“Illuminate the far wall,” she told it.

“Yesss.” It swiveled. Suddenly there was stark light. Ursula gasped.

Across the dust-covered chamber were easily recognizable tables and chairs, carved from the very rock floor. Among them lay dozens of small mummies. Cold vacuum had preserved the bipeds, huddled together as if for warmth in this, their final refuge.

The faceted eyes of the alien colonists had collapsed from the evaporation of moisture. The pulled-back flesh left the creatures grinning—a rictus that made a seeming mockery of the aeons they had waited here.

She set foot lightly on the dust. “They even had little ones,” she sighed. Several full-sized mummies lay slumped around much smaller figures, as if to protect them from something.

“They must have been nearly ready to begin colonization when this happened.” She spoke into her portable log, partly to keep her mind moving. “We’ve already determined their habitat atmosphere had been almost identical to the Earth’s, so that we can assume that was their target.”

She turned slowly, speaking her impressions as she scanned the chamber.

“Perhaps the mother probe was programmed to modify the original gene information so the colonists would be perfectly suited for whatever planet environment was avail…”

Ursula suddenly stopped. “Oh my,” she sighed, staring. “Oh my God.”

Where her headlamp illuminated a new corner of the chamber, two more mummies lay slumped before a sheer-faced wall. In their delicate, vacuum dried hands there lay dusty metal tools, the simplest known anywhere.

Hammers and chisels.

Ursula blinked at what they had been creating. She reached up and touched the mike button on her helmet.

“Gavin? Are you still awake?”

After a few seconds there came an answer.

“Hmmmph. Yeah, Urs. I was in the cleaner though. What’s up? You need air or something? You sound short of breath.”

Ursula made an effort to calm herself… to suppress the reactions of an evolved ape—far, far from home.

“Uh, Gavin, I think you better come down here. I’ve found them.”

“Found who?” he muttered. Then he exclaimed. “The colonists!”

“Yeah. And… and something else, as well.”

This time there was hardly a pause. “Hang on, Urs. I’m on my way.”

Ursula let her hand drop, and stood for a long moment, staring at her discovery.