Page 98 of Pets in Space 10

If it sounded like he was trying to convince himself, well, Lira appreciated the sentiment.

“So will you.” He had to be. That’s all.

She backed up two more steps and then turned and started down her path. She glanced back, met his gaze and then he turned and began walking his path.

“He’d better be okay,” she muttered and then felt her heart stutter when the glowing lights flickered as if in response. She moved her shoulders, shedding an unseen burden and tried to focus on why the Vorthari wanted her to go this way.

Her father had been inside, or so he said. He wouldn’t lie about it, but the Vorthari could have done something to him to alter his perception. They could be doing that to her right now.

That didn’t help at all.

Pretend this is a dig, she told herself. It’s just a dig. Like any other. What would you be doing if you weren’t in a nearly full-on panic?

Her breathing began to slow and so did her heart beats.

Her eyes started to see, and not just look.

There was a story here that might help if, as she feared, her civilization was going to have to come to grips with the idea that another species—or two—had been living under the surface of their world. It could be as seismic as the tremors.

She was part of it, whether she’d asked for it or not. So…she began to look around as her archaeologist brain tried to kick on.

Were the lights the Vorthari?

How had they come into being?

How did they function in this closed habitat?

Her steps almost faltered.

How was she functioning in this closed habitat?

“Why can I breathe?” She spoke this question out loud.

The lights that lined her path flickered again, with some urgency.

She picked up the pace and followed it around a “corner.” Or a bend.

It was a very odd sensation to lose sight of what was behind her when it seemed as if she could see for some distance around her. It was transparent, but somehow not.

She came to another one of the strange intersections, but lights barred her way on either side. Where the sections joined together, the lights flickered. It was different from the flashes, which was seriously weird.

She approached one of the sections and knelt down, extending a hand without enthusiasm. The lights brightened and now she could see the join. It was offset, as if it had come together without precision.

She sat back on her heels and this time her curiosity was real. On one side, the look of the soupy stuff the lights floated in was a little different from the other side.

“Two?” she asked. If her father was right, that was a definite yes. But two what? Two habitats?

The lights changed again, urging her to continue down the path again. She rose and walked forward, eagerly now. There was a story here, a mystery to be solved. It was, in a way, a dream “dig.”

She didn’t have to dig anything and the inhabitants were still here, the artifacts intact.

As she walked, she tried to look at everything. And then she realized she hadn’t looked up. She stopped and stared.

The top of the habitat appeared to be fully visible as it arched overhead. Like the path, she could see a rough join, but there were also dark splotches in a few places.

“Are those the places the,” she caught herself in time and changed Skaridrex to, “Shattercrawlers are…”

She wasn’t sure how to ask the question, but they answered anyway. It was a yes.

As she stood there, staring at them, she realized that it wasn’t as silent as she’d thought. A soft whispering, barely heard, ebbed and flowed around her. She felt something touch her hand and looked down.

A small bead of light rolled across her hand and danced off into the soup again.

She touched the spot and studied it, but there was no sign of anything.

It was just a touch. She hoped.

She had a thought and went to the edge of her “path” and looked down. The soup was thicker down there, but she thought she spotted more of the badly done joined sections and more of the darker spots.

“That can’t be good.”

She eased slowly back. “Now what?” she said out loud.

The light path pulsed, and she resumed her walk.

“Okay then.” She made sure to keep in the middle this time and didn’t look around as much. It all felt a bit like walking a narrow ledge over an abyss. And then she became aware of something different in the swirling mass ahead of her. It was a column.

It was definitely different from everything else, though it also seemed to be made of color and light. A power source, perhaps? And the shape, it was close in size to the one from that dig.

The path of lights circled the column, so she followed it, her eyes studying the pattern of the lights flickering on the column’s surface.

Her suit registered a radiation signature, but not enough to cause her problems. Yet.

But, even without the other indicators, this column indicated intelligent design. If she hadn’t already guessed that.

“It’s beautiful,” she said. She looked up and noticed that the pattern of light arced around the top of the column. One side made a perfect arc out of her sight, but the other side, in the direction she’d come, had that same odd look of imperfect stitching.

“Is there another of these in the other direction?” she wondered.

The lights in the mass brightened. That was a yes.

“Power source?” The lights dimmed. So, no. She frowned, thinking. If it was powered, the only other thing she could think of was, “Engine?”

Now the lights agreed.

An engine? To power the habitat? But they’d said it wasn’t a power source. We come from the stars. That is what Harold had said he heard the Skaridrex say. Was this, could it possibly be a rocket engine?

She’d never have had that thought if it weren’t for Miles. She knew this, recognized what might be a small bias entering into her thinking. The only thing her people thought came from the stars were asteroids.

“Is this a spaceship engine?” She asked the question without wanting to. She wasn’t sure she wanted an answer.

She didn’t know how she knew their answer was uncertainty. She just felt it. The whispers were distressed.

Was that why they’d wanted her to see this? Because she was someone who tried to unravel the past?

“Can I touch it?”

That was a no.

“If this is an engine, for some purpose as yet unknown, does it still work?”

Okay, that was a yes.

“Is it capable of propulsion?” That might be the same question she’d asked before, just formed in a different way, but this time she got a yes. Not a definite yes, but a cautious yes.

“My father says there are other habitats?” And she’d seen what might have been a dead habitat.

Their answer was another of the less definite positives.

“Did you build this engine to leave?” She couldn’t see any other reason for it deep underground.

But they said no. It was a very definite no.

The vague outline of a theory was taking shape inside her head. It wasn’t a theory she wanted to have, but the wisps of it were there.

If the engine, the propulsion engine, wasn’t for leaving, could it have been for…arriving?

“Where did you come from?” she asked. It wasn’t a yes or no question, but she had that sense of uncertainty again. “Did you form here?”

More uncertainty.

It was frustrating. On a dig, she’d try to create a theory from scarce artifacts. Here she had it all and it wasn’t any easier.

“Is there a data center of some kind? A control for resources somewhere? A place where you record your history?”

They didn’t answer her, and she had the sense that they were almost puzzled by her question.

Then the lights began to flicker and dance, as if agitated.

The tremor caught her unawares without T’Korrin to give her advance warning. It wasn’t a lot of warning, but it had helped. She lurched toward the column and almost touched it. She opted to go down to her knees to not touch.

It had been a while since a tremor had taken her down. She’d forgotten how much it could hurt.

***

Lira had a sense that the Vorthari didn’t know what she wanted to see. She followed one path after the other, but she didn’t see anything that looked like a system or data storage. She did learn a couple of things, not by being told but just a gradual awareness. From the whispers?

The walkway they’d created was a closed environment with oxygen calibrated to someone like her.

The Vorthari’s environment was — no surprise — very different from hers. There was actually a transparent membrane separating her from them.

She’d stopped once and tried to make some kind of contact with the lights on the other side. One of them had drawn close enough for her to get a sense of their shape. Or perhaps a better description would be their changing shape. They reminded her of a sea creature, but with more flexibility.

They were beautiful as they changed shape and intensity of light, trailing pale, wispy threads like gossamer cloaks. At their center was the “light” but she wondered if this light was how they saw. The orb did seem to turn and change.

She’d carefully reached out and touched a fingertip to the membrane and it had sent one of the wispy threads to touch the other side.

She’d smiled and the Vorthari seemed to respond with pleasure. At least she hoped that’s what it was.

She’d resumed her walk, that Vorthari tracking along with her now. She thought she could recognize…it now, tell it apart from the others. She wondered what T’Korrin would have made of it. He’d have probably been jealous, she decided.

And then she reached an outer edge of the habitat.

She stared at it, aware it was different from the membrane that had created her walkway.

But not sure how or why. She studied it, walking slowly around the perimeter of the habitat and after a time, saw a pattern emerge.

And then, in the pattern, the vague outlines of a story.

She came back to the present with a start at the sound of her father’s voice in her suit comm.

“Lira? Are you there?”

She pressed a button. “Of course. Are you alright?”