Donald Moffitt - Genesis 02

to airlessness and low gravity.
    “What are you talking about?” Bram asked.
    “See anything over there? Use your top magnification.”
    Obediently, Bram searched the distant ruins with his helmet telescope. The liquid crystal display emerged from its clear plastic sandwich and formed a circular image in front of his right eye. He squinted and adjusted the focus.
    “I don’t see anything.”
    “Turn up the contrast.”
    “I think I see some kind of streak or scratch. It’s hard to be sure. I think it’s in my helmet… no, it stays put when I move. It may be a beam of light or a reflection. It’s pointing straight up in the direction of the moon.”
    “That’s it,” Jao said.
    “That’s what?”
    “Oh, no. I’m not saying. I’m not sticking my neck out till we get there.”
    “Watch out!” Bram’s suit radio said.
    He stepped to one side and saw Lydis and Zef wrestling one of the walkers out of the hatch. They let go, and it floated down to the ground, where it unfolded, shook itself off, and inflated its passenger bubble. The biodevice was a tried and true version of the basic model the Nar had used for airless planetoids and nonrotating space structures. Its fragile, elongated frame would not have stood up under any semblance of real gravity, but it was strong enough for places like this. It had a submetabolism that worked on hydrogen and oxygen, and besides supplying energy, the auxiliary system had water and oxygen to spare for passengers.
    “Well, let’s not waste time,” Jao said, with a hop and a dive toward the vehicle. “Did anybody pack a lunch?”
    Enry was engrossed in his work. Now he was putting dust samples into little vials. Ame came bounding over from a fissure she had been studying. “That’s more like it,” she said. “Wait till I get my kit.”
    Lydis drifted down the ladder and stationed herself in front of the spidery biovehicle. “Hold on,” she said. “We go out two at a time, at least till we know more about this place, and we keep the voice and homing circuits on at all times.”
    “What d’ya mean?” Jao said. “The walker’ll carry three.”
    “Sorry,” Lydis said. “That’s the way it’s going to be.”
    Jao assumed an expression of great regret. “Sorry, Ame. You can take the next trip. Do you want me to bring back any rubble samples for you?”
    Ame sputtered. “We’re going to have a first look at the ruins, and it needs someone with some archaeological and paleontological training.” She appealed to Lydis. “Isn’t that so?”
    “I’d say so,” Lydis replied.
    “Well,” Jao said. “Your daughter has spoken. I guess it’s Ame and me. Sorry, Bram. I’ll give you a running report over the radio.”
    “Not a chance,” Lydis said firmly. “Neither your nor Ame is qualified on a walker. Bram’s the driver.”
    It was Jao’s turn to sputter. “There’s nothing to steering one of those things.”
    “There’s too much trouble an inexperienced driver can get into low gravity,” Lydis said. “You could turn over. Bounce it too high and come down the wrong way. Misjudge a ravine.”
    “Sorry, Jao,” Bram said. “You can have the second ride. I’ll find out what that thing is. And give you a report over the radio.”
     
    The walker loped across the jagged landscape, bouncing upward in great buoyant swoops that ate up the miles. Bram, with an occasional corrective jerk of the reins, kept a watchful eye through the inflated bubble on the route ahead. The tumbled lines of rubble they had to cross were not really dangerous to the walker, which was nimble enough to compensate for its stiff-legged gait when it came down wrong-footed on a boulder or crack. But of course it had no long-distance judgment.
    “It’s shivery,” Ame said, glancing toward the great glowing hump of a disk that rose out of the ground to their left. As dull and rusty as the light was, it cast long gloomy striations of shadow across the stark plain.
    “Shivery?” he teased her. “Is that some sort of technical term you paleontologists use?”
    She nestled for comfort against him on the narrow bench. “It’s been dead and broken for millions of years. But I feel that it’s been waiting for us.”
    “It has.”
    “And that it’s watching us right now.”
    “Nothing could live here.”
    “ We do. And this thing we’re riding in sort of lives.”
    “You’re letting your imagination run away with you. But that’s not surprising. This place is