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When she emerged from the spaceport, Zoë Heriot recognised the young woman waiting for her. They'd never met before, but they'd spoken enough times on the videophone – and Zoë never forgot a face.
"Alison Swift?" she asked.
"That's me." Alison, a few years younger and half a head taller than Zoë, looked relieved that the arrangements had gone smoothly so far. "Nice to meet you in real life, Zoë."
"Likewise." Zoë shook the proffered hand. "Shall we get started?"
Alison nodded. "This way. We'll need torches."
She turned to the right, and started to walk along the spaceport's perimeter fence. Almost as soon as they'd left the lit forecourt, they were among trees, of perhaps twenty or thirty years' growth. The sun had long since set, and without their torches progress would have been impossible.
"This used to be a car park once, I think," Alison explained. "No call for it, these days."
Fifteen minutes' walk around the spaceport boundary, the woodland on their left and the fence on their right, brought them to an area where the trees had failed to take hold. Alison's torch dimly illuminated a collection of low concrete domes, all covered with moss and ivy, apparently abandoned for decades. Brambles and undergrowth had colonised the spaces between the domes, but no trees could be seen. Zoë kicked at the leafmould at her feet, and discovered a concrete surface which, it seemed, the trees had not been able to penetrate. Though this area was outside the current perimeter, it must have been part of the spaceport at one time.
Alison led Zoë along a vague path through the brambles and came to a halt outside one of the domes. A tunnel led into the dome, sloping gently downward. Around the dome entrance, the vegetation looked disturbed and unhealthy.
"This is where you saw the lights?" Zoë asked.
"That's right."
"I'll check for radioactivity, if you don't mind."
Zoë swept her Geiger counter around.
"Just normal background," she said. "It should be safe to wait here and see if anything happens."
Alison switched her torch off. "I hope something does. It'd be so embarrassing to drag you all the way out here and then there's nothing to see."
By Zoë's estimate, they waited in the cold and darkness for about seventy- five minutes. Overhead, they could see the lights of stars, and the slowly- moving glimmers that were artificial satellites or space stations. But neither these, nor the distant glow from the spaceport terminal, gave any useful illumination.
Suddenly, Alison gripped her arm. A point of light was moving about on the ground near the dome entrance. They crept closer, but were seen or heard: the light disappeared back into the dome. Zoë and Alison followed it inside, through a huge steel door that stood uselessly open, down a spiral staircase, and through a maze of darkened corridors. Throughout, the light remained exasperatingly coy, always some way off, scuttling away when they got close. When it finally came to a halt, they hurried up to it.
Without any doubt, it was not of terrestrial origin. It looked part-metal, part-crystal, but with enough irregularities to convince Zoë that it was grown rather than made. In shape it was something between a starfish and a lobster, and it was no bigger than a man's hand. At its centre, among delicate-looking structures, a light glowed dimly.
"Now how did you get here?" Zoë wondered out loud. "And what are you?"
As if her words had been a signal, the creature skittered away again, crawling over her boot in its haste to get away. Zoë gave chase, keeping her torch firmly trained on her prey.
"Oh, no you–" she began, rounded a corner, and stopped dead. Just "Oh, no," suddenly seemed much more appropriate. It was readily apparent that the creature she'd been chasing had friends. A lot of friends. Enough to form an irregular dome, as wide as the corridor, and perhaps half Zoë's height.
"Can you understand me?" she asked.
The dome moved towards her, the creatures at its base taking steps in frightening unison, and the rest snapping their pincers at her. Whether they were controlled from elsewhere, or whether this was some kind of a hivemind, she didn't know: it didn't seem like the time for scientific speculation. Slowly and carefully, keeping her emotions firmly in check, she retreated into the corridor where she'd left Alison, and realised at once that they'd been lured into a trap. Another dome of creatures was approaching from the far end, visible as a cluster of lights in the darkness.
She glanced around for a way out, and spotted a doorway a few metres away. Catching hold of Alison's hand, she darted through the door, slammed it behind them, found a bolt, and shot it home. Almost at once, she could hear scratching against the far side.
Alison shone her torch around the room. Apart from a long bench and a few faded warning notices, it was empty.
"There's no other way out," she said, sounding close to panic.
"We'd better go over our resources," Zoë said. "What have you got?"
Alison delved wildly in her pockets. "My torch," she said. "A personal alarm. A camera. That's it."
Zoë emptied her own pockets onto the bench. "A torch, an all-frequencies radio scanner, a Geiger counter, and a Swiss Army knife. Are those things still out there?"
"Yes. I can hear them scratching. But they can't get through this door, can they? It's ever so thick."
"It had to be." Zoë shone her torch at the warning signs. "This looks like an old rocket fuel silo. The door was probably built to handle accidental explosions."
"You said you had a radio scanner. Could we use that to call for help?"
"I don't think we could get a signal out, even if I could convert the scanner into a transmitter. We must be at least eight metres below ground level."
She paced up and down, thinking furiously.
"A resonator," she said, eventually. "Those creatures look brittle. With luck we can hit their resonant frequency and disrupt their functioning. Maybe even shake them to pieces. I think we've got all the bits we need here."
"Do you think you can make one?"
"Yes," Zoë said, more confidently than she felt. "Can you hold the torch? Thanks."
She found a reasonably clear area of the workbench, wiped dust off it with her sleeve, and set about dismantling Alison's personal alarm.
"I wish we'd never come here," Alison said.
Zoë carefully slid the alarm's circuit board out of its case. "I've got to take some of the blame for that," she said. "I should have realised that it could have been a trap."
"Well, I didn't realise either."
"I know, but I should have done. I don't like being wrong. It's annoying."
In the cold blue torchlight, Alison seemed to be looking at her closely.
"Why are you here, anyway?" she asked. "You're a scientist, aren't you?"
"Astrophysicist, first class."
"So why did you get in touch with me about the lights I'd seen? I'd have thought you'd just dismiss the whole thing as nonsense."
Zoë put down the part-dismantled alarm.
"It's a hobby," she said slowly. "Investigating the unknown, I mean. It all started when I met a man – I don't know his real name. Everyone just called him Doctor. He made me realise there's much more to the Universe than I knew at the time. I wanted to go travelling with him, but–" She broke off, unable to remember exactly what had happened that day, and started again. "I started looking into unexplained phenomena in my spare time. Once I get interested in something, I want to know everything about it."
She turned back to her work and started to take the radio scanner to pieces.
"So that's how you came to see my message about the lights?" Alison asked.
"That's right. It sounded interesting, so I came along to see if there was anything in it."
"And there is." Alison winced at the scratching outside. "What do you think those creatures are?"
"Well," Zoë said, still concentrating on her electronic improvisation, "the warning notices on this wall are all about the old Hyperox thrusters, and they haven't been used for forty years or more. So I think whatever's here must have been there at least that long. Perhaps something came back on one of the early ships? As an egg, maybe, if these creatures lay eggs." She pulled a loop of wire tight and tied a neat knot in it. "And it's been down here ever since, living off the spent fuel, breeding and growing into – well, I suppose you could call it a colony. And now they're coming out of the silo at night and extracting nutrients from the vegetation."
Alison shuddered. "How can you be so calm?"
"I've been trained to control my emotions." Zoë forced a smile. "Believe me, if I wasn't suppressing them as hard as I can, I'd be running around screaming my head off. And that wouldn't help get this resonator built."
Taking the hint, Alison fell silent, continuing to aim her torch as Zoë finished constructing her machine. One by one, the electronic gadgets on the bench were gutted, and added to the crazy tangle of wires and circuits that Zoë was constructing. Finally, Zoë picked up the result, needing both hands to hold it.
"Is it finished?" Alison asked.
"As much as I can get it," Zoë said. "We won't know if it works until we try it, of course."
"There isn't anything else we can do?"
"I don't think we can negotiate. Only stay here until we starve, or until they get through the door." Zoë crossed the room until she stood before the door. "Can you open this, please?"
Alison swallowed, drew the bolt, and swung the door open. In the light of her torch, it looked as if there was a silver grating stretching from floor to ceiling. A second look revealed the truth: the crystalline creatures had formed themselves into a grid, blocking the way out.
Zoë aimed her device at the wall of creatures, switched it on, and slowly turned the dial that adjusted the frequency. It was an effort to hold the thing steady; the vibrations flowing up her arms were painful in their intensity. She forced herself to concentrate on the dial.
Abruptly, the network of creatures collapsed, their bodies shattering before they hit the ground. Before they'd finished falling, Zoë was hurrying along the corridor, the route to the exit clear in her mind. Alison was close behind her, the cold blue-white light of the torch she held casting her shadow in front of her. There was another dome of the creatures, similar to the ones that had trapped them in the first place, blocking the far end of the corridor. Her machine made short work of them. The rest of the passageways were empty, but as they hurried back to the stairs, Zoë could hear the sound of clicking crystalline legs in the tunnels behind them.
The staircase that led up to ground level was a spiral around a steel column, free-standing in a six-way corridor junction. Coming down, Zoë had moved cautiously, taking pains to avoid slipping. Going up, she took the stairs two at a time. The treads were steel gratings, and if she looked down she could see the floor below, covered with tiny dots of light, each dot one of the creatures that had made this silo their home.
At the top, she stopped. Alison was close behind her, gasping for breath as she hurried to the top. She nearly tripped on the last step, but caught hold of Zoë's arm, almost causing her to drop the resonator. The two women looked back down the staircase. The stairs behind them were crawling with the angular, silvery creatures, a glowing point of light visible at the centre of each one. As the dots rose up the spiral, it reminded Zoë of a test tube being filled with liquid.
"Quick," Alison gasped. "Destroy them!"
"There's only enough power to use this once more," Zoë said calmly. "Maybe twice if we're lucky." She bent over the machine, adjusting the frequency dial. "But to destroy all those creatures I'd need six or ten bursts."
"Then give it to me. I'll hold them off. You run."
"Alison!"
"I got you into this. It's my fault."
Zoë shook her head. "I'm not going to let you sacrifice yourself for me. Stand back."
She pressed the machine against the steel column around which the staircase spiralled, and turned the power on to full. In one burst, the jury-rigged resonator gave up the last of its stored energy, sending every joule it could into the staircase. With a series of cracks sharp enough to sound like explosions, the central column shattered. Handrails and treads dropped into the depths, landing in a cacophony of metal and concrete. The wave of lights sweeping up the stairs faltered, then plunged into the darkness.
There was an ominous groan from overhead, and flakes of concrete began to fall. Alison shone the torch upwards. Cracks were spreading out from where the column had met the ceiling.
"Now we run, I think," Zoë said.
They made it out of the silo a couple of minutes before a tremendous hollow boom echoed from the doorway, followed by a cloud of dust. Once the noise had died down, they waited, listening for the sounds of metallic clicking that would suggest some of the creatures had escaped. There were none.
Alison shone her torch at the dome. It was no longer complete: there was a ragged hole in the top.
"Are they all dead?" she asked nervously.
"I shouldn't think so," Zoë said. "But without that staircase they ought to be trapped down there. We got out, anyway, and that's the main thing. We'd better check we didn't bring any of them out on our clothes."
They looked each other up and down, and turned their pockets out, finding nothing untoward. Then they set out for the distant lights of the spaceport buildings.
"It might be as well to have the site checked out," Zoë said, after a while. "Just in case those creatures aren't as trapped as we'd like. I can put you in touch with the right people."
"There are right people for dealing with alien lifeforms?"
"Oh, yes. They interrogated me after I came back from the space station and–" Zoë broke off. "Sorry, I can't tell you about that."
"You mean this isn't the first time you've dealt with aliens?" Alison sounded as if she was beyond surprise by now.
"That's right." Zoë, despite everything she'd been through, found herself smiling in the darkness. "And I hope it won't be the last."