City of Ruins

FORTY-FOUR



They’re back.” Anita Tren sounded excited. She blew up the real-time image of the exterior of the Ivoire without Coop’s permission. Suddenly all of the screens on the bridge were filled with images of the abandoned sector base.

Coop shifted in his command chair, turning toward the full wall screen on the left side of the bridge. That screen showed the door leading into the sector base.

The door was easing open.

He almost corrected Anita, but didn’t. His breath had caught, and he felt just a little redeemed. He had thought the outsiders would return.

And now they had.

This time there were seven, not five.

“Compare, would you?” he said to Dix. “I want to know if any of those people are the same ones who were here forty-eight hours ago.”

Dix didn’t answer. He had been unusually quiet since getting the news about the sector base. He seemed shrunken in on himself, exhausted, as if he couldn’t sleep.

Coop had seen him like this before, and he knew that Dix, despite his emotional upset, would get the job done.

Coop’s eyes already told him that the person who had come in the door first was the woman he had noticed earlier. The woman who had put her glove against the ship, as if it were a miracle, something she had never, ever expected.

He couldn’t tell, however, if the others were people who had come in before.

“Shouldn’t we go talk to them?” Perkins asked.

She stood near the screens, her hands clasped behind her back, unknowingly mimicking the posture that Coop had every single time he stared at the same images in the captain’s suite.

Only he was trying to quell his own emotions, to keep his mind even, focused, and calm.

Perkins, so far as he could tell, was excited. She wanted to throw herself into the work.

“Not yet,” Coop said to Perkins. “We don’t want to startle them.”

She turned and gave him a winning smile. “C’mon, Captain,” she said in a wheedling tone. “They know we’re here. How else would the ship have come in?”

“The anacapa,” Dix said, his tone as dismal as his posture. “Working automatically.”

Perkins frowned at him. “They’re outsiders. How would they know that?”

“How do they know anything?” Yash asked. She was going over the data in front of her as well. “They’re explorers in this place. That’s clear from the way they move. We have no idea how they manage or what they do.”

“Which is why we’re not going through that door until we’re ready,” Coop said. “We don’t want to surprise them. For all we know, they’ve never seen a spaceship before.”

“I’d wager you’re right,” Yash said. “I can’t imagine how those environmental suits would survive in space. They probably have just started developing their own space program. And those suits aren’t going to take them very far.”

“That we can tell,” Perkins said. “Cultures always mix old and new. Sometimes people wear things that are ceremonial.”

“With equipment?” Yash said. “I don’t think so.”

Coop smiled. Yash wouldn’t. She always wanted the latest, best, most improved. That was one of the reasons he had hired her in the first place, because she tinkered and improved everything around her.

The seven outsiders clustered in a group, and the woman gestured. He was right; she was the one in charge.

“Five are the same, two new, just like it looks,” Dix said without inflection.

“Do you think they’re always going to be coming in forty-eight-hour intervals?” Anita asked.

“Doubtful,” Coop said. “If I had to guess—and it would just be a guess—the two new are arbiters of some kind, or people with a particular expertise.”

Perkins shifted, as if she couldn’t contain the energy she felt. “I could go ask.”

“And get attacked?” Yash asked. “They’re wearing knives.”

“Knives, I know,” Perkins said. “How old-fashioned is that?”

“Actually,” Dix said, “only one of them is wearing a knife, and it seems more like an all-purpose tool than a weapon.”

“The woman in charge,” Coop said.

Dix nodded. “She’s also carrying something that looks like a laser pistol. Her hand hovered near it as she came in the door. She was expecting an attack.”

“Or worrying about one,” Coop said more to himself than the others.

“They shouldn’t see anything different,” Yash said. “We made sure of that.”

“I think we should go out there,” Perkins said. “If they’re already expecting us—”

“To attack them,” Coop said. “They thought we might attack them. Coming out the door is not the best idea at the moment.”

Although he wanted to go out there himself, quiz them, and figure out if all of the readings his team had taken were right. He wanted to find out what was going on, what had happened to Venice City, if there were still members of the Fleet (or descendents of it) on Wyr.

Perkins sighed, but said no more. She understood she’d been overruled.

The outsiders split into three teams, two people staying by the door, two going to the equipment, and three coming to the ship itself.

“I hope they don’t touch anything they shouldn’t,” Anita said.

“They can’t tamper with much,” Yash said. “Most of the equipment is in shut-down mode.”

“Who knows what time has done to corrode it?” Dix said, without looking up.

“I guess we’ll find out,” Coop said, as he settled in to watch.

* * * *