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  A long time ago. Long after these symbols had been carved.

  He wondered who had been down here first, exploring this cave, making those marks.

  And how long ago?

  But what are these symbols for? What do they indicate?

  They couldn’t be random. There had to be a reason, and as Rodriguez studied them, he noticed that certain ones repeated farther down.

  Letters? Numbers?

  “There’s a pattern here,” he whispered, as much to himself as to the others.

  With the flare sputtering in his hand, Jordan moved down to the step next to him.

  “We don’t have all day here, Doc,” he said.

  “I know, I know.” Rodriguez gave him a quick nod, irritated that he had broken his concentration. “Just give me a few seconds. There’s definitely something here ... something ...”

  His voice trailed off as he stared at the carving while rubbing the sharp edge of his jaw.

  “These flares won’t last forever,” Ivan called up from below.

  “Just wait a minute!” Rodriguez shouted back, surprised that his fear had been replaced now with a determination to understand.

  He guessed he might even seem deranged as he looked back and forth, up and down the stairs, all the while counting on his fingers and muttering to himself until—finally—he snapped his fingers.

  “Got it,” he said. “I understand!”

  “Understand what?” Jordan said, but Rodriguez looked at Sinjira, staring at the symbols, recording everything. He turned to her.

  “Put this one in a special file, sweetheart,” he said, leaning close and mugging for her. “Label it ‘genius at work.’ “

  She looked at him, one eyebrow raised.

  “Can we get moving?” Ivan hollered.

  “Faster than ever now,” Rodriguez shouted back.

  He was feeling so confident—or maybe suicidal—he loosened the rope around his chest, wiggled out of the loop, and started striding down the stairs, stepping over the gaps while counting out loud as he went.

  When he was standing on the step beside Ivan, the ex-runner grabbed him by the collar, yanking him off balance.

  “Are you out of your mind? Are you trying to get us all killed?”

  “Simple mathematics,” Rodriguez replied, letting his smile widen.

  “Explain,” Annie said.

  “Three steps up to the platform,” he said. “Then a stairway leading down. Look back and count the steps that have disappeared so far. Anyone see a pattern?”

  Ivan glared at him for a moment, then looked up the steps, counting the black gaps where stones had disappeared.

  “None.”

  Ivan appeared to be in no mood for fooling around, but Rodriguez laughed in his face.

  “One ... four ... one ... nine ... two ... six ... and five. Ring a bell? Anyone?” He looked up the stairs at the others, waiting.

  Ivan shook his head as though he thought the man had lost his mind.

  “So the next steps that will disappear as we go down will be three... five ... eight... nine ... seven ... nine ... et cetera.”

  “How do you know this?” Ruth asked.

  “What do you mean, et cetera?” Ivan clenched his fist. “We don’t have the time for games.”

  Annie said, “Yeah, Doc. I gotta admit you lost me here.”

  As if to prove Ivan’s point, the flare Rodriguez held sputtered, the light gradually fading.

  Before he dropped it over the edge, he fished another one from his backpack and lit it.

  “It’s pi,” Rodriguez said. “The digits of pi. You know? The ratio between the circumference of a circle and its diameter? ‘

  Ivan shook his head and said, “I gotta admit, I wasn’t much of a math student.”

  “What a surprise.” He laughed out loud. “You see, you divide the-“

  “No. No ... don’t explain,” Ivan said irritably. “If you can get us down these stairs any quicker, please, be my guest.”

  “Follow me then.”

  Rodriguez started down the stairs, moving fast and counting numbers out loud as he went.

  “Four ... six ... two ... six ... four ...”

  ~ * ~

  “The guy’s a damned nutcase,” Ivan said, but he focused on Rodriguez as he made his way down the spiral stairway.

  Then he and Ruth and the others followed along.

  “Aren’t you glad you didn’t let him go back?” Ruth asked.

  Ivan said, “I still may have to push him over the edge ... if I can catch up with him.”

  Rodriguez’s voice echoed from below, receding with the distance.

  “Three ... three ... eight... two ... seven ... nine ...”

  Mad. Crazy.

  But correct.

  “Hey! Hold up! Not so fast,” Ivan shouted.

  When he looked at Ruth in the glow of the flare, he tried not to think how beautiful she looked.

  Focus.

  “Five ... zero ... two ... eight... eight... four ...”

  “How long does this number—this pi—go on?”

  “That’s the thing of it,” Ruth said. “Scientists using computers have carried out the division to millions of decimals, but it never ends. Apparently, it goes on forever.”

  Forever.

  Ivan spat into one of the gaps as he stepped over it.

  “Let’s just hope this stairway doesn’t.”

  ~ * ~

  39

  THE VINES ABOVE

  Ivan stopped.

  Suddenly, light—a rich blue glow—appeared up ahead and they weren’t simply inside a chamber.

  Quite clearly, they were deep inside this cavern, inside this mountain on Omega Nine where someone had left a series of connected chambers carved out of the stone. All tests.

  And now, here, before them, was a mammoth corridor that looked more like the entrance to a magical city hidden deep inside the mountain.

  Jordan came up from the rear and stopped beside Ivan.

  “What do you think—another trap, another game?”

  Ivan bit his lower lip and shook his head.

  He looked back at the others. Annie’s eyes were locked on the two of them. The others were looking around at the smooth curved walls that swelled and ballooned, growing larger as far as eyes could see.

  “No. I think ...”

  Ivan looked around at the reverse funnel shape of this grand hallway.

  “... it’s the entrance to ... I’m not sure.” He looked at Jordan and grinned. “I’m surprised not to see a sign saying, ‘Abandon all hope.’ “

  Jordan shifted from one foot to the other. “What’s that?”

  “A poet, a long time ago, said that was the sign over the entrance to hell. ‘Abandon all hope ye who enter herein.’”

  “Nope. Never heard of it,” Jordan said.

  Not surprising, Ivan thought.

  “Look. We passed the tests. We got through the traps, and we’re in.”

  “In ... where?” Ruth asked.

  Ivan turned around and looked at her.

  “Maybe something made by the Builders.”

  Ruth’s eyes went wide.

  “And now,” Ivan said, “now that we made it inside this ... I don’t know ... this building or chamber ... or fortress ... whatever ... we can go on. Maybe no more traps.”

  Annie gave the slightest of nods.

  Hopefully, Ivan thought.

  But his hope quickly faded when he remembered that his brother was down here somewhere hiding, waiting. The traps up above were supposed to have killed them, and no doubt there would be more traps ... and worse.

  Ivan turned to Jordan, about to say, Stay sharp. Eyes open.

  But that would be redundant.

  He started moving forward, and now that circumstances appeared to be different—perhaps—the gunner walked by his side while the rest of them came up behind them.

/>   ~ * ~

  Annie looked around at the passengers of the SRV, all following the two men in the front with their guns ready.

  They were all here. Why?

  Because they had no other option other than staying back with a crazed Nahara and waiting to see what happened? And the Star Road wasn’t for people who sat around and waited for things to happen.

  Annie wondered if any of them were having second thoughts.

  She knew she sure as hell was. Give her the open Road, and her at the helm. That’s what she wanted.

  But she kept pace with the others, gun ready, as Sinjira and Ruth walked on either side of her now, having more in common—their fear—than their differences.

  She kept glancing at Rodriguez behind her. He looked wide-eyed, but she guessed that, as a scientist, this all amazed him as much as it scared him.

  Nobody spoke.

  As the chamber opened even wider, the blue glow intensified, washing their faces. The light emanating from some mysterious power source, maybe the same source that had been used—how many eons ago?—to carve this massive entranceway out of stone.

  No sound. No talking.

  Until one of them—Sinjira, of course—heard the humming.

  ~ * ~

  Sinjira moved up close to Ivan and Jordan, and touched them both on their elbows.

  “You hear that?”

  They stopped, and turned to her.

  “Hear what?” Jordan said.

  “Listen,” she said.

  Thinking: Was she that much more sensitive than the others that she could hear, see, and feel things that just went right past them?

  “A hum. Very faint.”

  Ivan nodded.

  “Another sonic trap?” he asked.

  Sinjira shrugged and said, “Could be.”

  She wasn’t sure he actually heard it or had simply grown to trust her instincts, her senses.

  “Okay. Let’s stay frosty. Until we can hear what you’re hearing, okay?”

  Sinjira nodded to Ivan.

  But she didn’t resume her position back with the others, thinking: Let’s stay close to the firepower.

  They moved even more cautiously, the party in slow motion.

  ~ * ~

  “I hear it now,” Ivan said.

  The hum, not quite clear. Not irritating. Certainly not debilitating like the sonic attack they had suffered. Almost soothing.

  A gentle, breezelike sound.

  “Um ... me, too,” Jordan added.

  Annie, a meter or so behind them, said, “Yup. Me, too. Any ideas what it is?”

  That question, as they kept moving, resolved itself.

  Ivan looked up to the smooth expanse of the now giant, sweeping arc of the ceiling of this entry way.

  Vines hanging down.

  Not exactly vines.

  Hard to tell what they were in the blue light, these dark blue-green tendrils hanging from the ceiling of various lengths. They glowed with an eerie iridescence and vibrated constantly as if fitful breezes were blowing through the chamber.

  But—of course—there was no breeze. Not this far down.

  The vines shook ever so slightly, each acting independently. And as they shook, they created a gentle humming sound.

  “What are they?” Annie said.

  “They’re absolutely beautiful,” Sinjira said from behind Ivan, no doubt recording it all.

  Beautiful. Yes, but what are they... What do they do?

  He kept walking since the vines seemed to pose no imminent danger.

  Other than swaying and vibrating, the vines didn’t seem to react to their presence as they moved closer and then passed under them.

  The faint hum remained gentle, soothing. The subtle, waving motion continued ... but didn’t increase.

  “Guess they’re okay” Jordan said.

  Ivan wasn’t so sure.

  ~ * ~

  Ivan raised his hand, silently ordering everyone to halt. Then he pointed to the floor ahead.

  Even though they were still far away from what littered the ground, he could tell what the indeterminate jumble actually was.

  When you’ve seen battles, when you ve seen bodies piled high, you know.

  “What is it?” Jordan asked. His rifle was raised, sweeping the area.

  Annie came up to his side. “What’s wrong?”

  Ivan gestured to the shapes that covered it as far as he could see in this weirdly lit chamber.

  At some point, the mammoth entranceway curved to the right.

  But in front of them ...

  Bodies. Hundreds... thousands of bones.

  He had nothing to say ... not without a closer look first.

  He turned to Jordan.

  “This is not looking good.”

  A nod from Jordan and he moved forward. Annie quickly moved forward, too.

  They didn’t have to tell the others to hang back, as obedient as school kids, the silent command to stay put easily enforced by the shapes of bodies ahead, dark shapes silhouetted against the blue light.

  Ivan, Jordan, and Annie walked together, each instinctively moving their rifles to a ready position, sweeping from side to side, covering all possible approaches.

  Until they reached the first of the bodies.

  There were two figures. Humanoid, but clearly not human. Even in death, they were locked in a death battle, hands—or claws—wrapped around each other. One on a throat; the other with a clawlike hand meshed tightly against the other’s face.

  Their battle, frozen in time.

  Such scenes were replicated everywhere they looked. More corpses locked in a wild melee... a fight to the finish. Some of the corpses looked as though they had exploded by massive gun or energy blasts. Others were desiccated masses with exposed brittle bones, their innards long ago rotting in the dry air, turning to dust.

  Annie was the first to speak:

  “What... the hell happened here?”

  Ivan shook his head.

  “A lot of different types. Aliens. Different species,” he said. “It’s like they ... like they all came here from various planets to fight and they all died.”

  A chill ran up Ivan’s back. The implications were staggering.

  He had seen death and destruction. But this completely chilled him.

  He looked up at the cavern ceiling. The vines were still vibrating harmlessly. The slight quivers still seeming somehow benevolent... welcoming.

  But could the strange vines have anything to do with it?

  A battle scene—but not really.

  More like scores of scenes from many different battles, a jumbled war as untold alien creatures fought to the death.

  Ivan looked ahead, beyond the vast field of dead, to something he had been too preoccupied to notice before.

  The expansive walls of the side of the chamber were no longer widening.

  And he saw something on those walls.

  Without waiting for the others, Ivan started walking through the field of death.

  ~ * ~

  SIX

  THE MACHINE AWAKES

  ~ * ~

  40

  INSIDE

  Ivan moved forward, picking his way carefully around the twisted figures lying on the ground as best he could; but there was no escaping the occasional step on a loose bit of bone or a fossilized twist of skin.

  The crunch of his steps echoed hollowly in the chamber.

  Jordan followed close behind.

  “You see it, too, don’t you?” Ivan asked.