Return to Dakistee (7 page)

Christa applied her thumb to the viewpad and said, "Would you care for a cup of coffee, Doctor?"

"No thank you. I'm on a tight schedule. Good day." With that, she left the shuttle and walked to where her own was waiting.

"Wow," Carmoody said. "Did they make her bring it to you personally?"

"In my note I may have mentioned that Dr. Manson had proved to be a little less than cooperative. Perhaps that was the reason she was here today. I wouldn't have said anything if she hadn't deliberately tried to mislead us regarding where the cylinder was found. I still haven't worked that one out. There was no reason that I can see."

"Perhaps she just wanted to place an obstacle in our path and thought misleading us about where the cylinder was found might accomplish that."

"Perhaps. With luck we'll have no more contact with her. Her personality is no better than the coffee she serves to her visitors."

Christa opened the small case and removed the cylinder. She looked at the symbol on the end of the tube and smiled. "Well, we have it. Now what do we do with it?"

"It's yours for as long as you want it. You could mount it on a display stand and send a picture to Dr. Manson."

"No, I'm not looking to rub her face in it. I don't know why, but I really feel we need this object to open the door.

* * *

After breakfast the next morning, Christa and Carmoody returned to the tunnel. They stood staring at the door and the cylinder as they thought, but there seemed to be no real connection other than the symbol on the end of the tube. There were no openings in the door where the cylinder might be inserted, as would be done with a key, and no supports where it could be hung. The breakthrough came when Christa extended her hand to compare the length of the cylinder with the diameter of one of the circles. As her open hand neared the door, the cylinder suddenly leapt up and stuck to the door. She was so startled that she just stared it for some thirty seconds as she tried to reason why it should behave like that. Recovering from her absorption, she reached out and plucked the cylinder from the door, then again held it close to the door, but a meter to the right of the first spot. She watched, fascinated, as it again leapt from her hand and clung to the door.

"This doesn't make any sense," Christa said. "Dakinium doesn't have magnetic properties, yet it's acting like it does." She plucked the cylinder from the door and carried it over to a Chembrite light where she held it against the steel support stand. There was no magnetic attraction. "Well, the magnetic properties aren't in the cylinder. It must be something in the composition of the door."

"Did you notice," Carmoody asked, "that it only stuck on circles both times?"

"Did it? Let's check that out."

After ten minutes of experimentation, the results seemed conclusive. The cylinder would only stick to the areas inside the six circles, but it stuck equally well inside any of them.

"So, either there're magnetic properties in the door and the cylinder has a steel core, or the Dakistee ancients discovered some property of Dakinium that we don't yet know," Christa said. "Did you notice the rod always aligned with one of the thirty-eight marks on the circumference?"

"Yes, I did," Carmoody said.

"It would seem we have part of our answer," Christa said.

"We do?" Carmoody said with surprise. "What is it?"

"The circles
must
represent a locking mechanism. There could be no other reason for having such an elaborate arrangement on the door. It has to be a combination lock."

"Okay, but how does it operate?"

"I can think of several possibilities. You could place the cylinder on a circle, beginning in a certain position, then twist it to a new position. We've already established that it will align in any of thirty-eight directions. But that could be problematic if there wasn't a way to reset the lock since there's no visible indication of where an internal cam is presently pointed, so it's more likely that simply placing a cylinder against the door enables a mechanism. However, that theory relies on there being five more cylinders. So— to open the door, you must have the proper cylinder on the proper circle, aimed in the proper direction. It's incredibly simple and yet incredibly complex at the same time."

"I'm not following you. It doesn't sound that difficult if you have the cylinders."

"That's why it seems incredibly simple, but if I'm correct, we must not only have all six cylinders, but we must know the exact position required for each. Each of the required cylinders might have been entrusted to an important individual on the planet and only that individual knew the proper alignment of their cylinder. That makes it both a key lock and a combination lock in one. You must have all the pieces
and
the knowledge of the combination to open the door. Having only one part won't do it."

"If that's true," Carmoody said, "there's another possibility. What if one of the circles was meant to be left without a cylinder, although six cylinders were made. It would be like having six deadbolts on a door where you had no information if the bolt was currently open or closed."

"Yes. If just one of the deadbolts isn't retracted, the door remains locked."

"I wonder how many permutations are possible? Assuming that all six cylinders are required, what's thirty-eight raised to the sixth?"

"Roughly three billion, eleven million combinations," Christa said. "However, there's another consideration. I'm assuming that each cylinder has a different 'magnetic' strength value, so you must have the correct cylinder on the proper circle. This raises the possible combinations to
eighteen
billion." She released a soft sigh and added, "It might take a few days longer to open the door than I had anticipated before my arrival."

Chapter Five

~ May 16
^th
, 2285 ~

As the two Space Command officers later relaxed in the shuttle with cups of fresh Colombian, Carmoody asked, "What now? How do we locate the other five cylinders, and where do we even begin to work out the proper combination required to open the door?"

"I'm not even going to worry about the combination unless and until we acquire the other five cylinders. If the one cylinder we do have is made of Dakinium, it stands to reason that the others are as well. We can't let them fall into the wrong hands."

"How can we determine if it's Dakinium?"

"The easiest way is to x-ray it. We know it's not made of lead— it's too light. If it's aluminum, titanium, tritanium, or some composite, it won't block all x-rays. The archeologists have x-ray equipment here."

* * *

All six doctors and their chief assistants were on hand to watch the test. Christa couldn't refuse them admittance to the work shelter since it was their shelter and she needed the use of their equipment.

When the x-ray test was complete, the results were negative. No X-rays had passed through the cylinder.

"And what significance does this cylinder have with gaining access to the facility?" Dr. Peterson asked when the test was over.

"I believe the unknown symbol on the end of the cylinder plays a role in opening the door. I hope to learn what the symbol represents and how the name was pronounced."

"And what was the purpose of this test?"

"I'm looking at everything that might provide clues to opening the door."

"So it's not just the symbol you're interested in but the cylinder as well?"

"Yes."

"And what role does it play in opening the door?"

"That's remains to be seen, but it's all part of the puzzle. This door doesn't have the same simple locking mechanism the other has, which is why you were unable to open it."

"And this is all you know, or suspect, after ten days of effort?" Dr. Peterson asked acerbically.

"Since you spent months shouting at the door without success, I saw no benefit in repeating your efforts. I'm taking a different approach. I have no guarantee it will be any more successful than your months of effort, but it's my best line of reasoning right now. If you have a better idea, Doctor, I'd love to hear it."

"Humph," Peterson said as he turned and left the shelter.

"Don't mind him," Dr. Huften said. "He's just frustrated after being so excited about the discovery and then being unable to open the door."

"I understand," Christa said, smiling. "Although we've been acquainted for many years, I certainly don't know him very well. Still—I think that once we manage to open the door he'll cheer up."

"Only if we get to look around inside. Edward is still bitter about being shut out of the other facility."

"That's only a habitat for the Marines posted here. All of the equipment was taken away years ago, and anything that didn't violate Galactic Alliance was turned over to the Expedition headquarters."

"I know. It's more a matter of pride than anything else. He feels slighted."

* * *

Christa hesitated to use a plasma torch to test the cylinder, but once back at her shuttle, she used a laser pistol to fire at the cylinder with bursts of increasing power and duration after verifying that the previous burst had no effect. The tests were performed under the shuttle's belly, using the ground as a 'bullet block', and out of sight of the dig site laborers. When a sixty-second, narrow beam burst at full power had no effect, she was satisfied the cylinder was made of Dakinium.

"So now we know it's Dakinium," Carmoody said. "How are we any closer than before?"

"That's a good question. All I can say is that each piece of a puzzle helps us towards the solution, even when we don't know the importance of the piece at the time. However, in this case we know two things. One, since the rods are Dakinium, they are definitely associated with the ancients of Dakistee, so I doubt their inherent capability for attraction to the circles is mere coincidence, and two, there is no known sensor which can detect the presence of Dakinium, so the search for the other cylinders may be long and arduous."

"If sensors can't detect Dakinium, how do we find the cylinders?"

First, I'm going to contact Anthius and request that they look through their files. Perhaps there's a cylinder sitting on another site director's desk somewhere.

* * *

Christa's shuttle only had one bed so Carmoody had been billeted at Fort Carver since arriving dirt-side, but she always joined Christa for breakfast. When she arrived in the morning several days after verification of the cylinder, Christa greeted her excitedly.

"I just heard from the Expedition Headquarters on this planet. They've verified that in recent years, two more cylinders have been found. Using the coordinates they provided, I was able to determine that each excavation was over a Regional Cultural Headquarters. One cylinder has been confirmed to be on Anthius, and they'll send it at the earliest opportunity. The other cylinder was in a warehouse here on Dakistee, but it's apparently been misplaced. It's missing from the artifact box where it was stored, but they're trying to track it down and will send it when they find it. I've sent a note to Admiral Holt on Higgins requesting that he divert the next Quartermaster ship scheduled to pass within twenty light-years of Anthius to pick up the cylinder and bring it here. That shouldn't be long since Anthius is only fifteen light-years off the direct route between Earth and Higgins."

"He'll do that? He'll divert an entire Quartermaster ship just to pick up an artifact?"

"This project has the highest priority. If so many ships hadn't been sent towards the Region Two border when the war was raging, we'd probably be overrun with help."

"I can't imagine what we'd do with them. We've mostly been spending our days reviewing old records, searching for any clue that might point to locations of the cylinders. More people would only get in the way."

"You're probably right, but I'd feel a lot better if we had a warship or two in orbit overhead. Sooner or later the Raiders are going to learn of our efforts here. If Dr. Manson has heard the news all the way over in Brighton, the entire planetary archeological community probably knows by now as well."

"I wouldn't doubt that for a second. They seem to spend all their free time openly comparing notes with their fellows regarding what they've found recently." Carmoody paused for a breath, then said, "So— okay, we've tracked down three of the cylinders. We're halfway there. How do we get the rest?"

"We've deduced that the three found to date were located in the ruins of RCH buildings, and we know where the other buildings were. We simply have to get someone to set up a dig at each location."

"Simply?"

"I've asked Admiral Holt to inform the Expedition Headquarters of our pressing need for the remaining three artifacts. He'll explain that under GA law, Space Command is authorized to assume control of the area where we believe the artifacts are located. He'll explain that our earth-moving equipment is on the way to the planet and that we'll be digging up the RCH locations and sifting through the excavated soil for the cylinders, or perhaps a vacuum canister containing the cylinder."

"They'll go absolutely ballistic! Earth-moving equipment would destroy the dig sites."

"Most probably, although it won't damage the cylinders. Their reaction is what I'm counting on. Admiral Holt will be prepared to offer a compromise when they respond. If the Expedition Headquarters begins active, full-scale excavations in search of the artifacts we need, he'll hold off and let them do it their way. If we find they're not making a maximum effort, we can always move in with our earth-moving equipment, all of which will be positioned nearby to keep the consequences of moving too slowly uppermost in their minds. I think they'll be well motivated. I really hate using such tactics, but I see no other alternative. We must have those cylinders and we can't sit around for five, ten, or even twenty years until they decide to excavate the areas we believe the cylinders are located."

Carmoody breathed deeply and let it out slowly. "I can't see any alternative either, but I can already hear the expletives that will be ringing through the halls at Anthius."