and welded blocks of sand.
He was not worried about radiation. This was not a nuke: It was a meteor strike. A big one.
There were ruins crumbling at the edge of the crater walls above: broken walls in burial shrouds of ice, blind with unglassed windows and doorless thresholds, or stumps of chimneys helmeted in snow. Now Menelaus saw a regularity in the cracks and discolorations in the crater floor: squares and rectangles. Old streets, old foundations, something had been here once.
This had been a large installation. Not a city: Some of the ruins were shaped like pillboxes or hemi-cylinders. A military installation. A fortress built high in the mountains? There was a break in the treeline, and all the trees in a row, for over a mile, were younger than those surrounding. He guessed that this was where the launchrail once rested, and broken lumps regularly spaced along the path may have been the energy system. That square break in the treeline was where the vehicle building might have stood: That broken eggshell in the distance, if it were not a mosque, was the remnant of a reactor dome. Of the acceleration rings there was no sign.
So—not just any fortress. A fortified spaceport. There had been no such installations anywhere on Earth in his day.
And now a second fortress had been built atop the first, no doubt replacing the old one when it was pasted. That implied even more years had passed. Seventy-five? A hundred? How long had it been? More importantly, had any radio messages been received from the Hermetic ? The original expedition provisions would have allowed the vessel to stay at the Diamond Star for seven years, before powering up to begin the astronomical voyage back, with another possible two years if crewmen died, or very strict rationing were practiced. The results would arrive before the ship. If all went as planned, if there were results to send. If the Monument had been translated …
Back inside the chamber, there were images of fire painted on the ceilings, images of birds and beasts and maidens and conquering kings on the walls. Everything was deep red, dark blue, blue-black, with tints of gold and mahogany to bring a richness out of the textures. Framing the doors and windows and arches of dark wood carved in pattern of Celtic dragons coiled in knots. Underfoot were Persian carpets like nothing he’d ever seen. On either hand, and every which way he turned his eyes, everything was either gold, or crystal, or polished wood, or fine china, or substances he could not put a name to. There was a black paneled bowl of red roses on the nightstand, and some sort of candelabra in the ceiling, surrounded by painted babies with pink wings.
It all looked like something from an old European mansion. He had been expecting something else. Rooms made of force fields and streamlined steel with tailfins. Sliding doors that opened by themselves and made a shush-shush noise or something. Moving walkways. Atom-powered lightbulbs. Talking sinks, preferably that had a third tap for beer.
It was damn pretty, though, he had to give them that. The place even smelled nice, applewood logs burning on the fire.
He craned his head back and looked at the ceiling again. Images of fire? These were battle scenes.
4. Portrait of War
High up on the wall, his eye first fell upon an image of a burnt city under a mushroom cloud. The artist had painted streaks and streams of odd color, green and indigo, issuing like a lighting bolt high in the air. There was a tiny silver dot high up in the corner of the image: no doubt this was the aircraft spotting for the incoming missile strike. So the fools had actually done it. The Burning of New York the Beautiful had not been enough to warn the world. World War, this time with atomics. Or some weapon even more deadly: if the artist’s design was accurate, the bolt was wider at the top than at the bottom, unlike a detonation or mass-driver strike.
The cityscape was photographically accurate.
He was not worried about radiation. This was not a nuke: It was a meteor strike. A big one.
There were ruins crumbling at the edge of the crater walls above: broken walls in burial shrouds of ice, blind with unglassed windows and doorless thresholds, or stumps of chimneys helmeted in snow. Now Menelaus saw a regularity in the cracks and discolorations in the crater floor: squares and rectangles. Old streets, old foundations, something had been here once.
This had been a large installation. Not a city: Some of the ruins were shaped like pillboxes or hemi-cylinders. A military installation. A fortress built high in the mountains? There was a break in the treeline, and all the trees in a row, for over a mile, were younger than those surrounding. He guessed that this was where the launchrail once rested, and broken lumps regularly spaced along the path may have been the energy system. That square break in the treeline was where the vehicle building might have stood: That broken eggshell in the distance, if it were not a mosque, was the remnant of a reactor dome. Of the acceleration rings there was no sign.
So—not just any fortress. A fortified spaceport. There had been no such installations anywhere on Earth in his day.
And now a second fortress had been built atop the first, no doubt replacing the old one when it was pasted. That implied even more years had passed. Seventy-five? A hundred? How long had it been? More importantly, had any radio messages been received from the Hermetic ? The original expedition provisions would have allowed the vessel to stay at the Diamond Star for seven years, before powering up to begin the astronomical voyage back, with another possible two years if crewmen died, or very strict rationing were practiced. The results would arrive before the ship. If all went as planned, if there were results to send. If the Monument had been translated …
Back inside the chamber, there were images of fire painted on the ceilings, images of birds and beasts and maidens and conquering kings on the walls. Everything was deep red, dark blue, blue-black, with tints of gold and mahogany to bring a richness out of the textures. Framing the doors and windows and arches of dark wood carved in pattern of Celtic dragons coiled in knots. Underfoot were Persian carpets like nothing he’d ever seen. On either hand, and every which way he turned his eyes, everything was either gold, or crystal, or polished wood, or fine china, or substances he could not put a name to. There was a black paneled bowl of red roses on the nightstand, and some sort of candelabra in the ceiling, surrounded by painted babies with pink wings.
It all looked like something from an old European mansion. He had been expecting something else. Rooms made of force fields and streamlined steel with tailfins. Sliding doors that opened by themselves and made a shush-shush noise or something. Moving walkways. Atom-powered lightbulbs. Talking sinks, preferably that had a third tap for beer.
It was damn pretty, though, he had to give them that. The place even smelled nice, applewood logs burning on the fire.
He craned his head back and looked at the ceiling again. Images of fire? These were battle scenes.
4. Portrait of War
High up on the wall, his eye first fell upon an image of a burnt city under a mushroom cloud. The artist had painted streaks and streams of odd color, green and indigo, issuing like a lighting bolt high in the air. There was a tiny silver dot high up in the corner of the image: no doubt this was the aircraft spotting for the incoming missile strike. So the fools had actually done it. The Burning of New York the Beautiful had not been enough to warn the world. World War, this time with atomics. Or some weapon even more deadly: if the artist’s design was accurate, the bolt was wider at the top than at the bottom, unlike a detonation or mass-driver strike.
The cityscape was photographically accurate.
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