A Forest of Stars - Kevin J. Anderson [80]
Rlinda stood, leaving the exposed green-tinged body in the dry dust. She would find time to move the poor man while Lotze continued his snooping. “You might be a detective, Davlin, but I’m not sure you really understand people. This old couple was married for decades. They spent half their lives isolated on alien digs—people like that can handle solitude.”
“I’m not ready to draw conclusions yet,” Lotze said. “They also had a compy and three Klikiss robots.”
Rlinda nodded toward the cliff city, where the nearest set of alien buildings waited like ancient secrets. “Want to go sightseeing in those ruins?”
Empty Klikiss cities had been found on numerous planets, but fully investigated on few. The sentient race had built hivelike structures in prairie environments or tunneled into canyon walls. The Ildirans had known about the lost race for a long time, but they left the abandoned ghost cities alone.
In its early days, excited by the possibilities of expansion, the Terran Hanseatic League commissioned explorers to investigate worlds the Ildirans had cataloged and then ignored. The Colicoses’ discovery of the Klikiss Torch had reawakened interest in the lost civilization, though the hydrogue war quashed plans for more intensive excavations.
Now Rlinda wandered through the musty tunnels with amazement on her face. The alien buildings were made of a polymerized concrete, some sort of silica-enhanced fiber, perhaps manufactured organically by the insectile Klikiss. Each wall was covered with strange hieroglyphics and incomprehensible equations.
She and Lotze spent a day in the mazes of the ghost metropolis, finding a few items of Colicos equipment, but little more. “The last report of Margaret Colicos described a second, better preserved set of ruins,” Lotze said. “My suspicion is that they spent their days working there.”
Taking general directions, Rlinda flew the Curiosity low until they tracked down the canyon and found wrecked scaffolding that had once been mounted onto the cliff wall.
“We need to get inside,” Davlin said.
“Sure. Just find me a parking lot big enough to land this ship.” He didn’t laugh at her joke, so she came up with an innovative solution. “The Curiosity is designed to haul cargo, Davlin. Down in the loading bay, I’ve got several levitating pallets. They can handle even the two of us together.”
She landed on the flat mesa above the cliff walls. Then, standing next to Lotze on the high-tech raft, Rlinda steered them with painful slowness toward the edge of the cliff and then down the wall. “This thing is made for moving big crates, not winning any races.”
She maneuvered the levitating pallet inside the cliff overhang and set it down on the rocky floor, where dust had begun to collect in corners. The air smelled dry, and their footsteps made whispery sounds as they entered.
Davlin pointed to lights and wires strung along the corridors, markings on the walls, and tags left behind. “Margaret’s notes indicate that she was quite enthusiastic about what they would find here.”
Rlinda squinted into the shadows, shining her portable light. “Well, maybe something found her instead. I should have brought a weapon. I’ve got two on my ship, I think.”
Lotze focused on his surroundings, all of his senses attuned to picking up clues. Deeper inside the cliff city, they found a scattered, pathetically desperate-looking barricade piled in front of the entrance to a large chamber. It had been knocked down from the outside. Rlinda shone her light into the room and saw machinery and large, flat walls.
And an old man’s body lying on the floor.
Lotze hurried through a break in the barricade, directing his light. Louis Colicos was better preserved than the green priest, enough that Rlinda could tell with a glance that he had died violently. His body was broken and torn, with many deep wounds. Cautious now, she looked behind her, eyes wide, as if expecting something to jump