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"Going doith the ship, Mr Platz?" a woroup toward the nearby junction hall They all smiled at the joke
"Oh, was there an alarhed and he offered a sly grin as he waved the he had the office to himself The creould be in the topside cli the lifeboats and attaching theured he had two hours of blissful quiet More than enough time for what he intended to do
Inside his office, he closed and locked the door He went to his safe and used a combination of thumbprint and nu open, Neil knelt down in front of a second safe, tucked inside An antique, purely mechanical, as small as a shoe box No complicated electronics to fail, no need for some computer expert to have maintenance access
He spun the dial fro the series of numbers The combination hadn’t been used in more than twelve years, yet it caed Neil closed his eyes and drew a lungful of air, then slowly released it Indecision crept into his thoughts the instant he wrapped his fingers around the handle After all, the contents had been secure all this time No one but Neil knew the secret contained inside Surely he could keep it, if only to honor the memory Perhaps to study it, maybe even let the scientists have a look--
No He hardened his resolve It must be destroyed, and today He should just take the entire safe and push it out an airlock Let the truth drift for eternity in the vast, freezing void for athe handle on the safe’s door It opened
With a sigh, Neil reached inside and re outwardly special about it He closed his fingers around the cool ceramic object
One last look, he thought Then it’s the heart of the sun for you
He held the cube in both hands as he walked to the sensory theater It felt like a dreah the empty station The place felt cold--creepy, even--without its inhabitants bustling about He half-expected to see a schoolboy ride by on a tricycle Or twin girls inblue dresses, hands entwined around the hilt of a bloody knife
He chuckled The laugh echoed in the euilt The business at hand was nothing to joke about
Neil put his focus back on the cube If there were any ghosts in this place, he held them in his hands
He stepped into the sensory theater and flipped the systeraced the center of the round roo screens, each capable of more resolution than the human eye could discern
The crew treasured this room, and the vast library of entertainments stored on the station’s array New and old, from fully interactive sensory experiences in which the viewer could participate to the sio
Neil perched hie of the cushioned red seat and placed the data cube into a port atop a sleek black pedestal
The cube held only three recordings Before Neil could entertain any an autoan to build in him He kept one hand on the cube, ready to rip it from the machine, and watched the events unfold for the last tih a dead e, from the tiny camera mounted on Sandeep Sharma’s helmet, presented the scene fro, that he could see everything except the man’s face No way to read the eoodbye, to say sorry To see that hint of Tania in her father’s eyes
"If only you’d trusted e showed the interior of a shuttle cockpit, croith gauges and colorful terminal screens Sandeep sat at the controls, only his arms and the tops of his knees visible in the fraator’s seat, suited up in siht Forty-four years since that daht of the world has all but killed er Neil flashed an eager grin and a thumbs-up
The view returned to the cockpit and the forward-lookingStill too far from the object for the camera to discern it, but Neil kneas there The idea of sitting through the event again, of watching Sandeep and his younger self see the object for the first time, the unchecked excitement in their faces and voices, disturbed hiht on top of the da
Foreshadow, they would dub it later, when they understood its significance A ridiculous name, and yet so perfectly apt It was the first of the Builder’s ships, parked in orbit alht years before the Darwin Elevator arrived Undetected by a population turned inward, a population apathetic to the overdue proions
The rest of the planet thought the Darwin Elevator to be a surprise arrival, the "first-contact" event for the history books Some noted the absurd luck of the Platz fahtcliff and so many industries that would be key to the exploitation of the Elevator Consunored such questions, and in tie
Neil knew the truth Sandeep did, too, until his demise The only other person Neil ever told was his own father, the true business tycoon The oldastronauts to keep the discovery secret, and together they began to shift Platz Enterprises toward taking full advantage of the finding
All because of that bloody rooh the portion of the recording where Sandeep flew them past Foreshadow Station for the first time A smooth black sphere tucked at the end of a mottled conical hull Exotic h the hours of footage as they circled the object, until he reached the portion where their robotic probe touched the device An accident, Sandeep’s excite the small vehicle too fast And yet it started it all
Neil slowed the footage to normal speed He heard his own excited voice as the door opened Sandeep urged caution, but young Neil demanded they push forward
The probe drifted inside Neil fast-forwarded again, to the part where he and Sandeep entered the station themselves, in space suits, to see it with their own eyes
Foreshadow The cursed room at the heart of it
Six-sided, each "wall" nearly fifteen e ht, but not like a terminal screen These had a physical nature to thes shown there
The first nized immediately It depicted the station itself Foreshadow
The nextNeil paused the video to study it again, for the last tie Alien in style, yet unmistakable Earth, at the bottom--a portion of it, at least: Northern Australia Darwin