BOOK ONE: ALLELE; Chapter Ten

Sita spoke into the ship's comms, "Allele, now I can appreciate what one of the phasetechs  meant when he described the allure of archeology."

"What's that?" Allele and Jon, asked from their pods, now docked and in tow by Sita's converted observation craft.

"The peace and contemplation of finding yourself... nowhere, sifting through nothing to find nothing, where nothing ever was, and never will be," Sita answered.

"Does sound like us," Jon agreed, "but It's only been three months."

Allele chided,"Lepton isn't doing much better. At least we don't have to excavate those mangled ruins, wondering if we missed something, sifting through piles of junk just to find that they're just piles of junk. We get to skip around through the ice like we're vacationing in the Druppa Expanse."

"The worst of our fears is of killing a firmasquid," Jon piped in.

"Correction," Sita whined, "You get to do the skipping, I get to watch, and watch, and watch."

"And, you do it so well," said Jon.

Sita answered back,"Yes I do, don't I? You could learn from me, Jon. My job is to deploy the two of you and watch, which I do. Yours is to find something! Not doing so good there are you?"

"Now, now, you two," Allele interjected, "We may not have found anything yet, but if anything is out here we will. We're ahead of schedule for finding nothing, and that means we'll be able to cover a much wider area than we'd planned."

But, Allele was also frustrated. She'd counted on having some form of trophy within the first six weeks. Lepton had warned her it would take time, that she was being unrealistic. Even Levin's crew, better equipped as it was, hadn't uncovered any significant artifacts. Nothing shed new light on the reason behind the collapse or the ambitious mining operation that led to it.

Allele's team had scoured over a hundred acres without result. On this day they would be searching a region where the empty shafts produced by the ancient mining operation had survived mostly intact. Most collapsed in on themselves but several hundred located near the outer perimeter of the rift filled with water that quick froze to hold them intact, forming a field of blue ice palisades separated by gray green honeycombs of natural ancient ice.

The clear blue ice created solid canyons thousands of feet deep the bottoms of which became glass smooth lenses in the ceiling of the vast subterranean ocean trapped beneath. Most of the shafts and canyons were pointless to search save for a few locations where the wall formations indicated a possible footprint for structures like towers mining outposts that may have fallen into the shafts to become preserved in the rapid freeze of the flood water.

Sita lowered the craft a few hundred feet into one shaft until level with a promising "Melt". Melts were huge welt-like formations in the natural ice wall, mottled as if by extreme heat. How they formed in the core of an ice flow was one of the mysteries the team hoped to answer. Though not directly related to Allele's area of study, the team examined any they came across in coordination with Lepton's operation.

The one Sita was examining was a round shallow cavity about seventy or eighty yards in diameter that appeared to have been burned into the Shaft wall by a single sustained blast of heat creating a long smooth frozen tongue of ice that seemed to drain to the bottom of the shaft, the whole formation embedded in the later flood of blue ice.

"This is it," Sita told the others as she slowed her decent to rest at the eye of the melt. "I'm not getting any readings of abnormal deposits of any kind." she added with dismay.

"Another day off to a dreary start," Jon piped in.

"Well, somebody must have been here, don't lose hope before we even start," Allele said.

"Allele, we've seen this kind of..." Jon hesitated to say what he was thinking which was that they'd examined countless formations like this without ever finding anything.

"Yes Jon?" Allele interrupted.

"Nothing. Yes, maybe today. Sita, I'm ready to be jettisoned." Jon said.

"Me too," added Allele. "Let's just get to work and not think about glory. Don't lose sight of..."

Sita cut her off, "Yeah right," and released the two pods pushing them off with a jolt that rocked their passengers. Allele felt anger at Sita's insubordination but chose to make light of it. They were all stressed and disappointed.

"I suppose I deserved that," Allele said.

"It's a lovely speech, Allele it really is," Jon said.

"I never tire of it," added Sita.

"Okay enough, I get it!" scolded Allele. "The sooner we start..."

"...the sooner we finish." Both Jon and Sita chimed in.

"Is it that bad?" asked Allele.

"We love you," Sita answered.

"Thank you Sita. Okay then. Jon, our usual pattern." Allele instructed.

Sita locked position of the base craft at the center of the melt opening, and suspended about twenty yards away from the wall of the shaft. Despite being in solid ice, it's blue transparency made it appear she was hovering over a shear drop of thousands of feet to the sea below. Jon ascended to the uppermost edge of the melt while Allele descended to the corresponding lower edge. When all were in position Sita started the Archiving protocol that would record the entire operation as seen from all three craft. Allele and Jon inched their way forward and slowly entered the ice wall scanning for any objects or simple debris bearing a synthesized signature that might be suspended in the melt halo, the mottled skin of the melt that is usually about thirty feet thick.

The phase envelopes of the pods created a spectral shift that gave the blue ice a more purple hue where the envelopes passed through. Inside the pod cabins the pink light of the envelope filled atmosphere itself giving off light that did not emanate from any source. Sitting at their scanner screens, Allele and Jon could see out into the ice as if submerged in a stationary ocean. Bubbles and various bits of rock and other natural debris were scattered everywhere, all suspended in a field that appeared as if caught in an instant of time.

Allele and Jon maneuvered their craft in a clock-wise direction following the melt halo, all the time scanning for anything that might be of interest. When they returned to their original position of rotation they would have both scanned the section of the melt halo through which they'd passed. When the first and widest rotation was complete they   closed the gap between them by fifty feet as they moved in along the conical halo to began the pattern again. During the third such track Jon noticed a green shift in the blue ice along the inner surface of the halo.

"Are you seeing that?" he asked Allele.

"Yes, interesting. Let's finish this track and take a look." Allele replied, but Jon had already broken formation.

"Jon, you're out of alignment," Sita warned.

"Jon, return to formation please. I don't want to have to redo the track," Allele growled. "Jon. Jon!"

"You have to see this!" he finally answered.

He had penetrated into the bed ice surrounding the melt halo. To the right and behind him the halo wall loomed, a massive rippled crystal bubble. Before him a funnel of the green ice jutted from the halo at a sharp enough angle to cut across the the well wall into the next palisade of blue ice and beyond. The green ice had the same clear smooth characteristics of the blue of the palisades except it glowed the way a phase envelope did pink. Jon knew that an object existing in a rogue phase would not give off light, only a phase envelope could be the cause. The funnel was in a unique phase that was being projected artificially.

"Jon come back!" Allele was shouting now.

"It's alright. Come out the back of the halo. You have got to see this," He answered excited.

"See what?" Sita asked. "There's nothing out there Jon."

"Sita? Never mind. Allele please follow me," Jon pleaded. He'd already brought his pod alongside the funnel shaft and begun to follow it away from the melt.

"JON, COME BACK!" Allele commanded, but he was not replying. Reluctantly she turned her pod and headed out of the halo in the direction Jon had gone. The Funnel loomed out before her.

Shocked she called back to Sita, "Sita are getting this?"

"Getting what?" she asked impatiently. "There's nothing back there but bed ice. Just plain old boring bed ice. All I get is Jon skipping away toward the wall of the next shaft."

"Okay, stay where you are Sita. I'll go after him," Allele said.

"Shouldn't we both?" Sita asked.

"No. If you aren't getting this rogue shaft something is wrong with your scanning equipment. I don't want you to risk an accident. I'll get him back," Allele reassured her and began to follow Jon along the funnel shaft.

"Jon, what are you doing?" Allele asked. "Jon, just answer me."

"Allele the light must be coming from the far end of the shaft. It's getting brighter the further I go," he answered after a moment.

"Jon, wait for me and we'll check it out together."

"There's no danger. I'll meet you there when you catch up," he said.

In the distance Allele could see Jon's pod racing alongside the rogue funnel wall. Suddenly it took a sharp turn and disappeared into the funnel wall.

She screamed into the commas, "Jon Don't!" Receiving no answer, she turned her attention to Sita, "Sita, you don't see any of this at all?"

"Nothing, Allele."

"You're at the center of the melt it should be right in front of you," Allele said.

Sita called to Jon, "Jon you've passed the limits of my scanners. Please stop and wait for Allele." No reply, she called to Allele, "Either something is interfering with his comms or he's turned them off."

"Okay Sita, I'm going to have to follow him. Stay where you are unless I say otherwise." Allele began to follow the shaft away from the melt as Jon had, but maneuvered her pod into it immediately in hope of regaining sight of Jon's pod.

Sita called, "Allele, I'm going to run diagnostics on my scanners to see what's wrong," but Allele's pod had blinked out of sight, even the ship's scanners lost her.  "Allele I've lost you. Allele? If I can fix the scanners should I follow you?" There was no reply.