BOUNDARY(106)

Secondly, the room was divided roughly in half down the center, by a low wall with a wide, flat top separating the two halves. On one end, the wall had a set of hinges of some sort. Behind this area was another set of doors and a small tripartite control panel similar to those found in the large control room and in a few other places.



A Bemmius mummy lay in that area, arms curled across each other and outward in what Helen currently considered a possibly instinctive defensive posture. "By doing that they protect the mouth, eye, and brain areas, and have those long, sharp hooklike structures pointing out towards any possible threat," she'd said. "This is rather like us throwing our arms up to protect our faces, or covering our heads with our arms in a falling rock area."



Judging by the number of Bemmius mummies found in that pose—which did not accord well with models of how a relaxed or a random death pose would look after mummification—it might well be that this was the equivalent of a person realizing he was doomed and ending up cowering in the corner.



"Look at his hands."



Joe nodded. The "hands," the complexly-divided portions of the quasi-tentacles that allowed Bemmius to use tools, showed signs of tremendous abuse. Some of the "fingers" were torn off and others were twisted and bent, showing that the internal structural plates were damaged or misaligned. Like others they had examined in the sealed rooms, this Bemmius had apparently tried to force the door open in a panic. A close examination showed that he had beaten and clawed at all three doors in the room, at some point during his imprisonment here.



"So, which door now?"



"Let's see what's behind the far door there. Until now, we haven't found any room that adjoins the corridor that doesn't have a door to it. I'm wondering why this one doesn't."



"Right." Joe floated back, gathered up the door opener that Gupta had designed while they were en route, and made his way back. He was careful in the microgravity not to let the heavy metal and composite structure get moving too fast. There might be almost no gravity, but the tool's mass was still the same.



"Have you seen the complaints from Earth about our exploration techniques?"



"Hey, they have a point," Harry said, floating at ease as he waited for Joe to get the opener in position. "If we were using these methods on, say, Egyptian tombs, we'd be lynched."



"Still, it's not like we're going to be letting in air to cause decay."



"No. But the proper archaeological—or paleontological, for that matter—approach would be to spend weeks slowly working away at methods to open them, recording each and every movement, and so on." He caught the door opener as it approached and gave Joe time to get set up to position the framework.



"Yeah," A.J. commented from whatever remote area he was working in, "but if the ancient Egyptian tombs had actually been built by space aliens, like some nutcases thought, and if we thought we might discover their tech inside, you can bet we'd be out there with backhoes and bulldozers and the namby-pamby archaeologists would be taking the back seat."



"No doubt," Joe concurred, "although I'd recommend you be a lot more diplomatic in the way you said that, if you were talking to Helen. I worked with her in the field for several summers, don't forget. And I can tell you that hell hath no fury like a bonedigger scorned."



A few minutes of setup and they were able to force this second door open, with a great deal of grunting.



"This one was a lot tougher," Joe finally gasped, relaxing in the restraint straps and waiting for his breathing to slow.



"Sure was," Harry said, almost as winded. "I wonder if—"



He did his unstrap-and-swing-around stunt again. "Well, that's interesting. This door's almost twice as thick as all the others."



A.J.'s voice broke in, pitched unnaturally low. "That leaves the question . . . was it so thick to keep something from breaking in—or is it that thick to prevent something from getting out?"



"Shut up, A.J.," Joe grumbled. "Being in these rooms with giant alien mummies is creepy enough without you tossing in B-movie paranoia."



"Fine, fine. Just don't go looking at any eggs in there, okay?"



"Thank you so much for reminding me of that image. Get off the friggin' channel if you don't have anything useful to add."



Harry, ignoring the byplay, had unstrapped and was already into the next room. "Hey, now this is new."



Joe drew himself across the threshold and stopped to survey the new area. "Holy . . . You aren't kidding!"