BOUNDARY(44)

"Ohmigod." She heard herself running the words together. "Ohmigod, ohmigod, A.J., that's a door, a door on Phobos for crissake, what's a door doing there?"



She whirled, about to put some pointed questions to the blond engineer, then stopped.



"No, you'd never do this kind of joke. That's real? Someone—or something—was on Phobos before us?"



Her mind was racing ahead of her words. That explained the guards at the door, A.J.'s comments, and why she hadn't heard updates on the Faeries' progress. Someone had clamped the lid down hard on the project.



"No joke, my fave NASA engineer. I'd say more something than someone if I were guessing. We haven't found any remains yet, or if we have I haven't recognized them as bodies, and I think I would. Then, there's several doors we need to open. This one's partly open, but I'm not sure I can squeeze one of the Faeries through."



"So, if you haven't found any bodies, why do you say 'thing'? No, wait, let me guess—the designs."



"Right in one. The corridors aren't shaped the way we'd do them. At least, not where they were clearly cut instead of just adapted from cracks and caves already present inside Phobos when whoever or whatever they were took it over."



He pointed to the screen. "That door—look at it. It's more a semicircle, or a half ellipse. Either they were really short but liked very wide doorways for some reason, or they were shaped low, kinda wide, and fairly big. We've come across plaques and things set in the walls in places we might put signs—you know, 'Engineering that way, Life Sciences to the right'—and they're all set much lower down than we'd put them. Almost a meter lower down."



"So you have closed doors? Do you think . . . maybe . . .?"



A.J. shook his head. "Not unless they have some super-miracle materials and no need for power. There isn't any significant source of energy left on this rockball. If there was, the Faeries would have picked it up. And without some kind of energy, nothing's going to be alive here for long. But there might be some other stuff in the closed rooms."



Hathaway joined in. "We've had some of our other engineers going over part of the data A.J.'s been feeding us. It looks to us like something violent happened to the base—maybe a collision with something else, maybe some kind of internal cataclysm. But whatever it might have been, there's been a lot of damage to various areas. Explosive decompression, shockwaves, the whole nine yards. If this was on Earth, there would probably have been cave-ins. As it is, there are places we can't get to easily."



"So," Jackie said, "maybe the doors that are closed got jammed during the disaster?"



A.J. nodded. "That's kinda what we're hoping. Yeah, it'd be pretty grisly for our alien friends who got stuck, since they'd have run out of whatever it is they breathed once the main base power went down. But it would also mean we'd have a good chance of finding something intact in there—bodies, maybe even equipment."



"Intact?" Jackie asked,



"Well . . . intact enough so we have a chance of figuring it out." Hathaway replied. "I doubt anything will work. But first we have to get inside."



A.J.'s grin was smug. "At least we actually do have a chance of getting inside."



Hathaway rolled his eyes. "Okay, okay, okay, yes, A.J., you were right and we were wrong. There was a point to putting manipulators on the Faeries. It was still a waste of resources. There was no way you could possibly have known what you were going to find."



"How can you call it a waste when we're using them? Besides, it was my grant money to spend. I was sure I'd have an occasion to use them for something. I'll admit, I didn't expect it to be something this big."



"You think the Faeries have the ability to move doors like those?" Jackie asked doubtfully.



"Not sure, really," A.J. admitted. "Maybe not. The systems were set up to be maximally configurable, and I'm going to be selecting the highest mechanical advantage. And using three of them at once, if I need lots of force."



"What if something goes wrong? You don't want to lose three Faeries."



"I don't want to lose one Faerie. But it's not likely I'll lose any of them. Even if it goes badly, the worst I'd expect to happen is that they'll blow the manipulators or break them. They're not going to explode or anything silly like that." He pursed his lips. "A shame, in a way. If I could make them blow up, then I'd have a way to open at least one of the doors even if the manipulators don't do the trick. I'd originally planned for them to have Fairy Dust dispensers, but the sensor mote design ran into problems and had to be scrapped. They'll be up and running for the real mission, no doubt, but for this venture it just wasn't in the cards."