BOUNDARY(59)

The large oval room was a study in curves and ramps and triangled paneling. Even though constructed by completely inhuman minds and manipulative members, the layout was something hauntingly familiar. A sort of dais, with scalloped indentations at the edge that must correspond to seating arrangements, was located in the center. Around the perimeter of the room, on the side opposite the door, there were a series of tripartite panels. They were clearly separated yet related in groups of three, each with what appeared to be some kind of display panel or viewing screen above the central of the three subpanels.



Other dark, indefinable shapes were barely visible, sharp-edged but confusing, casting eerie shadows on the walls behind them. Titania began its preprogrammed survey of the room, in a counterclockwise direction from the entrance—which, naturally, took the other shapes out of view.



"Damn! I flip a coin and it chooses the wrong direction."



"We'll get to that area eventually," Jackie pointed out reassuringly. "How long?"



"You can't survey the room too quickly, especially if you don't want to hit anything. I'd say it's another half hour before we get our second look. Getting other data in now and . . . Yes, it's what I thought. There's something in those walls that was messing with the readings earlier. They're all much clearer now."



A.J. was still not paying a great deal of attention to the other data. Like everyone else, he was watching the slow revelations of Titania as she carefully surveyed the great control room.



"Look at that," one of the newcomers whispered. "More symbols on those keyboard-type things."



"How do you know they're keyboards?" challenged another.



"I don't know. But if we assume this is a control room, then it stands to reason that these things are very likely to be something like a keyboard."



"Size argues that they must have been using a phonetic alphabet rather than one oriented to meaning, like ideograms," someone else put in.



"Unless they had developed a symbology that included a method of representing meaning."



"Well, it could be mathematical . . . But look there, that one. I think some of those symbols are the same ones on a couple of the plaques we've located in the corridors."



"Not just mathematical, then. Unless they discussed hallway-style directions in mathematical terms."



"The hallway signs don't have to be directions. They may have known directions instinctively. Perhaps they were reminders of significant equations . . ."



The discussion continued in low tones with the participants examining in detail the specific frames in question. The rest of the spectators continued to be glued to the new images flowing in from Phobos.



"There, that station, it's bigger," Jackie said. "And the ramp that leads up to it flattens out into almost a platform. It's got more than one of those display-type screens above it, too. A captain's station?"



"Could be," A.J. allowed. "Or chief researcher or engineer."



After a pause, he added: "Okay, people, here we go. We're getting back to a FOV that ought to show us those whatever-they-weres towards the far side."



The darkness lightened. The mysterious shapes began to clarify again. Something like a small, black-brown bush with a thick, jagged stem drifted by the imager.



"What the heck is that?" Diane wondered aloud.



Suddenly, sliding into view almost as though it had lunged from the left-hand side, a far larger shape loomed on the screen. Three long, sinuous projections extended towards Titania, with the glittering of something smooth and whitish showing between them. Behind these projections bulked a massive body extending several meters back into the darkness, shadows and light playing on it and hinting at more detail.



As Titania continued onward, the shape emerged more clearly, coming into profile: an almost sluglike body, three stout projections on the far end mirroring the longer ones at the front.



"Holy mother of—" A.J. began.



"That's—" Jackie said.



"Bemmie!" they both finished simultaneously.



"Bemmie?" Hathaway repeated. "What the hell's a bemmie?"



Madeline Fathom looked just as puzzled as Hathaway. A.J. and Jackie turned to both of them, started talking at once, and went through several cycles of "Okay, you tell them, no, you, no, go ahead, you say it, no . . ." before A.J. finally claimed the floor.



"Colonel, I think we have a new crew member for you. Because,"



A.J. said with a wicked grin, "we know someone who's already spent two years studying our aliens."