Garr seized her arm. “Wait. There could be danger.”
“You’re not allowed to follow me. So unless Kaython’s ordering you inside, you need to let me go.” She didn’t want to play the “trust your goddess” card, so she tried another: “Trust me.”
He studied her, the entryway, and then her again. “You’re right.”
It felt nice to hear him say it. “Of course I am. I’m ridiculously smart, remember?”
“Ridiculously?”
“I should terrify you.” She reached up to stroke his square jaw. “I’ll be fine.”
He took her fingertips and kissed them. “Be careful.”
“I’ll come running back the second I find something evil in there that wants to eat me. Promise.”
Turning to face the dimly lit corridor, Rae summoned her courage and stepped through the entrance and into Ythir’s ancient history.
***
The corridor took her to a command chamber that served as an observation post at the top of a larger, underground facility. Glass panels in the floors and walls overlooked recessed laboratories, some of which had rows of canisters and equipment that were more reminiscent of manufacturing and engineering than pure science.
The command post had a dozen computer stations. Each one used a holographic projector as its display and the operating system let her switch or pan through screens with taps or simple gestures with her hands and fingers. For a smart phone user, it was fairly intuitive.
When she brought lights up on the recessed labs below, she noted how right she’d been about manufacturing. The tubes she’d seen looked like a series of mason jars of varying sizes, ranging from a foot tall to large enough to hold a city bus.
She could understand Ythirian and they were labeled as “birthing wombs.” When she cracked her first data file and saw the familiar double helix of DNA structures, Rae put it together.
“It’s a genetics lab.” Of course it was—the Skorvag was designed here. It was a facility whose central purpose was to create life-forms, particularly those that merged organic and inorganic nanotech compounds.
Rae sprinted to the cave’s mouth to relay these facts to Garr: “It’s a genetic engineering lab!” She burst from the tunnel and threw her arms happily around him, overjoyed.
He caught her by the hips, spinning her full circle before setting her down. “That is… good?”
“Good? That is my dream! It’s still operational. It’s got… oh my God. I could make dinosaurs!”
Truth told, wanting a pet dinosaur was sixty percent of her interest in genetics. She’d wanted one since she was six. Pausing a moment, glancing into the dim corridor, she added, “I mean, I’m not sure the DNA is on file, or if I’m allowed to make a dinosaur. But I want to.”
“So make a dinosaur,” Garr said with a shrug, like it was no big thing.
She gawped up at him. “Seriously?”
“Kaython led you here. If she didn’t want you to make a dinosaur, why bring you?”
“But… you’re the prime. You’re supposed to convince me that science is evil.” This was his role—science fiction always included someone to warn about the evils of tampering with the forces of nature. “What if my creations go on a rampage?”
He shrugged. “If they do, I’ll just kill them.” He slammed his fist into his palm. “Then you can try again.”
Holy shit, I think my not-quite-boyfriend just gave me a genetics lab. She turned back toward it. “Stay here. I need to… I don’t know. Smell it again.” She sprinted back inside.
In the command chamber, she sorted through files in search of an explanation for the Skorvag. Maybe a history lesson would catch her up on why Kaython wanted her in here.
Video logs played, with ancient Ythirians on the screen. They were smaller—maybe even smaller than humans—with light-blue skin. The journals from their lab director caught Rae up while she picked through their genetic profiles, flabbergasted that they had so much DNA for Earth creatures.
Somehow, the Skorvag had monitored Earth even before the portals brought Garr to her home world. They’d been updating the genetic profiles in these labs throughout the ages, and Rae found species extending back to before the K-T extinction.
There was dinosaur DNA all right. She was giddy.
The video logs explained the purpose of the Skorvag and these genetics labs: they were constructed strategically across the whole planet following a calamitous nuclear war that expended the last of Ythir’s fissible resources.
With a radioactive dust cloud encircling the globe, there wasn’t enough sunlight for solar power and the surface was unlivable. Most life-forms had been destroyed, except those the scientists had managed to save and keep on record.