Dean Wesley Smith - VOR 03 by Island of Power

Author:Island of Power [Power, Island of]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

13

Time:2:22P. M.Pacific Time

12 hours, 51 minutes after Arrival

Hank was panting and sweating by the time they reached the twenty-eighth floor of the alien tower.

Private Hawk had his back against the door, holding it open into the large space beyond, and light flooded the stairwell. After twenty flights in the dark staircase, with only their flashlights for illumination, the sudden brightness made him squint.

“What a relief,” Stephanie said, as they went through the door and out into the open area.

Hank felt exactly the same way. It was a relief just to stop climbing stairs.

It was cold, with a slight wind swirling through the enormous room. Hank glanced around and could see that the wall and part of the floor below had collapsed in one corner. The outer walls were still transparent like the seventh and eighth floors, but there were more remnants of what might have been furnishings, varied equipment, and patterns of spaceslaid out across the vast area.

He and Stephanie moved out into the room and stopped. Hank took a few deep breaths of the wonderfully cooling air, working to get his lungs full again. He had spent far too many years working in labs and not exercising. Climbing twenty stories of stairs spaced just a little too far apart was a killer. And they still had a distance to go, let alone get back down in the other building. He had a feeling that by the time this was all over, his knees would ache for a week.

On the way uphe and Stephanie had talked a little about what the size of the stair spacing, the height of the ceilings, and other such details might indicate about the look and shape of this city’s original inhabitants. They decided they didn’t yet have enough information to make any logical assumptions.

Slowly the other scientists came out of the stairwell, seeming to appear from a door in the middle of empty space. Hank didn’t know if he’d ever get used to seeing that.Or to being in a building with invisible walls.

Sergeant Malone stood to one side, watching as they all came up. She and her men were in such good shape that it looked like they hadn’t even broken a sweat under their armor after ascending the twenty flights of stairs. And they were all carrying what looked like heavy equipment.

Stephanie reached down and tried to pick up a piece of debris, but it broke apart in her hand. “How old is this city?” she asked, brushing the dust off her hands on her pants.

“Old,”Edaro said between pants for breath. “But not as old as I feel at the moment. I haven’t had this much exercise since the last time I tried to walk thirty-six holes in one day.”

“It’s a wonder this entire city isn’t just one big pile of dust,” Hank said, staring at the broken, crumbled bits of the item Stephanie had tried to pick up. He tried to lift what might have been a piece of furniture, but it too disintegrated in his hands, sending a small cloud of dust swirling into the air.

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