The January Dancer Read Online Free PDF

O’Toole joined the Terran.
    Maggie B. turned to the captain, who had not moved. “What is it?” she asked.
    January waited out a growl of static. “Something’s missing.”
    “Holy Alfven!” said Tirasi, and O’Toole turned to the captain. “It’s a fookin’ ghost.”
    “You have to look at just the right angle,” Tirasi explained when the captain and Maggie had joined them. “Johnny, stand away. The light has to be… There, do you see it?”
    January nodded slowly. He could make out the billowing of yellowed clouds against a ruddy background, as if a slice of orange sky many leagues deep had been captured and set on a pedestal. “It’s a whole-gram,” he guessed.
    “Yah?” said Tirasi as he viewed his gauge in disgust. “A projected image with mass ?” He showed January the readout. “ And with a temperature and ”—passing his hand through the image—“with a texture. Cool, smooth, and I can feel that it’s hollow.”
    “You can feel it,” Maggie B. said, “but you can’t pick ’er up.” Tirasi nodded. “Like grabbing smoke.”
    “Why am I not fookin’ surprised,” said O’Toole. He was answered by another outbreak of static.
    The second chamber was right beside the pedestal and January idly felt one of the soft, spongy leaves that ringed the entry. It seemed made of the same material as the door of the vault.
    At that point, Tirasi and O’Toole noticed their captain’s possession of the sandstone block. “Well, now,” said O’Toole with a glower. “And are ye cutting us out on the only bit of loot we can actually walk off with?”
    January, surprised, looked at the sandstone block in his grip. It had fit his hand so comfortably that he had quite forgotten he was holding it. The stone was thicker at the ends now, and curved in a slight arc—and he had not felt even the smallest movement.
    It was an exceptional piece, he realized. An exception not only to the beauty of the other items, but also to their immobility. A cuckoo in the nest. And why wasn’t it taken when the rest of this vault was plundered?
    Tirasi nudged the pilot. “Greedy sod, ain’t he? C’mon, Slug, let’s explore the rest of this place. Might be there’s more stuff in the next room.”
    January suddenly knew. Those fleshy “leaves” were not the petals of a decorative flower that ringed the entrance to the second chamber. They were segments of another of those marshmallow doors. Something had pierced the door in the center, and it had peeled outward in pie-slice sections. From the arrangement of the pieces, the door had been pierced from inside the chamber. And there was nothing inside the chamber but an empty pedestal.
    “Wait!” he said, and to his surprise the others stopped and turned expectantly. January looked again at the shredded door. What had sat on that pedestal, sealed off from the other objects? The irresistible force? How long had the door resisted it? Millennia? Eons? But it had failed at last.
    Where was it now? It could not have gotten off-planet, surely. No, it must still be loose somewhere on this world.
    Waiting for a ship to happen by.
    “You’re absolutely right, Bill,” he said. “There may be other relics somewhere in the complex, but for all we know that corridor”—he pointed toward the half-open door at the end of the room, half enticed by the dark at the end of the tunnel, half expecting something irresistible to come pouring through it—“for all we know that corridor leads nowhere but to a dead end deep inside the planet. That would fit, somehow. But we need to get off this world, now.”
    O’Toole scratched his ear, cast an uneasy glance at the corridor, and said, “Sure thing, Cap’n. But I hate to leave without getting something out o’ this.”
    The lack of objection surprised January. “Something’s happening,” he told them. “Have you been listening to the static on the comm channels? It’s getting stronger. There’s a storm brewing, and a big