The Auriga Project Read online

Amon dropped the mic with a clunk that was swallowed in the chaos. He leaped over to the display, yanked out a tactile keyboard from the base of the screen, and began rapidly typing in override commands designed to short-circuit the translocation.

  It didn’t respond to those either.

  “Cut the power!” Amon yelled. Reuben was already tearing at the floorboards to reach the power cables beneath them. Electricity saturated the air, causing Reuben’s hair to stand on end and wave wildly.

  Reuben held up the control unit’s plug. Amon glanced up and saw the display was dead. The arch continued to thrum with energy.

  “Shit!” Amon said, already knowing it was too late. The redundant power cables connecting the arch and the translocation platform to the particle accelerator meant that they would have to cut all the power cables to shut it down. And there wasn’t enough time for that.

  “Eliana!” Amon yelled, twisting frantically as he searched for her. The light radiating from the sphere of rings this time was blinding, a bright-white sun that outshone the spotlights fixed on the stage.

  He shielded his eyes with one hand and squinted into the light. The chairs where Lucas and Wes had been seated were empty—they must have retreated from the stage when the Hopper malfunctioned. Did they take Eliana with them?

  But then he spotted her, silhouetted against the great ball of light that emanated from the sphere.

  He sprinted toward her only to stumble into something hard that tripped him and sent him sprawling to the deck. He felt the bar of the microphone stand beneath him as he pushed himself back up.

  He juked around Carbon, the lunar rover. She was ten feet from him now. Eliana stretched her arm toward the sphere of light, reaching. She gasped, her mouth widening, as the expanding radiance engulfed her wrist.

  Five feet away. He lifted his knees, pumped his arms, reached out to grab her. The light swallowed her elbow, her shoulder, half her body. A terrible dread lined Amon’s stomach with steel wool.

  Two feet. He jumped, reaching out. Instead of coming into contact with Eliana, he felt the light as a physical resistance pushing back at him like a viscous liquid.

  The feeling of resistance retreated suddenly. He slammed into the unforgiving hardness of alloy rings, knocking the breath from his lungs.

  Eliana. He gasped and writhed on the ground, shocked from the impact. Where did she go? Gritting his teeth against the pain, he pushed himself to his feet.

  Red spots crowded his vision. When they cleared, he saw that the stage was illuminated by only the spotlights now, and bulbs flashed from the media pit. The horrible screeching noise had ceased, but shouts from the audience filled his hearing. He stood on the translocation platform inside the alloy rings.

  Alone.

  3

  Two Moons and a Purple Sky

  One minute, a thousand tiny blades lacerated Eliana’s skin, like her body was being ripped to shreds. The next, she sat up on a hot beach and spat out sand.

  The heavy, humid air intensified her sudden nausea. She tried to ignore it while she took in her surroundings.

  The beach was too clean for the Gulf Coast, that was for sure. The humidity, too, seemed uncharacteristic for Texas, even on a sweltering summer evening. It reminded her of the time she and Amon had made the mistake of traveling to Cancún in the middle of July.

  But it wasn’t evening anymore. A blazing yellow sun high overhead beat her down with an oppressive heat.

  Eliana shivered in cold sweats as her body adjusted to the rapid change in temperature.

  “What the hell?” she said aloud. Hearing her own voice disperse in the thick air made her acutely aware of her isolation.

  She slipped off her heels and tried to stand, biting back the flutter of panic that threatened to overtake her. Her legs wobbled, black spots crowded her vision, and she fell down with a groan.

  As she lay there, fighting to remain conscious, it occurred to her that the fitted black dress and low strappy heels she had chosen for the demonstration were totally inappropriate for the beach. Even olive skin like hers would burn in a matter of minutes exposed to the fiery sun.

  She laughed in spite of herself. She thought, Do I not have more pressing concerns?

  “Where am I?” she said to no one.

  She closed her eyes and forced herself to think rationally through what she had just experienced. One minute, she had been posing during the demonstration, with Amon by her side, trying to make sure the camera had a good angle on her hand—with her lovely new ring—while she pressed the Initiate button on the display. The next, something had tugged her toward the expanding sphere of light, her hand reaching out as if it had a will of its own.

  The shock she’d taken from the display screen had numbed her hand completely when it zapped her. She cracked one eye and held her hand up to the light. It felt fine. Could the ring possibly have caused whatever went wrong? Looking at it now, it seemed not much different from any other diamond, except for the gem’s unusual smoky depth.

  When it had pulled her toward the brilliant sphere of light expanding from the translocation platform—and thinking about it, she became certain that some force had leashed her hand and drawn her to it—she remembered the diamond glowing with the same every-color radiance as the sphere. Was she imagining it, or had the gemstone somehow channeled the electricity that crackled through the air?

  The instant of primal terror Eliana felt as the light washed over her was nothing compared to the binding knot of dread that found a seat in her gut now.

  Refusing to let the fear take over, Eliana struggled to her feet once more, willing her knees to be steady, and surveyed her position.

  She stood on a long stretch of beach that separated a dense green jungle on one side from a calm surf on the other. The ocean’s flat expanse stretched all the way to the horizon, which, unless Eliana was mistaken, had a more pronounced curve than she was used to. Not ten yards from where she stood, purple waves washed onto the shore.

  Eliana blinked and rubbed her oddly weary eyes. Purple waves? Am I seeing things?

  She walked to the water’s edge. It was beautifully translucent and—yes—a light purple in color. She turned her gaze to the cloudless sky. It was a similar shade of pale violet, reflecting the sea.

  Or is it the other way around? Does the sea reflect the sky?

  Gazing up, Eliana noticed two faint moons that hung in the cloudless firmament. One appeared to be significantly smaller than the other. A big bite had been taken out of the top right shoulder of the larger satellite. Both were roughly three-quarters full, but she had no way to tell if they were waxing or waning.

  Her mind turned its gears again, coming to terms with the strangeness of her situation. Her nausea remained. She forced herself to be rational, thinking, You’re not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy.

  She also knew from her experience at dig sites that she needed two things to survive the heat: shade and water. Without them, she was a goner.

  She dragged herself up the beach and sat in the sand dunes beneath two big floppy leaves at the edge of the jungle. Tiny insects swarmed around her sweaty neck and left red marks where they bit her. Since it was easily twenty degrees cooler in the shade, she determined not to let the bugs bother her while she allowed herself a moment to rest.

  Though her situation was dire, Eliana felt a wave of sympathy for Amon. No doubt he was more panicked than she was about her disappearance. At least she knew she was alive. For all Amon knew, she had been vaporized, her molecules scattered to the winds. It seemed like nothing more than blind luck that she had landed on solid ground, somewhere with water—even purple water—instead of being teleported to cold, empty space. What little she understood of Amon’s work made it abundantly clear which was the more likely scenario.

  Amon would not approve of her sitting here, wallowing in self-pity and thinking about him. He would be out there running around, trying to find her, thinking up solutions to the problem instead of pouting. Reuben would b
e helping him. Lucas, too.

  The media would be eating this up. She imagined the headline: “Famous Inventor’s Wife Goes Missing in His Own Machine.”

  That wouldn’t flummox him. He’d be searching for her. The least she could do was make sure she was alive when he got here.

  With a new determination, Eliana slapped another bug on her neck. She glanced into the shadows in the jungle behind her. If she wasn’t dressed for the beach, she certainly wasn’t dressed for the jungle. Unknown jungles were dangerous, even with all the right equipment—and she had neither machete nor bug nets to protect her, let alone a contingency plan for crossing paths with any large predators.

  With that thought in mind, she looked both ways down the beach. One choice was as good as the other, but if she made it to the cliffs she saw a good distance down the coastline to her left, she would have more shade, and maybe a cave for shelter.

  She stood and began to walk in that direction, but caught herself before she went too far. She wondered, If Amon comes after me and I’m not here, how will he know where to look for me?

  She got down on her knees in the sand, made sure she was far enough back from the surf that not even a very high tide would reach her. She cupped her fingers and dragged her hands through the sand like she was building a moat around a sandcastle. Instead of a moat, she spelled out Amon’s name in letters three feet tall. To the right of his name, she carved a big arrow pointing toward the cliffs, her target destination.

  She walked to the water and looked back, making sure it was legible. She could read it from several feet away.

  As a last measure, she retrieved a couple big sticks from the dense jungle and pressed them deep into the sand so they stood straight up, marking the place.

  That would have to do. It was as big a signpost as she could make on short notice. Barring an extremely high tide, gale-force winds, or a heavy rainstorm, she had carved his name deep enough in the sand to last for several days.

  That was good. The last thing she wanted was for him to show up, not find her, and then leave without her.

  Satisfied with her work, she turned from it and set a course toward the cliffs.

  A mile was an optimistic estimate, Eliana thought as she trudged through damp sand. She simply misjudged the sheer size of the cliffs, and therefore the distance to approach. The enormous pale walls of rock reflected a piercing glare from which Eliana had to shield her eyes with one hand until her head stopped throbbing.

  She must have been out of shape or something. The muscles in her legs ached, and it was all she could do to put one foot in front of the other. Walking down by the water in the wet, firm sand proved to be easier—both on her weary body and on the bare pink skin of her feet. The sea was the temperature of bathwater, but it only provided a modicum of cooling relief.

  As for the beach itself, there wasn’t so much as a piece of trash in the sand. This only served to reinforce the idea that wherever she’d been sent, it wasn’t Earth. People would have littered this beautiful length of virgin coast with empty bottles, food wrappers, and copious cigarette butts decades ago if this was the planet she knew as home. Here, one detected almost no sign of human life at all. Only the occasional piece of driftwood—at once a happy and a miserable observation.

  Eliana rubbed her raw throat. She took a moment to sample the ocean water, but it was salty enough to make her gag and neither quenched her thirst nor replaced the fluids spilling from her pores. The sun shimmered closer to the cliffs as she journeyed toward the shelter they promised. The two moons disappeared from sight as the sun began to fall behind the cliffs.

  She couldn’t make sense of why she felt so tired. She’d run a marathon once. She’d also worked twelve-hour days at dig sites in desert climates. What she felt was nothing like that. Her exhaustion went all the way to the core of her being.

  Twice she had to take a break from walking and sink to her knees in the sand while the world stopped spinning. Each time, she somehow managed to rise again and power on. The thought of Amon kept her going. And the thought of the cool sand at the base of those shady cliffs.

  Her new ring, the color of a dark, starry night, served as a constant reminder of Amon. Of course, she couldn’t drink the stupid ring.

  Step by step, the cliffs drew closer.

  Finally, the pale wall of rock loomed overhead, and she stepped into its shadow.

  She gasped and fell down, rolling to her back in the cool sand. She pressed her cheek against the ground and inhaled deep, quenching gulps of air.

  She pushed herself up and sat with her back to the wall as her eyes adjusted to the shade. She gazed left, letting her head rest against the white rock. Where the cliff made a corner, the beach tapered back and gave way to rocky outcroppings. And something moved around on the rocks.

  She rubbed her eyes. Two figures—one cut tall and lean, broad in the chest; the other short and plump, probably female, judging from the proportions. Two people!

  In that moment, Eliana didn’t care how or why other people had come to reside on this strange planet. She simply took solace in the fact that she wasn’t alone on this forsaken stretch of coastline.

  Reinvigorated by the prospect of finding help—and the hope that one of them had fresh water—Eliana tapped into a final bastion of strength somewhere deep within her bones, struggled to her feet, and staggered along the cliff wall toward them.

  At first, they didn’t notice her. The tall figure faced the water and made throwing motions out to sea, his arms swinging over his head in long, slow circles, his fingers wrapped around a fine line. The other bent over something in her lap as she worked it with her hands.

  When she got closer, Eliana noticed that the taller figure was bare-chested, a loincloth wrapped around his waist. The woman was dressed much the same.

  Within speaking distance, Eliana’s heartbeat quickened, and she forgot to speak when she saw that their clothes appeared to be hand-woven, made from a coarse fabric, probably hemp or some kind of cotton.

  She stared, dumbstruck. She traced with her mind the intricate, interlocking tattoos carved across the woman’s arms and shoulders. She took mental notes about the large, polished pieces of jade hanging from her small earlobes and the experienced handiwork that might craft a necklace of turquoise and seashells like the one dangling from her neck.

  Eliana’s eyes widened and she tried to say something, to capture her amazement at the sight with words—but her attempt at speech came out as a croak, and the figures spun, startled to notice her for the first time.

  Now that their faces were clear, Eliana could see that the woman was old enough to be her mother, but the man was actually a teenager, a boy no more than sixteen or seventeen years old—almost young enough to be her son. His large frame made him seem older from a distance. His shallow chest would one day be deep and strong, his arms thick and brawny, but he had a lot of filling out yet to do. Unlike the woman, he had no tattoos. Perhaps the woman’s tattoos had a certain meaning or represented a milestone in life the boy hadn’t yet reached. Or perhaps it was a gender distinction. Did she know any society among the ancient civilizations of Earth in which only the women tattooed themselves? The boy did wear a band of stones around one bicep and colorful beads tied into his hair. Both of his forearms were striped with lines of pale scar tissue.

  The woman cried out in a guttural language Eliana couldn’t place, and at the same time, she felt a light tugging at the hem of her dress. She looked down into the face of a boy, naked and decorated only by a small bone earring poking through the lobe of one ear. He worked the synthetic fabric of Eliana’s dress with his fingers, giggling.

  The young man reached out and gently pulled the child away from Eliana, placing himself protectively between them.

  She thought, Did I do something wrong? Why are they looking at me like that?

  She worked her dry throat and wiped her hand across her damp forehead. “Water,” she managed to say. She blinked to clear the sweat st
inging her eyes and lost her balance. She tumbled to the ground, her head bashing against the wall. The blow only registered as relief that she didn’t have to hold herself up any longer.

  The young man hovered over her as mirror images. He cast twin shadows that spun, identical siblings dancing close and apart, close and then apart.

  He looked deeply concerned. His lips moved, but no words came out. His wide, flat forehead wrinkled in the middle when he frowned.

  The world moved in slow motion. The sound of waves like echoing footsteps carried her away from her own body, and then darkness took her.

  4

  Scouring the Stars

  Reuben,” Amon called across the stage, forcing his feet to move. “Spin it up again.”

  Amon wasted no time. He vaulted off the stage to where they’d stashed emergency equipment while Reuben reactivated the displays. The crowd was several dozen yards back, having abandoned their chairs and retreated as far as they could make it in the frantic moments after it had become apparent that something had gone terribly wrong. A few intrepid cameramen saw him and ventured forth, but Amon tossed the spacesuit up onto the stage and climbed up before they got too close. As he stepped into the spacesuit, a familiar whine cut the air. Amon had heard that noise a thousand times before; never had it sounded so ominous.

  Lucas mounted the other end of the stage, crossing his arms and swinging them out to his sides.

  It was only when he got closer that Amon realized Lucas was talking to him. “No,” he was saying. “What are you doing? Are you out of your fucking mind?”

  Amon ignored him, turning on the oxygen tank. He fitted the helmet over his head and sealed it. There was no time to talk.

  Inside the suit, all Amon could hear was his own labored breathing. Reuben gave him a thumbs-up. To Lucas’s arm-waving dismay, Amon strode up the slight incline and stood on the platform in the center of the sphere of rings. He gave Reuben the thumbs-up back, felt a slight lurch in his gut, and a moment later he was in the research dome on the lunar surface.