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alien-work-of-art theory.
    He grunted. “Too… too ordered, David. Too schematic.” Then he laughed. “But by saying that I fall into a trap. How can I begin to interpret an alien aesthetic? It might be an art installation, for all I know, but I have a hunch it’s something more… more mechanical.”
    Maddie came up to him and slipped an arm around his ample waist. “Just think, Matt, in thousands of years, aliens might be trying to interpret your art.”
    He pulled an expressive face. “Now that’s an utterly depressing thought, on many levels.”
    “Speaking of timescales…” Hawk said, then addressed Da Souza, “Do the archaeologists know how old all this is? You say it predates the Ashentay.”
    Da Souza nodded. “Estimates range from eight hundred thousand years to a million, give or take a few thousand.”
    Maddie whistled.
    “But whoever made this, you say they weren’t native to the planet?”
    “That’s right, Mr Conway. No evidence of a technological civilisation has been found anywhere else on Chalcedony, not the slightest trace. That would lead one to surmise an extraterrestrial source for all this.”
    “But you’ve no hard evidence of that?” Hawk asked.
    Da Souza smiled. “If you’d care to accompany me through to the next chamber…”
    Dutifully, we followed. I caught Hannah’s eye and smiled. This was far better a guided tour than I’d dare hope for.
    We passed through a triangular portal, which mirrored the architecture of the chamber we were leaving, and entered an even vaster chamber.
    Maddie whistled again. “This is… amazing.”
    “Daddy!” Ella cried. “What are they? They look like… like spaceships.”
    Da Souza winked at me. “You have a budding scientist there, Mr Conway. That’s what we’re pretty sure they are, Ella.”
    Hawk laughed. “An underground car park for starships!”
    The vessels—if indeed they were vessels—were racked one above the other, three high: sleek silver wedges about the size of the Mantis . They bore no exterior markings, no seams to indicate exits or viewscreens. Even their sterns, where you might expect to see evidence of some form of propulsion, rockets or at least exhaust flarings, were without any sign of these.
    I estimated there were about a hundred craft stacked in the chamber.
    “Hard to credit that they might be a million years old,” Maddie said.
    “The dictates of aerodynamics were the same back then,” Hawk replied.
    “But they can’t be spaceships,” Ella frowned, “because they don’t have doors.”
    I squeezed her hand. “Perhaps the aliens were very small,” I said, “and they squeezed in through tiny holes?”
    “Let’s go and look!” she cried.
    For the next ten minutes we moved around the stacked ships, examining them closely for evidence of miniature apertures.
    Scattered about the ships were more prosaic items: the tables and com-terminals of the archaeologists, lending a welcome, familiar air to this wholly alien environment.
    I noticed another triangular portal at the far end of the chamber, this one sealed by a makeshift wooden hatch, marked with a red and black hazard symbol.
    I pointed. “What’s through there?”
    “Ah… that’s strictly off limits, Mr Conway,” Da Souza said.
    Before I could enquire further, she looked at her watch and said, “Now, the next shift of scientists is due down here in less than an hour, so perhaps we’d better be making tracks. I trust the tour, if brief, was edifying.”
    We murmured our appreciation as we filed back through the chambers towards the exit stairway.
    Later, as we emerged from the subterranean cool into the cloying humidity of the rainforest, Kee—who had been quiet until that point—shivered and said, “I didn’t like it down there, Hawk. It was creepy.”
    We hurried back to the villa.

SIX
     
     
    We decided to eat in that evening and I made my speciality, green Thai curry. Checking the provisions in the cooler and extensive storeroom