They swam to her, staring at the image.
She moved to the next one and dusted it off. As the water cleared, she could make out an image of a metal pod of sorts floating in the ocean, a white parachute spread out on the blue waves next to it. On the pod’s side she saw an emblem of red and white stripes, and an arrangement of stars set against a blue background in the upper left.
Kicking her feet, she maneuvered to the next rectangle, clearing it off. This one showed a photo of a barren red landscape, rocks covering the ground into the distance.
The last image on the wall depicted scientists in white suits gathered around a probe covered in places by gold foil.
She spun slowly in a circle, taking in the whole room. More frames had been mounted to the opposite wall, so she swam toward them. Dusting off the first one, her heart suddenly soared. It showed a grey metal craft taking off from a runway, its front wheel already lifted off the ground. She instantly recognized it from the schematics they’d recovered from the disks. It was the A14. “Here it is!” she said.
The others swam over, examining the picture. A long silence engulfed them. “If only we had more than a picture,” Dirk said quietly.
Undeterred, she swam to the next rectangle, and the next, until she’d uncovered them all. The next showed a photo of a four-legged craft in a warehouse. Another showed the close-up of a man in a bulky white suit descending a ladder from the same vehicle, against the blackest sky she’d ever seen.
The next one shocked her. It depicted the same four-legged craft on a barren grey surface. Hanging in the sky was an incredible blue and white swirled moon. It was the most stirring, mysterious image she’d ever seen. She glanced back at the image of the four-legged craft inside a warehouse, and then at the one on the barren surface. She gasped. The blue marble wasn’t a moon. It was the earth, taken from the moon.
“What is it?” Raven asked, responding to her gasp of astonishment.
“Take a look at this!” she called out. “This is unbelievable.” They all stared as realization dawned.
“It’s our planet. Taken from space,” Dirk breathed.
“They were really up there,” H124 said, her voice almost a whisper.
Raven pushed off a corroded filing cabinet to take in all the pictures. “But we’re no closer to finding the A14.” He couldn’t disguise the sheer disappointment in his voice now.
She swam back to the photo of the A14 taking off from the runway. She saw white scratchings at the bottom of the photo, partially covered by corrosion. She noticed they all had the marks. She peered more closely at the one of the man descending the ladder and saw there was writing. “Neil Arms…” it said. She could also make out a few other words: “Eagle” and “Apollo XI.”
She moved back to the image of the A14, gently brushing off corrosion with her gloved finger. More words appeared. She couldn’t make out the name of the craft, but she already knew it was the A14. The rest of the words read “Museum,” “air,” and “Aviation Wing.”
Making a slow circuit of the room, she read as much of the writing as she could discern on the other images. At the bottom of the shuttle image, she read “housed in,” and again “Museum” and “air.” On the photo depicting the pod floating in the ocean, she read “Mercury,” “Museum,” and “Innovation Hall.”
She recognized the word “museum” from the Rover books she’d perused. They’d had one book about something called the “Smithsonian,” which had stood in “Washington, D.C.” and had held countless collections of cultural and scientific interest. She’d seen photographs of the bones of ancient creatures who had roamed the earth, paintings of important people, ceremonial and sacred objects belonging to various cultures. The museum had long since been inundated by rising sea levels, but the collections might have been moved to other areas of the country.
“I think all these vehicles were moved to a museum,” she told them.
Raven met her gaze. “Even the A14?”
She glanced at its photo and nodded. “Even the A14.”
“So now we just have to find out where they moved the A14 to,” Raven said, scrutinizing the pictures.
H124 turned toward the door, catching Dirk floating near the doorframe with a distant look on his face. His chin trembled, then he caught her gaze. Tears brimmed on his lower lids but hadn’t fallen. She wanted to reach out and squeeze his arm, but felt like she didn’t have the right. Astoria had died on her watch. She still felt she could have done something to prevent it.
Dirk blinked and averted his gaze.
Raven crossed to another door on the opposite side of the room. “Can’t go up the way we came down,” he said, wrenching this second door open. “That thing’s probably still in the elevator shaft. We’ll have to go this way.” He checked his schematics and pulled himself through the doorway. H124 followed.
Dirk took up the rear as they propelled themselves down a corridor on the right, looking for holes in the structure that led to the open sea.
The corridor led past numerous doors, some open, some still closed. They searched other warehouse spaces, hoping the A14 might be there. But all of the spaces were empty. It made H124 believe more in her theory about the vehicles being moved to another facility. They had to have gone somewhere.
As they swam, they paused in the open doorways, looking for breaches in the walls beyond, hoping for a different way out. Rusted metal lay twisted and covered with sediment and corrosion. At the end of a corridor, they came to a thick metal docking door. Crusted handles protruded from the base.
H124 checked her schematics. According to them, open ocean lay on the other side of the docking door. She examined their oxygen levels. They only had twenty-four minutes of air left. She stifled the nervous pang that rose inside her. “Twenty-four minutes,” she told them.
At first she and Raven tugged on the handle of the docking door, but it had been corroded shut for too many years to budge. Raven pulled out his pocket pyro again, and started to cut a hole in the metal. The progress was agonizingly slow.
“Seventeen minutes,” she said quietly.
Dirk had swum up next to the door, where he floated listlessly, that faraway look on his face. She could hear his uneven breathing, holding back emotion. She couldn’t imagine what it must be like for him, to lose someone he’d known his whole life, who’d always had his back.
She looked back at Raven’s progress. He was almost there. Eleven more minutes.
He finished cutting the hole and punched the metal circle out of the door. Beyond, the dark blue of the ocean awaited them. “Let’s go!” He signaled for H124 to go through first, and she kicked over to the hole, then pulled herself through. Raven emerged next. Above them the bright surface of the ocean looked too far away.
Six minutes.
Dirk’s gloved hands appeared as he started to pull himself through the hole. She had just begun kicking for the surface when a dark, bullet-shaped body sped toward them through the water. An AUV. It launched a projectile, and an eruption of bubbles sprang forth from its nose cone. The mini torpedo barely missed her, screaming by in the water, pushing her back with its concussive wave. Raven was far off to one side, so it sailed past him. But Dirk was just fully emerging from the hole, right into the line of fire.
It connected with his body, propelling him backward. He slammed into the side of the building, the projectile lodging itself into the building wall beside him. H124 kicked away quickly. Sharp spikes dug into the building’s exterior. Dirk kicked away from it, but he was still too close. The torpedo detonated,