"There's a lot we don't know. Too bloody much. The trip to the base of the tower was meant to start clearing up some of the mysteries, and instead it only created more questions."
"Good god," Lamont whispered.
"Let's not jump to any conclusions," Carter objected, stopping to lift a finger. "The gap between what we know and what we don't know is practically infinite. It could well be that we're looking at a burial practice that, while perhaps odious to us, was perfectly normal for the people we see here."
Something about the situation was eating at the edge of the newspaperman's consciousness. When he had first come upon the remains in the crater, his immediate thought was of their expedition to Epiphany Rex weeks before. There, they had come upon dome-shaped structures made of native plant matter and debris, and camouflaged in such a way that they were invisible from above. Inside the domes, they had found bones. The bones of inhabitants of the planet that, while malformed, were recognizably human compared to its other centipedal natives. Was there some kind of fantastic connection?
"You're right about one thing, mate," Lamont said, folding his arms as he continued to look down at the remains. "There's a lot we don't know. Too bloody much. The trip to the base of the tower was meant to start clearing up some of the mysteries, and instead it only created more questions."
"I think you'll find," Phobos said, smiling mildly, "that this is nearly always the case. It could take years of sustained effort before any kind of a cohesive picture begins to form around this artifact."
"That would be tickety-boo if it were just a curiosity that we were stopping to investigate," Lamont protested. "But it ain't. We've got people living in that thing for at least a few more weeks."
"Believe me, Lamont, I'm keenly aware of that." Captain Carter's words took on a tone of defensiveness. "But right now we've got every available resource tied up in trying to ensure that they don't stay there any longer than they have to. Our fact-finding expedition was an extravagance that we won't soon be able to repeat."
"Perhaps for you lot," Lamont said grimly. "But I'm still charmingly superfluous. I've got absolutely nothing better to do."
"Are you planning to return to the surface of the moon?" Faust asked. "Rosemary has some experience in excavating remains."
Lamont hesitated as he considered the two visits that he had made so far to that strange world. He thought about the weird, glowing tendrils of oxygen, the oppressive gravity, the terrifying magnetic pull of the tower. He shook his head. "We got a pretty good look at the ground level of the structure. It seemed clear that there were no obvious methods of ingress there."
"And you're still convinced that the answers you're looking for would be found in the lower levels?" Francis asked.
"Based on what we experienced, the ground levels are almost certainly devoted to the processing and storage of oxygen for the rest of the tower," Phobos speculated.
"You're probably right about that, mate," Lamont agreed. "But the fact remains that there's a whole bottom half to the tower, at least, that we can't get access to. Not from the top, and not from the bottom."
"So what does that leave?" Faust asked.
Lamont frowned. An idea was beginning to occur to him, but he didn't want to vocalize it. A few days ago, visiting the weird surface of the moon would have been just about the most terrifying thing he could imagine. Now, that was no longer true.