The Lost Libraries Archive (The Erik Midgard Case Files Volume 2)

Chapter 3

III

The Solar System's greatest seat of higher learning sat on the shores of the Sea of Serenity, just north of Tranquillity City.

            It was one of the few places on the moon where you could walk around outside without a spacesuit. Oxbridge Luna was surrounded by an atmosphere dome, made of an energy shield rather than any solid material, so that any meteorites that hit it would pass straight through and the dome would instantly seal up behind them, preventing any atmosphere loss. Large green lawns and trees grew inside the dome on soil shipped up from Earth and several cloned dodos were wandering about on the grass in front of the main library when Mirabi and I arrived, behind the large, floor-to-ceiling windows on the second floor. A tall, thin, athletic man in a dark blue security guards uniform was waiting for us.

            "Detective Erik Midgard. Chronological Operations Agency," I said as we stepped down from the teleporter pads.

            "Detective Mirabi Arjuna. Likewise," said Mirabi. "Sorry for the wait. You wouldn't believe the day we're having."

            "Captain James Anubis. Terra Cimmeria Security Services, Detectives," said the man, saluting. "I'm in charge of security here at the Project. Thanks for coming. Follow me."

            It was obvious from his accent, and then from his ancient Egyptian pantheonym, that Captain Anubis was a south Martian. But it was only when he saluted and his sleeve cuff slipped back and I saw the start of a line of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs tattooed along his forearm, probably all the way to his elbow, that I knew he was a Free Martian and at least a former professional soldier; a son or grandson of the mercenaries who had almost retaken Titan and Europa from the Jupiter Imperia during the last war. Anubis was in his early thirties, slim and muscular, with close-cropped, almost golden brown hair and blue eyes and he managed to march both briskly and smartly as he led us along the corridor and down two flights of stairs.

            "So what's happened?" asked Mirabi.

            "The project director's been stabbed," said Anubis, glancing at his watchcom. "Forty-five minutes ago as best we can work out. He'd been dead for at least twenty minutes when we found him."

            "OK. Have you moved the body?" I said, as we reached the bottom of the stairs.

            "No, everything's exactly as it was. Through here," said Anubis.

            The double doors at the bottom of the stairs were open, but had a sign next to them, ALTP Project - LLA. Temporal travel in process. Project members only, which explained why we had been called in instead of the Tranquillity police. ChronOps always got sent first to anything that even remotely involved time travel.

            We hurried through the doors into a long rectangular room with a high ceiling. Lots of doorways without doors lead off into other rooms. Each one had a sign above it with a name in artistic calligraphic lettering. Xiangyang Palace. The House of Wisdom. Bibliotheca Corviniana. Nishapur. Glasney College. Alexandria. Each of the rooms we could see through them had walls lined with bookshelves and the shelves were packed. But only some of them were filled with normal paperbacks and hardbacks. Some of the books were much larger or smaller than normal, some of them were scrolls, some of them didn't have spines and many were unusual shapes. One room even had a long shelf of stone and clay tablets with writing scratched onto them in alphabets I didn't know. It would have looked like some kind of museum, except that they were all obviously brand new. I could faintly smell the leather, paper, parchment and other materials coming from all the rooms.