IT WAS A SPACESHIP—AND IT WAS MORE THAN
THAT.
It was a starship, a ship designed to go to places even the eye
could not follow and to go distances beyond the grasp of human
minds—but it was more than that.
It looked very much like a great tube, flattened a bit on top
and bottom and rounded at both ends, with protuberances that were
bays for the scout ships that clung to their mother in special
recesses, and sensors, and communications devices—and much,
much more.
The ship itself—one of the hundreds that circled great
Jupiter in silence, shut down, but preserved and ready for
reactivation if their service should ever be needed—was a bit
over fourteen kilometers long. The ship had a brain and massive
amounts of stored knowledge and skills that had not been needed in
a very long while.
“I wonder if it is bothered by that,” Cloud Dancer
said, more to herself than to the others who were gazing at the
viewing screen of their relatively small interplanetary
freighter.
“Huh?” Walks With the Night Hawks, her husband and
co-conspirator, looked at her. “Who is bothered by
what?”
“The ship. It has a mind, a soul, as this one does. Its
spirit is dedicated to work, to a great task, and it has been told
to do nothing since it did that task. I wonder if it minds, sitting
there idle, without hope or opportunity to do its task, to be
itself, for all this time.”
“It sure fought like hell to keep us out,”
came the gravelly voice of the Crow Agency man, Raven. Not long,
before they had been the targets of some of those fighters nestled
inside the great ships; only deciphering the clearance code in time
and some fancy maneuvering had saved them from being blown from the
sky.
“That was its duty,” the Hyiakutt Indian woman
responded. She was quite smart, but having been raised in a
primitive culture, she saw the universe from a perspective as alien
to the others as they were to the computer brain of the great ship
they now approached. “Now it receives us. I wonder if it is
eager, or if it is waiting to devour us?”
“Neither,” an odd voice said through the
ship’s intercom. When Star Eagle, as they had named the
computer pilot of the ship, spoke on his own, it was in a pleasant
male voice, but when China was interfaced into the ship’s
system, forming a human-computer synthesis, the voice sounded
strange, neither male nor female, but somehow both at once.
“There is no command module on any of these ships. It was
removed when they were placed in storage here. These ships have
many brains, as it were, since even the tiny fractions of a second
it might take to relay an order might cause needless risk, but the
only ones there now are automatic maintenance and ship’s
security. The tech cult that discovered the human interfaces
intended to fly the ship themselves, without a command
module.”
Hawks frowned. “Is that possible?”
“Yes, but not efficient or practical. They did not think
beyond that point, since even attaining that much was highly
improbable. All plans were based on the escape, not what came next.
Just like us.” Yes, but we’re at least better off than they would
have been. We have Koll, who’s been out there, and
information from Raven and Warlock. We are not going completely
blind. He frowned, wondering if that was really true or if he
was just trying to reassure himself.
Still, he had no doubt they would get away. No mystical sense
informed him, and he knew of no particular edge on their part, but
even though they’d had to fight every step of the way to this
point, he couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow they were
being led.
Most of this crew had been selected, somehow, by Lazlo Chen, the
ambitious chief administrator of the central Asian district and
discoverer of the information that five gold rings could, if found
and used properly, deactivate or control Master System. Chen owned
the only one of the rings remaining on Earth, and was determined
that this group secure the others for him. The stakes were quite
high—nothing less than godhood for the one who found all the
rings and brought them together.
But even Chen was subject to Master System; even Chen had severe
limits on his knowledge and power. Chen’s reach extended over
the whole of the Earth and even beyond, but it did not reach as far
out as Jupiter. Since their escape from the asteroid penal colony,
Melchior, Hawks had been convinced that another player was also on
the scene, one who also wanted them to succeed and whose reach
did extend farther out. Who or what this player was could
not be known now; nor could they guess whether it was
using Chen for its own ends, or whether Chen was using it.
This was a strange band to pick for such a mission. Hawks was a
Hyiakutt Amerind historian, a student of rebels and warriors, not
one himself. Cloud Dancer had been born and raised in the Plains
culture, a primitive suddenly thrust into a world of what to her
was magic. The Chow sisters came out of an equally primitive
society in China, but as personal servants to Center personnel
they’d had more experience with technology; they had an
uncanny ability to pick even computer-encoded locks, though they
were otherwise ignorant. Raven, the Crow security man built like a
boulder, and his associate Manka Warlock, the Jamaican beauty with
the cold personality and a liking for killing people, seemed more
obvious choices, but neither of them had ever before left Earth.
Out here in space they were as ignorant and helpless as he was. The
selection of China, too, made some sense—originally known as
Song Ching, she was the daughter of the chief administrator of
China and the product of a breeding experiment to produce a subrace
that was physically perfect and mentally so advanced it was hoped
to be a match for the computer system—but she, too, had never
been off Earth, and thanks to the cruel experimentation of the
scientists on Melchior she was hardly a perfect choice now. Blind
and compulsively pregnant, her true value was only in her ability
to use the human interface to become one with the mind of the
ship’s computer pilot, as she was doing now.
That, too, was a mystery. Why did these ships have interfaces
for humans at all? Master System alone could build them, in
far-off, wholly automated factories among the stars. Why was there
a bridge, with connections to the vital parts and operations of the
ships, as if humans and computers were supposed to work together?
It was this absolute control of space that made Master System
unbeatable, and it had been perhaps nine hundred years since any
humans had traveled on spaceships as anything other than
passengers. It would have been simple to build these ships so that
no one could ever control or tamper with the command modules, the
computer brains. Why hadn’t that been done?
Even the huge interstellar vessel they were now approaching had
positions for humans, and more than one bridge, yet these ships had
not been built until after Master System had taken total control of
humanity. These ships had been designed not for human use but to
carry the bulk of humanity against its will to captivity among the
stars. Why, then, were there a bridge and interfaces for humans,
since without those they would have no escape, no opportunity to
flee, at all?
And then there was Reba Koll, the essential one, the only one
who’d been out there before, and the only one who herself had
used the interfaces illegally to pilot a spaceship. They had a lot
riding on the memories and long-unused skills of the strange old
woman with the tail, and she was quite mad—who wouldn’t
have been after enduring ten years of experimentation on Melchior?
She claimed not to be Reba Koll but someone—or
something—else she would not now reveal. Even the security
forces who had pursued them from Melchior claimed the same, and
that worried Hawks. He didn’t think she was some sort of
inhuman monstrosity, but he wondered if she was something very
dangerous such as the carrier of a dread disease.
The final two in the party had been unexpected additions to the
mission. Silent Woman, a product of years of slavery and
degradation in the primitive culture of North America, her tongue
cut out, her body covered with colorful tattoos, was almost
childlike, and there was little or no way to communicate with her
on more than a rudimentary basis. She understood none of the
languages the others used commonly—though Hawks had used a
mindprint machine to give her basic English—and she seemed to
live in a world all her own.
Sabatini, the cruel captain from whom they’d taken this
ship, was here involuntarily, a prisoner. They could neither trust
him nor let him go; sooner or later, Hawks knew, they would have to
face his disposal.
There was nothing left to see on the viewscreen; Star Eagle was
now so close to the massive interstellar ship that the vast bulk
blotted everything out.
“Strap in and prepare for a set of big jolts,” the
ship warned them. “My reverse thrusters are shot thanks to
the battle, and that means, in effect, no brakes. I’ve done
as much as I can, but now we will have to be caught and halted by
tractor beam and that’s going to be a pretty big shock.
Helmets on and switch to internal air supply. I have no idea if we
can maintain pressurization.”
They were already all strapped in, both here and in the lounge
and up on the bridge, yet each checked his own straps and webbing
to make certain they were secure. The ship then activated the
restraint system, pulling them back and holding them so firmly that
it was hard to breathe. All were wearing pressure suits and helmets
now, and they could only wait.
Suddenly there was a massive jolt, a tremor that shook the whole
ship, followed by another, then another. The ship seemed to lurch,
moving in all directions at once, and all around were creaks and
groans of metal in distress. Loud hissing sounds punctuated the
moaning and groaning of fatigued metal. The sense of motion and the
shocks stopped quickly; the noises did not.
“What’s happening?” Warlock asked nervously.
“We’re not going to die just on the edge of
victory!”
The speakers sputtered, hissed, and crackled.
“I—released China—to her,” came the
pilot’s normal voice. “Ship—break up. Suits on,
hold tight—I—”
“You’re breaking up!” Hawks said through his
suit radio. “If I understand correctly the ship is breaking
up in the tractor. Will you be all right?”
“You—get in—soon as bays close.
Decompressing . . . main module—no serious
danger to—China—”
Suddenly there was silence except for the faint buzz of the
carrier in the suit radio. The lights blinked, then went off,
leaving the passengers for a moment in darkness and then in an
eerie semilight as their helmet and small body locator lights came
on.
“Is the ship dead?” Cloud Dancer asked, awed by the
idea. “Has Star Eagle now soared to the
otherworld?”
“I—I don’t know,” Hawks responded.
“The body of the ship is dead, that’s for
sure, but those computers have their own power supplies and sources
of energy. It’s possible he’s still alive and we can
rescue him. I hope so.”
There was a sudden and unexpected jarring and the whole ship
shuddered, then seemed to roll over slightly on its side, as the
big ship’s tractor mechanism pulled them in, controlled by
the automatic maintenance and defense systems.
“We’re in!” Raven called. “Damn it,
we’re inside the thing!”
Hawks was suddenly galvanized into action. “Warlock, go
forward and see to China and Reba Koll and bring them back
here.”
“No need,” came Koll’s sharp, raspy voice over
the radio. “We’re all right and coming back
now.”
“The command module,” China said in her own soft,
high voice. “Have you seen to it?”
“Huh?” Hawks frowned. “Where is it?”
“Aft, in the first cargo hold. There’s a big round
plate in the floor secured by nine recessed bolts and an electronic
combination. You throw two long switches to reveal the
lock.”
Hawks looked around. “Okay, Chow sisters. That sounds like
it’s in your department.”
“No need,” China told him. “I know the
combination and it can be set and timed to blow the bolts. I come
as quick as I can. Someone get a measuring tool and meet us
there.”
“Do we have to do it now?” Warlock asked irritably.
“It’s a damned machine. It’ll wait.”
“It is one with us,” Cloud Dancer responded in a
bitter, almost menacing tone. “It comes with us.”
China was there now, being led by Reba Koll. Hawks shrugged as
he was handed an electronic measure from Sabatini’s kit and
went back with them. “Nobody leaves yet,” he cautioned.
“You don’t want to go into that kind of place without
backup.”
“How long’s the air last in these things?”
Raven muttered.
“Better than sixty hours,” Koll told him.
“There’s time.”
“Yeah.” The Crow security man sighed.
“There’s time, but is there air out there?”
Hawks wasn’t quite sure what China had in mind, but he was
willing to go along with her. She was a strange sort, but she knew
these machines like nobody else did, and in a real sense the whole
group was dependent on the blind girl.
The plate was not easy to find in the dark; even under normal
conditions they might have missed it. Recessed into the deck were
two long mechanical rods that took some effort just to get lifted
up a bit; they were almost as difficult to raise the rest of the
way, eventually requiring the combined weight of Hawks and Raven.
Finally, though, both rods were pulled up and then pushed over as
far as they could go, and a center plate popped out revealing a
dirt-caked touchpad. When they’d cleaned it off as best they
could, China gave them the combination that she had learned from
Star Eagle.
Hawks nervously keyed it in, then they all stepped back, well
away of the plate, and waited. There was no sound in the airless
ship, but a sudden series of flashes burst around the plate and the
bolts all seemed to leap out of their sockets. Moving quickly now,
they pried the plate up and put it out of the way, revealing a
cavity perhaps half a meter deep in which sat three small
rectangular objects.
“Pull up the center one carefully—very
carefully,” China instructed. “Then measure its
dimensions and tell me of its connectors.”
Doing so carefully was a chore; magnetism or some other force
kept the device seated well, and breaking that grip was tough.
Finally, though, they got it up, measured it, and checked it over.
The connectors, smoothly polished and brass-colored, seemed etched
into the sides and bottom of the box; there were a lot of them in
numerous patterns. Hawks did his best to describe them to
China.
She nodded. “For now, put it back so that it can continue
to draw on its emergency power reserves,” she instructed.
“Now we must go into the big ship.”
“Just what is that, lady?” Raven asked,
irritated that this didn’t seem to have much point after all
that work.
“That is the command module—the brain—of Star
Eagle,” she told them. “The other two are management
modules. They can live far longer there than we can in these suits,
so we must hurry. We need to discover the equivalent place on the
big ship and check it out as well.”
Hawks understood. “You’re thinking of moving Star
Eagle from this ship into command of the big one. Is that possible?
Surely the design of the command modules will be different for a
massive interstellar craft than for an interplanetary freighter.
The operations will be far more complex.”
“Not really,” she told him. “Most of it
appears standardized so that they can be reprogrammed easily at any
point. Master System doesn’t want any computer too
sophisticated running these things, and particularly not one that
can’t be reprogrammed on the fly. There is no guarantee; the
size might be right but the connectors different, for
example.”
“What if it is?” Hawks asked her. “What if
it’s impossible? How do we fly this monster?”
“The way the tech cult who discovered the plans for these
intended to do it. Direct interface, human mind to machine. Or
minds, in this case. I suspect it will take several to manage
it.”
“You know where this thing’s supposed to go
in?” Raven asked.
“Yes—more or less. It should be obvious once
we’re there. The trouble is, I have no idea where we are in
this ship except that we are on an outer deck.”
“You realize how big this mother is?” Raven
asked her. “It could take days, weeks, to find our way
around, with nothing much working. There’s limited water in
these suits, even more limited air, no food, and no road map.
It’s impossible!”
“So was getting this far,” Hawks snapped, trying to
break the mood. “First, two of us go out and find out where
we are—some landmark, something, that’ll give China a
clue. Then we get her and Captain Koll up to that bridge to start
doing things the hard way while others of us try and find the
interface. I assume, China lady, that you have some sort of map of
this thing in your head if we can find landmarks.”
“I have a schematic imprinted there, the memory of which
was further enhanced by Star Eagle, but it is not of the detail I
would like. The bridge should be easy, and we’ll take it from
there. At least if I can find the bridge and establish some sort of
interconnect we ought to be able to get some life-support systems
operating.”
Hawks sighed. “Well, Crow—you feeling up to a walk
in the dark with me?”
“Anything to get moving,” Raven responded.
There was something ironic about moving around in a strange,
dark, eerie environment using a blind woman for eyes. The
compartment they were in was enormous, far too large for their
lights to illuminate even a wall. The freighter they had just left
was close to three hundred meters in length and it didn’t
even crowd the place. The first step, then, was finding a wall, and
that took almost forty minutes.
With gravity their task might have been impossible; there were
few objects that could be used as ladders or footholds. In zero
gee, however, they were able to explore more efficiently.
Eventually they found hatches on an inner wall and studied one. It
was locked electronically, of course, but they found the manual
override and opened it.
They moved through the hatch and were startled when a small
string of lights came on along both sides of the corridor near the
floor.
“Motion sensing,” China explained through the radio
from back inside the freighter’s remains. “That is a
break for us.”
“I’m not sure about that break business,”
Raven noted sourly. “There are corridors leading to corridors
leading to corridors.”
“I have a marker here from the ship’s kit,”
Hawks tried to reassure him, although he wasn’t feeling very
secure himself. “I’m making a mark every ten floor
lights or so, and I will indicate direction at every intersection.
That’s the best we can do.”
They went on for what seemed like a long time without hitting
any landmark that China could use to place them. The corridors
seemed to go off in all directions into eternity.
“Hey, Chief? You noticed we ain’t come on no big
rooms, no lines of rooms? No offices, dormitories, or camp meeting
places, for that matter. Just access ways for equipment and
service. We got to be in the service corridors and not the main
halls. I mean, this was built as a cargo ship and its cargo was
people. Lots and lots of people. Where in hell did they
put them?”
Hawks didn’t reply, but he was getting a bad feeling about
all this. As a historian, he knew of these ships and what
they’d done—although he’d never dreamed that they
still existed—and he had always imagined them as great
inverted worlds, with gardens and dense apartmentlike clusters,
like an immense floating and self-sufficient city. This, however,
was sterile, spartan, cold, and lifeless. Raven was right. A ship
this size might be expected to transport and support thousands of
people. Where? And how?
And, quite suddenly, through one more hatch, they found the
answer.
They must be, Hawks guessed, in the belly of the ship, yet it
was crowded and went off in all directions. Their helmet lights and
the lights on what had now become a wide catwalk revealed only a
tiny part of it, but there was the sense that this, too, went on
forever.
“Jeez! It’s like some kinda monster
honeycomb,” Raven remarked. The many catwalks divided an
enormous section that extended above and below as far as the light
carried. They could see down past some half-dozen levels of
chambers before the honeycomb was swallowed in darkness.
Hawks turned and studied the way the catwalk was fastened to the
inner hull wall. “Rails,” he noted, pointing.
“The walks move up and down. See the stops there? Each walk
would service, I would say, five rows of these holes or chambers
up, and perhaps five down. They were probably not marched in. It
would be too messy. Most likely the people were placed in some sort
of drug-induced coma, probably in large groups by gas, then hauled
in here and loaded automatically by equipment designed for that
purpose. You said it, Raven—cargo.” He leaned over and
felt just inside the nearest chamber. “Some sort of soft
synthetic lining. See? Each one is large enough for one human
adult. You can see small vents, and that tiny box looks as if it
contains tentacular tubing. They put them in, then the tubing
attached itself where necessary, and they were sustained for the
journey.”
“Yeah,” Raven said dryly. “Gives you the
shakes. I suppose they kept a mixture of the gas and pure oxygen in
here to keep ’em out, or maybe these things can be sealed and
separately flooded. Gives you the creeps, though.”
“Until now this was only an academic thing for me,”
Hawks told him, his voice strained. “In its own way it was
even somewhat romantic. Whole human civilizations being carted off
to the stars to found new colonies. It does not seem very romantic
now. This is the true face of Master System, Raven, the one we
served and even believed in to a great degree when we were younger.
Even this expedition, this rebellion, was, I admit, as much a
romance to me, a chance to live beyond the confines, to experience
rather than merely study—but no more. I have lost an
innocence here I did not know I retained, and I am filled with
revulsion. These weren’t humans to Master System and its
machines, Raven. Not their makers, not their charges. Just digits.
Binary ones and zeros. Quantity this. Not even the dignity of zoo
animals or pets. Carrion. No—live meat in its despicable deep
freeze.”
“Sorry to interrupt,” China’s voice broke in,
“but can you get any real landmark on the central cargo bay?
You’ve got a lot of people back here who are getting hungry
and will also need air.”
Hawks resented her intrusion, and also her tone. She
must have heard them. When she saw—but, no, she
wouldn’t see. She couldn’t. She could be standing right
here and it could only be described to her as it might be read by
him from some book or computer printout. At times that strange girl
seemed more machine than human, anyway. She might very well stand
here, even if she could see, and explain the cold and efficient
logic behind the system from a computer’s point of view. She
probably would.
“The corridor we entered on has to be one that services
this level, running parallel to it,” Raven responded.
“Best we might do is pick a direction and follow it until it
ends.”
Hawks tore himself away from his reverie. “No. If
we’re near one end of the chamber and go the wrong way it
might be ten kilometers to reach an end, and it might be an end
with nothing worth the trouble. We must split up. You walk one way,
I, the other, until the first one of us comes to an end or some
other recognizable feature. Remain parallel to the hatches leading
to the walks. If we are not in the center, and the odds are against
it, then one of us should reach something useful in a short
time.”
“Fair enough. I’ll go left and if I junction
I’ll continue to always take the left fork. You do the same
on the right, taking the right fork. We have to get cracking on
this. History can wait, as usual.”
After about another thirty or forty minutes, Raven called out.
“I’ve gotten to the end! There’s another catwalk
out here, but also ones leading up to hatches all along the
wall.”
“Any distinguishing features on the wall?” China
asked him.
“Hard to see with the light we got. There’s five
hatches makin’ kind of a triangle goin’ up one side to
a center one and then back down. Lemme haul myself up there and see
what’s what.” There was a pause filled with some
intermittent grunts. Then Raven spoke again. “It’s
recessed in the whole area. Triangle shape, and right up top is a
whole bunch of what looks like pipes that come together in a neat
line and go into the wall. That help?”
“Yes. I know exactly where you are. Look carefully down
from the center hatch, perhaps centered in the middle. A round
plate of some kind, possibly secured by rivets.”
“Ugh! No handholds down there, and I ain’t got this
no-gravity stuff down yet, if I ever will. Let’s
see . . . Yeah! It’s here. Looks like it
was designed to turn if you had a handle, but I don’t see
one.”
“A strong magnet would do it. I think we can find
something here. It is probably not locked. That is a service tunnel
going down to the core room. The center hatch above should lead to
the bridge. Hawks?”
“Yeah?”
“Stop going where you’ve been walking. You’re
walking aft and you’d be a long time getting to anyplace
useful. Best you return here and get the rest of us. We must take
Star Eagle’s core and the two support modules and see if we
can make them fit in there. If we can, we will be masters of this
ship.”
“Uh huh,” Raven grunted. “And if we
can’t?”
“Then we will have to work around it. Let’s try the
other first. Master System is almost maniacal about
standardization. It’s one reason we have been able to beat
the system so often. The interplanetary ships were designed as
precursors to these, and there is no evidence that they have ever
been significantly changed in their basic design and
specifications. You remain there and let Hawks and the rest of us
come to you.”
“Yeah, I’ll just sit here all nice and comfy,”
the Crow responded. “Sorta like hangin’ around the
mausoleum.”
When they finally succeeded in removing the bulky plate, they
revealed a round cavity large enough for a human in a pressure suit
to enter. Hawks and Raven were again the first inside, the latter
pushing the three modules from their crippled interplanetary
craft.
The tube angled down for perhaps twenty meters, then opened into
a large bubblelike chamber. Around the wall in a band were
drawerlike module compartments, all filled, and in the center was a
raised squared-off pedestal with four rectangular cavities laid out
in a cross. All were vacant.
“Well, we have the right place, but which goes
where?” Hawks asked China through the suit intercom.
“All four look exactly the same, and there aren’t
exactly instruction sheets printed on them. Also, we have four
holes and only three modules.”
“That won’t matter much, I don’t think,”
China assured him. “The core had a unique set of contacts.
Those contacts should match only one of the sockets. Are the sizes
right?”
“Look right,” Raven told her. “We’ll see
when we try. There’s a million of these tiny nipples in this
gold leaf, though. Hard to tell which is which by just looking at
them. Maybe you could see a difference but I sure as hell
can’t.”
“I wish I could see it,” the Chinese girl
responded. “Well, there is only one core socket; the others
are data modules. The data modules aren’t socket specific,
only the core, or brain. If there is no other way, then place the
two support modules in any two sockets and then attempt to load the
core in one of the remaining sockets. Be careful not to damage or
scrape any part of it. If it fits, fine, but don’t force it.
If it doesn’t fit, try the other. Then switch.”
“Be easier if we just tried the core first,” Hawks
noted.
“No! The core is its brain but the storage modules are its
basic memories. If it connects with this ship but does not
immediately have access to its memory modules it will not know
where it is or who we are or what this is all about. The core is
still the basic Master System core; it is the modules that were
altered to allow it freedom. Activating the core without the
modules will simply deliver us into the hands of a slave of Master
System.”
“Uh, yeah. Uh huh.” They turned and carefully
selected one of the storage modules, then studied the cavities.
“I’d say let’s put these in the right and left
cavities as seen from the hatch and try the core with the
vertical,” Hawks suggested. Raven shrugged.
The first one slid easily and seemed to be firmly seated.
“So far so good,’ Raven noted, sweating. They inserted
the other, which went in just as easily. “Best guess is that
one of the two remaining is in fact the brains.”
“I had only a partial schematic,” China told them.
“I’m not certain what the fourth one would be. Possibly
additional memory to help manage a ship this size, or possibly a
subsidiary brain, one handling the ship and the other the cargo
life support. It is possible it might fit both places. Try it and
see. We have no choice.”
“Top one,” Hawks guessed. “Seems silly, but
it’s closest to the actual bridge above.”
“Yeah, by about a meter and a half,” Raven
responded, but they carefully maneuvered the core and then fitted
it into the cavity. Nothing happened. “Seems to be sitting
just a little higher than the others. Want to try the bottom
one?”
“We couldn’t get it all right first
time,” Hawks said. “All right—use the small
magnets and pull.”
They lifted the module out, then maneuvered it slowly to the
lower cavity, checked its position, and lowered it into place.
Again, it didn’t seem to go in quite all the way.
“We’re either wrong on the others or we’re gonna
have to risk pushing on the thing,” Raven noted.
“Careful!” China warned them. “They are tough
but not too tough. It is why they are shielded.”
There was a tiny bit of play, and they tried moving the module
first this way, then that, pushing down slightly as they did so.
They were just beginning to decide that perhaps they had the wrong
one, after all, when Raven accidentally jiggled the top as he
shifted position, and the module sank down just a bit in the socket
and seated itself firmly.
“Hey! It’s in!” the Crow shouted, staring in
wonder at the thing. “But nothin’s
happening!”
Suddenly there were strange clicking, whirring, and beeping
sounds through their intercom sets.
“It’s on all frequencies! Radios off for now!”
China yelled over the din. “Count to a hundred and check each
hundred until it’s quiet again!”
It was eerie enough to be in the ghostly dark bowels of the
strange ship, but in silence it was even worse. Hawks took some
comfort from seeing Raven and Raven’s light, but he
couldn’t help wondering about China. Deaf and dumb because of
this, like the others, she was also blind and now completely cut
off.
At each check the horrible sounds were so painful that none
could stand to keep his or her radio on for more than the briefest
moment. The number of hundred counts seemed to go on forever.
Outside the hatch, China waited in a world of silent darkness,
hand in hand with Cloud Dancer and Silent Woman on either side of
her, that touch the only reality she had other than the breathing
sounds from her suit. She had never felt so totally helpless, and
her complete dependence on the others was only now being driven
home to her. She didn’t like the feeling at all. Worse, she
could not understand what was happening, or why. Nobody, not even
the researchers who’d theorized all this, had actually
touched one of these ships. Nine centuries had passed since humans
had been even cargo on this ship; no human being had ever set foot
in here as an independent agent.
Suddenly a million possibilities presented themselves to her
mind. A power mismatch. Inverted circuitry that would cause a loop
and ultimately a burnout. Or, perhaps, the great ship and its
complexities was simply too much for Star Eagle to handle or
comprehend, much as his mind was actually alien to hers.
Keeping hold of China’s left hand, Cloud Dancer turned to
look back into the darkness of the immense cavity. Suddenly she
gasped and squeezed that hand tighter, then tried to poke one of
the others. Koll, finally, turned and saw what Cloud Dancer
saw.
Behind them a snake of lights was growing, writhing, twisting,
going ever outward, upward, downward. It took them a moment to
realize what was happening.
All the floor lights on the catwalks were being illuminated,
section by section. The ancient cavity that had transported
uncounted thousands or perhaps millions was soon lit up like a
festival, dimly but beautifully, as far as any eye could see.
They tried their radios. There was still a lot of static and odd
background noise, but the sounds were no longer unbearable.
“Anybody on?” Reba Koll called. Her voice crackled a
bit, but it carried all right.
“I’m in!” Hawks’s voice sounded even
worse.
“We are here!” the Chow sisters chimed in. “Is
it not beautiful?”
“All of us are going to die,” Carlo Sabatini
wailed.
Cloud Dancer kept nudging China until the girl finally let go
and activated her radio. One by one they all checked in.
“Still nothing much down here,” Raven reported
worriedly. Cloud Dancer told them about the lights.
“Nothing like that here, but I’m feeling something.
A low vibration ,” Hawks told them. “What about up
there?”
“Faint. Very faint,” China responded in a voice that
sounded curiously unlike her. The sharp edge, the confidence, was
gone, Hawks thought. She’s been badly scared. It was
almost a relief to discover that she was human after all.
A strange voice cut them all off. It was quite high at first,
then went down a scale as if it was testing each note to find one
it liked. Finally it stopped.
“Do I have communication?” the voice asked at last.
It sounded a bit less than human, like a man’s voice played
at a speed slightly too slow and irregular. The effect was
eerie.
“You have it,” China responded. “Is that you,
Star Eagle?”
“Star Eagle . . . Yes, I identify with
that. It is . . . difficult. There is so much,
so much at once. It keeps coming at me, but it is far too much to
absorb. I am grown enormous! It
is . . . difficult . . . to
focus my primary consciousness, to limit it. Somehow this must be
partitioned.”
“We require entry to the bridge, then the establishment of
power and life support there,” she told it. “Can you
handle that?”
“Proceed up to the bridge. It is essential that the
capping locks be placed on my modules and then the hatch resealed
before we can proceed. I can then activate the isolation circuitry
that will keep the core bay suspended and vacuum insulated from
shocks and vibrations.”
“You heard the man, Chief,” Raven noted. “See
what he’s talking about?”
“Now I do,” Hawks responded. “We’ve been
walking on it.”
They had taken the one flatter area on the floor of the bubble
as some sort of ramp. Now they stepped off it, then lifted it up
and into place. “No fasteners, though,” Hawks
added.
“Stand back. I will activate the locking mechanism,”
the ship told them. A series of clamps came up through the bolt
holes and flatted out, then the entire metal surface seemed to
buckle slightly inward. Hawks assumed it to be some sort of
magnetic and vacuum seal.
They made their way back out, then managed, not without
difficulty, to get the round giant screw part of the way back in.
Again the ship warned them to step aside, and the plate screwed
itself in the rest of the way, sealing itself shut.
“The topmost hatch,” China told them. “We must
head for the bridge.”
They had to walk through more corridor for a long way, then up
railed ramps. Finally, though, they reached a ceiling hatch that
led to an air lock, which opened onto the bridge.
Star Eagle had turned on the bridge lights, but the resulting
red glow was barely adequate to illuminate the room of gun-black
metal. It was perhaps twenty by thirty meters, a big semicircular
room with stations at instrument clusters lining the walls and more
stations in three banks of boxy machinery front to back. The
station chairs, of black metallic mesh, looked uncomfortable: They
had swivels, but they were low-backed, armless, and were solidly
fixed to the floor.
“We’ll have to shift some of the more comfortable
stuff from the old ship to here,” Cloud Dancer remarked.
“This is not very comfortable.”
“Most of ’em’s pretty spare,” Reba Koll
commented. “Big mother, but no privacy at all.”
“I do not notice a kitchen or a bathroom,” Manka
Warlock noted. “This will not be a pleasant place.”
“I am going to pressurize the bridge,” Star Eagle
informed them. “It will be very oxygen-rich and quite dry,
but it will be serviceable. Until I can gain better mastery of what
is here and how it all works, I will have to make do and so will
you. Later on I can give more comfort. The transmuters here have
enormous capabilities, I think, but they are huge. A more
suitable interface to the bridge area will have to be arranged. I
will order Maintenance to see to it. I am afraid the fare will not
be very good right now, but I believe I can arrange some basic food
and water needs. My food service programs are for the small
transmuter aboard the old ship and won’t be much use here.
Your suit mechanisms will take care of liquid wastes; I fear you
must improvise on solid waste until something can be worked out. In
all this ship, the only bathroom is the one back on the old
ship.”
“What did he mean by ‘transmuter’?” one
of the Chows asked.
“A ship this size needs spare parts always, and spare
everything,” China explained. “Also, it could never
carry sufficient water and air and the rest to support the number
of people it carried. It is sufficient that the master computer
contain the plans and schematics for everything required, from
computer consoles and circuitry to basic water, and be able to make
them. For this it uses a device called a transmuter. All of the
food that we consumed on the old ship was made that way. It takes
something solid or some energy and it converts it to whatever is
needed. The salad you ate a day ago might well have been worn-out
parts from the ship once, or spare exhaust gases from the
propulsion system. Nothing is wasted, you see. Very small
transmuters were even used on me back on Melchior, to speed what
they wished to make of me. Shortcuts to surgery, to
create—or to destroy. We have all had it, to a degree. The
tattoos on our faces—this is why they seem so much a part of
us and do not wear out.”
All of them who had been prisoners on Melchior had the tattoos
on their faces. Those of Hawks, Silent Woman, Cloud Dancer, the
Chows, and Reba Koll were silver; China’s was a metallic
crimson. Each was an abstract design, ranging from a solid ball
near the corners of the mouth and spreading up, tendrillike, to the
side of the eyes and ears. The markings were slightly indented and
quite smooth, but they had sensation like that of the surrounding
skin—the tattoos were, indeed, the prisoners’ own skin.
No prisoner could ever fake not being a prisoner, and the color of
the tattoo indicated the levels to which one had access, so one
could not even sneak away. It was the indelible mark of Melchior.
Only Raven, Warlock, and Sabatini lacked tattoos; they had not been
prisoners.
“Someday these designs will be marks of honor,”
Hawks said, more to himself than the others.
“This transmuter, then—it can make food? And water?
And air?” Chow Mai asked. “It is the magic of the
gods.”
“It is only technology, nothing more,” China
responded. “A machine, like the others, but an essential
one—for us. This ship was never designed to carry humans such
as we.”
Cloud Dancer looked around at the chairs on the bridge.
“Then how do you explain this?” she asked.
“If we could explain this, then perhaps we could explain
Master System,” Hawks noted dryly.
“Pressurization complete,” Star Eagle reported.
“It is safe to take off your suits. The air temperature at
introduction is well within the comfort zone. Avoid all flames and
sparks, since it is mostly oxygen. You might feel some slight
dizziness or intoxication, and slight changes in voice, as well, so
be prepared.”
They had been in the suits for many hours, and in close quarters
for far longer than that, so they were happy to remove their suits
and stretch out on the floor. They were tired, sweaty, and now
mostly helpless, dependent on a computer that was trying to learn
how to run the ship. Even Sabatini seemed to have had all the fight
taken out of him. None of the others trusted him, but under the
circumstances there was little he could do to harm the party as a
whole, and if he tried to hurt an individual member, the others
were more than willing to take care of him, a fact he understood
well.
The metal walls and decking were still cold, but Hawks
didn’t care. His wives, Cloud Dancer and Silent Woman, came
over to sit beside him, and he put one arm around each of them.
What a strange, motley crew of revolutionaries, he
thought. Silent Woman, with her garish multicolored tattoos from
the shoulders down; the Chows, with skin grafts to heal their once
badly mutilated bodies in place but discolored, giving them a
camouflagelike complexion; Reba Koll, a little old lady with a thin
tail; and China, her exquisite body very visibly pregnant. He could
only wonder if the child would survive all this, and, if so, what
they would do with it.
How the hell were they going to do anything? Damn it, out here
even such as he and Raven were as primitive and ignorant as Silent
Woman. He was hungry, and thirsty—they all were—but he
had endured such before. He—and they—could only wait.
But for what?
More than fifty thousand kilometers out from the graveyard of
ancient generation ships, just outside the activation limit of the
automatic defense system but within scanning and sensor range of
the mothball fleet, was another ship. It was not a large ship, not
by the standards of that ghost fleet or even by the standards of
the freighter they’d chased, but it was far sleeker and,
locally, within stellar systems, far faster.
Arnold Nagy, Chief of Melchior Security, sat in his usual padded
chair, half reclining, only casually looking at the screens. He was
bored and depressed at the same time, a man who had failed at his
job and who did not dare to go home. In a sense, he was as much a
wanted fugitive as the party he was chasing, only more
comfortable.
An older man came up from below and settled into the next chair.
Even Master System, the all-powerful, nearly omnipotent master of
the known universe, would have been shocked to see him there, since
he was simultaneously captive back on Val-occupied Melchior.
Doctor Isaac Clayben had not gotten as far as he had without
being clever. For more than three decades he had fooled Master
System and maintained a combination prison colony and research
station to probe the Forbidden Knowledge, the proscribed and hidden
knowledge of Master System and its technological wizardry. To such
a man, creating a physical duplicate who appeared to be the real
thing with his mind erased was child’s play. Yet now he, too,
was a fugitive, a man who did not even exist. Were Master System to
get even a hint that he was not only alive and in full possession
of his mind and skills, but that he had with him the data banks
representing tremendous advances into things humans were not
supposed to know, would cause a hunt as great or greater than that
now being organized to chase Hawks and his group of rebels. Thanks
to them, he also knew about the five gold rings. In many ways, he
was better equipped technologically to obtain them, but he had no
idea where they were. He assumed that the renegades knew where in
the tractless universe to find the rings and quite possibly the
names of their owners. The obvious solution would be to make a
deal, but not so long as they were partially led by China and Reba
Koll. China had reason to despise him—more reason than she
now knew. And Koll—well, that was a special case.
“No signs of any activity after all this time?” the
scientist asked. “I would think, by now, if something were
possible it would have been done. It will only be a few more days
until Master System’s own fleet of Vals and who knows what
else will be here. Be pretty hard to miss a target like
that.”
“There’s a lot of ‘ifs,’ ” Nagy
agreed. “That ship was banged up pretty bad. They got it
aboard, but who knows how much of that was automated? Air, food,
water—and how the hell you gonna drive one of them hanging
cities, anyway? I think maybe we oughta be thinking about our own
skins. I figure sixty hours more is it, and that’s
pushin’ the safety margin. Master System doesn’t
hav’ta allow for the survival of human beings, you
know.”
“They’ll do it, Arnold. I know they will.
China will get it moving, somehow, and Koll will get them out of
there. If we aren’t right with them, if we lose them, we also
lose any chance at the rings. And, Arnold, unless we have the rings
we’re goners. We’re too hot. The freebooters
won’t shield us, we have no large transmuter capable of
integrating with one of the other populations nor the knowledge and
contacts with them to use it to any advantage, and we have no place
else to go.”
Nagy sighed. “Yeah. In a way, they’re better off
than we are. Seven women and only three guys. Pick a nice planet
and let your kids do the rebellion.” “Six women, Arnold. Six women, three men, and a
monster.”
“Yeah, well, six to three is still better than none to
two. What do you think, Doc? Is Koll gonna kill ’em and go
after the rings herself, or what?”
“I doubt it. Not most of them, anyway. She’ll use
them. So long as it is not a choice of her survival or theirs and
so long as she thinks she can get her hands on the rings,
she’ll play along with them.” He sighed. “This is
deep, Arnold. Deep and complex. So many sides, so many
players.”
“Yeah, well, I—” Nagy broke off suddenly and
sat up in his chair, his attention drawn by data on one of his
screens. “They’ve got power! Damn me to hell, but they
got power on that big bastard! That sucker’s charging its
energy banks!”
Clayben stared at the screen. “Yes, you’re right.
Well, I guess that answers your question, anyway. They are alive,
they are in control of that ship, and if they can build up
sufficient energy they are going to move.”
“We’ll be ready for them. This is one express we
ain’t gonna miss.”
IT WAS A SPACESHIP—AND IT WAS MORE THAN
THAT.
It was a starship, a ship designed to go to places even the eye
could not follow and to go distances beyond the grasp of human
minds—but it was more than that.
It looked very much like a great tube, flattened a bit on top
and bottom and rounded at both ends, with protuberances that were
bays for the scout ships that clung to their mother in special
recesses, and sensors, and communications devices—and much,
much more.
The ship itself—one of the hundreds that circled great
Jupiter in silence, shut down, but preserved and ready for
reactivation if their service should ever be needed—was a bit
over fourteen kilometers long. The ship had a brain and massive
amounts of stored knowledge and skills that had not been needed in
a very long while.
“I wonder if it is bothered by that,” Cloud Dancer
said, more to herself than to the others who were gazing at the
viewing screen of their relatively small interplanetary
freighter.
“Huh?” Walks With the Night Hawks, her husband and
co-conspirator, looked at her. “Who is bothered by
what?”
“The ship. It has a mind, a soul, as this one does. Its
spirit is dedicated to work, to a great task, and it has been told
to do nothing since it did that task. I wonder if it minds, sitting
there idle, without hope or opportunity to do its task, to be
itself, for all this time.”
“It sure fought like hell to keep us out,”
came the gravelly voice of the Crow Agency man, Raven. Not long,
before they had been the targets of some of those fighters nestled
inside the great ships; only deciphering the clearance code in time
and some fancy maneuvering had saved them from being blown from the
sky.
“That was its duty,” the Hyiakutt Indian woman
responded. She was quite smart, but having been raised in a
primitive culture, she saw the universe from a perspective as alien
to the others as they were to the computer brain of the great ship
they now approached. “Now it receives us. I wonder if it is
eager, or if it is waiting to devour us?”
“Neither,” an odd voice said through the
ship’s intercom. When Star Eagle, as they had named the
computer pilot of the ship, spoke on his own, it was in a pleasant
male voice, but when China was interfaced into the ship’s
system, forming a human-computer synthesis, the voice sounded
strange, neither male nor female, but somehow both at once.
“There is no command module on any of these ships. It was
removed when they were placed in storage here. These ships have
many brains, as it were, since even the tiny fractions of a second
it might take to relay an order might cause needless risk, but the
only ones there now are automatic maintenance and ship’s
security. The tech cult that discovered the human interfaces
intended to fly the ship themselves, without a command
module.”
Hawks frowned. “Is that possible?”
“Yes, but not efficient or practical. They did not think
beyond that point, since even attaining that much was highly
improbable. All plans were based on the escape, not what came next.
Just like us.” Yes, but we’re at least better off than they would
have been. We have Koll, who’s been out there, and
information from Raven and Warlock. We are not going completely
blind. He frowned, wondering if that was really true or if he
was just trying to reassure himself.
Still, he had no doubt they would get away. No mystical sense
informed him, and he knew of no particular edge on their part, but
even though they’d had to fight every step of the way to this
point, he couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow they were
being led.
Most of this crew had been selected, somehow, by Lazlo Chen, the
ambitious chief administrator of the central Asian district and
discoverer of the information that five gold rings could, if found
and used properly, deactivate or control Master System. Chen owned
the only one of the rings remaining on Earth, and was determined
that this group secure the others for him. The stakes were quite
high—nothing less than godhood for the one who found all the
rings and brought them together.
But even Chen was subject to Master System; even Chen had severe
limits on his knowledge and power. Chen’s reach extended over
the whole of the Earth and even beyond, but it did not reach as far
out as Jupiter. Since their escape from the asteroid penal colony,
Melchior, Hawks had been convinced that another player was also on
the scene, one who also wanted them to succeed and whose reach
did extend farther out. Who or what this player was could
not be known now; nor could they guess whether it was
using Chen for its own ends, or whether Chen was using it.
This was a strange band to pick for such a mission. Hawks was a
Hyiakutt Amerind historian, a student of rebels and warriors, not
one himself. Cloud Dancer had been born and raised in the Plains
culture, a primitive suddenly thrust into a world of what to her
was magic. The Chow sisters came out of an equally primitive
society in China, but as personal servants to Center personnel
they’d had more experience with technology; they had an
uncanny ability to pick even computer-encoded locks, though they
were otherwise ignorant. Raven, the Crow security man built like a
boulder, and his associate Manka Warlock, the Jamaican beauty with
the cold personality and a liking for killing people, seemed more
obvious choices, but neither of them had ever before left Earth.
Out here in space they were as ignorant and helpless as he was. The
selection of China, too, made some sense—originally known as
Song Ching, she was the daughter of the chief administrator of
China and the product of a breeding experiment to produce a subrace
that was physically perfect and mentally so advanced it was hoped
to be a match for the computer system—but she, too, had never
been off Earth, and thanks to the cruel experimentation of the
scientists on Melchior she was hardly a perfect choice now. Blind
and compulsively pregnant, her true value was only in her ability
to use the human interface to become one with the mind of the
ship’s computer pilot, as she was doing now.
That, too, was a mystery. Why did these ships have interfaces
for humans at all? Master System alone could build them, in
far-off, wholly automated factories among the stars. Why was there
a bridge, with connections to the vital parts and operations of the
ships, as if humans and computers were supposed to work together?
It was this absolute control of space that made Master System
unbeatable, and it had been perhaps nine hundred years since any
humans had traveled on spaceships as anything other than
passengers. It would have been simple to build these ships so that
no one could ever control or tamper with the command modules, the
computer brains. Why hadn’t that been done?
Even the huge interstellar vessel they were now approaching had
positions for humans, and more than one bridge, yet these ships had
not been built until after Master System had taken total control of
humanity. These ships had been designed not for human use but to
carry the bulk of humanity against its will to captivity among the
stars. Why, then, were there a bridge and interfaces for humans,
since without those they would have no escape, no opportunity to
flee, at all?
And then there was Reba Koll, the essential one, the only one
who’d been out there before, and the only one who herself had
used the interfaces illegally to pilot a spaceship. They had a lot
riding on the memories and long-unused skills of the strange old
woman with the tail, and she was quite mad—who wouldn’t
have been after enduring ten years of experimentation on Melchior?
She claimed not to be Reba Koll but someone—or
something—else she would not now reveal. Even the security
forces who had pursued them from Melchior claimed the same, and
that worried Hawks. He didn’t think she was some sort of
inhuman monstrosity, but he wondered if she was something very
dangerous such as the carrier of a dread disease.
The final two in the party had been unexpected additions to the
mission. Silent Woman, a product of years of slavery and
degradation in the primitive culture of North America, her tongue
cut out, her body covered with colorful tattoos, was almost
childlike, and there was little or no way to communicate with her
on more than a rudimentary basis. She understood none of the
languages the others used commonly—though Hawks had used a
mindprint machine to give her basic English—and she seemed to
live in a world all her own.
Sabatini, the cruel captain from whom they’d taken this
ship, was here involuntarily, a prisoner. They could neither trust
him nor let him go; sooner or later, Hawks knew, they would have to
face his disposal.
There was nothing left to see on the viewscreen; Star Eagle was
now so close to the massive interstellar ship that the vast bulk
blotted everything out.
“Strap in and prepare for a set of big jolts,” the
ship warned them. “My reverse thrusters are shot thanks to
the battle, and that means, in effect, no brakes. I’ve done
as much as I can, but now we will have to be caught and halted by
tractor beam and that’s going to be a pretty big shock.
Helmets on and switch to internal air supply. I have no idea if we
can maintain pressurization.”
They were already all strapped in, both here and in the lounge
and up on the bridge, yet each checked his own straps and webbing
to make certain they were secure. The ship then activated the
restraint system, pulling them back and holding them so firmly that
it was hard to breathe. All were wearing pressure suits and helmets
now, and they could only wait.
Suddenly there was a massive jolt, a tremor that shook the whole
ship, followed by another, then another. The ship seemed to lurch,
moving in all directions at once, and all around were creaks and
groans of metal in distress. Loud hissing sounds punctuated the
moaning and groaning of fatigued metal. The sense of motion and the
shocks stopped quickly; the noises did not.
“What’s happening?” Warlock asked nervously.
“We’re not going to die just on the edge of
victory!”
The speakers sputtered, hissed, and crackled.
“I—released China—to her,” came the
pilot’s normal voice. “Ship—break up. Suits on,
hold tight—I—”
“You’re breaking up!” Hawks said through his
suit radio. “If I understand correctly the ship is breaking
up in the tractor. Will you be all right?”
“You—get in—soon as bays close.
Decompressing . . . main module—no serious
danger to—China—”
Suddenly there was silence except for the faint buzz of the
carrier in the suit radio. The lights blinked, then went off,
leaving the passengers for a moment in darkness and then in an
eerie semilight as their helmet and small body locator lights came
on.
“Is the ship dead?” Cloud Dancer asked, awed by the
idea. “Has Star Eagle now soared to the
otherworld?”
“I—I don’t know,” Hawks responded.
“The body of the ship is dead, that’s for
sure, but those computers have their own power supplies and sources
of energy. It’s possible he’s still alive and we can
rescue him. I hope so.”
There was a sudden and unexpected jarring and the whole ship
shuddered, then seemed to roll over slightly on its side, as the
big ship’s tractor mechanism pulled them in, controlled by
the automatic maintenance and defense systems.
“We’re in!” Raven called. “Damn it,
we’re inside the thing!”
Hawks was suddenly galvanized into action. “Warlock, go
forward and see to China and Reba Koll and bring them back
here.”
“No need,” came Koll’s sharp, raspy voice over
the radio. “We’re all right and coming back
now.”
“The command module,” China said in her own soft,
high voice. “Have you seen to it?”
“Huh?” Hawks frowned. “Where is it?”
“Aft, in the first cargo hold. There’s a big round
plate in the floor secured by nine recessed bolts and an electronic
combination. You throw two long switches to reveal the
lock.”
Hawks looked around. “Okay, Chow sisters. That sounds like
it’s in your department.”
“No need,” China told him. “I know the
combination and it can be set and timed to blow the bolts. I come
as quick as I can. Someone get a measuring tool and meet us
there.”
“Do we have to do it now?” Warlock asked irritably.
“It’s a damned machine. It’ll wait.”
“It is one with us,” Cloud Dancer responded in a
bitter, almost menacing tone. “It comes with us.”
China was there now, being led by Reba Koll. Hawks shrugged as
he was handed an electronic measure from Sabatini’s kit and
went back with them. “Nobody leaves yet,” he cautioned.
“You don’t want to go into that kind of place without
backup.”
“How long’s the air last in these things?”
Raven muttered.
“Better than sixty hours,” Koll told him.
“There’s time.”
“Yeah.” The Crow security man sighed.
“There’s time, but is there air out there?”
Hawks wasn’t quite sure what China had in mind, but he was
willing to go along with her. She was a strange sort, but she knew
these machines like nobody else did, and in a real sense the whole
group was dependent on the blind girl.
The plate was not easy to find in the dark; even under normal
conditions they might have missed it. Recessed into the deck were
two long mechanical rods that took some effort just to get lifted
up a bit; they were almost as difficult to raise the rest of the
way, eventually requiring the combined weight of Hawks and Raven.
Finally, though, both rods were pulled up and then pushed over as
far as they could go, and a center plate popped out revealing a
dirt-caked touchpad. When they’d cleaned it off as best they
could, China gave them the combination that she had learned from
Star Eagle.
Hawks nervously keyed it in, then they all stepped back, well
away of the plate, and waited. There was no sound in the airless
ship, but a sudden series of flashes burst around the plate and the
bolts all seemed to leap out of their sockets. Moving quickly now,
they pried the plate up and put it out of the way, revealing a
cavity perhaps half a meter deep in which sat three small
rectangular objects.
“Pull up the center one carefully—very
carefully,” China instructed. “Then measure its
dimensions and tell me of its connectors.”
Doing so carefully was a chore; magnetism or some other force
kept the device seated well, and breaking that grip was tough.
Finally, though, they got it up, measured it, and checked it over.
The connectors, smoothly polished and brass-colored, seemed etched
into the sides and bottom of the box; there were a lot of them in
numerous patterns. Hawks did his best to describe them to
China.
She nodded. “For now, put it back so that it can continue
to draw on its emergency power reserves,” she instructed.
“Now we must go into the big ship.”
“Just what is that, lady?” Raven asked,
irritated that this didn’t seem to have much point after all
that work.
“That is the command module—the brain—of Star
Eagle,” she told them. “The other two are management
modules. They can live far longer there than we can in these suits,
so we must hurry. We need to discover the equivalent place on the
big ship and check it out as well.”
Hawks understood. “You’re thinking of moving Star
Eagle from this ship into command of the big one. Is that possible?
Surely the design of the command modules will be different for a
massive interstellar craft than for an interplanetary freighter.
The operations will be far more complex.”
“Not really,” she told him. “Most of it
appears standardized so that they can be reprogrammed easily at any
point. Master System doesn’t want any computer too
sophisticated running these things, and particularly not one that
can’t be reprogrammed on the fly. There is no guarantee; the
size might be right but the connectors different, for
example.”
“What if it is?” Hawks asked her. “What if
it’s impossible? How do we fly this monster?”
“The way the tech cult who discovered the plans for these
intended to do it. Direct interface, human mind to machine. Or
minds, in this case. I suspect it will take several to manage
it.”
“You know where this thing’s supposed to go
in?” Raven asked.
“Yes—more or less. It should be obvious once
we’re there. The trouble is, I have no idea where we are in
this ship except that we are on an outer deck.”
“You realize how big this mother is?” Raven
asked her. “It could take days, weeks, to find our way
around, with nothing much working. There’s limited water in
these suits, even more limited air, no food, and no road map.
It’s impossible!”
“So was getting this far,” Hawks snapped, trying to
break the mood. “First, two of us go out and find out where
we are—some landmark, something, that’ll give China a
clue. Then we get her and Captain Koll up to that bridge to start
doing things the hard way while others of us try and find the
interface. I assume, China lady, that you have some sort of map of
this thing in your head if we can find landmarks.”
“I have a schematic imprinted there, the memory of which
was further enhanced by Star Eagle, but it is not of the detail I
would like. The bridge should be easy, and we’ll take it from
there. At least if I can find the bridge and establish some sort of
interconnect we ought to be able to get some life-support systems
operating.”
Hawks sighed. “Well, Crow—you feeling up to a walk
in the dark with me?”
“Anything to get moving,” Raven responded.
There was something ironic about moving around in a strange,
dark, eerie environment using a blind woman for eyes. The
compartment they were in was enormous, far too large for their
lights to illuminate even a wall. The freighter they had just left
was close to three hundred meters in length and it didn’t
even crowd the place. The first step, then, was finding a wall, and
that took almost forty minutes.
With gravity their task might have been impossible; there were
few objects that could be used as ladders or footholds. In zero
gee, however, they were able to explore more efficiently.
Eventually they found hatches on an inner wall and studied one. It
was locked electronically, of course, but they found the manual
override and opened it.
They moved through the hatch and were startled when a small
string of lights came on along both sides of the corridor near the
floor.
“Motion sensing,” China explained through the radio
from back inside the freighter’s remains. “That is a
break for us.”
“I’m not sure about that break business,”
Raven noted sourly. “There are corridors leading to corridors
leading to corridors.”
“I have a marker here from the ship’s kit,”
Hawks tried to reassure him, although he wasn’t feeling very
secure himself. “I’m making a mark every ten floor
lights or so, and I will indicate direction at every intersection.
That’s the best we can do.”
They went on for what seemed like a long time without hitting
any landmark that China could use to place them. The corridors
seemed to go off in all directions into eternity.
“Hey, Chief? You noticed we ain’t come on no big
rooms, no lines of rooms? No offices, dormitories, or camp meeting
places, for that matter. Just access ways for equipment and
service. We got to be in the service corridors and not the main
halls. I mean, this was built as a cargo ship and its cargo was
people. Lots and lots of people. Where in hell did they
put them?”
Hawks didn’t reply, but he was getting a bad feeling about
all this. As a historian, he knew of these ships and what
they’d done—although he’d never dreamed that they
still existed—and he had always imagined them as great
inverted worlds, with gardens and dense apartmentlike clusters,
like an immense floating and self-sufficient city. This, however,
was sterile, spartan, cold, and lifeless. Raven was right. A ship
this size might be expected to transport and support thousands of
people. Where? And how?
And, quite suddenly, through one more hatch, they found the
answer.
They must be, Hawks guessed, in the belly of the ship, yet it
was crowded and went off in all directions. Their helmet lights and
the lights on what had now become a wide catwalk revealed only a
tiny part of it, but there was the sense that this, too, went on
forever.
“Jeez! It’s like some kinda monster
honeycomb,” Raven remarked. The many catwalks divided an
enormous section that extended above and below as far as the light
carried. They could see down past some half-dozen levels of
chambers before the honeycomb was swallowed in darkness.
Hawks turned and studied the way the catwalk was fastened to the
inner hull wall. “Rails,” he noted, pointing.
“The walks move up and down. See the stops there? Each walk
would service, I would say, five rows of these holes or chambers
up, and perhaps five down. They were probably not marched in. It
would be too messy. Most likely the people were placed in some sort
of drug-induced coma, probably in large groups by gas, then hauled
in here and loaded automatically by equipment designed for that
purpose. You said it, Raven—cargo.” He leaned over and
felt just inside the nearest chamber. “Some sort of soft
synthetic lining. See? Each one is large enough for one human
adult. You can see small vents, and that tiny box looks as if it
contains tentacular tubing. They put them in, then the tubing
attached itself where necessary, and they were sustained for the
journey.”
“Yeah,” Raven said dryly. “Gives you the
shakes. I suppose they kept a mixture of the gas and pure oxygen in
here to keep ’em out, or maybe these things can be sealed and
separately flooded. Gives you the creeps, though.”
“Until now this was only an academic thing for me,”
Hawks told him, his voice strained. “In its own way it was
even somewhat romantic. Whole human civilizations being carted off
to the stars to found new colonies. It does not seem very romantic
now. This is the true face of Master System, Raven, the one we
served and even believed in to a great degree when we were younger.
Even this expedition, this rebellion, was, I admit, as much a
romance to me, a chance to live beyond the confines, to experience
rather than merely study—but no more. I have lost an
innocence here I did not know I retained, and I am filled with
revulsion. These weren’t humans to Master System and its
machines, Raven. Not their makers, not their charges. Just digits.
Binary ones and zeros. Quantity this. Not even the dignity of zoo
animals or pets. Carrion. No—live meat in its despicable deep
freeze.”
“Sorry to interrupt,” China’s voice broke in,
“but can you get any real landmark on the central cargo bay?
You’ve got a lot of people back here who are getting hungry
and will also need air.”
Hawks resented her intrusion, and also her tone. She
must have heard them. When she saw—but, no, she
wouldn’t see. She couldn’t. She could be standing right
here and it could only be described to her as it might be read by
him from some book or computer printout. At times that strange girl
seemed more machine than human, anyway. She might very well stand
here, even if she could see, and explain the cold and efficient
logic behind the system from a computer’s point of view. She
probably would.
“The corridor we entered on has to be one that services
this level, running parallel to it,” Raven responded.
“Best we might do is pick a direction and follow it until it
ends.”
Hawks tore himself away from his reverie. “No. If
we’re near one end of the chamber and go the wrong way it
might be ten kilometers to reach an end, and it might be an end
with nothing worth the trouble. We must split up. You walk one way,
I, the other, until the first one of us comes to an end or some
other recognizable feature. Remain parallel to the hatches leading
to the walks. If we are not in the center, and the odds are against
it, then one of us should reach something useful in a short
time.”
“Fair enough. I’ll go left and if I junction
I’ll continue to always take the left fork. You do the same
on the right, taking the right fork. We have to get cracking on
this. History can wait, as usual.”
After about another thirty or forty minutes, Raven called out.
“I’ve gotten to the end! There’s another catwalk
out here, but also ones leading up to hatches all along the
wall.”
“Any distinguishing features on the wall?” China
asked him.
“Hard to see with the light we got. There’s five
hatches makin’ kind of a triangle goin’ up one side to
a center one and then back down. Lemme haul myself up there and see
what’s what.” There was a pause filled with some
intermittent grunts. Then Raven spoke again. “It’s
recessed in the whole area. Triangle shape, and right up top is a
whole bunch of what looks like pipes that come together in a neat
line and go into the wall. That help?”
“Yes. I know exactly where you are. Look carefully down
from the center hatch, perhaps centered in the middle. A round
plate of some kind, possibly secured by rivets.”
“Ugh! No handholds down there, and I ain’t got this
no-gravity stuff down yet, if I ever will. Let’s
see . . . Yeah! It’s here. Looks like it
was designed to turn if you had a handle, but I don’t see
one.”
“A strong magnet would do it. I think we can find
something here. It is probably not locked. That is a service tunnel
going down to the core room. The center hatch above should lead to
the bridge. Hawks?”
“Yeah?”
“Stop going where you’ve been walking. You’re
walking aft and you’d be a long time getting to anyplace
useful. Best you return here and get the rest of us. We must take
Star Eagle’s core and the two support modules and see if we
can make them fit in there. If we can, we will be masters of this
ship.”
“Uh huh,” Raven grunted. “And if we
can’t?”
“Then we will have to work around it. Let’s try the
other first. Master System is almost maniacal about
standardization. It’s one reason we have been able to beat
the system so often. The interplanetary ships were designed as
precursors to these, and there is no evidence that they have ever
been significantly changed in their basic design and
specifications. You remain there and let Hawks and the rest of us
come to you.”
“Yeah, I’ll just sit here all nice and comfy,”
the Crow responded. “Sorta like hangin’ around the
mausoleum.”
When they finally succeeded in removing the bulky plate, they
revealed a round cavity large enough for a human in a pressure suit
to enter. Hawks and Raven were again the first inside, the latter
pushing the three modules from their crippled interplanetary
craft.
The tube angled down for perhaps twenty meters, then opened into
a large bubblelike chamber. Around the wall in a band were
drawerlike module compartments, all filled, and in the center was a
raised squared-off pedestal with four rectangular cavities laid out
in a cross. All were vacant.
“Well, we have the right place, but which goes
where?” Hawks asked China through the suit intercom.
“All four look exactly the same, and there aren’t
exactly instruction sheets printed on them. Also, we have four
holes and only three modules.”
“That won’t matter much, I don’t think,”
China assured him. “The core had a unique set of contacts.
Those contacts should match only one of the sockets. Are the sizes
right?”
“Look right,” Raven told her. “We’ll see
when we try. There’s a million of these tiny nipples in this
gold leaf, though. Hard to tell which is which by just looking at
them. Maybe you could see a difference but I sure as hell
can’t.”
“I wish I could see it,” the Chinese girl
responded. “Well, there is only one core socket; the others
are data modules. The data modules aren’t socket specific,
only the core, or brain. If there is no other way, then place the
two support modules in any two sockets and then attempt to load the
core in one of the remaining sockets. Be careful not to damage or
scrape any part of it. If it fits, fine, but don’t force it.
If it doesn’t fit, try the other. Then switch.”
“Be easier if we just tried the core first,” Hawks
noted.
“No! The core is its brain but the storage modules are its
basic memories. If it connects with this ship but does not
immediately have access to its memory modules it will not know
where it is or who we are or what this is all about. The core is
still the basic Master System core; it is the modules that were
altered to allow it freedom. Activating the core without the
modules will simply deliver us into the hands of a slave of Master
System.”
“Uh, yeah. Uh huh.” They turned and carefully
selected one of the storage modules, then studied the cavities.
“I’d say let’s put these in the right and left
cavities as seen from the hatch and try the core with the
vertical,” Hawks suggested. Raven shrugged.
The first one slid easily and seemed to be firmly seated.
“So far so good,’ Raven noted, sweating. They inserted
the other, which went in just as easily. “Best guess is that
one of the two remaining is in fact the brains.”
“I had only a partial schematic,” China told them.
“I’m not certain what the fourth one would be. Possibly
additional memory to help manage a ship this size, or possibly a
subsidiary brain, one handling the ship and the other the cargo
life support. It is possible it might fit both places. Try it and
see. We have no choice.”
“Top one,” Hawks guessed. “Seems silly, but
it’s closest to the actual bridge above.”
“Yeah, by about a meter and a half,” Raven
responded, but they carefully maneuvered the core and then fitted
it into the cavity. Nothing happened. “Seems to be sitting
just a little higher than the others. Want to try the bottom
one?”
“We couldn’t get it all right first
time,” Hawks said. “All right—use the small
magnets and pull.”
They lifted the module out, then maneuvered it slowly to the
lower cavity, checked its position, and lowered it into place.
Again, it didn’t seem to go in quite all the way.
“We’re either wrong on the others or we’re gonna
have to risk pushing on the thing,” Raven noted.
“Careful!” China warned them. “They are tough
but not too tough. It is why they are shielded.”
There was a tiny bit of play, and they tried moving the module
first this way, then that, pushing down slightly as they did so.
They were just beginning to decide that perhaps they had the wrong
one, after all, when Raven accidentally jiggled the top as he
shifted position, and the module sank down just a bit in the socket
and seated itself firmly.
“Hey! It’s in!” the Crow shouted, staring in
wonder at the thing. “But nothin’s
happening!”
Suddenly there were strange clicking, whirring, and beeping
sounds through their intercom sets.
“It’s on all frequencies! Radios off for now!”
China yelled over the din. “Count to a hundred and check each
hundred until it’s quiet again!”
It was eerie enough to be in the ghostly dark bowels of the
strange ship, but in silence it was even worse. Hawks took some
comfort from seeing Raven and Raven’s light, but he
couldn’t help wondering about China. Deaf and dumb because of
this, like the others, she was also blind and now completely cut
off.
At each check the horrible sounds were so painful that none
could stand to keep his or her radio on for more than the briefest
moment. The number of hundred counts seemed to go on forever.
Outside the hatch, China waited in a world of silent darkness,
hand in hand with Cloud Dancer and Silent Woman on either side of
her, that touch the only reality she had other than the breathing
sounds from her suit. She had never felt so totally helpless, and
her complete dependence on the others was only now being driven
home to her. She didn’t like the feeling at all. Worse, she
could not understand what was happening, or why. Nobody, not even
the researchers who’d theorized all this, had actually
touched one of these ships. Nine centuries had passed since humans
had been even cargo on this ship; no human being had ever set foot
in here as an independent agent.
Suddenly a million possibilities presented themselves to her
mind. A power mismatch. Inverted circuitry that would cause a loop
and ultimately a burnout. Or, perhaps, the great ship and its
complexities was simply too much for Star Eagle to handle or
comprehend, much as his mind was actually alien to hers.
Keeping hold of China’s left hand, Cloud Dancer turned to
look back into the darkness of the immense cavity. Suddenly she
gasped and squeezed that hand tighter, then tried to poke one of
the others. Koll, finally, turned and saw what Cloud Dancer
saw.
Behind them a snake of lights was growing, writhing, twisting,
going ever outward, upward, downward. It took them a moment to
realize what was happening.
All the floor lights on the catwalks were being illuminated,
section by section. The ancient cavity that had transported
uncounted thousands or perhaps millions was soon lit up like a
festival, dimly but beautifully, as far as any eye could see.
They tried their radios. There was still a lot of static and odd
background noise, but the sounds were no longer unbearable.
“Anybody on?” Reba Koll called. Her voice crackled a
bit, but it carried all right.
“I’m in!” Hawks’s voice sounded even
worse.
“We are here!” the Chow sisters chimed in. “Is
it not beautiful?”
“All of us are going to die,” Carlo Sabatini
wailed.
Cloud Dancer kept nudging China until the girl finally let go
and activated her radio. One by one they all checked in.
“Still nothing much down here,” Raven reported
worriedly. Cloud Dancer told them about the lights.
“Nothing like that here, but I’m feeling something.
A low vibration ,” Hawks told them. “What about up
there?”
“Faint. Very faint,” China responded in a voice that
sounded curiously unlike her. The sharp edge, the confidence, was
gone, Hawks thought. She’s been badly scared. It was
almost a relief to discover that she was human after all.
A strange voice cut them all off. It was quite high at first,
then went down a scale as if it was testing each note to find one
it liked. Finally it stopped.
“Do I have communication?” the voice asked at last.
It sounded a bit less than human, like a man’s voice played
at a speed slightly too slow and irregular. The effect was
eerie.
“You have it,” China responded. “Is that you,
Star Eagle?”
“Star Eagle . . . Yes, I identify with
that. It is . . . difficult. There is so much,
so much at once. It keeps coming at me, but it is far too much to
absorb. I am grown enormous! It
is . . . difficult . . . to
focus my primary consciousness, to limit it. Somehow this must be
partitioned.”
“We require entry to the bridge, then the establishment of
power and life support there,” she told it. “Can you
handle that?”
“Proceed up to the bridge. It is essential that the
capping locks be placed on my modules and then the hatch resealed
before we can proceed. I can then activate the isolation circuitry
that will keep the core bay suspended and vacuum insulated from
shocks and vibrations.”
“You heard the man, Chief,” Raven noted. “See
what he’s talking about?”
“Now I do,” Hawks responded. “We’ve been
walking on it.”
They had taken the one flatter area on the floor of the bubble
as some sort of ramp. Now they stepped off it, then lifted it up
and into place. “No fasteners, though,” Hawks
added.
“Stand back. I will activate the locking mechanism,”
the ship told them. A series of clamps came up through the bolt
holes and flatted out, then the entire metal surface seemed to
buckle slightly inward. Hawks assumed it to be some sort of
magnetic and vacuum seal.
They made their way back out, then managed, not without
difficulty, to get the round giant screw part of the way back in.
Again the ship warned them to step aside, and the plate screwed
itself in the rest of the way, sealing itself shut.
“The topmost hatch,” China told them. “We must
head for the bridge.”
They had to walk through more corridor for a long way, then up
railed ramps. Finally, though, they reached a ceiling hatch that
led to an air lock, which opened onto the bridge.
Star Eagle had turned on the bridge lights, but the resulting
red glow was barely adequate to illuminate the room of gun-black
metal. It was perhaps twenty by thirty meters, a big semicircular
room with stations at instrument clusters lining the walls and more
stations in three banks of boxy machinery front to back. The
station chairs, of black metallic mesh, looked uncomfortable: They
had swivels, but they were low-backed, armless, and were solidly
fixed to the floor.
“We’ll have to shift some of the more comfortable
stuff from the old ship to here,” Cloud Dancer remarked.
“This is not very comfortable.”
“Most of ’em’s pretty spare,” Reba Koll
commented. “Big mother, but no privacy at all.”
“I do not notice a kitchen or a bathroom,” Manka
Warlock noted. “This will not be a pleasant place.”
“I am going to pressurize the bridge,” Star Eagle
informed them. “It will be very oxygen-rich and quite dry,
but it will be serviceable. Until I can gain better mastery of what
is here and how it all works, I will have to make do and so will
you. Later on I can give more comfort. The transmuters here have
enormous capabilities, I think, but they are huge. A more
suitable interface to the bridge area will have to be arranged. I
will order Maintenance to see to it. I am afraid the fare will not
be very good right now, but I believe I can arrange some basic food
and water needs. My food service programs are for the small
transmuter aboard the old ship and won’t be much use here.
Your suit mechanisms will take care of liquid wastes; I fear you
must improvise on solid waste until something can be worked out. In
all this ship, the only bathroom is the one back on the old
ship.”
“What did he mean by ‘transmuter’?” one
of the Chows asked.
“A ship this size needs spare parts always, and spare
everything,” China explained. “Also, it could never
carry sufficient water and air and the rest to support the number
of people it carried. It is sufficient that the master computer
contain the plans and schematics for everything required, from
computer consoles and circuitry to basic water, and be able to make
them. For this it uses a device called a transmuter. All of the
food that we consumed on the old ship was made that way. It takes
something solid or some energy and it converts it to whatever is
needed. The salad you ate a day ago might well have been worn-out
parts from the ship once, or spare exhaust gases from the
propulsion system. Nothing is wasted, you see. Very small
transmuters were even used on me back on Melchior, to speed what
they wished to make of me. Shortcuts to surgery, to
create—or to destroy. We have all had it, to a degree. The
tattoos on our faces—this is why they seem so much a part of
us and do not wear out.”
All of them who had been prisoners on Melchior had the tattoos
on their faces. Those of Hawks, Silent Woman, Cloud Dancer, the
Chows, and Reba Koll were silver; China’s was a metallic
crimson. Each was an abstract design, ranging from a solid ball
near the corners of the mouth and spreading up, tendrillike, to the
side of the eyes and ears. The markings were slightly indented and
quite smooth, but they had sensation like that of the surrounding
skin—the tattoos were, indeed, the prisoners’ own skin.
No prisoner could ever fake not being a prisoner, and the color of
the tattoo indicated the levels to which one had access, so one
could not even sneak away. It was the indelible mark of Melchior.
Only Raven, Warlock, and Sabatini lacked tattoos; they had not been
prisoners.
“Someday these designs will be marks of honor,”
Hawks said, more to himself than the others.
“This transmuter, then—it can make food? And water?
And air?” Chow Mai asked. “It is the magic of the
gods.”
“It is only technology, nothing more,” China
responded. “A machine, like the others, but an essential
one—for us. This ship was never designed to carry humans such
as we.”
Cloud Dancer looked around at the chairs on the bridge.
“Then how do you explain this?” she asked.
“If we could explain this, then perhaps we could explain
Master System,” Hawks noted dryly.
“Pressurization complete,” Star Eagle reported.
“It is safe to take off your suits. The air temperature at
introduction is well within the comfort zone. Avoid all flames and
sparks, since it is mostly oxygen. You might feel some slight
dizziness or intoxication, and slight changes in voice, as well, so
be prepared.”
They had been in the suits for many hours, and in close quarters
for far longer than that, so they were happy to remove their suits
and stretch out on the floor. They were tired, sweaty, and now
mostly helpless, dependent on a computer that was trying to learn
how to run the ship. Even Sabatini seemed to have had all the fight
taken out of him. None of the others trusted him, but under the
circumstances there was little he could do to harm the party as a
whole, and if he tried to hurt an individual member, the others
were more than willing to take care of him, a fact he understood
well.
The metal walls and decking were still cold, but Hawks
didn’t care. His wives, Cloud Dancer and Silent Woman, came
over to sit beside him, and he put one arm around each of them.
What a strange, motley crew of revolutionaries, he
thought. Silent Woman, with her garish multicolored tattoos from
the shoulders down; the Chows, with skin grafts to heal their once
badly mutilated bodies in place but discolored, giving them a
camouflagelike complexion; Reba Koll, a little old lady with a thin
tail; and China, her exquisite body very visibly pregnant. He could
only wonder if the child would survive all this, and, if so, what
they would do with it.
How the hell were they going to do anything? Damn it, out here
even such as he and Raven were as primitive and ignorant as Silent
Woman. He was hungry, and thirsty—they all were—but he
had endured such before. He—and they—could only wait.
But for what?
More than fifty thousand kilometers out from the graveyard of
ancient generation ships, just outside the activation limit of the
automatic defense system but within scanning and sensor range of
the mothball fleet, was another ship. It was not a large ship, not
by the standards of that ghost fleet or even by the standards of
the freighter they’d chased, but it was far sleeker and,
locally, within stellar systems, far faster.
Arnold Nagy, Chief of Melchior Security, sat in his usual padded
chair, half reclining, only casually looking at the screens. He was
bored and depressed at the same time, a man who had failed at his
job and who did not dare to go home. In a sense, he was as much a
wanted fugitive as the party he was chasing, only more
comfortable.
An older man came up from below and settled into the next chair.
Even Master System, the all-powerful, nearly omnipotent master of
the known universe, would have been shocked to see him there, since
he was simultaneously captive back on Val-occupied Melchior.
Doctor Isaac Clayben had not gotten as far as he had without
being clever. For more than three decades he had fooled Master
System and maintained a combination prison colony and research
station to probe the Forbidden Knowledge, the proscribed and hidden
knowledge of Master System and its technological wizardry. To such
a man, creating a physical duplicate who appeared to be the real
thing with his mind erased was child’s play. Yet now he, too,
was a fugitive, a man who did not even exist. Were Master System to
get even a hint that he was not only alive and in full possession
of his mind and skills, but that he had with him the data banks
representing tremendous advances into things humans were not
supposed to know, would cause a hunt as great or greater than that
now being organized to chase Hawks and his group of rebels. Thanks
to them, he also knew about the five gold rings. In many ways, he
was better equipped technologically to obtain them, but he had no
idea where they were. He assumed that the renegades knew where in
the tractless universe to find the rings and quite possibly the
names of their owners. The obvious solution would be to make a
deal, but not so long as they were partially led by China and Reba
Koll. China had reason to despise him—more reason than she
now knew. And Koll—well, that was a special case.
“No signs of any activity after all this time?” the
scientist asked. “I would think, by now, if something were
possible it would have been done. It will only be a few more days
until Master System’s own fleet of Vals and who knows what
else will be here. Be pretty hard to miss a target like
that.”
“There’s a lot of ‘ifs,’ ” Nagy
agreed. “That ship was banged up pretty bad. They got it
aboard, but who knows how much of that was automated? Air, food,
water—and how the hell you gonna drive one of them hanging
cities, anyway? I think maybe we oughta be thinking about our own
skins. I figure sixty hours more is it, and that’s
pushin’ the safety margin. Master System doesn’t
hav’ta allow for the survival of human beings, you
know.”
“They’ll do it, Arnold. I know they will.
China will get it moving, somehow, and Koll will get them out of
there. If we aren’t right with them, if we lose them, we also
lose any chance at the rings. And, Arnold, unless we have the rings
we’re goners. We’re too hot. The freebooters
won’t shield us, we have no large transmuter capable of
integrating with one of the other populations nor the knowledge and
contacts with them to use it to any advantage, and we have no place
else to go.”
Nagy sighed. “Yeah. In a way, they’re better off
than we are. Seven women and only three guys. Pick a nice planet
and let your kids do the rebellion.” “Six women, Arnold. Six women, three men, and a
monster.”
“Yeah, well, six to three is still better than none to
two. What do you think, Doc? Is Koll gonna kill ’em and go
after the rings herself, or what?”
“I doubt it. Not most of them, anyway. She’ll use
them. So long as it is not a choice of her survival or theirs and
so long as she thinks she can get her hands on the rings,
she’ll play along with them.” He sighed. “This is
deep, Arnold. Deep and complex. So many sides, so many
players.”
“Yeah, well, I—” Nagy broke off suddenly and
sat up in his chair, his attention drawn by data on one of his
screens. “They’ve got power! Damn me to hell, but they
got power on that big bastard! That sucker’s charging its
energy banks!”
Clayben stared at the screen. “Yes, you’re right.
Well, I guess that answers your question, anyway. They are alive,
they are in control of that ship, and if they can build up
sufficient energy they are going to move.”
“We’ll be ready for them. This is one express we
ain’t gonna miss.”