The Sleeper of the Ages

by Hans Kneifel

  "Or of something we haven't realized yet," Kalymel said. "Of the dangers of landing. Or of the planet." He looked around, scanning the surroundings for anything that might catch his attention. He coughed; the air was dry and full of dust. Here, on the way to inner wall of the hull, the deep rumble of the inertial absorbers had grown louder. "They're probably much more sensitive than we are. Come on, Elsey, catch up."

  They had followed the renegades through corridors, through open-standing doors into large light-filled rooms in which nothing grew other than large-leafed, waist-high bushes that converted carbon dioxide into oxygen. The Muties had forced their way straight through the plants, leaving behind trails too obvious to miss. With unbelievable strength they had opened narrow doors that were secured with heavy bars. Through this emergency passage, obeying some inner drive that led them in this direction, they had entered disused workshops and manufacturing rooms and had zig-zagged through them. Seats and equipment had been knocked over, tattered bits of their bloody bandages hung from corners and edges.

  Then came racks filled with boxes and cases. Lamps with very old and dusty shades shone weakly. White beams from their spotlights flicking in all directions. The five pursuers, continued to race onwards, from one room to the next and through sectors of different sizes, in which the lighting, odors, humidity and temperature, and the background wall colors, changed constantly. Narrow, ominously empty ramps connected the decks with each other.

  Kalymel had the hatches and doors closed behind them in order not to disturb the carefully balanced exchange of precious air and power. He was aware that he had to carry out this security measure despite the loss of time. He estimated that he had almost made up for the Half-Leukors' lead. "We should be right behind them," he said as Elsey and Lieth, dirty and pouring with sweat, stood next to him. "Try not to be too hard on them. Remember—they're sick and confused!"

  "Maybe they're lying exhausted between the transformers," Macaire offered, climbing the steps. "Let's get this over with."

  "Let's go. Onwards!"

  Kalymel took a deep breath. He imagined that the icy coldness of space along with cosmic radiation penetrated the steel walls, but within a few minutes he and his men were again dripping with sweat. The air was not only cool and dry but thin as well; the indicators on the carbon-dioxide tanks, which were secured just above the floor and filled with the propellant for the fire-extinguishing foam, showed they were filled to maximum capacity. On the way to the next deck, up-gravity, they went past a tank whose valve blew open with a bang at that moment and expelled its contents hissing into space through its connecting tubes.

  When the lift came to a stop and the elevator shaft's bright yellow double doors began to slide open, Kalymel waved his companions to the side of the platform. The opening grew, the warning lights blinked frantically, and as Elsey was the last to press himself against the wall, wild cries along with metallic-sounding shots of the magnetic weapons resounded from the machinery room. The rumbling of the absorbers grew louder.

  The bolts shot out from between the transformer blocks with a vicious hum and detonated against the walls of the staircases and the elevator's support beams. Pieces of debris clattered in all directions. The sliding door sections came to a stop, striking against the buffers. Macaire and Kalymel leaped out into the darkness, the paralyzer guns in their hands, and threw themselves to the right and left for cover.

  A second salvo slammed in tight concentration against the bars of the elevator framework. The shockwave from the exploding bolt heads blew Lieth and Hollun into the middle of the hall. Their cries were almost impossible to understand as the echoes of the huge room distorted every word. As Hollun's spotlight cast its beam across a section of the machinery, Kalymel thought he could understand the fragment of a word or two.

  " ... Fear ... the Keeper ... sure to fail ... can't stand the pain ... in the name of the Legendor ... !"

  Kalymel and Macaire crawled at first along the inner wall to the right and left, then made a dash along the bases of the machines and the connecting pipes towards where they suspected the fugitives to be. On the opposite wall, weak light formed a kind of multi-colored halo. It could be a control panel or a display. They snapped their spotlights on at short intervals. The focused light formed white beams in the thin haze of dust and steam that filled the hall.

  The sick renegades were firing blindly at real or imaginary targets. From the centers of the lividly flaring explosions, shards of debris sizzled through the darkness, striking the walls and machinery housings with a rattling and cracking that filled the hall with deafening noise.

  Kalymel straightened up and peered into the aisles between the banks of machinery. "Stop shooting!" he called. "We want to help you!"

  He fleetingly saw a figure that changed its position and whose outline was made visible by the beam of a wandering spotlight. The answer to his demand was a renewed hailstorm of shots, wild shouts, and the noise of bursting shrapnel-heads. He ducked. The splinters pelted around him. To his rear, he heard a sharp, long drawn-out hissing, a shrill whistling, and he knew that a CO2 tank had been hit. Highly concentrated carbon dioxide was streaming out, the valve rattled, the gas spread out along the floor, triggering an alarm. Whirring ventilation fans began to turn, the overhead lights on the ceiling and above some of the machines switched on. It took the time of a cautious breath for Kalymel's eyes to adjust to the brightness.

  "Carbon dioxide alarm!" Elsey shouted. "High off the floor."

  Almost at the same time, Kalymel saw a Half-Leukor; he raised his weapon and fired. There was the sound of a drawn-out humming, a faint beam leaped from the mouth of the gun to the white-skinned man's chest. It was Amias. He threw up his arms, dropped his crossbow, and collapsed almost in slow motion.

  The other two Half-Leukors stood at the sides of a control panel in the shape of a quarter-circle. The vidscreens above the jumble of indicators were in operation, but neither Macaire nor Kalymel could make out what they were showing. Cada and Lumena fired all the bolts in their magazines. The crossbow levers snapped back and forth and the sounds of the alarm mixed with the rattling noise in the machinery hall.

  To the left of Kalymel's field of vision, Lieth leaped up and fired a shock beam at Cada, who was changing magazines. She looked pathetic: her blood-soaked bandages were hanging loosely from her body, and she bled from her fingertips and orifices. Her skin displayed a frightening pattern of white, black, and red. She fell over backwards, struck a machine housing, and slowly slid to the floor, unconscious.

  Shrieking and dancing wildly, Lumena emptied his magazine of bolts on the spot. Hollun had worked his way under cover to a hiding place just to Lumena's right; he came out of his shelter and struck Lumena from the side. The crossbow fell with a clatter against a console and kept firing until the last bolt had left the feeding tube and slammed into an overhead light, which burst with a bang and showered them with a hail of sharp-edged plastic fragments.

  "Stop!" Kalymel called, running towards the para-Muties. "It's over! Put the crossbows away!"

  He lowered his weapon, clipped the spotlight to his belt, and dashed to the control console. Before turning to the unconscious fugitives, he looked at the vidscreen. There, in the light of the oncoming sun, a shimmering circle was displayed. The capture fields that spanned between the projectors could not be seen, but the neutrino effects formed whirling patterns and structures that quickly dissipated. Kalymel was convinced that within the giant circle he could see a face appear amid the whirling, swirling colors that melted into fractals and then slowly dissolved into showers of light. The alarm suddenly went dead; the hissing and whistling of the damaged tank had stopped. Only the rumbling of the Absorbers and the sound of the ventilators remained.

  Macaire had reached the unconscious fugitives before Kalymel. He looked at them for a few moments in silence, then shook his head regretfully. "I wonder if they'll survive?" he asked himself aloud. "Let's take them outside. We should inform the Naahk."


  For the next half hour, they struggled sweating to drag the limp bodies to the elevator and give them cursory treatment. Then Kalymel went to the nearest terminal and had the Network establish a connection to Atubur Nutai.

  The Commander's head appeared on the screen, tired, his forehead glistening with perspiration, and blinked in exhaustion. He looked past Kalymel's shoulder at the motionless bodies. After a few labored breaths, he said: "I see that you have forestalled the sick ones from further senseless actions. The CO2 concentration has fallen to a non-threatening level. The Commander thanks you in the name of the Councils and the crew." For a long moment he looked uncertainly at Kalymel, who was glancing around for a gurney or some similar equipment. "Wait for the elevator. I will activate it so you can bring the three back to the clinic. My instruments indicate no further damage—you, Kalymel, should check the systems for possible damage afterwards. You will hear from me again."

  "I need the precise data, Naahk," Kalymel said. "Very well. Later. I'll find it on the Net. We're bringing them out."

  He switched his communicator on and called the South-Green clinic area. They were to get gurneys ready and prepare everything in order to take care of the sick ones quickly.

  One after the other, Kalymel and the others lifted the bodies of the renegades, on whose skin the blood was drying. The formerly white hair was dirty, filled with dust, sweat, and crusted blood. As they let Amias slide back down to the floor in front of the elevator, they saw the lights and heard the lift clattering upwards from the unfathomable depths.

  Among the tragic mysteries of life aboard the OVIR was the Gebrest, which had spread over the years and manifested itself in various painful and ultimately fatal ways. The skin of the Para-Mutants—the disease had progressed the most with these three Half-Leukors—suddenly showed dark areas that quickly became larger, turned red, and began to secrete watery blood. After about ten days, the plasma dried up and the palm-sized blood marks slowly disappeared. Internal organs did not seem to be affected; the marks did not hurt any more or less than normal "wounds" of this size. The disease seemed to be beaten.

  Then, usually after a long time, bright blood oozed unexpectedly from the nose and ears, later from the fingertips, and the nails or claws shriveled and fell out.

  This change in the progression of the disease was accompanied by nightmares and, strangely enough, by a conspicuous but temporary increase in para-abilities; the physicians did not know what to do nor was there any hint to be found in the archives or annals of the Network about this disease or ways to cure it. The Gebrest bided its time until the next outbreak.

  It struck again unexpectedly. The sick ones were secured to their beds and treated with everything that the medics knew would not harm them. But time dragged on. Minutes stretched to hours, agonized day periods and nights. The stronger vegetated longer than the old or the weak, then their bodies began to dry out and death came silently and inevitably.

  Kalymel's team carried the unconscious renegades into the elevator, which clattered down-gravity and stopped at the level of the Common Area for the first time in years. Macaire whistled and waved to some young women.

  "Help us!"

  The ghastly-looking Half-Leukors were loaded onto gurneys and rolled into the med-station. One after another, the physicians came and began to treat the three unmoving bodies on the cots; while one group washed away the blood and dirt, the others implanted intravenous drips as fast as they could. Kalymel sat down heavily on a stool, started to remove his gear, and looked at the welter of medical equipment and ragged and bloody bandages.

  "Things are getting stranger all the time," he said to Hollun. "We can only hope that conditions will be different after the landing."

  "By the Keeper!" Hollun replied in a low voice. "In fifty days we'll all be much wiser."

  The vidscreen in the med-station's anteroom came on. Atubur Nutai stared wordlessly down at the aides who had crowded around the three sickbeds. He nodded to Kalymel, who had stood up and with drooping shoulders stepped in front of the pick-up lens.

  "Even the second check showed that the three did not cause any significant damage. In order to prevent further incidents of this kind, you must bind the sick ones securely. I will put the elevator back into operation in ten minutes, Kalymel. Get your test equipment." He nodded slowly. His bare scalp glistened with reflected light. His haggard face expressed more than just worry, but his eyes flashed with eagerness for action. "Take a look at the transformer deck. Bring someone along who knows something about it to help you."

  "Macaire will work with me," Kalymel replied. "How is it going with the deceleration?"

  "As planned," the Naahk replied. "You can all rest easy. The inertial absorbers are operating at ninety percent capacity. For forty hours, the para-diseased have held the neutrino energy supply at a peak amount. Almost double intensity."

  "And ... now?" Kalymel asked, worried.

  "Just under normal. In any event, we will carry out a flawless intermediate landing. Inform me when your inspection is completed."

  "Of course, Commander," Kalymel said. The Network dissolved the image on the yellow-framed display screen.

  Kalymel went to his cabin, gave himself a superficial wash, and pulled the metal case from its shelf. As he took hold of the smooth-worn handle, he chuckled briefly and almost wistfully. The knowledge and experience to use the instruments in the case properly had been passed along with the container from generation to generation. He was currently the last to use these test and measurement instruments; he really ought to have been training a gifted youth in their practice.

  He waited for Macaire, then, after calling the command center, they took the slow elevator cabin up to the topmost stop. The lift came rattling to a halt, then the scissors-gate opened. Every component of the projectors, transformers and all cables, insulators and housings represented the best, most indestructible high-performance technology. They had been the state of the art for science and metallurgy when the LEMCHA OVIR's construction was complete. Many instruments came from an even later generation of development than when the project began and components from the original outfitting had been replaced even during construction.

  About a third of all indicators no longer functioned. Kalymel and his predecessors had entered the readings they had taken with their test instruments into the Network and had written and drawn the latest data on the indicators with grease pencils.

  He and Macaire first switched on the sector lighting of the innermost top deck. Five years before, with the help of a movable scaffolding, the Tenoy and their assistants had cleaned and repaired as necessary all the overhead lights and spotlights. After Kalymel had removed all the covers from the fuses and thrown the massive switches, an uncustomary bright light filled the transformer deck. He wiped a thin layer of dust off a table, set the case down, lifted the lid, and opened the data-reading device's protective cover. The positronic "inspection book" showed the last recorded data.

  Following a predetermined plan, Macaire and Kalymel went from control console to control console using the test devices and probes to read instrument displays and compared the data. If the displays and indicators were no longer functional, they used the probes to take readings at selected points on the cabling and the machines themselves.

  Macaire suddenly straightened up and called over to Kalymel: "I just realized that we're running the last check. Or the most important one, anyway."

  Kalymel noted a deviating value and typed it into both his portable computer and the Network display.

  "Yes, you're right, Macaire. Landing after more than half a millennium. We don't dare make any mistakes." He closed the cover plate on a console and stretched his cramped muscles. "All this equipment here will last for centuries yet. But it's a good thing that we're landing. If there were still 10,000 of us ... "

  "If things were going that well, we probably wouldn't be landing at all, Kalymel."

  "Probably not."

  Tired
, they sat down in front of the central control console for the quadrant and looked at the grid-patterned vidscreen displays. One unit was defective. The others showed the fractal manifestations that formed in the fields as a result of the disintegration of the neutrinos in the ring's capture field. Ever since the first activation of the system, Kalymel thought to himself, the image had probably not repeated itself a single time. After a few moments, he gave his companion a sharp nudge. "There! Look at that!" he said roughly.

  At approximately 15-second intervals, the swirling hazes, spirals, and abrupt color changes formed clear, recognizable pictures that remained stable for only about half a second. Heads and faces appeared, solidified for brief moments, and dissolved once more. Spindle-shaped forms snaked glowing through the surging, wavering surfaces, then sank back into the chaos. Macaire and Kalymel thought they could make out the faces and heads of gruesome creatures from fairy tales, or beings that had arisen from the depths of horrible nightmares.

  "Incredible," Macaire murmured and shook himself. "It's as though the neutrinos want to tell us we're flying straight to our destruction!"

  "Maybe they're the dreams of the dying Half-Leukors?" Kalymel wondered out loud. "Some kind of mutual influence is going on. But between which sides? The ark and space? The sun out there or Amias and Cada?"

  "The energy flow hasn't changed," Macaire said. "Let's carry on."

  They had another three hours to go. But they continually interrupted their work and gave the vidscreens long looks. For minutes at a time, they saw only the familiar fractal patterns, but suddenly, like a pseudo-stroboscopic effect, the nightmarish faces and flaming spindles loomed threateningly from out of the capture field. The terror that they projected increased as Kalymel turned off the spotlights and let the double door to the elevator slide open.

  They were silent during the ride on the creaking and rattling lift down into more familiar surroundings. As Kalymel went by the med-station on the way to his cabin, Loris raised his bandaged arm and called out in a strained voice, "Kalymel! Lumena just died a few minutes ago!"