by Timothy Zahn
It didn’t reach.
I stared at the gap between mesh and probe, a bad taste suddenly tingling against my tongue. I was moving away from the mesh, all right. Slowly and subtly, but now that I was looking for it I could definitely see the mesh receding. And the only way I could be moving like this was if the small sphere had suddenly developed a gravitational field like its big brother beside it.
I looked around again, paying special attention to the loops of cable hanging through to my side of the mesh. No, the field wasn’t exactly like that of its big brother, I corrected myself. It was, instead, an exact inverse of it. Instead of pulling everything toward the outer wall, this one was pushing everything toward the center. I tried to think how it could be pulling that one off, but my mind wasn’t up to it.
Besides, I had more urgent things to think about at the moment. If the field was focused toward the center of the sphere—and that was certainly how it looked from the way the hanging cables were now pointed inward—then once I hit the zero mark I would be pretty well stuck there. Any direction I turned I would be looking uphill; and with absolutely nothing available to kick or push off against, I would be as solidly pinned as a mosquito in a spiderweb.
I picked another curse out of my repertoire, a heavy-duty one this time, as I swung my light around looking for inspiration. There were the hanging cables, of course, now resembling Spanish moss more than they did floating seaweed. But without knowing what any of them were for I would have to be pretty desperate before I’d risk damage to either the Icarus or myself by tugging at them. Besides which, a second look showed that I wasn’t going to get anywhere within grabbing range of any of them.
Still, once I’d choked down the panic reaction and forced myself to think rationally, I realized that I was hardly in dire straits. Tera knew I was in here, and once I failed to emerge it would only be a matter of time before Ixil or one of the others ventured in to find out what had happened to me. A rope belayed outside and carefully threaded in through the tangle of wires, and I could pull myself to the mesh and ultimately to safety. Tera’s insistence that I bring food and water in here might turn out to have been a good idea after all.
I seemed to be drifting faster now, though it was difficult to tell for sure. A sudden yellow glow appeared from the corner of my eye, and I turned to see that one of the flat displays that had been showing the same red symbols as all the others had suddenly changed to a grid pattern of yellow-and-black squares. Even as I studied it another of the displays also changed, this one to squares of orange and black. For a minute I glanced between them, trying to see if there was any pattern in the layout of their colored squares. But if there was it was too subtle for me to pick out.
I was about two meters from the center, still drifting at a leisurely pace, when it suddenly occurred to me that if I kept on this same course I was going to run directly into the articulated arm angling across my path.
I played my light over the arm, feeling a fresh batch of sweat leaching onto my face as I did so. I’d already noted that the arm was composed of an alternating series of black-and-silver bands; what I hadn’t noticed until then was that at the very tip of the arm the color scheme changed to about twenty centimeters of a disturbingly luminescent gray. My field sensor wasn’t picking up anything from it yet, but I was still too far away for any current less than a couple hundred volts to register. The arm didn’t look like any of the power cables I’d had to sneak through on my way in, but considering the alien origin of this place that didn’t give me much comfort.
What was clear, and of no comfort whatsoever, was that even if the arm suddenly came to life with enough power to light up New Cleveland, there was still no way in space for me to miss running into it. About all I could think of to do was to try to get a careful grip on it as I approached and use it as a fulcrum to swing the bulk of my body around it instead of hitting it full force.
The problem with that idea was that if it didn’t have the structural strength necessary to handle that kind of sudden stress, the gray end was probably going to break off in my hand. On the other hand, if it was that weak and I didn’t grab it, it would probably break anyway as I slammed into it.
And as my train of thought reached that depressingly no-win conclusion, I was there. Clenching my teeth, feeling rather like someone trying to sneak up and grab a sleeping pit viper, I reached out with my right hand and got a careful grip on the arm.
Too careful. The material was far more slippery than it looked, and before I knew it my hand was sliding straight down the striped section toward the gray end. I squeezed harder, simultaneously trying to swing my body around as I’d originally planned. But my lack of purchase on the arm meant I had no leverage at all, and I found myself instead sliding along the arm in a sort of low-gravity version of a fireman and his pole.
It was hardly the way I’d planned things, but at least the arm was clearly stronger than my worst-case scenario had anticipated. Even with my full weight pressing on it via my one-handed grip, it was showing no sign of breaking or even bending. Maybe even strong enough that I’d be able to use it to climb back out to the mesh.
Assuming, of course, I could figure out how to get a solid grip on the damn thing. Swinging my body partially around, I got my other hand in place and grabbed as hard as I dared.
The two-handed grip helped some, but not enough. I was still sliding serenely down the arm, now almost to the gray section at the end. If I couldn’t stop myself, I knew, my momentum would cause me to overshoot the end of the arm and go straight through the sphere’s center. Hardly a catastrophe, since there was nothing over there for me to crash into, but it would cost me more of our increasingly precious minutes while I waited for the gravitational field to slow me to a stop and bring me back to the center again.
And then I was to the gray section of the arm. Clenching my teeth, knowing this was my last chance to stop myself with a modicum of dignity, I squeezed it hard.
It was as if I’d grabbed hold of a live hundred-volt wire. Suddenly my whole body was tingling, the hairs on my neck and arms standing straight up, my clenched teeth trying to vibrate against each other. And on top of all of it was the chagrin that after all of my exaggerated caution and borderline paranoia, I’d finally hit a live wire. What made it even worse was that I’d even hit it entirely on purpose.
And yet, at the same time, the small part of my mind that hadn’t gone into instant panic mode was noticing that if this was an electric shock it was like none I’d ever experienced before. There was no pain, for one thing, and none of the subtle promises of future pain, either. In addition, the tingling was running uniformly through my entire body, not simply along my arms and chest as a normal current ought to flow. There was a distant sound like the awful ripping thunder crack from a too-close lightning strike, and everything went black.
It didn’t stay black long. Almost before the darkness had a chance to register, the lights came back on again. Not the harsh, sharp-edged beam of my flashlight, but a softer, much more muted glow. For a second I wondered if I had blacked out, but both the darkness and the light had come without any of the normal cues and sensations of a loss and regaining of consciousness.
It was at about that point in my slow-motion cogitation that I suddenly noticed the striped arm with the booby-trapped end was gone. So was the tangle of wiring and geometric monitor shapes I’d been facing across the small sphere.
So, for that matter, was the small sphere.
Belatedly, I focused my eyes straight ahead of me on the now familiar curving gray hull. So I had blacked out in there, at least long enough for the jolt to kick me out here to the center of the Icarus’s big resonance sphere. I winced as I thought of all the stuff I must have torn through on my way out—I was probably lucky I hadn’t been electrocuted for real.
Though if I’d wrecked enough of the alien electronics to render the stardrive inoperable I would probably soon wish I had been crisped. Twisting around in the catlike, half-sw
imming movements of standard zero-gee maneuvering technique, I worked myself around toward the access hole, wondering why Tera wasn’t screaming her head off at me.
The reason was very simple. Tera wasn’t there.
Neither was the tool kit I’d left beside the opening. Neither was the ship’s computer that had been more or less permanently mounted there. Neither, for that matter, were the stacks of meter-square panels, the piles of mechanical equipment, or the consolidated bits of personal effects.
I was in the large sphere, all right. Problem was, I wasn’t in the Icarus.
A familiar sense of falling permeated my confusion: The sphere’s gravitational field had taken hold and was pulling me gently down toward the inner surface. Too slowly, or so it seemed, considering the .85-gee pull we had on the Icarus. I had just about decided that this sphere’s field was set lower when I got within a meter of the surface and the field abruptly increased dramatically. I barely got my knees prepared for the impact before I was down, hitting the metal with a dull thud. Clearly, the gravitational field was a lot more radially variable than I’d realized, though how they were managing that trick I couldn’t even begin to guess.
And then, as the echo of my landing faded away, I heard another sound. Faint, distant, but extremely familiar. A sort of thoughtful squeak, coming from the direction of the access hole leading into the smaller sphere.
It sounded like Pax.
I had my plasmic in my hand before I’d taken two steps toward the small sphere. Pure reflex on my part, of course—Lord knew I had no idea what I was going to do with it. I certainly couldn’t shoot or even threaten to shoot whoever or whatever I found in there. Not if I ever wanted to find out what the hell was going on here.
I did the last three meters to the access hole in a low crouch, listening as hard as I could with the noise of my heart thudding in my ears. I could hear faint ferret snufflings now from inside; more to the immediate point, I could also hear the subtle sounds of something else moving around in there with him. And if I didn’t dare open fire indiscriminately, there was no guarantee that whatever was in there would have any such qualms itself. Dropping flat on the deck, I inched my way the last half meter and cautiously looked in.
At first glance the interior of the small sphere seemed to be nothing at all like the setup I’d seen back on the Icarus. A second, closer look showed that at least most of the apparent difference was due to the fact that all the couple of meters’ worth of loose wiring I’d waded through in the Icarus’s sphere was here neatly packed against the inner surface, held in place by a tighter version of the netting I’d had to maneuver through there. The same type of displays were scattered around various spots on the netting, their multicolored lights providing the glow I’d seen out in the larger sphere. The black-and-silver-striped arm I’d played alien water slide with was also there, stretching its slightly angled way from the mesh to the center.
In some ways having all the wiring squeezed together this way made it look even more tangled than it had when it was spread out over a larger volume. It certainly made the whole spectacle more colorful, which was probably why it took me another couple of seconds before I noticed the movement a little way to my right. It was Pax, all right, looking hale and hearty and perfectly at home as he strolled across the netting toward me, sniffing curiously at everything in sight.
“Hello, McKell,” a voice called out, the unexpectedness of it making me jump. “You certainly took your time getting here.”
I looked in the direction of the voice. A quarter of the way around the sphere, almost hidden in the glare from one of the sets of displays, a figure was sitting on the netting. Gazing up at one of the other displays, he was scribbling madly on a notepad balanced across his knee.
It was Arno Cameron.
CHAPTER
17
It was a situation that called for a brilliant comment, a witty rejoinder, or complete silence. Not feeling either brilliant or witty at the moment, I kept my mouth shut, put away my plasmic, and concentrated instead on negotiating what I suspected would be a fairly tricky transition between the two spheres.
It turned out not to be nearly as difficult as I’d expected. This small sphere, unlike the one I’d had to burrow my way through on the Icarus, had its gravitational field pointed toward the surface rather than the center, so that aside from a little disorientation as I crawled around the edge of the access hole there was really nothing to it.
Between the maneuvering itself and a short face-licking attack from a Kalixiri ferret clearly relieved to see someone familiar, I managed to buy myself nearly a minute of recovery time before I had to try speaking. “So,” I said, getting carefully to my feet on the netting and looking across at Cameron. The word was supposed to sound casual and debonair, as if I did this sort of thing all the time. Instead, it came out like the croak of a teenager facing down the parents of his very first date. So much for the efficacy of all that stalling.
But Cameron merely smiled as he turned off his notepad and laid it on the netting beside him. “I screamed and cried for half an hour after I got here,” he said. “If that helps your dignity any.”
“Thanks, but my dignity is expendable,” I told him. This time the words came out much better. “Right now I’m more concerned with life, liberty, and the pursuit of greedy Patth and their vindictive buddies.”
I glanced around. “And frankly, anything that scares Arno Cameron that much is something I really hesitate to tangle with.”
“Don’t worry, it’s not as bad as I first thought.” His eyebrows lifted slightly. “So you know who I am. What else do you know?”
I shrugged. “I know our alleged computer specialist Tera is your daughter Elaina Tera Cameron,” I said. “Is it safe to walk on this stuff?”
“Perfectly safe,” he assured me. “I’d avoid stepping on the displays, but everything else is as solid as the commark.”
“The wires won’t break or come loose?” I asked, dubiously eyeing the multicolored tangle beneath my feet.
“I’ve had a lot of time to examine them,” he said. “Trust me, they’re every bit as solid as the ones on the Icarus.”
“Ah,” I said, taking a cautious step toward him. “So in other words, all that exaggerated care I took getting through the Icarus sphere was a waste of effort?”
“If you want to look at it that way,” he said with a shrug. “Personally, I’ve never found any effort to be completely wasted.”
“Sure,” I said noncommittally. The cables and conduits made little squooshing sounds as I walked over them, but aside from that it all felt firm enough. Still, there was no point in taking chances, and I kept it slow and careful. The gravity, I estimated, was about the same .85 gee as we had in the Icarus’s large sphere.
“So Elaina told you who she was,” he commented as I picked my way toward him. “I’m a little surprised by that. I was very clear she was to keep her identity secret.”
“It was a bit more complicated than that,” I said, passing over the details. “Just to save time, I also know how you smuggled the Icarus onto Meima, both in its original disassembled form and then the orbital loop you did to bring it out of hiding and over to the spaceport. I know the Patth are becoming very insistent about getting their little paws on it.”
I looked around the sphere. “And I used to know why they wanted it. Apparently, I was wrong.”
Cameron exhaled noisily. “As were we all, my boy. Tell me, do you have any idea where we are right now?”
“Inside another of your alien artifacts, obviously,” I said. “Which means that instead of a simple little stardrive, what your people dug up was actually the Holy Grail of the Einstein-Bashermain Unified Field Theory.”
“An interesting but succinct way of putting it,” Cameron said. “Yes, we are in fact sitting inside the physical proof that all those exotic wormhole and teleportation theories are more than just mathematical constructs. There’s going to be a considerable amount of both
gloating and backpedaling in the halls of academia when word of this gets out.”
“Assuming word of it ever does get out,” I said darkly. I had reached him now, and gave him a quick and hopefully unobtrusive once-over as I sat down gingerly on the mass of wiring in front of him. His face was drawn and pale, his cheeks and chin peppered with an impressive collection of beard stubble. He hadn’t yet stood up; I wondered if he was perhaps too weak to do so. “If the Patth were willing to bribe, suborn, and kill for a stardrive that might or might not compete with theirs, imagine what they would do to get hold of a real working stargate.”
“The Patth or anyone else, for that matter,” he said with a grimace. “Which makes it all the more urgent that we get the Icarus to Earth before anyone else does find out what it is.”
I cleared my throat. “Yes, well, I can immediately see a problem or two with that. Do you happen to have any idea how far we are from the Icarus?”
“All I know is that it’s a considerable distance,” he said, gesturing toward the large sphere. “There are a handful of small viewports out in the receiver chamber—they’re unobtrusive, but I found the controls to open them. I’ve spent a good part of the past two days searching for a constellation—any constellation—that I can recognize. There’s not a single one I can find, not even in distorted form.”
“And I can assume you’re not just talking Earth constellations?” I asked, just for the record.
The smile this time was very brittle. “I’ve been from one end of the Spiral to the other, McKell,” he said. “I say again: Nothing was recognizable.”
I felt a lump form in my throat. “Terrific,” I murmured. “I hope like hell we’re not poaching on someone else’s territory.”