The Forever Hero

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “Doesn’t make much sense.”

  “No. Not now.” Gerswin shook his head. “Anyway, that’s all.”

  “That’s enough,” offered N’Bolgia.

  “Might be,” returned Gerswin as he turned away from the two and headed up the corridor toward the exit tunnel and the skitter.

  Outside the clouds had lightened, and another group was making its way down the hillside from the ridge.

  In the middle of the group, mostly officers, Gerswin could make out the slightly rounded figure of the commandant, Senior Commander Mestaffa.

  Gerswin sighed and waited, standing beside the laser-bored tunnel until the others reached it.

  “Lieutenant, have you seen Major Hylton?”

  “Yes, ser. He is checking out the installation.”

  “Installation?”

  “Yes, ser. I am sure the major will be able to brief you. It begins about eight meters back into this tunnel. That’s the entrance to the old structure. Fully lit.”

  Gerswin did not smile at the thought of acting more like a tour guide than a pilot.

  “Thank you, Lieutenant.”

  “Yes, ser.”

  Gerswin started to head back toward his skitter when Captain Carfoos snapped, “Where are you going?”

  “Back to my skitter, Captain. Make sure it’s ready for the return. Can’t leave it here overnight. So I either take it back empty or full. Need to get it preflighted and ready.”

  “All right, Lieutenant.” Carfoos tapped a Marine near the rear of those waiting in line to follow the commandant. “Kyler, you take the lieutenant’s position here.”

  “Yes, ser.”

  Gerswin snapped a salute at the captain and took a long first stride toward the skitter. Trust some career types to post a guard long after the real need had passed.

  The wind swept through his hair as he reached the ridgetop and looked down. Four skitters were lined up across the flat space below.

  He started down.

  Perdry was checking the tail section when Gerswin reached the cargo ramp. The tech dropped to the clay and took several steps toward the pilot.

  “Interesting, Lieutenant?”

  “One way of describing it.”

  In short sentences, Gerswin recounted his tour of the ancient installation, concluding with his encounter with the commandant and his entourage.

  “Sounds like them,” observed Perdry, pointing in the general direction of the other three skitters. “Took three to bring in what we brought with one.”

  Gerswin nodded slightly.

  “Lieutenant? That place bad news?”

  “I think so, Perdry. Think so. But not for the reasons they think. Has secrets they won’t be able to understand. Drive them crazy with worry. Wonder what else is hidden here.”

  “Bad news,” affirmed the tech. “Definite bad news.” But he returned to his checks.

  Gerswin started on the other side of the skitter, letting the mystery of the gates drop into his subconscious, for the moment.

  Not that he could do anything at all. Not now, perhaps not ever.

  XXVI

  “Put on your gloves first, Lieutenant,” suggested Markin.

  “Gloves?”

  “The plasthins. You can still feel what you’re working with.”

  Gerswin frowned. “Why the gloves?”

  “The turbine blades are polished as smooth as we can get them. The tolerances are in thousandths of millimeters. You touch that blade edge with your fingertip—there’s a touch of dampness and acid there. Also, it’s sharp enough to cut your finger. Then we have to worry about blood and water and acid. Sooner or later, that could unbalance the blade or weaken it.” Markin laughed.

  Gerswin did not bother to hide his puzzled expression.

  “That’s the official line. But most times, especially here, one of you hotshots will beat the blades to frags before they have a chance to weaken.”

  Gerswin finished pulling on the ultrathin tech gloves.

  “So why the gloves?

  “A couple of reasons. It gets the techs in the habit of being careful around delicate machinery. Also keeps you from carrying in contaminants that really could scratch things up.”

  Markin stood by the thruster access panel.

  “Move over here, Lieutenant.”

  Gerswin stood to the left, but as close as he could to see what Markin was doing.

  “Here’s the standard access, the one you use for a preflight. Now…see here? Through the tech access panels? Don’t open this in the open hangar bays or out in the field except in an emergency. It will change the temperature too quickly and let in contaminants at the ring level.”

  Gerswin edged forward.

  Markin pointed.

  “This is what I wanted to show you. You can see the joint here, the whole series.”

  The tech touched the base of one of the individual blades with his gloved fingertips and gently worked it free. The entire curved blade was soon in his hand, nearly half a meter long and perhaps ten centimeters wide, the curve so slight as to be forgotten, so smooth it was mirrorlike in finish despite the darkness of the alloy.

  “See how easy it comes out?”

  Gerswin nodded.

  “Don’t you wonder why it stays in when you’re flying?”

  “Never thought about it.”

  “All right. You saw how I took it out. You try another one.”

  Gingerly, gingerly, the lieutenant touched a blade. He could feel the wobble, though he could not see the motion, as he eased it out of the mounting ring.

  “Now put it back in.”

  Gerswin did, with the same exaggerated care, oblivious to whatever Markin was doing.

  “Now take mine and replace it.”

  Gerswin took the preferred blade. It felt faintly warm to the touch even through the plasthin gloves, which were supposed to be thermally insulated.

  He eased it into the slot, but for some reason, the blade jammed when it was halfway into place.

  “Seems jammed.”

  “Leave it there. Don’t push it. Don’t force it. Just support it.”

  The pilot frowned, but did as he was told.

  “Does it feel cooler now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Try again. With just a tiny bit of pressure. Just a bit.”

  The blade eased most of the way in, but an edge remained, not visible, but Gerswin could tell.

  “There’s an edge stuck out.”

  “Is there?”

  “I’m sure.”

  Markin lifted a scopelike instrument from the kit at his feet and stood beside Gerswin, who stepped back to let the tech look at the mounting ring.

  “Where?”

  “There.”

  “You’re right.” Markin put down the instrument. “We’ll wait a moment, till it cools down enough to get out easily.”

  “Cool down? You mean the blades are that heat sensitive?”

  “I played a bit of a trick on you, Lieutenant. I gave you full thermthins there, for hot engine work. When you’re done, I’d like them back.”

  Gerswin shook his head.

  “Not sure I understand, Markin.”

  “Simple, ser. The thruster blades and the mounts are heat sensitive. Cold now…they are. That’s why the blades are loose. If you shook the engine without the seal ring in place, every one would fall out.

  “While you were taking out the second blade, I switched blades and used a lasertorch on the one I gave you to heat it up. That’s what happens when you light off. As the thruster speed builds, the heat increases, blades tighten.

  “Now, before we forget, would you pull the one you put in?”

  Gerswin was tempted to pull the wrong one out of perversity, until he remembered he might be the one flying with the flawed blade. He handed the substitute, which had cooled enough to slide out easily, to Markin, who examined it with the scopelike instrument.

  “Stet. Right one, or should I say wrong one,” grunted
the tech. “Here’s the right one. Want to put it in?”

  “If you don’t mind.”

  “Go ahead. You’re the pilot who’ll fly it.”

  Gerswin tried to insure that the blade was seated correctly and identically to the others.

  He felt relieved when Markin inspected his work with the instrument and rechecked the retaining seal. As he waited while Markin reclosed the tech access panel and then the preflight panel, he let his eyes run over the smooth finish of the flitter, admiring the way in which the techs had managed to return it to flying condition time after time.

  “Lieutenant, the question is: Did you get the point?”

  “Markin, I’m just a dumb pilot. Can see the reason for care. If something got inside the housing once the thruster heated up, you would get increased stress on both blade and housing. Enough to cause a fracture?”

  “Lieutenant, I’ll give you half. You might make a better tech than a pilot. That’s the tech answer.”

  Gerswin shook his head. What was the pilot answer?

  Markin smiled.

  “Lieutenant, what happens if you’re in a hurry and feed full power to that thruster before the blades have heated up?”

  Gerswin almost pulled at his chin with the gloves still on his hands, then jerked his left hand away, realizing that his skin was damp and not wanting to contaminate the gloves.

  “Oh…sorry, Markin. Not thinking clearly. If the blades aren’t tight, they’d vibrate. Could that vibration snap them at the base?”

  “They’re probably stronger than that,” answered the tech, “but if you had some that had already been stressed by too many full power cold starts, you could throw at least one. And if it let loose at the wrong angle, you’d lose the whole thruster.”

  Gerswin shivered.

  “Would it go through the housing?”

  “Never seen that. The composite is tough. A loose blade could bounce back into the fuel line sprays.”

  This time Gerswin nodded slowly.

  “Guess I’ve got a lot to learn, Markin.”

  “You’re young, Lieutenant. You got time. Especially here, you have time.”

  Gerswin nodded again, slowly pulling the thin thermal gloves off from the wrist backward, careful not to touch the outside surfaces.

  “See you tomorrow, Lieutenant.”

  “Tomorrow, Markin,” agreed the pilot.

  Tomorrow, and tomorrow.

  XXVII

  Gerswin recognized Captain Carfoos. The last time he had seen the rail-thin officer with the limp brown hair had been outside the Gates of Hades, when both the commandant and Carfoos had assumed that Gerswin was a sentry.

  At the recollection, Gerswin repressed a snort.

  “Major Hylton is waiting. Go on in, Lieutenant.”

  Gerswin wondered at the tone of the captain’s voice, if it mirrored indifference or resignation. Gerswin seldom saw Carfoos, and could not tell what the flat inflections meant.

  “Yes, ser.”

  The major was alone.

  “Sit down, Lieutenant.”

  Gerswin took the armchair across the console from the major.

  “We have a problem, Lieutenant. Not a major one, but one of which the commandant and I felt you should be apprised, since you were in at the beginning.”

  “Something to do with the black gates into the mountain?”

  The major nodded. “The Gates to Hades, as they are popularly called around the base.” He cleared his throat. “We had hoped to find some material, some artifacts, which might give us an insight into pre-Federation high technology, particularly into the composition of that nuclear bonding metal.

  “We were successful, in a way. We did get an insight.”

  Major Hylton motioned to the junior officer.

  “Come over here, Lieutenant, where you can see the screen.”

  The major moved his swivel to one side. Gerswin stood and moved around the console to the major’s left.

  “Watch. We found one operating console, but it was locked—except to provide the following message. After we copied the message—you’ll see and hear it in a minute—we tried to analyze both the console and the message, but when we opened the console, which took a stepped-up cutting laser, it triggered some sort of destruct circuitry that none of our scans had even revealed. The whole thing melted down.”

  The major frowned and looked back at his screen. “So did everything else. The lighting, the screen wall projection are gone. So far, at least, the orbital controllers have had no luck in locating the feeder satellites.”

  Gerswin kept from shaking his head and waited.

  Major Hylton touched a stud on the console.

  A text was displayed on the screen, slowly scrolling upward, with the top line fading as it moved off the top as another replaced it at the bottom of the screen. Gerswin could pick out some of the words, but many were totally unfamiliar, and the thrust of the message eluded him.

  This time, he did shake his head.

  “I thought that with your background you might have a better understanding than any of us did the first time through.”

  “No, ser. Got some words, but that’s it, and most of them are Imperial. Remember, there is really no written language left on Old Earth, especially for a devilkid.”

  “Devilkid?”

  “Types like me. Running around outside the shambletowns.”

  “I see.”

  The major cleared his throat again. “In addition, there was an audio tape.” He touched another stud.

  Ding!

  The single clear tone echoed through the office before the words began to roll from the console speakers.

  This time Gerswin caught some of the phrases, recognizing that the intonation was closer to shambletown than Imperial. The ancient voice tolled like bells from the oldest cathedrals of New Colora, and Gerswin shivered at some of the phrases.

  “What do you think, Lieutenant?”

  “Warning, with the sound of a dirge.”

  “Did you understand what was said?”

  “Not all of it, but enough to know that unless we understand a lot more than they did, we’d better not play with their tools.”

  Hylton frowned. “You understood more than I did, more than I still do when I hear it.” He pointed vaguely toward the screen. “Here’s the translation into modern Imperial, at least according to the scholar from New Avalon. Both text and verbal messages match, of course.”

  The written version was not as long as it had sounded. Gerswin watched the words march up the screen, each one pounding against him like a laser against his personal screens.

  To our future, should there be one:

  This was once a military installation before we put aside weapons based on our planet. Would that we had put aside the other dangers.

  The outside gates were designed to bar anyone with less than advanced technology; the interior precautions are designed to stop all but the most enlightened.

  The satellite map was left to show the product of a somewhat advanced technology and to provide a record should a great time have passed.

  You may be beyond us, and our secrets may be both insignificant or incomprehensibly simplistic. In those cases, this message is irrelevant.

  If you are puzzled by the black metal bonding and cannot conceive of any way to breach it, do not try. Beyond the metal lies only those radioactive wastes from the most hellish weapons and systems ever conceived by the mind of man. The wastes are buried in solid granite far beneath the installation, and surrounding the granite, itself enhanced in density, is a shield of impermite, the black metal.

  Why do we leave such a heritage? It is possible that a future society may need those resources. While we cannot conceive of such a need, we have secured them. Even we could not reclaim them, had we the time. Anyone who has the ability to recover them should be aware of their legacy. A complete listing of the materials follows this message.

  Today, our vaunted technology is beginning to
take its revenge upon our planet.

  The ocean levels are rising and the mean global temperature is increasing. The winds are steadily wreaking more destruction, and the earth can no longer sustain the billions who must eat.

  We have reached the stars, but the stars cannot reach us. We have tried to rebuild our sister planets to sustain life, but cannot complete that effort, for those resources have been diverted to produce food now that our arable land is vanishing.

  We had attained an uneasy global peace, based on sufficient food for all. But the food is no longer sufficient, and the riots have begun.

  Nothing is certain, nor whether this message will survive. No monument upon the tortured face of the Earth is assured of survival, for already the winds throw boulders across the high plains. Nor will the warrens beneath the surface long survive, not when so many organic toxics permeate the very soils and rocks of the continents.

  This is not the original message of this monument. The installation was converted once from its military purpose to a memorial for that peace which we felt would be permanent, and as a monument to the success of our technology. We have converted it once more.

  Call it a mausoleum, and learn from what you see, and from what you do not.

  Gerswin looked up.

  The major said nothing, waiting for Gerswin’s reaction.

  “So that was what happened.”

  “You speak as if it were nothing new.”

  “Close enough to the shambletown legends.”

  “Shambletown?”

  “That’s where the people live now. The descendants of most of the survivors. In the shambletowns.”

  “Oh, that’s what they’re called.”

  Gerswin just nodded, puzzled at the major’s apparent indifference to the scope of what he had just reviewed, even if the senior officer had seen it a dozen times.

  “Anyway, Lieutenant, I wanted you to hear the cube and see the translation, since you were there. I wanted to make sure that you understand the situation.”

  Gerswin shifted his weight.

  The major looked up at him, seemingly unaware that Gerswin had been standing the entire time, but said nothing.

  “What comes next, ser?”

  “We’ve referred it to High Command and resealed the tunnel for the time being. The scientists tell me that not even a tachead would dent that material. There’s some low-level background radiation around the outside gates. It would seem that someone tried a hell-burner, unsuccessfully, against them. A long time ago. All it did was melt rock over and around them.”