The Space Between

by Scott J Robinson

  Making his way slowly forward, Keeble emerged into a full sized room. He was looking at the biggest engine he'd ever seen. Not that he'd seen many true engines. Rising to his feet, he craned his neck to look at the top of the monstrosity and took a moment to wonder at the size of the engines in the larger starships.

  He wondered about the room for a minute, shining his light into nooks and crannies, trying to match what he saw with parts he knew from planes and cars. Many of them were made from stone, strong and perfect. He may well have stayed longer, but the need to talk to someone, to bounce ideas off them and hear theirs in return, reminded him of his companions waiting outside. He doubted any of them would have worthwhile ideas, but they'd be better than nobody at all. With one last, quick look around and a pause to clean the dust away from a small, blank screen, Keeble found a door and continued on.

  But he discovered that the next room was a workshop of some kind, with blank televisions and tools and cabinets filled with parts. It was all he could do to drag himself away. He hurried through the nearest door and paused at the base of a set of narrow stairs. He didn't know where to go. He tried to orient himself in his mind.

  "I came up that way," he said, "and turned that way." He spun about in the hallway as he spoke, gesturing to push his thoughts in the right direction. "So that means that the others are this way." He started to climb, trying to calculate distances in his mind. If he added the height of the ladder he'd climbed, to the distance between each floor... He climbed three levels higher.

  He stopped on a landing and shone his torch through an open hatch and out into a hallway. After a moment of thought, he went out for a better look. Keeble shone his light around and examined everything for a moment before reining his curiosity in once more. To his right, a passage led to a large window. The window certainly hadn't been visible from outside. He hurried along the passage and looked down into the hangar.

  The first thing he saw was a human.

  Keeble gasped as the man darted behind the cover of a much smaller ship one hundred and seventeen meters away. Another ran across the narrow strip of bare floor and hid. About two dozen men were quartering the hangar, looking for any signs of life. It wouldn't be long before they reached the larger ships and found what they were after.

  When he drew his attention away, Keeble saw the scaffolding and his companions not far away in the opposite direction. The window stopped right near them with the wall taken up by what could only be a door. There was a wall blocking the passage just beyond. There was a vehicle of some kind clamped to the floor along the end wall and a row of cabinets, some of them opened, lined the other.

  When he went closer, Keeble could see three buttons near the door. He tried them all, though he knew they wouldn't work.

  "No power."

  Next, he examined the wall nearby. There was an access panel. He pulled it open and was rewarded with the sight of a metal wheel.

  With a little smile, he gripped the wheel with his good hand and turned.

  Nothing happened. It didn't move. He grunted and tried again. Putting all of his strength into it. It moved slightly, but hardly enough to even measure.

  If only he'd brought his tools, instead of leaving them with Kim. He took a deep breath and tried again, calculating the progress of the Americans across the hangar outside.

  Finally the wheel started to turn.

  "I'll feel like a fool if this doesn't open the door."

  But even as he spoke, the door started to slide open, half one way and half the other. When there were ten centimeters between the two edges, big moai hands gripped from the outside to help. Not long after, Meledrin slipped through sideways, followed by Kim and Cuto when the gap had widened a little more.

  But there was still a long way to go before Tuki would be through. Keeble continued to work at the grinding wheel. Kim lent her strength to the task.

  Shouts came from outside.

  “[Stop where you are.]”

  “[Stop or we'll shoot.]”

  They continued to work, and Tuki squeezed through a few seconds later.

  Keeble started to work the wheel in the other direction, but Cuto pushed him out of the way. The alien worked quickly, big hands not slowing.

  Gunshots rang out, bullets pinging off the hull.

  Keeble didn't know if they were warning shots or not, but he willed Cuto to work faster.

  Outside, the scaffolding started to rattle and shake, but the wheel had been loosened by its journey in the other direction, and the door was soon closed.

  Keeble collapsed to the floor next to Kim. He gave no thought to who he was sitting beside as he struggled for air. He unstrapped his mechanical arm and threw it into a corner, rubbing at his wrist as he tried to calm his heart.

  Cuto, Tuki, and Meledrin were standing silently, eyes closed.

  "I don't know how much time that'll give us," Kim said between gasps. Her face was flushed though she had done little of the work. "There's all types of equipment out there. They might be able to find something that will help."

  "Nothing in here works, though," Keeble motioned vaguely. "Don't see why anything out there would. Besides, the stuff is ancient, so they probably won't know how to use it."

  "And if this vessel does not function, then what is the purpose of all that we have done? And it is ancient too, so even if it remains functional, who is to say Kim is capable of operating it?"

  Keeble hadn't thought of that. He figured he could get it working anyway.

  "I found the engine. I think there might be more than one, actually."

  Kim sighed. "Well, any ideas? The torch batteries won't last forever. An hour, if we're extremely lucky. What happens if we don't get the lights working?" She looked at everyone.

  Tuki cleared his throat. "The skyglass can be used to see, though it is not very bright." To demonstrate, he looked at the crystal ball and mumbled quietly.

  Keeble watched as the ball started to glow, giving off a soft radiance. It wasn't bright, but better than nothing.

  "Can you get the 'glass to just show a star, Tuki? And zoom right in?"

  "Possibly." He muttered again, and a moment later the glass was filled with a bright yellow fire. Tuki smiled.

  "Well, you lot will just have to stay near the windows," Keeble said. "I'll take the lights and see if I can fix the engine."

  "We can still help," Kim said.

  Keeble grunted but knew better than to argue.

  30: Illumination

  Kim hit one of the buttons by the chair. "Engage," she said. "Make it so." Nothing happened.

  The bridge was slightly more than half a circle and housed in a dome at the very top of the ship. The seat in which she sat was located at the very center of the complete circle and raised above the others. It faced forward out toward a huge, curving window and could only have been the pilot's chair. Knowing that didn't help much.

  There was another seat nearby, three steps down and also facing forward. Other than that, there were three other consoles and seats. Plus another seat encased in what was almost a complete sphere. Only an empty doorway broke the perfection of the single piece of clear, plastic-like material. The seat was beside one of the consoles. So, six control stations all together, in sets of two. She couldn't decipher any of those controls either.

  Between them all was a small amphitheater with two rows of tiered seats set in a horseshoe.

  Kim sighed and watched the American serviceman who was standing on the ship's hull, looking like a giant space bug splattered on the windscreen. "There's no wind in space," Kim said. "That's a view port."

  The soldier had been pounding on the view port with a sledgehammer for the better part of ten minutes without any sign of damage. As if he or his superior officers could have expected otherwise. Keeble had wandered through the bridge a few minutes earlier, taking a break from his exploring perhaps, and laughed when he saw the man outside.

  Kim was still watching half an hour later when the Americans m
oved on to gas cutting equipment. The futility was it all was very obvious, really. It had to be obvious to the Americans as well.

  "This ship came down from space, you moron," she said to the man on the view port as if it was all his idea. "It can withstand more heat than your little oxy-torch."

  But the man continued with his oxy and another came along to take up the challenge of the sledge. When Kim went closer to the view port, she could see others working with similar tools.

  "Oxy-morons." But she couldn't hear all the pounding, so they certainly weren't going to hear her lame jokes.

  Of course, the officers probably thought the exercise needed to be done anyway, just in case. And they were probably right.

  "There are two each of three different types of engines."

  Kim spun to look at Keeble.

  "What?"

  Keeble nodded his head in satisfaction as if he'd put the engines there himself. "Well, one of the pairs may be clocks. I can't really tell without investigating a bit more."

  "What?" Kim said again.

  Keeble carried on as if she hadn't said anything at all. Perhaps the dwarf didn't really care if she was there. "The matching ones can run at the same time, or separately. The different sets are linked together, but only loosely. Two pairs near the middle, along with a pair of huge batteries. Then there is another pair of engines at the front, linked to those four antenna things on the outside of the ship. Like the man said, backups for everything."

  "Which man? Do any of them work?"

  Keeble shrugged. "I don't even know how to try to start them to test. If you don't either, I'll need to keep looking." He looked like he wanted to leave but was not going to give up that quickly.

  Kim sighed. "Shit." For a while, she'd been down with the others trying to help, but when it came to fixing things her expertise ended just after she opened the toolbox and before she selected a tool. The lack of progress had started to make her mad. "What else is down there?"

  "You could go and look for yourself."

  Kim couldn't argue with that. "It'd be quicker if you told me now."

  "There's a hold."

  "Yeah? Anything in it?"

  "Lots. Don't know what, though. Only just managed to get the door open. Back up was broken."

  "Excellent." There was something Kim could handle. She was a backpacker by trade, so she could find useful things almost anywhere. But that didn't help with the real problem.

  "So, can you work out how the engines work? You said you learned about cars just by pulling them apart."

  Keeble shook his head as if Kim didn't understand anything. "I had books there, as well, that showed how things were linked. No books here. And the engines are nothing like a car engine. I can't find anything I recognize."

  Kim sat up straighter. "There will be books, but they'll be on computer. The first thing we need to do is find the power switch for this stupid machine."

  "Power switch?"

  "Yeah. There's got to be something like a standby mode, or something." It sounded reasonable. "There are two huge batteries, right? We need to find what they're linked to."

  "They don't help. They're linked to thousands of things. Without power I can't check anything to see what's useful."

  "Oh. I guess I'd better stop moping and help then."

  Keeble grunted. "Don't need help."

  "Rubbish."

  The only way down from the bridge with no power was a spiral staircase. It ran round the side of a lift shaft that was in the very center of the dome of the bridge, directly beneath the captain's chair. And once she got to the floor below, where there were a couple of offices, a boardroom, and a storeroom, she followed Keeble and his torch to the next set of stairs. Level two seemed to be exclusively sleeping quarters. On the third level, they went to the dining area. There were rows of metallic tables bolted to the floor and cabinets around the walls, all of which had been opened and ransacked.

  Tuki was watching his crystal ball as if its light would tell him something. Meledrin was reading. At least, she was looking at the book Kim had found out on the world. There were another couple of books on the table.

  Turning off the torch, Keeble stopped in the center of the room, looking around as if disgusted by the mess the search of the lockers had created. Despite its age, a lot of the clutter seemed to be in remarkably good condition.

  There was a lot of general, mixed stuff, plus about a dozen strange looking yellow contraptions.

  "What are those things?" Kim asked. They were cylindrical, with hinged carrying handles and levers on the side.

  Keeble answered with a shrug. "Don't know. They're everywhere though."

  Kim picked one up and examined it. "Have you tried the lever?"

  Keeble hadn't, which Kim found surprising. Perhaps he just had more important things on his mind.

  "Well then."

  "You can't just..."

  Kim moved the lever, and a few seconds later the top half of the cylinder started to glow. After about thirty seconds there was enough light to reach all but the furthest corners of the room.

  Kim smiled. "Huh. Well, there you go." But there were heaps of the things. Were blackouts common occurrences on starships? The light continued to grow until it was blindingly bright.

  "That's a bit bloody bright," Keeble said, as if that was the reason he hadn't been using them.

  "Who cares? It's better than what we had." Kim shrugged, squinting against the glare. "How are you going, Mel? Did you find anything interesting?"

  "There is a library, but all the books seem to be written in the same language as this one you found."

  "So it came from the library, do you think?"

  Meledrin shook her head. "The one you found is handwritten on rudimentary paper. The others are printed on high quality paper such as I saw on your world."

  "So can you read them?"

  "There are many with pictures which I have been attempting to cross reference. There are signs on the walls outside many of the rooms, as well, that I have noted down." She indicated a piece of paper on the table. She nodded. "I am making progress."

  "Well, keep going." Kim sat silently for a moment, watching her stark, sharp-edged shadow on the wall. "Keeble thinks two of the engine things might be clocks."

  "Clocks?"

  "Yep." She gave the clocks some thought. "They're mechanical clocks. Why have those when a digital clock would take up a lot less room and be a whole heap more accurate?"

  Meledrin shook her head. "I do not know."

  "Does it matter?" Keeble shrugged.

  "It must. They're huge, so they must be important. Vitally important. They'd hardly make huge clocks just to wake people up in the morning. But if nothing else it narrows down what do we need to fix in order to get this thing moving. We can worry about the clocks later."

  Keeble muttered something under his breath.

  "Pardon?"

  "I can't fix the clocks." The dwarf scuffed his boot on the floor. "Clocks are very specialized. If one little thing is out, nothing works properly. And these ones look more complicated than any I've ever seen."

  "Well, let's worry about that when the time comes."

  Kim knew she had to get Keeble doing something or he'd get grumpy. "Keeble, you go look at the engines to see what you can learn. I'll think of something useful to do."

  Sneering, Keeble nodded, took a lamp, and made his way out the door. Cuto watched the dwarf for a moment then collected a lamp of its own and followed.

  Kim pointed to the book. "So, what can you read so far, Mel?" It could be the answer to their prayers or a recipe book — which might not be so bad either. Kim had a feeling it was important, though. It appeared to be out of place in this world. With the ships and the printing and everything else, an old leather book was not something that would be just lying around.

  The elf shook her head. "Nothing, really." She shook her head again. "It is as it was when we were learning Tuki's language. I am understanding mor
e than I should at this juncture, but it is all very strange."

  "So, what have you got?"

  Mel took up one of the books from the ship and started flicking through the pages. "Using these pictures I was —"

  "Don't bother telling me how you worked it out. I trust you."

  "Very well." Mel paused for a moment then took up the book Kim had found. "This part here seems to say something about the stars being a gift from the gods to man."

  "Ummm, okay. It's some type of religious text?"

  "I do not believe so, though it does go on to say that the power of the stars and the glare of the gods' gaze overwhelmed any man who reached out to take the gift." Meledrin's brow was wrinkled as she attempted to tease meanings out of the strange symbols scrawled on the page. "So the gods bestowed another gift, reshaping men into six different tribes that could form a 'great all mind' so they would not be overburdened by the gift of the stars.

  "That is if I have the translation right. I am not sure that it means anything at all."

  Kim wasn't so sure. In Area51 she'd discovered that what might be considered fanciful, impossible legends could have a basis in reality. This talk of six tribes and reshaping people struck too close to home. Keeble, Mel, and Tuki were all human, apparently, just slightly different from those found on earth. Reshaped by the gods, perhaps?

  Tuki shifted slightly in his chair, and Kim knew enough to know that was significant. He had something he wanted to say but was too nervous to say it.

  "What is it, Tuki? Don't be afraid to speak up."

  "It is just that the moai say we came from the stars and that one day five 'greater beings' will come and lead us back there."

  "Five and a moai make six, right? The six tribes."

  He nodded for a moment, stopped and shrugged.

  A moment later, Kim surged to her feet, and grabbing a lantern, rushed to the stairs then to the flight deck above. Once there, she stopped to stare. The chair near the door and the one in the clear sphere were large by human standards. The two on the other side of the room were smaller than the others, though situated on a platform so the controls were all the same height.