The Space Between

by Scott J Robinson

  She knew as much as he did, but he answered. "You can't fly with any sort of control at all because the alignment is out, and we crash." He didn't know what a single unaligned field generator could do, if anything, but it sounded reasonable. Or perhaps the two Gravitic fields just had to be aligned with each other and nothing else. "Or we get into space and have to stop to do repairs and get attacked. Or the generator fails when we really need it."

  "Do you really have any idea, or are you guessing?"

  "Does it matter?"

  "No, but I'd like to know anyway."

  Another thing he didn't want to admit. "I'm guessing." No dwarf liked to guess.

  "Okay, well, a couple of hours to disconnect the generators and get us flying that way. How long to align them?"

  Keeble shrugged.

  "Guess."

  He shifted uncomfortably. "I really don't know."

  "The computer doesn't tell you?"

  "Probably, but I didn't get that far."

  "Right. Well, I say let's fly. Disconnect the things, and let's worry about the rest later. People are dying as we speak."

  Keeble nodded. You have to know when to stop thinking and start doing. He smiled slightly. And when you decide to do things, you have to decide with conviction.

  "Give me a couple of hours."

  "Great. Can I help?"

  "No. It's just a case of finding the right panels and disconnecting the right wires. I think."

  "Okay. Then let me know when you're done."

  At least she didn't pretend to know how to fix anything.

  "Keeble."

  "What?"

  "See if you can talk to Cuto about making those adjustments to the radio."

  "What adjustments?"

  "So we can talk to the hurgon."

  "Oh. Right."

  Keeble returned to the engineering department and the computers. Three quarters of an hour later, his eyes were starting to ache and his head was spinning with all the words and diagrams. He hoped Meledrin was feeling at least a little bit of what he was feeling. If she was, she didn't show it. He scowled at her and switched the machine off. He knew all he needed to know. All he had to do now was find where he needed to go and find out what he needed to do, exactly.

  There was a stone panel in the corner that led to the first of the engines. He touched the wall. The first sounds of his Song sprang into his mind, and he started to Sing them. He didn't need to concentrate like he had not so long ago. It was like he was breathing, thoughtless and easy. While he Sang, he turned away from the panel and started to search for tools in the cabinets around the walls. After a moment, Cuto searched as well.

  A few minutes later, the alien said something.

  "Cuto has found some tools," Meledrin said.

  Keeble went to look. "Good. Just what we need." He tried a hand signal that he'd seen Meledrin use several times. Cuto tilted its head to the left in reply.

  "What did I just say?"

  "You said 'Good.' The tilting of Cuto's head to the left is equivalent to a smile"

  "Good." He took the large box down from the cabinet and carried it across the room. It was full of all manner of tools. Keeble recognized some of them.

  Cuto followed and poked through the tools for a moment. Keeble scowled again. He couldn't work out if Cuto was male or female. Should the alien be allowed to work? Or should it be made to keep out of the way? No decent dwife would consider trying to work. Except Ari. Ari had wanted to work. He remembered that she'd mended his socks while he worked in the tunnels. She'd cleaned her own room in the bunker, despite him saying she wasn't allowed. Meledrin wouldn't try to do any real work, but everyone knew that elves were lazy.

  The alien picked up something and examined it, turning it from side to side. Then another one. A wave of hand signals.

  "Cuto recognizes some of the tools," Meledrin translated, "but not all."

  Keeble returned his attention to his Song, which he'd continued during the search, and started to build the higher layers. With the toolbox in hand, he stepped up to the wall and through it into a small recessed area. Cuto followed.

  Keeble reigned in his thoughts. Hope this is the best engine to disconnect. There may have been something in the computer to tell him, but he didn't know how to find it. He shrugged and got to work. He was starting to work like an elf, no concrete plans. Almost making it up as he went along. If Milo could see him now.

  He used a wonderful, automatic, star-shaped screwdriver to undo a set of four screws and carefully laid aside the panel they'd been holding. With the panel removed, he could see the part he thought he was after, two and a half meters beyond. He crawled awkwardly into the hole, dragging the tools with him.

  Cuto grunted and scratched out some words.

  Keeble started, hitting his head on something hard and unforgiving. The alien was right behind him, squeezed in amongst the machinery. It was motioning towards the toolbox.

  Keeble nodded and, free of his burden, moved quickly into a more open space and sat up to look. Cuto did the same.

  "Let's see what we have here, then," he said to himself. He identified what was called the coupling block and set to work.

  The instructions for disconnecting the generator were inscribed on Keeble's mind, but he didn't blindly follow. He found the first control panel that needed to be modified. It was only a minor operation, but he wanted to do everything right. He sorted through the wires, identified the terminals.

  "Give me some..." But Cuto didn't understand, so he turned and pointed. The alien found the right tools and offered a simple, one-handed signal as it handed them over.

  With each task he needed to complete, Keeble checked to see the results of what he intended to do, following pipes and electrical wires and circuits from here to there and back again. Every time he disconnected something, he connected it again to make sure it could be done.

  Every time he needed a tool, Cuto found it, held it out, and translated into sign language or gave the alien version of a shrug. More than once the alien was there to lend a hand, working with solid concentration and a steady grip. Its big hands, with three fingers and a thumb and too many knuckles by far, were as strong as clamps but also surprisingly dexterous.

  In an hour the job was done, or at least Keeble thought it was. He turned to look at Cuto. The alien shrugged an alien shrug.

  "I guess we'll find out." He packed away the tools and followed Cuto back out into the engineering bay. And now for the next job. He shook his head and asked Meledrin, who was studying the computer, to ask Cuto about the radio.

  32: Fly

  Kim didn't go straight to the hold. For a while she just wandered around the ship, shining her lantern in through doors and into corners that hadn't seen light for about fifty thousand years. There was a hangar with a couple of strange looking craft parked untidily about. There was a cup sitting on a desk in a small office near there. Kim stared at it for five minutes, imagining the man or woman who had once sat in the chair, drinking and talking. Working on some small problem that had come up. Or playing solitaire on the computer while the boss wasn't looking. Shivering, she hurried on.

  In the hold she found a crate with a partially opened door. Putting the lantern on the floor, Kim gripped the handle and pulled. At first she thought nothing at all was going to happen, then it creaked open further. A sliver of light made it through the gap and revealed smaller boxes full of shiny silvery bags and square black containers. There were labels, but Kim couldn't decipher anything. In the end, she bit the bullet and tore open one of the bags. It contained what might have been food. The dry block crumbled to dust in her fingers. Then she fiddled with one of the square containers for five minutes before the lid came off. Inside was a gloopy mess that actually smelled pretty good. Maybe it was food. Maybe it was still edible. She hadn't really given any thought to what they'd all eat. She had the tins of baked beans, or whatever it was they'd stolen from Area 51, but that wasn't going to last very long at all.


  She dipped her finger into the slop, raised it to her mouth, then thought better of it. She would wait until she was a bit hungrier yet.

  The dull boom of another explosion echoed slightly around the hold. It all seemed so far away, like someone else's life, or a bad movie on TV in another room. Kim tried to forget about it.

  There were no other open containers that she could see, so Kim grabbed a door handle at random and pulled. Nothing happened. The handle was stuck. She tried another with the same result and decided she'd need a tool. A big, heavy, bashing tool.

  She found a metal bar in a corner and used it first to pound, then to lever. Eventually the handle gave up and did as she wanted. And inside the container was machinery of some kind. It was beyond her to even come up with a sensible guess as to the purpose of anything. Can openers, which might be handy for getting to the baked beans, or planet destroying weapons.

  She made her way through half a dozen more containers, wrestling with every door but one. Standing in the most recent container, lantern throwing her shadow across more piles of the unknown, Kim wiped sweat from her face and wondered if there was anything to drink. Preferably alcoholic. Great rebel leader she'd turned out to be. She'd stolen a spaceship that wasn't going anywhere and a cargo load of nothing useful. At least, as far as she knew. Meledrin would be handy to help with some translation but was busy doing more important things.

  "Shit." Fixing the engines wasn't a lot of point if they couldn't talk to the aliens.

  Kim jumped when another shadow joined hers. She spun, metal bar ready, and saw Keeble poking his head in through the door. Perfect timing.

  "How desperately do we want to fly?" he asked.

  Kim didn't want to sit around in the dark — lantern lit or not — for any longer than was necessary. They needed to fly, to talk to the aliens, to end the war. She thought of telling the dwarf that outright but thought he might appreciate a bit more thought going in to the matter. It all came down to the same answer in the end, though. She also mentioned the radio and received the expected scowl in response. Priorities, woman.

  When the dwarf stumped away, grumbling to himself but obviously pleased with the idea of fiddling with the ship, Kim made her way back out into the hold. She looked around. There were containers everywhere. Some were piled neatly while others looked as if they'd been dumped, ready to organize later. The point was, there were hundreds of them, plus a whole extra level down below. She could search all day and still miss all the good stuff.

  "Well then, I guess I could go work out how to fly this thing."

  But she needed to eat first. They'd all gone too long without food already.

  Collecting her lantern she made her way to the lift and up to the mess. She organized a meal of tinned spaghetti in tomato sauce and not much else. She took some down to the engineering department. Cuto sniffed at some then gave the hand signal for 'no' and said something.

  "Cuto does not need to eat yet. And even if there was need, Cuto is unsure of what you are offering." Meledrin poked at hers with her spoon and raised her eyebrows. Apparently she wasn't sure either.

  "If you don't want it," Kim said, "just let me know. There'll just be more for the rest of us."

  Keeble was already eating. Kim divided Cuto's portion between the other bowls, skipping Meledrin's when the elf gave a small shake of her head.

  On the bridge Tuki was still playing with the skyglass, hardly even noticing when she arrived. He only looked up when Kim offered the food, accepting it with a slight smile. When another explosion thundered in the hangar outside, he quickly turned back to his study. It was as if he was using it as a distraction. Kim didn't have any encouraging words for him. She didn't think the ship was being damaged, Keeble would have said something otherwise, but the constant battering wasn't doing much for her state of mind either.

  She climbed up to the pilot's chair and examined the controls as she ate. They'd worked out which button started the engines. Other than that, she decided, she could work from what she knew of the controls in the ship they'd stolen from the Americans. Except there was no steering wheel. It seemed to have been replaced with a ball, which sat on a pedestal directly in front of the seat. The pedestal wouldn't move, so it wasn't a joystick, but the ball rotated in all directions. "Perhaps in a life without gravity you needed steering wheels that could point up and down, and all the points between, as easily as left or right." Which would mean that the thing they stole from Area 51 had only been a plane after all.

  The ball was colored a pleasant, pastel green and decorated with a pattern of concentric circles. On one side, the circles were so close together that they were almost indistinguishable from each other. In the center of the smallest was a red spot. The further you went from that spot, the further the lines were apart. The effect meant that, no matter which direction the ball was facing, you could always tell exactly where the red spot was. There was a blue spot directly opposite, in the middle of a smooth, blank area.

  There was what looked like an altitude knob but it could also be moved like a regular joystick. And there were three pedals instead of just the one that was in the plane they'd stolen. Added to the mix was a lever, currently set in what appeared to be the neutral position, halfway along its range.

  They seemed to be the main controls, but there were dozens of buttons and switches besides. There were another two little levers side by side. Switches and knobs, gauges and screens and dials.

  So, the ball for steering. The knob for lift and something else. The lever for something, and the pedals for...

  "Shit."

  When Keeble, Meledrin, and Cuto stepped into view an hour later she hadn't made any further progress.

  "Do you know how to fly yet?" the dwarf asked.

  "No. But I wasn't game to try anything until everyone was in here and strapped in."

  "Well, I don't think Cuto sits down, but Meledrin and I can." He made his way to his chair.

  Kim's mouth dropped open. "You mean we're ready to go?" She wasn't ready.

  "Yes. Well, maybe." As usual, Keeble didn't seem pleased with not knowing for sure.

  "The Gravitic Field Generators are separated?"

  "Yes."

  "Well, do you think we should go now? Or get some sleep first?"

  "The hull is still holding together, but who knows for how long? Those American's don't quit, do they?"

  "But..."

  "Let's fly."

  "Okay. I'll try."

  Keeble gave a whoop of joy and hurried to strap himself in. Meledrin followed suit, though she didn't look quite as excited. Cuto crouched down behind the horseshoe of seats and locked meaty hands around a backrest.

  Kim looked at the controls in front of her and then at her companions. She couldn't blame them for their nervousness. "Should we name the ship first?" she asked, trying to delay the moment as much as possible.

  Keeble had a sour look on his face but was nodding. "It's traditional, I suppose."

  Her first idea was Kittyhawk, but she was sure the Americans would already have taken that one. "How about The Hakahei?"

  "What the hell is that?"

  "It's what the Hurgon call our worlds."

  Meledrin looked as if she didn't care. Possibly she was staying silent in case she started jabbering like a normal person. Tuki was still staring at the skyglass, fiddling with the controls.

  Keeble was over it as well. "Whatever."

  "Right. Hakahei it is, then." It wasn't quite the reaction Kim was after, though she didn't really know what she'd been expecting. She took a deep breath and, out of excuses, turned her attention to the controls once more. "So, what do I do now?"

  Keeble grunted. "Don't lose your nerve now, woman."

  "What?"

  "Start the engine. You know the button."

  Kim pressed the button. Her heart was racing like a jazz drum solo.

  On a small screen to her left, an iconic, profile view of the ship appeared. The two legs shown on
the bottom of the craft flashed a few times then disappeared. Down in the corner of the screen a small picture of the legs appeared colored in red.

  "Umm..."

  "What is it?"

  "I think we're flying."

  "But we aren't moving."

  "Well, no." The Americans certainly were, scurrying like cockroaches caught in the light. From her vantage point, Kim could see soldiers out in the hanger, all making for the limited protection of the far wall, pulling out their weapons like those cockroaches shaking their fists at a passing car. Or like knights with cannons.

  Only one thing seemed to have changed on the panel. There were now three indicating lines near the altitude knob. Two of them showed all red, but the final line had one bar of green.

  "Well," Keeble said, "start with a control that doesn't look very important. See what happens."

  "All right then." She picked a dial and, with a deep breath and one eye closed, slowly spun it. "The ship's spinning," she said with a laugh, watching as a wall came into view outside. So much for the green ball being the steering wheel.

  "I'm not so sure," Keeble said. He unbuckled himself from his seat and went to the view port for a closer look.

  "What do you mean? I saw it."

  "Do it again."

  Kim spun the dial in the other direction, hoping to get them facing the door once more.

  Keeble gave a grunt. "The dome is spinning, but the ship itself isn't moving."

  "Are you sure?"

  The dwarf looked back over his shoulder.

  As the bridge continued to turn, Kim noticed something. "Hey, the ball doesn't move." She indicated the pastel ball she'd thought was the steering wheel.

  "What?" Keeble came closer.

  Kim turned the dial. The bridge spun, but the ball stayed in exactly the same position, as if the whole structure was spinning about the pedestal.

  "Keeble, how does the engine work?"

  The dwarf didn't have anything to say.

  "You understand the concept of gravity, right."

  He gave her a look that spoke volumes.

  "Well, just because you're controlled by gravity doesn't mean your people have given it any real thought. Or that you know how it works. But anyway, let's assume that the Gravitic Field Generators somehow create gravity. Or antigravity."