Breaking through the bore's wall revealed a shaft illuminated by high-energy particles from the nova passing by the bore’s mouth and by reflections from the clutter of Kadiil ships overhead.
Artisans laid a communication cable through the passage and strung a metal net across the bore, and they were ready to begin.
The idea was simple enough. Tommy wanted to catch a Kadiil ship in the bore, like catching a baseball in the pocket of a glove. A stationary "ball" in respect to the "glove" complicated this, but a delicate use of the ship's drive should nudge the Kadiil toward them.
The drive normally focused a point source gravity field fifteen kilometers from the ship in the direction of travel. If he ordered that now, anything between the ship and the point field would accelerate with the ship. Anything on the other side of the point source would accelerate toward the ship until the gravity field captured it. They had to establish a gravity field between the asteroid and a Kadiil ship to get the two moving toward each other in just the right way, and then switch the field off. Too much closing velocity would crash the Kadiil ship through the net. Too little and the nova wind would blow the ship away from the target.
Leegh insisted that her contribution to the mathematics of the drive and years of experience gave her the skills needed, and Tommy was happy to give her the job.
Leegh's placement of the field and its strength were perfect, except she captured three Kadiil ships rather than one. The net caught the first ship, then sagged almost to the breaking point under ships two and three.
Tommy took one last look at the video feed from the passage mouth and left the bridge to get a vacuum suit, with Leegh close behind. They were both obsessed with getting inside a Kadiil ship.
A group of warriors wearing armored vacuum suits and carrying weapons met them at the entrance to the bore.
"Master Tommy, Lord Leegh," Fen's voice spoke from the speaker next to his ear. "You must allow us to go ahead of you. This is warrior work. When we are sure you may enter safely, we will call you."
"Just don't disturb more than you have to,” Tommy responded “Anything might be a clue."
They waited quietly for a while. Finally Tommy said to Leegh, "If we get out of this, you might consider learning English. You would find it easier to follow the mathematics and physics humans are doing on Earth."
Tommy saw Leegh's snout turn toward him inside her helmet. Her whistle vibrated shrilly from his speaker. "I might consider many things, if we get out of this."
Fen's voice spoke again. "We have been unable to find a hatch. I called a crew of artisans with torches to force entry."
"Fen, if you cut through the hull, you may damage something important," Tommy said. "Is there another way?"
"There is a window on one end,” Fen replied. “We are going in there."
Tommy and Leegh moved aside as a group of artisans walked onto the plank catwalk to the first ship.
Torches sparkled on top of the ship.
"Master Tommy, Lord Leegh," Fen said, "we are inside, and the ship is empty!”
Using the scaffolding and ladders that the artisans had built on top of the net, Tommy and Leegh circled then climbed onto ship’s hull. Except for the clear crystal of the window near one end, the dead black hull absorbed the light from the spotlights scattered around and above the slightly flattened cylinder. Both ends of the cylinder elongated into a flat edge extending across the cylinder’s width. The window the artisans had cut through crossed above one edge like the cockpit window of an airplane back on Earth.
Tommy carefully placed his hands below the cut surface of the window and leaned his head into the ship. “Leegh, this chamber is too small for either of us to move around in.” He leaned further inside. “I see some narrow passages that a space-suited artisan might crawl through, but nothing that you or I could use.”
He pulled his head out and rotated his space-suited body so he could see Leegh. “Below this window would be the natural place to put flight controls, except the space is empty.”
“Why break the hull, then?” Leegh asked. “This opening may be the source of ship’s vulnerability to the nova.”
“One more mystery to add to the list,” Tommy responded.
Fen climbed the ladder until he stood beside them. "The ship was airless when we broke through. Artisans crawled inside and reported the ship’s interior consists of a drive cylinder like that on My Flowing Streams with nearly all of the remaining space filled with metal boxes. They found nothing that would indicate another living creature has ever been aboard."
Some of the metal boxes were close enough for Tommy to reach from his position on the hull. After the artisans had padded the edge of the window, he leaned in far enough to pull the front from one and look inside. "This is some kind of computer," he said. A conclusion suddenly seemed obvious and he said it aloud. "This ship is run by computers."
# # #
Three days later, the artisans had adjusted gravity in My Flowing Streams to one one-hundredth normal and guided the Kadiil ship into an empty hanger through one of the lander doors.
With the hanger doors shut and the internal air pressure restored, Tommy and Leegh removed their suits and glided in the low gravity around the base of the ship. When they reached the ladder leading to the window, Leegh began pulling herself up the ladder’s rungs.
Tommy watched her ascend for a moment, and then instead of following he shouted “Up, up, and away!” and leaped to the top of the Kadiil ship. He leaned over the ladder and grinned down at Leegh. “That was a lot more fun than climbing. You should try it next time.”
Leegh voiced a grinding whistle. “I no longer use the water slide in my chamber, and I have no desire or inclination to fly. You should consider what you now represent. We have too much serious work to pass our time in frivolous games.”
It is like flying, but Leegh’s right. And I got us into this, so…. He leaned back on the scaffolding below the window and waited for Leegh to join him.
“Do you have any ideas about what we should do next?” Tommy asked as Leegh tried to find a comfortable position for her long body.
This time, Tommy interpreted Leegh’s whistle as mournful. “I do not,” she replied. “We have another drive. Three new drives, counting the other two hanging in our net. If we had the means, we could build three new ships around them, but they are worthless in trade to the other starfaring species, who can get them from the Kadiil simply by asking.” Her dark muzzle dropped toward her chest, and her tail curled around her feet.
Tommy grabbed her shoulder. “I thought you were past that. I do have ideas, and I am not giving up until our supplies are exhausted.”
Leegh’s eyes focused on Tommy. “I will try to control myself, but it is difficult. Until I saw what we captured, I thought seizing a Kadiil ship would help us. It is like nothing I have ever seen before.”
“I read about similar things on Earth,” Tommy responded. “In our military, computers fly aircraft and control land vehicles. The idea is the same. These computers are probably a lot more complex, though.” He paused and gazed directly at Leegh in a way that would have been considered a mortal insult a few months before. “It is not hopeless. That worthless drive you mentioned looks exactly like our drive. If it is, the Kadiil computers could be using the same commands and responses to control it that we are using. We can work on that.”
Tommy stared at the hanger roof until Leegh asked, “What are you thinking?”
Tommy started. “I am thinking that we should take this ship apart, piece by piece, and spread the components out on the floor. Investigators do that on Earth to determine the cause of a plane crash. Maybe we can use the same technique to determine how these computers work.”
Even as he said that to Leegh, he decided to keep his doubts to himself. He had deciphered the lords' computers, but he had many hints along the way. The computers in these boxes might be thousands of years more advanced.
# # #
Tommy
and Leegh decided not to worry about breaking anything. If they didn't learn anything from the first Kadiil ship, two more hung in the net with another ship arriving every fifty-three minutes.
Tommy watched from the wall of the hanger as an artisan driving a large crane lowered gigantic hydraulic pliers onto the hull above the window, where two men attached its claws to the Kadiil ship’s black skin next to the window.
“What are they doing?” Tommy asked the artisan standing beside him.
“The hull is featureless, except for the window,” the man replied. “No nuts to unscrew. Nothing to grab on to except for the edge of that window. We’re trying to peel the skin back a little to see what’s there.”
Tommy saw the machine move slightly as a loud screech hammered his ears. He smelled melting plastic.
The machine stopped and master artisans from the mechanical, electricians, and communications guilds pulled themselves up the ladder. They squatted in front of the jaws of the machine. After a period of pointing and conversation, they stood and jumped off the ship.
The communications master bobbed his head slightly when he reached Tommy. “Master Tommy, the outside hull appears to be a molded non-metallic carbon composite. We don’t have the technology to make anything that size.” He smiled and bobbed his head again. “But, obviously the Kadiil do. Under the outside layer is another layer of insulating material. Under that we found thin cables.”
“Can you remove the carbon composite hull without damaging the cables?” Tommy asked.
The mechanical guild master’s smile was guarded. “If we are very careful.”
Before Tommy could answer, the master from the electrical guild asked, “How are the computers powered? The ship is big enough to have a fusion generator.” He nervously wiped his face with his sleeve. “If we hit that we could destroy the entire moon.”
“We have plenty of time,” Tommy replied. “Be careful. Make sure you know what you are moving before you move it. But get that ship disassembled.”
# # #
During the next three weeks, the mechanical guild worked around the clock to remove the ship’s outer skin, leaving its internal skeleton and flooring. With that done, the electrical and communications guilds carefully moved the boxes from above and to the sides of the drive, their connections intact, to the hanger floor. Then the artisans built scaffolding under the drive cylinder, and the boxes underneath it joined the others.
The electricians had been more than careful as they pulled the ship apart. Every connection had been examined. Every wire traced. In the end, they didn’t find anything resembling the fusion generator on My Flowing Streams. They did find that every box was daisy chained to another box by two cables, one thicker than the other. The daisy chain ended for both types of cable in connections on the face of the drive. The thinner wire ended in a male plug inserted into a familiar female jack on the side of the drive. The thicker cable also plugged into the drive and sent Tommy searching for the same spot on the drive in The Peoples’s Hand, where he found the same, unused, connection after torching through a wall.
The cables supported the plan he had discussed weeks before with Leegh; an approach that required that the Kadiil ship drive be identical in every way to the drive they partially understood. He had no plan at all without that.
# # #
"Were you able to recognize the sensors the ship uses?" Tommy asked the master from the Communications Guild.
"Most of the hull installations were burned away." The guildmaster pointed at some scraps of metal on one side of a strip of hull. "This gravity sensor isn't much different from the one we built. And this has to be the remains of a radar transmitter. A number of each were scattered on the hull." He led Tommy to another hull strip. "This is the base of a radio antenna." He pointed to another burned device. "This is some kind of optical sensor. We found several."
"What about the connections inside the hull?" Tommy asked. "Were they intact?"
"Yes."
"It's time to call a meeting," Tommy said.
They met in Tommy’s guild hall. The meeting included everyone in the Computer Guild, everyone in the Communications Guild, Leegh, and all of her interested relatives.
When everyone had settled down, Tommy climbed on a temporary platform. "First, some background," he said in the lords' language. "We have given the boxes we found inside the ship a thorough examination, and none of them appear to be damaged."
"Why are they dead?" asked someone in the crowd.
"Leegh has a theory," Tommy said. "Leegh?"
Leegh gave a low, buzzing, almost inaudible whistle.
Tommy smiled behind his hand. She didn’t like his leaving out her title of "Lord" in front of these humans.
"Exiting behind the nova wave front exposes a ship to a tremendous electromagnetic field. Our ships are made of metal, which, except for the installations outside the hull, protected our electronics from the field's effects. The Kadiil ships are hulled with a carbon-ceramic composite. The field must have gone right through."
"How can you be sure the electronics inside the boxes are not damaged?" asked another voice.
"We cannot be," answered Tommy. "The only way we can tell for sure is by trying to restart the computer that operated the ship."
When order was finally restored, Sanos expressed everyone's concerns. "Tommy, if you do that we could all be killed. The Kadiil ship is inside The People's Fist and protected now. You are asking us to take a chance on killing everyone."
"I would be if the computer were still connected to the drive. Has anyone found evidence of another type of weapon?"
He let the discussion continue for a while. When the buzzing finally died down, he raised his voice. "They have a weapon that can destroy anything from ships to planets. Why would they need anything else? If the computer is detached from the drive, we should be safe. The real questions are, can the computer be restarted, and how can we learn anything if it can?"
Sanos stood. "Tommy, we have examined every part of those boxes searching for a boot button and found nothing. The boxes’ exteriors are featureless, except for the cables that connect them to each other and to the sensors, radio transmitter, and the drive."
Vent stood. "Some of the computers you brought restart themselves after a power failure. We could try that."
"If that were the case, why are they still dead?" Sanos asked.
"Maybe because the power was not disconnected," Vent suggested. "We have no way to know until we disconnect the power and then connect it again."
“Are we sure nothing but power goes through the thicker cable?” asked Leegh.
That started another round of discussion, ending when Tommy said, “If anyone else has a different solution, please present it.”
When no one spoke he continued, "Has anyone found the location of the small dimensional tunnels? Restarting the computer might reestablish those. We will want that later, but not for our first test."
"Your artisans and I have located those," Leegh said. "I believe we can disable the apparatus that creates the tunnels without affecting anything else."
"What is going through the tunnels?" Tommy asked.
"We found a small radio transmitter and receiver focused on each one."
"Good,” Tommy said. “We have something for output to go with all of the input I plan to give it.
"Here is what I have in mind. I want to attach one of our computers to each data cable going into the computer: the drive, the radio receiver, every radar receiver, and gravity sensor. Unfortunately, we do not have a way to duplicate the optical sensor technology, but maybe that is all right. The Kadiil must have used them for navigation just as we do. Without those, it will depend on its other sensors and cannot establish its location independently of what we send it. I want our radio receivers in front of those micro tunnel radio transmitters, capturing every bit they transmit. The Kadiil computer is blind, deaf, and dumb. When we get through, it will be able to see only what we send, and
we will capture whatever it sends for analysis.
"What it sees has to be consistent with what it would expect, at least at first. I want teams of artisans from my guild and the Communications Guild working on that. Leegh and I will work on understanding the data the computers send to and from the drive. We will meet here on a daily basis to coordinate our progress and discuss problems.
"Any questions?" He waited for a moment. "Sanos, you and Vent get with the masters from the other guild to set up the teams. I will be available to help with the programming, but I would rather you try first."
# # #
Sisle waited for him at the door to his Lord’s chambers with Potter in her arms. "We haven't seen much of you lately. Do you have time for a walk in the Commons?"
She wore one of the dresses he had bought for her: something not too different from the tunics in shape, but the material had thin vertical blue stripes on a white background, which showed off her flawless skin and made her seem taller. All her new dresses ended just above the knee. She didn't have a preference, and he had insisted. He enjoyed looking at Sisle's legs, and the seamstresses had been eager to do what the human lord wanted.
He took Potter from her arms. "I need to get to work, but a few minutes won't make any difference."
When they were in the Commons, he put Potter down to explore the grass beside the trail as they walked.
"Aren't you afraid he'll get lost?" she asked.
"Not anymore. Watch him. People think cats can't be taken for a walk. They can be, just not the way you would take a dog for a walk."
"A dog?"
"Another animal domesticated by humans, like the horses we talked about, but closer to the size of a cat," he replied. "We had one when I was younger.
“Before I was taken," he added after a moment.
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