Manhattan Transfer

by John E. Stith

  Their path cut through the center of the deserted tract of equipment, and Matt slowed the pace. They passed under arches and through cutouts in the buildings. On Abby's left was a large transparent tube that came through the floor and curved to meet the side of a huge octagonal cabinet. Sludge resembling rocky road ice cream moved slowly through the tube, upward and into the cabinet.

  Five minutes later Matt signaled for the group to slow down. Ahead was something that at first looked like a pond, but as they approached more closely Abby could see it was a window built into the floor, an observation port through which they could see the world below. She could see the city of cones beneath its dome far below, miniaturized by being seen from several times the height of the tallest cone, an airplane–window view rather than a bird's–eye picture.

  The transparent port was at least ten meters across, surrounded by a raised lip. Suspended over the observation port were strange instruments aimed down through the port, some of them mounted on articulated supports like dentists' drills, others running on sets of tracks like small construction cranes. Capping the whole array of equipment was a suspended and inverted, transparent bowl. The lip of the bowl extended several meters out from the perimeter of the observation port, but hung a couple of meters in the air, allowing access to the port.

  Matt cautioned the team to stay clear of the edge of the observation port as they navigated around it. A moment later, Abby got a glimpse of Manhattan far in the distance toward the center of the octagonal area below.

  Matt must have seen it, too, because he stopped and held up his new walkie–talkie and spread the silvery antenna into a flashbulb reflector. "Manhattan base, this is Rover."

  Seconds later, a female voice said, "This is Manhattan base. How are you?"

  "We're all right. We should be able to take action soon." Matt explained what they'd found after cutting through the wall.

  "Well, you'd better move fast. The streets are full of protesters not too happy with the plan. They're marching toward Gracie Mansion, and they're busting up cars all along the way. Some preacher's got them stirred up. Says we're on the way to heaven and you guys are just going to blow it up."

  "We're maybe a kilometer or two higher than you are, and from here I've got to say this doesn't look like my idea of heaven." Matt released the talk switch and suddenly motioned Bobby Joe to come closer.

  "Can we transmit some of Julie's video down there? Seeing actual pictures of the Archies and this level might slow down the protests."

  "Okay. Tell them to get set to receive some video at ten percent of normal speed."

  Matt continued the walkie–talkie conversation as Bobby Joe asked Abby and Julie if he could use their minivids for a few minutes. Abby and Julie cued their recorders to the start of what they thought would be the best sections.

  Bobby Joe opened a small compartment on the side of Matt's walkie–talkie and uncoiled a small cable from inside. The plug on the end of the cable went into the side of a minivid. He fingered the minivid controls, then said to Matt, "All right. It's sending. The walkie–talkie was optimized for a lower bandwidth than video, so we can't transmit at normal speed, but they should be getting it."

  Abby moved so she could get a clearer view through the observation window. Standing near the lip of the port was a little like standing near the edge of a tall cliff. Distance turned one of the domed cities below into a cake under glass. Julie quietly gave her report along with the video.

  Matt scanned the horizon a couple of times during the time the minivids were connected. Finally he told Bobby Joe to stop. "Manhattan base, we'll check in again if we get a chance."

  "Roger, Rover."

  "Let's get out of here," Matt said as he folded up the reflector antenna. "We've been out in the open too long."

  The group continued toward the large red cylinder in the distance. They had been angling through the equipment–littered landscape for no more then ten minutes when Matt unexpectedly fell slowly forward and scrambled almost flat on the ground. He gave an urgent hand signal to take cover. He got as close as he could to a narrow, low wall. As Abby and the others scrambled into position behind the same structure, she got a glimpse of a distant monorail car approaching, running more or less parallel to the wall they were hiding behind.

  Abby quietly took her pistol from the holster. The Glock 17 felt slightly oily, and she blamed that on sweat. The semi–automatic was loaded with a seventeen–round magazine containing nine–millimeter cartridges. The pistol was light to begin with; in the low gravity it felt like a toy gun in her hand.

  Abby had thought the sound of a gun being fired was one of the scariest sounds in the world. Now she was aware of a sound that chilled her even more—the soft click click of a gun being cocked.

  Over her heartbeat, Abby could hear a soft whoosh of air grow louder as the monorail car came closer. She didn't breathe again until she was sure the sound was starting to grow softer. It was only then that she let herself think about how good it felt to lie down for a couple of minutes.

  Matt waited several minutes before he cautiously raised his head over the wall. "They're gone. We'd better keep moving."

  The group stayed closer together as they threaded their way through what resembled a grove of telephone poles, hundreds of shiny blue poles that reached halfway to the ceiling, spaced far enough apart that an obstacle course driver could have driven a compact car between them.

  Rudy said, "I just had a thought. With all the monorails running either radially or on transverse runs from radial to radial, you know what it would look like from the air?"

  "A giant spider–web," Abby said.

  "And," Bobby Joe said, "it probably won't be long before we're heading straight for the center."

  Julie said, "To think that I could have gone on vacation about a week before this all started. I was considering going out to Colorado with a friend."

  "Yeah, but then you might be roasting more than just wienies right now," Bobby Joe said.

  #

  Benny Kellermund was leaving the warehouse church with the rest of the congregation after one of the two daily services.

  The preacher was at the main door, and he seemed to be looking for Benny, because he gave a big sigh when he caught Benny's attention.

  "I need to talk to you," Stuart Lund said.

  "Sure, okay," said Benny.

  "It concerns your friend, too. Could you stop by in about an hour?"

  "Yeah, I guess we could do that."

  "Thanks very much. I think I've got an idea that will interest you."

  #

  "This is encouraging," Richard said. "They wouldn't build something this sturdy if all it did was recycle air for one of the prisons below."

  Abby suspected he was right. The closer they got to the red cylinder, the more obvious it was that the massive structure was a product of heavy duty engineering. The floor, which had supported the numerous pieces of large equipment they had already passed, here was braced.

  "I'm beginning to think you're right," Rudy said. "This really does look more like something designed for propulsion than anything we've seen so far."

  The group moved closer, picking their way through stuff that a giant might have strewn around while working on some enormous automobile. Monstrous valves, levers that didn't move but looked as if they were ready to do so at any moment, glowing cubes that pulsated with greenish light, none of it made the slightest sense to Abby. She continued taking video whenever she saw markings on equipment or noticed anything that cried out for being immortalized on video. On the way, she put in a fresh battery.

  The red cylinder seemed like a huge storage tank at an oil refinery, except for one thing. Small doors were scattered over the surface of the cylinder. Ladders led to many of the doors, ladders unlike the ones Abby was used to. These ladders were more like pairs of back–to–back ladders, probably designed so the Archies could use one set of legs on each side.

  At four locations Abby cou
ld see gantry–like structures rising next to the base and meeting the cylinder wall at a door.

  Finally they squatted under a T–shaped structure not twenty meters from the base of the cylinder. Matt looked at Richard and said, "Are you ready to put some explosives in place?"

  Abby cleared her throat deliberately. "I'm nervous about this. Suppose this isn't really the propulsion system? I still can't make much sense of the symbols I've seen."

  "It's a calculated risk," said Matt.

  "Even if it is the propulsion system," Julie said. "That's still no guarantee that blowing it to pieces will help us."

  "Again, it's a calculated risk. We could be doing the wrong thing, but this is one of those times that doing nothing is doing the worst thing." Matt looked at Abby and back at Julie. He turned to Richard. "Get started."

  "Sure," said Richard. "The whole works?"

  "Whatever's appropriate, but I don't want to use it all yet. And I want it on a long timer, say ten hours. I want to have time to be a long way from here, and I want time to change our minds if we learn more during those hours. This definitely feels like propulsion to me, but I understand the possibility that it could be some vital piece of life support for the entire ship."

  "There's another reason for making sure we disable the ship's propulsion," Rudy said.

  "And that is?"

  "It'll make it that much tougher for them to take us somewhere harder to escape from, and farther from home."

  Matt nodded. "Makes sense." To Abby and Julie he said, "I hope you're satisfied with this, but we're not a democracy right now." He scanned the area ahead and said, "All right. Let's go."

  They moved quickly to the octagonal door at the base of the cylinder. It opened smoothly. Matt stepped through, and the team followed. Abby stepped through, very happy to see handles on the inside of the door, too.

  Abby looked up and had to catch her breath. Several years ago, she'd been on a tour at Canaveral and had seen how large the thrusters were. What was contained in the cylinder didn't actually look like a thruster, but the enormous funnel reminded her of one. The funnel sat with its narrow end almost touching the floor, the large end not far from the ceiling. Gigantic coils wound around the underside of the funnel. The individual coils must have had about the same diameter as a manhole cover.

  Lights ringed the cylinder wall in rows about ten meters apart. Here and there inside the huge cylinder, catwalks led from the cylinder walls to work areas near what looked like huge gray barnacles on the coils.

  Richard pointed toward one of the barnacles nearest the ground. A double ladder led to a small platform just under it.

  Richard took Rudy's backpack and his own and went up the ladder. From the floor below, Abby watched as Richard took out slabs of a putty–like substance and tucked them between coils so they didn't show from the ground.

  Abby caught Matt's attention. "Why would the Archies wait before they destroy the planet?"

  "I really don't know. Maybe it's function of how interesting the planet itself is. Maybe they save more video images if it's something unlike what they've seen before."

  Rudy said, "Could be lots of reasons, probably most of which we wouldn't even understand. Maybe sometimes they have to charge up their weapons from a nearby sun, and that takes a while."

  "All done," Richard said as he climbed down.

  "Good. Let's get out of here," said Matt.

  Matt pushed the door open slowly. Abby was sure they'd see a huge spider blocking the entire doorway, and despite her rational awareness that these aliens had nothing in common with Earth spiders other than an unusual similarity in appearance, she suddenly thought about spiders that ate their mates.

  Outside the door the way was clear. Matt stepped through and the rest of the party followed.

  They didn't stop moving until almost an hour later when they took cover in a small clearing surrounded by rectangular equipment cabinets about a meter high.

  "God, I'm tired," said Bobby Joe the instant he sat down.

  Abby was tired, too, more tired than she'd been in ages. Her eyes hurt, her legs hurt, her shoulders hurt.

  "Rest well," Matt said. "We're moving on in ten minutes."

  Abby leaned back against one of the cabinets and closed her eyes. She imagined she was back in her apartment in bed, in the most comfortable bed in the world.

  She turned on her right side and saw the morning sunshine streaming through the window. She turned to her left and saw Matt lying next to her. Matt's eyes opened suddenly and he said, "We've got to go."

  "What?"

  "We've got to go," Matt said again.

  Abby felt a hand gently nudging her shoulder. She opened her eyes and saw Matt kneeling beside her. He was dressed in his multi–pocketed expedition shirt. Above his head was the ceiling of the Archies' ship. Abby blinked.

  "All right," she said. "I'm awake."

  Moments later the team resumed the trek. Ahead in the distance was the center of the web, where walls from floor to ceiling concealed what lay inside. The horizon seemed even more cluttered than before with equipment cabinets and machines of unknown purpose.

  Hours dragged on until Abby no longer cared whether they were spotted, no longer feared capture, as long as it would afford her the chance to sleep or die. Matt had obviously been hesitant to break out the stimulants, but a little earlier everyone on the team had popped a couple of pills. They seemed to make almost no difference.

  They grew closer to the walled area in the center of the ship. And then, when they had traveled so far that the wall was only another several hundred meters away, she got her second or third or fourth wind. Reality still had a mildly dream–like quality to it, but she felt more energy, more aware of her surroundings.

  A series of doors were set along the bottom of the wall. At each door, a monorail track stretched out toward the perimeter of the huge floor they were on. Next to the nearest monorail door was a smaller octagonal door, possibly intended for foot traffic or emergencies.

  Matt signaled them to stop and take cover. Seconds later, Abby watched through a crack between two cabinets as a monorail car with one Archie aboard approached a door farther down the side of the wall. About ten seconds before the monorail reached the door, the large door swung open silently. The monorail car sped through without slowing, and the door swung closed again as soon as the car had vanished.

  From that point on, everyone carried their pistols in their hands instead of in their holsters.

  The group snaked forward, threading between more equipment cabinets and strange structures, until they all crouched not thirty meters from a monorail door and the smaller door next to it.

  "I suppose we need to see what's on the other side of the wall?" said Rudy. Rudy volunteered to go check. He took off his pack and set it on the floor. He moved forward, pistol ready.

  Rudy scanned the area before him briefly, and then he ran, faster than Abby had expected. Just a few seconds later, he was at the door. He gripped the handles and just as he was about to pull the door open, the larger double doors over the monorail track began to open. Rudy flung himself sideways, getting as close to the base of the monorail track as he could, and seconds later a monorail car sped outward, occupied by two Archies.

  Abby held her breath, afraid the Archies would see Rudy, but the car kept going without slowing down and coming back. The door on Rudy's side swung closed over his head. Rudy stayed motionless where he was for a full minute before he got back up and moved to the smaller door. He put his pistol in his belt and twisted the handles. As soon as the door pulled forward a little, Rudy retrieved his pistol.

  He pulled the door open a little more and peered through the gap. Finally he pulled it open farther and leaned inside. Seconds later he turned toward the rest of the team and gave a come on sign.

  "Let's go. Fast!" said Matt.

  The team moved faster than they had in hours. Less than a half–minute later, they were all through the door and it was closed
behind them.

  Abby suddenly felt heavier as she ran behind Matt as they moved farther into the enclosure. The gravity must be higher in this section somehow. Another wall, perhaps a kilometer away in the distance ahead, formed part of what must have been a still smaller octagonal enclosed area. Between the inner wall and the outer wall lay a forest of large enclosed kiosks. Through the maze of kiosks Abby could see short sections of monorail tracks continuing in toward the center of the complex.

  The kiosks were octagonal, about two meters on a side and about three meters tall. Their placement seemed to be random. Abby and the others followed Matt until they were hidden from the nearby monorail track by two or three kiosks.

  The kiosks were almost all a uniform gray, except for a few nearest the monorail track, each of which had a dark band around the base. Matt approached one of the kiosks. Abby saw that it seemed to have an entry corridor rather than a door. A little like park restrooms, the kiosk was a solid enclosure with an extra short wall that came directly out from the wall, then bent at a octagonal–corner angle and continued for a couple of meters. Apparently, one could walk right inside, but the interior couldn't be seen from outside.

  Matt moved closer to the kiosk with a dark band around the base. He slowly entered the short corridor and peeked around the corner into the interior. Just as softly, but obviously more tense, now, Matt backed up and motioned the team to get away.

  The team moved quickly and quietly past several more kiosks, one with a band around the base, and several plain ones.

  Matt cautiously entered the corridor around another one of the kiosks, this one a plain one. Just about the same time that Matt peeked around the edge of the interior doorway and motioned the rest of the team to come ahead and join him, a dark band appeared around the base of the kiosk.

  Abby followed him. Inside the unoccupied kiosk was an octagonal room about three meters across. Against one wall was what was probably a bed. Set into the opposite wall was an unfamiliar–looking console. The ceiling glowed a soft blue.