The Archie waddled through the open hatch into a shuttlecraft, and Richard suddenly realized just how big the ship was, at least on the outside. The shuttlecraft was almost a city block long, probably half that wide. It must have been sunk eighty percent of its height into the deck.
Richard followed the Archie into a narrow passageway that forced the Archie's body higher because it had to pull in all its elbows. The passageway turned right, went a couple of meters, and then angled downward into the very center of the shuttlecraft.
The amount of light from behind abruptly diminished and Richard's ears popped as the pressure changed. The hatch had slid closed without a sound, and the craft was presumably pressurizing itself slightly over ambient pressure.
The downward slope of the passageway was easy for the Archie, difficult for Richard. He almost slid down the final meter of the passage as he tried to grip small overhead finger–holds and fit his toes into the small crevices on the sloping floor.
A smell of raw fish and moldy cheese grew stronger now, and Richard felt uneasy in the small space. For the first time, he wondered what Archies ate. The Archie had traveled all the way into the center of the shuttlecraft and it sat on a bench similar to the one in the monorail car. Richard had expected an acceleration couch of some sort, but now that he thought about it, probably the shuttle possessed the same acceleration–canceling system Bobby Joe had talked about the main ship having.
With the Archie in place in the egg–shaped central space, there wasn't actually all that much room left over for a human companion. Richard squeezed into the compartment, fitting his body behind the Archie's, and he tried to find a posture that wouldn't cut off his circulation.
The rounded shell of the cabin was vaguely like an airliner cockpit except for having a narrower variation in the style of the controls. What seemed to be a thousand small circles of light formed longitude and latitude grid lines where they were visible from the Archie's eye–stalk. Just below each circle of light was a depression sized so that an Archie could push a finger into it. Circling the base of the pedestal supporting the Archie body were two rows of about eight knobs each.
The Archie busied itself at the controls, using at least four of its legs to push briefly on a control here or a control there. Sometimes the light just above the control changed hue, sometimes a blinking light changed to a steady light. Directly in front of the Archie, a silvery ball rose out of the floor, as though levitated by a magnetic field.
The Archie's eye–stalk swiveled toward Richard briefly, then swung back toward the front. If it was afraid, Richard couldn't tell. It poked yet another control, and an octagonal screen lit overhead. Centered in the screen was the Archie captain, and next to her was Abby.
The Archie chattered briefly and the captain responded. Abby said, "I can see you, Richard. Can you see us?"
"Yes. Can you hear me?"
Abby nodded. "Loud and clear."
The Archies chattered some more, and Abby said, "They're going to launch another three shuttlecraft. When they get close enough to the planet shaper, the other three ships are going to fire on it and take evasive action. The pilot of your ship is going to plot a trajectory that lets you drift closer, like a stray asteroid or something, in hopes that it won't show up as a threat. They think the planet shaper's hull is strong enough that it won't even bother to react to the three ships firing on it, but they don't know."
"Sounds fine to me." Richard kept expression casual as he detected a metallic taste. Did this attempt really make any sense?
Moments later Abby asked, "Are you ready?"
Richard nodded. "Sure thing."
"Good luck then."
Bobby Joe suddenly stepped into view. His bald head reflected diffuse spots of light from the bridge. "Richard?" He hesitated. "Good luck to you."
Richard swallowed hard. "Thanks." Bobby Joe's opinion hadn't seemed important to him, but suddenly Richard felt appreciated, and the abrupt feeling made him flush.
The Archie captain chattered briefly.
The Archie pilot gripped the silvery ball with two hands.
Suddenly Richard was suspended in space. The entire top half of the shuttlecraft had disappeared, or more accurately, it had turned transparent. The screen above still showed Abby and the captain on the bridge, and the rows of lighted controls still showed, but it was as if the rest of the shuttlecraft had suddenly turned to glass. Richard sucked in his breath.
Below him, the depression in the deck was clearly visible. It resembled a large empty swimming pool, but with several dark scars apparently caused by a shuttlecraft arrival.
The Archie pilot gripped the silver ball in two hands and pulled it up fast. Richard felt no acceleration, but his stomach suddenly dropped. The huge Archie mother–ship fell away from the shuttle as though some enormous chain on the other side had yanked it away. Richard's perceptions were momentarily trashed, and it took him several seconds to decide what must have been true: the shuttle had just risen very high and very fast. The apparent lack of acceleration made acceptance difficult, but intellectually he knew the shuttle had in fact been the one to move.
The star field was almost complete now, above and below the shuttlecraft, and Richard felt as though he were suspended in space without a suit but able to breathe. Within no more than a second, the dark outline of the Archies' ship had dwindled to a dark pinpoint against the surprisingly close disk of Venus with its turbulent yellow clouds. Except for the lack of acceleration, the experience was something like ejecting from a jet fighter.
Richard and the Archie pilot sat in sunshine sent from a sun that looked even larger than normal but didn't seem very bright, no doubt thanks to some fancy filtering.
The Archie pilot punched a control, and grid lines formed outside the shuttlecraft, as though a giant globe with latitude and longitude lines was centered on the shuttlecraft. The pilot gripped the silvery ball and turned it. Stars whirled and the ship spun in space to a new orientation. When a vector through the nose of the ship came near a dotted–line vector that had been stationary with respect to the fixed stars, the vector line snapped into alignment, just like a drawing program snapping a stylus to designated grid lines.
Richard finally realized one more reason his perceptions had been tricked into thinking briefly that the large Archie ship, now a small dark octagon against the clouds of Venus, had been the one to move. The shuttlecraft was almost perfectly silent. When Richard listened closely, he could hear his own breathing and a faint rush of air, like ventilation air turbulence. Besides that, all he could hear was a tick–tick–tick sound that reminded him of a furnace heating up, the metal clicking occasionally as it expanded or contracted.
Three orange dots appeared to the sides of the shuttlecraft, and a red four–leaf clover appeared at the end of the vector pointing the direction the shuttlecraft was traveling. The three other shuttlecraft moved swiftly into a triangular formation, speeding away as they moved into their attack trajectory, well away from the flight path of the shuttlecraft Richard rode in.
Richard swallowed hard as the four–leaf clover expanded, occulting more and more stars as it grew closer. It was no longer the red symbol but instead he could see the actual shiny surface of the ship. The other three shuttle craft appeared to be approaching the planet shaper from something more than ninety degrees away from his own course. He wondered how close they'd get before they used their lasers, curious about why he'd seen no shots yet, but then he realized that he wouldn't ever see them, unless they reflected off the planet shaper's surface toward the shuttlecraft he rode in. In the dirty air over Manhattan the faint glow had been visible to some watchers; here in vacuum there would be no particles to reflect the light or to be vaporized by the energy surge.
The planet shaper grew larger and larger until it eclipsed half of the starry sky, its curved mirror surface making it even more threatening than a solid color would have seemed. They were close enough to see the star field shift over the ship's sur
face as their aspect angle changed.
Richard glanced up at the screen over his head. Matt had joined Abby and the Archie captain. All three were silent. That was just as well; Richard didn't feel like talking right now.
They were close enough now to see the dark hole where the city had hit the ship. It was a dark cavity in a shiny tooth. They moved closer.
One of the shuttlecraft vanished in about a second, like a time–lapse photo of a mothball vaporizing. The planet shaper was fighting back after all. Richard prayed the shuttlecraft had been destroyed because it had fired at the planet shaper, rather than just because it was close.
The Archie captain chattered briefly.
"We've lost two of the shuttle craft," Abby said quietly.
The dark patch loomed, bounded by distorted star fields. Richard forced himself not to wipe his forehead.
Larger. Larger. The dark patch occupied a third of the forward view.
"We've lost the third shuttle," Abby said.
They came closer and closer to the huge hole in the side of the hull. The hole must have been ten blocks wide.
The hole stretched to span all the way from top to bottom, and Richard was suddenly afraid they wouldn't be able to stop fast enough to avoid crashing into something in the interior.
"Are you all right?" Abby asked suddenly.
"Yeah. Why?" Richard looked down at the surface of the shuttlecraft and suddenly he knew why.
"The sensors here say your shuttle was hit."
"Apparently they're right. But we're still okay." Below him part of the clear ship had taken on the misty translucence of a bathroom window. The planet shaper must have decided to fire on them anyway, but it had just been too late. Richard took a deep breath.
They were inside the hole now. Everything was dark except for some starlight filtering through the hole behind them. Abruptly the interior lit up.
Richard squinted against the sudden light. At first he was afraid some internal lights had come on within the planet shaper, but he couldn't see any individual light sources. The light must have been coming from the shuttlecraft.
But no, that wasn't right either. He could clearly see shadows scattered around the distant interior walls. If the light came from where he was, it would fill the shadows visible from there. Finally he understood what must have happened. The Archie pilot had turned on image intensification. Whatever process that resulted in the shuttlecraft seeming transparent had been boosted, turning starlight and dim internal illumination into bright light.
Thank God the Archies' eyes responded to intensity somewhere near the same range as humans. Otherwise, he might be helplessly looking around in the dark. Or at the other end of the range, he might be immersed in a more terrifying kind of darkness: blindness.
The interior of the ship looked sculpted or grown, rather than fabricated. Richard had entered the guts of a starship; he was in the intestines of some enormous beast.
He looked back toward the hole they had come through. The edges of the hole were not the curled–in metal of an artillery hit. Instead the hull of the ship just ended cleanly as though a bullet had torn through a stretched piece of flesh, taking the damaged tissue with it.
Bits and pieces of rock and sheets of building material and bodies from the destroyed city drifted around the periphery of the cavity. Apparently most of the destroyed mass had eventually drifted out of the hole as the planet shaper braked during its approach to Venus. What remained were only the pieces trapped by ribs or walls in the interior.
Ahead was a large hole in the side of what reminded Richard of the interior of a heart, with several huge arteries leading off in several directions, curving enough that he couldn't see where they led. On that scale, the shuttlecraft was no larger than a blood cell. Apparently the impact of the city hitting the ship caused this opening also.
The Archie pilot aimed its eye–stalk toward Richard and chattered. Richard had no idea what it was saying, but moments later Abby said, "He's asking you which way you want to go."
"Can you see what I see?"
"Yes," Abby and Matt said simultaneously.
"You have any guess?"
Seconds later Matt said, "No. Take your pick."
Arbitrarily Richard pointed at the tube on top.
The pilot moved the silvery ball and the shuttlecraft moved expertly into the tube and began to move forward, staying in the center of the tube. Richard glanced up at the screen and was gratified to see it still showed a clear view. He had been afraid that the transmission would be interrupted by going deeper into the planet shaper.
Richard opened his knapsack and dug through what he had left. Ninety percent of the contents were plastic explosive. He had brought two timed detonators, but at the moment he planned to use only one. He might change his mind, depending on what he found, but for now he readied what he had for one big charge. He set the timer for four minutes and left it on hold. It was only as he finished that he realized what had been nagging at his subconscious. He'd been concentrating too hard on the wrong problem. The shuttlecraft had no airlock, and he had no pressure suit.
Richard swallowed hard. "Slight problem here. I'm probably going to have to go EVA without a suit when the time comes. Can you find out how fast the pilot can get air back in the shuttle and how long an Archie can go without air?"
Abby and Matt exchanged nervous glances, and Abby spoke to the captain. It took her several tries, apparently because of some confusion over time units. Finally Abby said, "An Archie can apparently do without air for about five or ten minutes. That's the good news. The bad news is that the shuttlecraft is designed for the Archies, and therefore it takes over a minute to pressurize. They figured that was a comfortable safety margin."
"I think I'll be okay." Richard said, more calmly than he actually felt. "I've done some demolition jobs in shallow water, where we snorkled instead of using scuba gear. I think I can hold my breath that long, and even if I miss by a few seconds I'll know that air is coming back. It's not like if the pressurization is too slow that I wind up sucking water. Plus, if I'm quick, I should be able to get the explosive planted before all the air is gone."
For several seconds after Richard finished talking, all he could think about was how much of a macho idiot he had been for volunteering. Why couldn't they have had something with more punch, like a nuclear warhead? He was so small in comparison to the planet shaper, he felt as if he was trying to explode a planet with a flare gun. If only they could find something that looked like a control center.
Richard watched the walls of the tunnel as they moved deeper into the ship. The walls were ribbed like an old radiator hose. The Archie pilot had tried its laser on the wall in several spots. Each slash formed and lasted a couple of seconds before it began to smooth over and heal. Ten seconds after a burn, the tunnel looked as good as before the cut.
"Let's save the lasers for later," Richard said. Abby relayed the instruction, and the Archie removed a finger from a control. Richard noticed that each of the Archie's joints was ringed with a fine circle of silver fur.
A junction appeared ahead, and when they reached it, the Archie pilot halted the shuttle so it hovered in the center of the five–way intersection until Richard told it to go straight through. They could get lost forever in this maze if they took too many turns.
The tunnel began to shrink gradually. At first it had been maybe twenty times the diameter of the shuttlecraft, and soon it was down to about ten times the diameter. They came around a gentle curve and found the entire tunnel blocked with what looked like a gray membrane.
"Ask if we can cut through this," Richard said.
Seconds later a bright red spot formed on the wall in front of them. The wall around the spot darkened and Richard began to have hope that they actually could cut through the wall when suddenly the entire wall dilated open.
"Holy crap," Richard murmured.
Beyond where the wall had been was a huge spherical room, many times wider than the t
unnel. Other tunnels led from the chamber to every direction, so many tunnels that their mouths, some closed, some open, took up half the area of the chamber wall. The shuttlecraft floated through the dilated doorway.
Suspended near the center of the volume was a gray and red mottled sphere smaller than the shuttlecraft. A dozen filaments connected it to anchor spots on the walls. As they came closer, Richard could see that it wasn't a sphere, but rather was made up of flat shapes, octagons interspersed with squares. The object pulsated slowly, as though it were a deformed heart.
"That's our target," Richard said. Abby talked to the captain, who chattered to the pilot in case Richard's pointing finger wasn't enough of a command. Richard looked behind the shuttlecraft as they moved farther into the huge chamber, watching to make sure he could identify which tunnel they had come through.
They moved closer. The heart contracted every few seconds and glistened in the amplified light, which, in the chamber, had taken on a noticeable purple tinge.
"Have him try the laser on it," said Richard.
Seconds later the pilot put his finger on the laser control again, and a molten spot formed on the surface of the sphere. After fifteen seconds the spot looked no different. They were close enough now that Richard could see crevices at several points on the surface.
"That thing must be carrying off the heat somehow," Richard said. "Or else it's just really tough. Everything in here must be industrial strength. Have him stop."
The laser switched off, and the molten spot returned to its former mottled appearance within a second.
Manhattan Transfer Page 38