“It doesn’t ever stop,” I told him. “It’s a constant cycling. Some of these rocks are very hot indeed. The atmosphere’s very deep and thick, and the upper strata are very cold. It’s not just water. There’s life up there, you see. A kind of aerial plankton. We can’t see it, not down here. The individuals are so small-like dust motes blown about on the winds forever. There are other life forms down here, but we won’t see those either, in all probability. They’ll be in the cold-spots and the lakes—not necessarily water lakes; that depends on the cyclothermic properties of the bedrock. This is high ground we’re on now. Over half this planet’s surface is liquid of one sort or another. Mostly sulfurous or hydrocarbon. A high percentage of the life-forms here will metabolize sulfur compounds as well as—or instead of—carbon.”
He looked at me soberly. I’d reeled off the information as much to show off as anything else, but I had some hopes of it putting him in a better mood.
“It’s a hell of a place to spend your day off,” I remarked, as he kept up his stare.
Lightning flashed almost overhead, and there was a peal of thunder like a broadside of cannon. We all jumped, and it broke the little man’s stare.
“We could all die here you know,” I told him. “Just because you have a gun and a bagful of bombs doesn’t make you the lord of all creation, does it? Just because you have a gun and a cause—you can’t wave that gun at the universe and say ‘I want that ship lifted, give me a miracle.’ We’ve already done the incredible once in getting down here. It’s asking too much for us to lift the Varsovien as well. Even if we reach it.”
But he wasn’t going to buy it. He wanted that miracle, and if the universe wasn’t going to provide it, via me, he was going to shoot us all, blow the Swan, and keep screaming at the storm until the moment he died. It wouldn’t take long.
As I sat there looking at him I was suddenly consumed by a feeling that had hardly touched me even in all the most difficult situations of the last few months. I was suddenly consumed by the feeling that there was no way out, that whatever happened we were all going to die. Perhaps there was a moment in the Drift when I thought the same, perhaps when Micheal faltered in his playing while we were keeping the spiders at bay an Chao Phrya. But at those times I was doing something, I still had cards in my hand to play. But was there any amount of card playing going to get us out of this?
No. Nothing short of a miracle.
It was at that moment, drenched with fear and despair and the futility of it all, that I decided I was finished. Paradoxically, I suppose, the moment when I thought that there was no hope was the moment that my decision about what to do finally fell into place. I had had enough of Charlot, enough of trouble. There wasn’t a problem in the universe that Charlot didn’t want in on. He didn’t just want a hand in Destiny, he wanted to be Destiny. Well, OK. But I never wanted to be Destiny’s right-hand man.
I never was a hero. I never was one to accept the troubles of all mankind. Let him hire Flash Gordon. I was finished. If the course of events was kind enough to throw me out of this thing alive, I resolved—firmly and finally, then I would quit, and Charlot could call down the vengeance of heaven, if he wanted to.
“We’re going downhill,” said Eve. “It looks better up ahead.”
I returned my attention to the outside world. It did, indeed, look much better. The knobs of rock that had plagued us for miles were getting sparser and smaller. We were heading down at an angle of five degrees or so; the slope was getting smoother and cleaner. The wind howled just the same, and the thunder still barked, but it all seemed just a little more distant now that the way was clear for us. Even the visibility was a fraction better. Eve accelerated.
“How far away are we?” I asked Ecdyon.
“According to my calculations,” he said, “we are within two hundred meters.”
“How big is it?” I asked.
“I do not know,” he said.
It was a futile question anyway, because by the time he’d answered, we could see it. Only slight glimpses, at first, and we couldn’t be sure what we were seeing, but it was the Varsovien all right. The first bits of her we saw were high in the sky, illumined by lightning, and they might almost have been patches of silver sky. I instantly assumed that she was a long, tall ship stood on end, and I wondered how she had stayed upright for thousands of years, or however long it had been. A moment or two later, as we pulled into her wind-shadow, I realized how wrong I was. This was a ship. She lay on her side all right, but what a side! I was reminded of the Caradoc battlewagon I had seen high in the sky over Pharos. Beside this ship, the Caradoc carrier seemed like one of her own tiny helicopters. With the weather on Mormyr what it was, there was no way to see her whole, in all her glory. It would take hours to walk around her. She was five times as broad as any ship I had ever seen was high. She was built to carry a city inside her—a city with all its suburbs and its sources of supply. This ship was a world in her own right. Capable of swallowing moons? Easily, if she could open her mouth.
Eve took the maiden closer, until she was under the curve of the ship’s belly. For the first time, we were all but out of the storm. Only a rare freak gust threw a handful of raindrops in to patter against the maiden’s hull. We continued to drive along her length, slowly, searching for a blemish in the skin that was still highly polished despite centuries of corrosion.
“Any idea how we’re supposed to get in?” I asked Ecdyon.
“If we find a lock,” he said, “I imagine that I can open it.
“You were maybe expecting something this size?” I asked him.
“No,” he replied, making that odd blinking gesture with his eyes—the only attempt at a change of expression he’d been able to adopt for use in conversation with humans. As it served all purposes, it wasn’t too communicative, but I thought this time he was merely trying to confirm his denial—to underline it, as if to say “Nobody could have expected this.”
“You realize that it’s futile,” I said, not only to Maslax, but to Ecdyon as well. “This whole thing has been a wild-goose chase. From the moment Stylaster contacted Charlot, this thing has been an utter and complete farce. Just take a look at this thing. It was never intended to come within a thousand miles of planetfall. She was built in orbit, and she was intended to stay in space. You can’t land a thing like this. The power needed to land and take off would be absolutely impossible to generate, let alone control. This thing is down here for good, believe you me. It’ll never get off the ground. Whoever dumped it might just as well have sent it cruising into the sun.”
“You’d better be wrong,” said Maslax.
“No. You’re wrong. Can’t you see that? Can’t you see that you have to be wrong? This isn’t a warship. It’s not a weapon. How could it be? Who’d build a weapon big enough to house the population of a small world? Who’d need a thing like this to fight a battle? Don’t be a fool. There’s only one thing that any people could want a ship like this for. Only one. The only thing one could possibly want that much space for is people. This is a migration ship, don’t you see? It’s an intergalactic. Hell, I don’t know what the bloody thing is doing here, of all places. I can think of no reason whatsoever why the Gallacellans would willingly abandon such a ship. But all you have to do is look, man! Can you really sit there and tell me that’s a weapon? Can you?”
“The ship is armed,” said Maslax.
“The ship is dead,” I said. “Stone dead. We’ve all been wasting our time. We’ve all been wrong. Dead wrong. I thought this was a warship they’d hidden away just in case they ever wanted to change their minds. But it’s not. It can’t be.”
“I can see a hatch,” said Eve.
“Can we reach it?” I asked. At first I couldn’t see it. Then I spotted it, well under the belly. It was high above us, but in the shelter of the ship we could erect a ladder from the maiden. If Ecdyon could get us inside, then we could see for ourselves what kind of ship it was.
Eve drew t
o a halt, and commented: “It’s a good thing we found it when we did.”
“Why?” asked Maslax.
She pointed. There was no way of knowing how much of the Varsovien there still was, extending into the fag and the rain, but there was no doubt at all that the rest would not be easy to get to. Ten yards in front of us, there was a dip in the ground, and the shelf of rock along which we had been driving came to an abrupt end. Beyond the lip of the rock was swamp. Beyond that, probably the sea.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Ecdyon and I labored to extend a ladder to the port while Maslax held his gun on Eve in the privacy of the iron maiden. I was grateful for the opportunity to exchange a few words with Ecdyon, but the exchange revealed absolutely nothing. I told him that this was no time to be holding out, and that if he’d told me any lies he’d better amend them right away. Bearing in mind the desperate state of our situation, I expected him to tell me the truth. Perhaps he did.
He claimed, in fact, that he already had.
“Now look,” I said. “This just does not make sense. You claim you know nothing except what Stylaster has told you. You did not know anything about this ship other than the fact—if it is a fact—that it was left here a thousand years ago? But you also didn’t know that the Gallacellans had ever used weapons?”
“What I have said is what I know,” he persisted.
“What about what you told Maslax? Do you have any idea what Stylaster intended to do once we brought him here? Could you lift the ship, if it could be lifted?”
“That was true as well.”
“You’re a great help,” I told him. “So who told Maslax about the Fenris device?”
“There is no such thing,” he said. His voice was difficult to catch because of the noise of the storm.
“Well,” I said, “let’s not be too sure of that. Your ignorance, it seems, is limitless. Suppose there is a Fenris device. Just suppose. Who told who?”
“I do not know. But....”
“That’s what I wanted to hear,” I said, as he paused. “Come on. Tell me the but.”
“I do not know whether it is true....’
“Tell me anyway.”
“The hierarchy is not united on this matter. Stylaster has not the backing of many of the castes. We have no quarrels, you understand. We are a peaceful people. But there are people who might not want the Varsovien recovered. I do not know why. I have heard only rumors that this is so. There is a ship called the Cicindel....”
“The ship that wouldn’t answer,” I said, remembering. “In the system, heading toward the Saberwing after the mayday call.”
“That is right. The Cicindel is rumored to represent other interests in this affair. It is from another system. It might have been sent to...observe...the progress of Stylaster’s plan. The Cicindel has been in the system for some time. It has not come to Iniomi. But it has landed once. On Pallant.”
“Now there’s a thing,” I said. “The Gallacellans have their little games to play as well.”
It dawned on me then how unfair it was of me to expect Ecdyon to know all things Gallacellan. Did I have encyclopedic knowledge of human affairs? True, I could give a quick rundown of who was liable to play what dirty trick on who within the foreseeable future, but I was certainly not privy to the inside information—only to the rumors and the speculations. What would I tell an alien who asked about Caradoc’s precise plans for furthering its commercial stranglehold on known space? What could I tell him? And Ecdyon, despite his association with Stylaster, was less likely to be in a position of omniscience than I, with my proximity to Charlot. I wanted to apologize to him, but I couldn’t see how to do it without a lengthy explanation of why I was sorry. And the ladder was in position. There was no time. I never did get to give Ecdyon that apology.
It didn’t prove to be difficult to get into the Varsovien. Any child could have done it. The airlock was vast—it accommodated all four of us easily. Personally, I wasn’t happy about all four of us boarding her. I would much rather Eve—and perhaps Ecdyon too—had stayed in the maiden. But Maslax reckoned to need them both—Ecdyon to help me sort out what was what, and Eve to hold as the hostage I would least like to see shot to pieces. We all came up the ladder, and we all entered the ship.
Beyond the lock there was a cylindrical chamber which appeared to have no other door save the lock itself. On the wall was a panel with a whole sequence of buttons. I say “wall” although the room was oriented at right angles to the natural direction of gravity—obviously the cylinder was supposed to be stood on end with a single circular wall. But the ship was laid on its side. We had to crouch down and crane our necks sideways to inspect the writing beside the buttons.
“What does it say?” I asked Ecdyon—then, with sudden doubt: “You can read, can’t you?”
“I can read,” he said. “This is an elevator shaft. One of the buttons is labeled ‘control level.’ Shall I press it?”
“Go ahead,” said Maslax.
Ecdyon pressed one of the buttons. Nothing happened.
“It’s all switched off,” said Eve.
“Is there an activator button?” I asked the Gallacellan.
“This one here is marked only with a symbol,” he said. “I do not understand the symbol. Shall I press it?”
“Might as well,” I said. “If it isn’t the activator it won’t have any effect, will it?”
Ecdyon pressed the button, and we fell.
For once, I’d been thinking just half an instant ahead of my actions. Even as I told Ecdyon to press the button I was realizing that when the elevator was activated the artificial grav-field would come into play. Then down would very rapidly become sideways, and we would all end up in a heap on the tail-end of the cylindrical chamber.
As we fell, I was all ready to grab Maslax’s gun and blast a hole in his left arm just below the elbow. It would have to be a real trick-shot, but with the wind to help me I thought I could pull it off. But I failed. Even as Maslax fell, his hand clutched more tightly around the gun. He hadn’t taken his finger away from the stud. It went off.
I was already reaching for him, but in the split second while his hand convulsed, the wind realized what was happening, and I snatched my hand away. The beam barely touched the gauntlet of my suit, and didn’t do any real damage.
Ecdyon was not so lucky. He intercepted the beam with his upper torso.
Maslax relaxed his grip almost instantly, and the beam cut out. The suit gave the Gallacellan a lot of protection, and it no doubt saved his life, but he was literally writhing in pain on the floor. His flailing limbs caught me in the midriff and threw me backward, robbing me of all the thin hope I retained of being able to disarm Maslax in the confusion. Eve was already crumpled up against the wall.
Maslax was the first to his feet. He was almost screaming.
“You should have warned me,” he whined, and the note of hysteria was starkly clear in his voice. “That was your fault. I didn’t mean to shoot him. I didn’t!”
I knelt over Ecdyon, trying to get some idea of the damage. The wound on his flesh was blue-black, but so far as I could see there was little leakage of blood (I presumed Gallacellans had blood). He stopped writhing within the minute, and sounds came out of his hind mouth. He was trying to talk, but nothing was getting through except clicks and whistles, as though he couldn’t make up his mind whether to groan in Gallacellan or in English.
Eventually—in a matter of minutes—he quieted. I peered through the visor of his suit, and I saw him deliberately blink his eyes.
“He’s alive,” said Maslax, still with the high-pitched tone in his voice. “I didn’t kill him.”
“Are you sure you have the guts to murder twenty-five million people at one stroke?” I asked him sourly, as Eve knelt to help me get Ecdyon to his feet.
Ecdyon tried to say something. It came out garbled, but English.
“Say again,” I said to him, gently.
“I said: the air is....” He
didn’t manage to finish. But I nodded to signal that I got his meaning. The air was good. The hole in his suit hadn’t done for him.
“We’d better not...,” I began, intending to say that we had better not take off our helmets because Gallacellan air, though enough like ours to be breathable, wasn’t ideal, and we had plenty of spare in the maiden. Then I thought better of it. Sometime or other, I was going to have to persuade Maslax to take off his suit so I could at least see the bomb trigger.
I started again: “We’d better not waste our own supplies,” I said. “Close off the bottles and take off your helmets.”
We all exposed our faces to the atmosphere. “A thousand years old,” I murmured, “and still as fresh as they left it.” It felt fresher to human senses than it really was, owing to traces of carbohydrate that were enough to register a scent, but quite harmless. There was a shade too much oxygen in it, which might have a mildly intoxicating effect, but I didn’t mention it—there was no point in alerting Maslax to the fact.
“Which button do I press?” demanded Maslax, now returned to his customary harsh and hoarse tones.
Ecdyon reached out and pressed it for him. He whispered, “I’m all right.” But I kept hold of his arms. He was heavy, and if he were to become a dead weight I probably couldn’t hold him up. But I could give him a little assistance in standing.
The elevator went up. I remembered that we were now traveling along the ship, out into the swamplands.
The journey seemed to take an age, though it was only two or three minutes. There were no flashing lights on the panel to show our progress.
When we stopped, the room revolved slowly so that the door was now oriented in the opposite direction. It still had to be opened manually. There was another door beyond it, and when we had passed through that one we found ourselves in another elevator. The only difference so far as I could see was in the pattern of the buttons on the control panel. These were arranged in a square rather than a column.
Ecdyon leaned over to read all the labels.
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