by John Whitman
moment later.
Captain Hajj didn't bother to look back. He was already heading for the
other turbolift, the one his crew members had taken. He checked the indicator
light to see where the lift was. If the lift had worked properly, the light
should show the twentieth floor.
Instead, the indicator light showed that the other turbolift, too, had
gone down instead of up. The light indicated the very lowest level. Hajj and
his crewmen worked together to pry the doors open. Once they'd succeeded, the
captain looked down.
"Hello!" he shouted, his voice echoing in the shaft. The only answer was
a thin cloud of smoke rising from below.
"If they hit bottom..." one of the surviving crewmen whispered.
"They're dead," Hajj said grimly. "And that makes whoever did this a
murderer."
Tash shook her head. "But who is doing this? If it's pirates trying to
steal the ship, why not just come after us with blasters? Why set traps?"
"It would have to be someone who understands computers," Captain Hajj
said, thinking out loud.
Zak almost burst out "It's Dash!" but Rendar still had his blaster, and
after seeing the way he had fired at the droids... Tash's phrase, action
through inaction, popped into Zak's head. He decided to wait.
"What do we do now?" Tash asked. "We still need to get to the
communications room, or somewhere."
"I'm not getting into another turbolift, that's for sure," Dash said.
"Agreed," the captain grunted. "But there's another way. Every set of
turbolifts includes a gangway, just in case the turbolifts stop functioning."
"A gangway?" Tash asked. "You mean a staircase?"
Captain Hajj shrugged. "Not exactly.
"Not exactly!" Tash repeated, staring up in disbelief. She was standing
just outside the turbolift gangway. Basically, it was a shaft beside the
turbolifts that ran up and down the height of the ship. Set into the wall of
the shaft was a ladder that rose up as far as the eye could see, and down the
same impossible distance.
"How high is it?" Zak asked.
Captain Hajj checked the floor they were on. "We have to get to deck
twenty. We fell down to deck three."
"Seventeen floors!" Zak gasped. "That's like climbing a ladder up a
seventeen story building."
"Right," the captain said, "and the sooner we start, the sooner we'll be
done."
Climbing the ladder, they followed the rules of mountain climbing. The
strongest climbers went first, and the weakest went last. Then, if one of the
weak climbers happened to slip, they wouldn't land on anyone when they fell.
Zak and Tash were last in line.
Zak didn't know how long or how far they'd climbed. But he knew his hands
were being rubbed raw by the hard metal rungs of the ladder, and his feet were
getting cramps.
He decided to take his mind off his aches. Dash was climbing just above
him. After a while, Zak asked, as if to pass the time, "So, Dash, what exactly
were you doing aboard the Star of Empire anyway?"
"I told you," Dash said, as he focused on the climb. "I was suspicious of
the alarms, so I-"
"No, no. I mean before that," Zak interrupted. "Why were you here in the
first place?"
A pause.
Finally, Dash said, "Vacation, like anyone else, I guess."
"Vacation from what?" Zak asked, trying to sound casual. "I mean, what do
you do for a living?"
Dash's voice sounded tense. He obviously didn't like this sort of
questioning. "I own a small freighter. I transport cargo from place to place.
People pay me."
Zak wanted to say, "That sounds like what smugglers do."
But he didn't. He was distracted by a noise from above them.
Clink. Clank. Clink.
It grew louder.
Clank. Clank. Clink.
They all looked up.
Something large and heavy was tumbling down the gangway toward them.
"Incoming!" Dash shouted. He pressed himself tightly against the ladder
and the Arrandas followed his example.
One of Captain Hajj's crewmen wasn't so lucky. Still craning his neck to
see what was above them, he took the full force of a falling hovercar engine
right in the face. The weight of the falling engine tore him from the ladder
and he dropped down the long gangway, vanishing from sight without a sound.
"What in the name of all the stars was that!" Dash swore.
"Whatever it was, it wasn't the last!" Zak yelled. "Look out!"
They all tried to melt into the wall as another heavy object-a large tool
box-hurtled past Tash's ear. Someone was using them for target practice.
CHAPTER 11
Captain Hajj and the surviving crewman stared in horror down the gangway.
"Comran!" they shouted after the man who had fallen. "Comran!" But there was
no answer. They couldn't even be sure he'd reached bottom.
The captain started to climb down past Dash, Zak, and Tash, but Dash
stopped him. "Captain, he's gone."
"I'm not losing any more men!" Hajj snapped.
"He's already lost!" Dash shot back. "And we've got to get out of this
gangway before we all end up like him. These kids are your passengers,
remember? Where's the closest hatch? Up or down?"
Captain Hajj cast one last glance down, then said, "Up. Only a dozen
meters. Let's hurry."
Two more heavy chunks of metal fell from above. One missed them all, but
the other clipped the captain on the shoulder, tearing his uniform and cutting
a gash into his arm.
They kept climbing until they reached the hatch. Then they scrambled to
get out of the shaft and into the safety of the hallway.
They made it not a moment too soon. As Tash jumped out into the hallway,
something huge, big enough to fill the entire gangway, rumbled past. It
scraped the walls as it fell. It would have taken all of them with it. The
sound it made when it finally hit the bottom of the ship was like two planets
colliding.
"Someone is here," Tash said darkly. "Watching us. Waiting for a chance
to-"
"To kill us," Captain Hajj finished. "There's a murderer up there. But
who is it?"
"I know who," Zak interjected. He pointed a finger at the pilot. "It's
Dash Rendar."
"What?" Captain Hajj sputtered.
"What!" Tash shouted.
"What," Dash replied calmly, "are you talking about?"
"I know all about you," Zak said, still pointing at Dash accusingly. "I
know you're wanted for smuggling and piracy. You're a thief. You tried to
steal this ship!"
Dash laughed. "Who told you that?"
"SIM did," Zak replied. "He knew you registered under a false name so you
wouldn't be detected by authorities."
Captain Hajj stepped forward, reaching for his blaster.
But Dash held his hands open, showing he wasn't planning to go for his
own weapon. "There's only one problem with your theory, Zak," the pilot said.
"If I'm the one who's behind all this, then who was that dropping hardware on
our heads just now?"
Zak had been so focused on Rendar for the last few minutes, he hadn't
thought everything through. Finally,
he said, "But SIM told me you had done
it."
"SIM lied," Dash insisted.
Zak scowled. "Computers don't lie. They analyze information and reach
logical solutions to problems. It thinks you're behind this, Dash Rendar.
Besides," he added, "you could have an accomplice."
"The boy's right," Captain Hajj said. "It's awfully strange that, except
for my crew, you're the only adult who's stayed behind. I'd say that makes you
our first suspect." The captain raised his blaster. "Hand over your weapon."
"Captain," Dash said. "If there's more trouble, you're going to need all
the help you can get."
Hajj didn't say a word. He just held out his hand and tightened his grip
on the trigger of his blaster. "That may be. In the meantime, I'd rather be
the one with all the weapons."
Dash's eyes went cold. Zak could tell he was sizing up his competition,
wondering if he could get his blaster out and fire before Captain Hajj's
weapon turned him into fried jelly.
At last, Dash pulled his weapon from its holster and put it gently into
the captain's hand. "You're making the wrong decision, Captain."
"We'll see," Hajj replied. He nodded to his surviving crewman. "Hang
back. Keep an eye on him."
"Now that's settled," Captain Hajj said, "we still need a way to get to
the comm room. Zak, do you think you can access SIM again?"
"No problem."
It took only a few minutes to find another passenger guide terminal, and
a short while after that Zak was through the game program and talking to SIM.
"SIM, we need another way up to the comm room. Turbolifts are out. We
can't use the gangway."
COME TO THE CONTROL ROOM. GET MY SYSTEMS FUNCTIONING.
"Tell him no," the captain snapped. "Blasted computers. We'll do our own
thinking."
Zak typed in a more polite response. "Thanks, but we're still headed for
the comm room. Any suggestions?" SIM paused, considering.
NUMBER OF POSSIBILITIES: 1. THE COMMUNICATIONS ROOM RECEIVES ALL THE
SENSOR INPUT FROM THE SHIPS ANTENNAE. CABLES RUN FROM THE ANTENNAE TO THE COMM
ROOM. THESE CABLES ARE STRUG THROUGH THE SHIP IN VERY LARGE PIPES. IT WOULD BE
POSSIBLE TO CRAWL UP THESE PIPES. THEY ALL LEAD RIGHT TO THE COMM ROOM.
HOWEVER, THERE IS A 50 PERCENT CHANCE THAT THE PIPES WILL BE IMPASSABLE.
"Of course!" Hajj said, slapping his forehead. "It'll be a tight squeeze,
but we can make it. It's almost like a shortcut! Tell that computer it's not
so bad after all."
Zak typed in the captain's comment.
THANK YOU, SIM said. AND ZAK..
"Yes?" he responded.
WATCH OUT.
Zak trotted to catch up to the others, just as Captain Hajj was saying,
"I know exactly where the cable pipes run. There's a big observation deck down
this hallway. One of the antennae is located nearby, so we can access the
cables there."
Hajj led them into an observation deck similar to the one Tash and Zak
had entered when trying to escape the ship. It was a little fancier-probably
serving passengers who paid extra for a first-class ticket-with a carpeted
floor and crystal glowpanels. But it served the same purpose. It was wide, and
one entire wall was made of transparisteel, allowing passengers to look out on
the stars, or whatever planet the Star of Empire happened to be orbiting. At
the moment, it drifted through empty space, and stars filled the view through
the transparent wall. Nothing about the scene looked unusual to Zak, but Dash
Rendar stopped.
"What's wrong?" Tash asked him.
"The stars," Dash said. "They're all wrong. I mean, our position isn't
the same as when the alarms went off. We've been moving."
Zak knew that pilots used the stars for navigation, and that Dash was
probably an expert, but he said anyway, "It can't be. Wouldn't we have felt
something?"
Dash shook his head. "Not necessarily. On a ship this big you don't
always feel motion. It's designed that way, to keep the passengers from
getting motion sickness. You ever been on an asteroid?"
Zak and Tash both nodded, and they both frowned. They had had a bad
experience on an asteroid recently.
"This ship is like standing on an asteroid. It's moving, but it's so big
you don't feel the motion. We're..." he tried to calculate. "I'd say we've
come at least several light-years off our original course."
"Three point six light-years, to be exact," said a familiar voice.
Zak looked up to see a golden droid shuffling toward them. At first
everyone tensed. Hajj and his crewman raised their blasters. But this droid
wasn't charging them wildly, nor did it carry weapons. Zak recognized it as
the same droid that had brought him to the computer control room. "Fourdee!"
"Indeed, sir," the droid answered. "And may I say that it's a pleasure to
see familiar faces. Any faces, really. I was afraid the ship had been entirely
deserted."
Captain Hajj confronted the droid. "What have you been doing since the
alarms went off?"
"Wandering, sir," the droid replied. "I am a porter droid, after all,
programmed to help passengers. And there were none, so I had nothing to do."
The droid's photoreceptors focused on Hajj's two blasters, the captain's own
and the one he'd taken from Dash. "May I add, sir, that I have a secondary
program in ship's security. If I may be of service to the ship?"
Captain Hajj grunted. "Very well. Better a droid programmed to serve the
ship than a smuggler I don't even know. Here." He handed the blaster to
Fourdee, then jabbed a thumb at Dash. "Keep your eyes on him."
"Yes, sir," Fourdee said.
But instead of falling in behind Dash, Fourdee immediately shuffled over
to the transparisteel wall of the observation deck.
"Hey!" the captain shouted. "What are you doing?"
"Why, I am serving the ship, sir," Fourdee replied. He raised the blaster
and blew a hole in the wall.
CHAPTER 12
Zak and Tash had learned some very basic lessons about space travel even
before they were old enough to go to school.
One rule was: Make sure you chart a clear course from one planet to
another.
The other was: Never, ever break the airtight seal on a spaceship.
Fourdee had just broken that rule. It had blasted a hole the size of a
human body in the transparisteel window. Outside the ship was the vacuum of
space. Inside the ship was an artificial atmosphere. The moment the seal was
broken, all the air rushed out into the void, gathering itself like a storm
trapped in a box. Fourdee was sucked out instantly, taking Dash's blaster with
him.
Zak and Tash had been in this situation before. The minute they heard the
transparisteel shatter, they dove for a table bolted into the floor. Dash
Rendar and Captain Hajj were fast enough to grab hold of something, too.
The last crewman wasn't so lucky. He hesitated for a moment, and the air
itself seemed to scoop him up and sweep him out the hole Fourdee had created.
He was gone in the blink of an eye.
Zak and Tash felt the vacuum of space tugging at them, but they held
tigh
tly to the table.
We'll be all right as long as this table holds, Zak thought. Instantly,
he regretted thinking it.
The bolts that pinned the table to the floor started to give.
The Star of Empire was a luxury ship. It wasn't designed for the kind of
punishment it was suddenly taking. Furniture that had been secured to the
walls or the floors was yanked from its mooring. Sections of carpet ripped up
and began flying across the room like angry ghosts before they were sucked
into space. Whole sections of the floor were wrenched from the ship's frame. A
large sheet of durasteel flooring near Zak and Tash started to peel up.
A wild idea crossed Zak's mind. An insane idea. But he thought it just
might work, and if it worked, it would save their lives. He hesitated for a
moment, gathering his courage.
He was just about to put his idea into action-when Dash Rendar did it