The Tar-aiym Krang (Adventures of Pip and Flinx)

by Alan Dean Foster

  If he had had his entire apartment and all its accouterments from Drallar, he would have been less well off than he was with that single fabulous device encircling his waist.

  The tremendous winds and jetstreams that flowed unceasingly around the planet should have made their descent difficult. Under Atha’s skillful handling, however, it was almost as gentle as it might have been in the Gloryhole. The only rough moments came as they passed through the silvery-gold impregnated sections of the atmosphere. The natural layers of airborne metallic particles (there were two) seemed unusually dense to the two scientists, but as long as they remained on rockets, not dangerously so.

  Unlike the luxury craft which had lifted them from Moth’s surface, this shuttle was equipped more for carrying cargo than folk, and so wasn’t provided with as many ports. Despite the smallness of the scattered plexalloy sections, however, Flinx still had some view of the land below. The one continent rambled from the north pole down to a point just below the equator. It was mostly red-yellow at this height, with here and there large splotches of dull green. Small rivers, faint and insignificant in comparison with the coppery blues of the planetary ocean, meandered lazily down among the low hills. Naturally there were no river canyons. Any such would have disappeared millenia ago under the punishing onslaught of the untiring winds.

  He had been momentarily worried about Pip, who had adamantly refused to be fitted with a tiny pair of makeshift goggles. Close inspection revealed that the reptile was equipped with transparent nictitating membranes, which slid down to protect the eye. He’d never noticed them before, probably because he’d simply not looked. He berated himself mentally for not realizing that an arboreal animal would naturally come built with some such type of natural protection against wind-carried objects. But then, neither of the two scientists had, either. Actually, Pip was more of a glider than a flyer. If he could master the winds down there he’d no doubt be more at home on Booster’s surface than any of them.

  A small intercabin comm conveyed the voice of Malaika back to them from Control. The tiny piloting cabin barely had space enough for the two pilots, and the big trader crowded it unmercifully. But he had insisted on remaining “on top of things.” It was literally put.

  They had been cruising on jets for only a short while when his excited cry broke the cabin’s silence.

  “Maisha, there it is! Check out the ports to your right.”

  There was a concerted rush to that side of the ship. Even Sissiph, her natural curiosity piqued, joined the movement.

  They were still high, but as they banked the ruins of what had been a good-sized city, even by Tar-Aiym standards, came into view. They had built well, as always, but on this planet very little could remain in its original state for long. Still, from here it seemed as well preserved as any of the Tar-Aiym cities Flinx had seen on tape. As they dropped lower the alien city pattern of concentric crescents, radiating out from a fixed point, became as clear as ripples from the shore of a pond.

  But even at this height the thing that immediately caught everyone’s attention and caused Truzenzuzex to utter a soft curse of undefinable origin was not the city itself, but the building which stood on the bluff above the metropolis’s nexus. A single faceless edifice in the shape of a rectangular pyramid, cut off squarely at the top. Both it and the circular base it rose from were a uniform dull yellow-white in color. The very top of the structure appeared to be covered with some kind of glassy material. Unlike the rest of the city it looked to be in a state of perfect preservation. It was also by far the tallest single structure he had ever seen.

  “Baba Giza!” came Malaika’s hushed voice over the speaker. He apparently became aware that his speaker pickup was on. “Take your seats, everybody, and fasten your straps. We are going to land by the base of that bluff. Rafiki Tse-Mallory, rafiki Truzenzuzex, we will explore the entire city beam by beam if you wish, but I will bet my majicho that your Krang is in a certain building at the top of a certain hill!”

  Nothing like understatement to heighten anticipation, thought Flinx.

  They landed, finally, on the broad stretch of open sandy ground to the left of both city and bluff. Atha had wisely elected to use replaceable landing skids instead of the wheeled gear, being uncertain as to the composition of the land they were going to set down on. There had been no clear, paved stretch of territory nearby. They had had a quick glimpse of the ruins of a monstrous spaceport off to the rear of the city’s last crescent. Malaika had vetoed landing there, wishing to land as close as possible to the ziggurat itself. He felt that the less distance they had to travel on the ground and the closer they could remain to the ship itself, the safer he would feel about roaming around the ruined city. The great spaceport had also no doubt served as a military base, and if any unpleasant automatic devices still remained to greet unauthorized visitors, they also would probably be concentrated there. So their landing was a bit rougher than it might have been. But they were down now, in one piece, and had received another benefit none had thought of. It would have been obvious had anyone reflected on it.

  The wind came in a constant wall from behind the building and the bluff below which they had landed. While by no means perpendicular, the bluff proved steep enough to cut off a good portion of the perpetual gale. It would mean easier working conditions around the shuttle itself, in addition to eliminating the possible problem of having to tie the ship down. The ship’s branch meteorology ‘puter registered the outside windage at their resting point at a comfortable forty-five kilometers an hour. Positively sylvan.

  “Atha, Wolf, give me a hand getting the crawler out. The rest of you check over your equipment and make sure you’ve got an extra pair of goggles apiece.” He turned to Tse-Mallory. “Je! They built their city behind the biggest windbreak they could find. Sort of gives the lie to your ‘caressing wind-bath’ theory, kweli?”

  “Do not abuse my guesses, captain, or I’ll make no more.” His eyes and mind were obviously focused elsewhere.

  “Wolf?”

  “Here, captain.” The skeleton came out of the fore cabin, looking even more outré than usual in his silver belt and goggles. The expression on his face was odd, because any expression on his face was an oddity.

  “Captain, there’s an active thermal power source somewhere under this city.”

  “Not nuclear?” asked Malaika. A gravitonic power plant was of course impossible on any body with a reasonable field of its own. Still, there were known aspects to Tar-Aiym science that humanx researchers couldn’t even begin to explain.

  “No, sir. It’s definitely thermal. Big, too, according to the sensors, although it was a very fast check-through.”

  Malaika’s eyebrows did flip-flops. “Interesting. Does that suggest any ‘guesses’ to you, gentlesirs?”

  Tse-Mallory and Truzenzuzex pulled themselves away from their rapt contemplation of the monolith above and considered the question.

  “Yes, several,” began the philosoph. “Among which is the confirmation of a fact we were fairly certain of anyway, that this is a young planet in a fairly young GO system. Tapping the core-power of a planet is difficult enough on the youngest, which this is not. But anyone can tap. The problem is to keep it under sufficient control to be able to channel it without causing planetwide earthquakes or volcanoes under major Hive-centers. We’re still not so very adept at that ourselves. And only in the most limited sense.”

  “And,” continued Tse-Mallory, “it suggests they needed a hell of a lot of power for something, doesn’t it? Now this is a fairly good-sized Tar-Aiym town, but it also seems to be the only one on the planet.” He looked at Malaika for confirmation and the trader nodded, slowly. “So for the mind of me I can’t see what they had to go to all that trouble for, when their quasinuclear plants would have provided more than enough power for this one city. Especially with all the water that’s available.”

  “Captain,” said Truzenzuzex impatiently, “We will be happy to hypothesize for you at len
gth—later. But now I wish you would see about removing our surface transportation from the hold.” His head swiveled to a port and the great golden eyes stared outward. “I have little doubt that your unasked questions and, hopefully, most of ours will be answered when we get inside that Tuarweh on top of this bluff.”

  “If we get into it,” added Tse-Mallory. “It is just possible that the owners locked up when they moved, and left no key behind.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  The crawler was a low, squat vehicle, running on twin duralloy treads. It also had a universal spherical “wheel” at its center of gravity to facilitate turning. Atha had made a few preliminary safety calculations and had come up with the fact that it would remain relatively stable in winds up to two hundred and fifty kilometers per, at which point things would start to get sticky. Flinx, for one, had no desire to put her calculations to a practical test. Nor did Malaika, apparently. He insisted on filling every empty space on the machine with objects of weight. If the winds got that bad, all the paraphernalia they could stuff into it wouldn’t help. But it at least provided them with something of a psychological lift.

  Not the least of these “objects of weight” was a heavy laser rifle, tripod-mounted.

  “Just in case,” the merchant had said, “opening the door proves more difficult than it might.”

  “For a peaceful trader traveling on his private racer you appear to have stocked quite an arsenal,” Truzenzuzex murmured.

  “Philosoph, I could give you a long, involved argument replete with attractive semantic convolutions, but I will put it, so, and leave it. I am in a very competitive business.”

  He cocked a challenging eye at the thranx.

  “As you say.” Truzenzuzex bowed slightly.

  They boarded the crawler, which had been maneuvered close to the cargo port to minimize the initial force of the wind. The big land cruiser held all of them comfortably. It had been designed to transport heavy cargo, and even with Malaika’s “objects of weight” scattered about there was plenty of room in which to move around. If bored, one might take the ladder up to the driver’s compartment, with its two beds and polyplexalloy dome. There was room up there for four, but Malaika, Wolf, and the two scientists occupied it immediately and were disinclined to give it up. So Flinx had to be content with the tiny ports in the main compartment for his view of the outside. He was alone in the quiet spaces with the two women, who sat at extreme opposite ends of the cabin from each other and exchanged deathly thoughts back and forth. A less congenial atmosphere would have been difficult to imagine. Try as he would, they were beginning to give him a headache. He would far rather have been upstairs.

  They were making their way up the slope of the bluff now, zigzagging whenever the incline grew too steep for even the crawler’s powerful spiked treads to negotiate. Their progress was slow but steady, the machine after all having been designed to get from point A to point B in one piece, and not to race the clock. It did its job effectively.

  As might have been predicted, the ground was crumbly and soft. Still, it was more rock than sand. The treads dug in deeply and the engine groaned. It slowed their advance somewhat but assured them of excellent traction in the teeth of the wind. Still, Flinx would not like to have faced a real blow in the slow device.

  They finally topped the last rise. Looking back into the distance Tse-Mallory could make out the crumbled spires and towers of the city, obscured by eternal dust and wind. It was more difficult to see up here. Gravel, dirt, and bits of wood from the hearty ground-hugging plants began to splatter against the front of the dome. For the first time the howl of the wind became audible through the thick shielding, sounding like fabric tearing in an empty room.

  Wolf glanced at their anemometer. “A hundred fifteen point five-two kilos an hour . . . sir.”

  “Je! I’d hoped for better, but it could be worse. Much worse. No one is going to be taking long walks. Upepokuu! In a gale we can manage. A hurricane would be awkward.”

  As they moved farther in from the edge of the bluff the air began to clear sufficiently for them to catch sight of their objective. Not that they could have missed it. There wasn’t anything else to see, except an occasional clump of what looked like dried seaweed. They rolled on, the wind dying as they moved farther into the lee of the building. Three pairs of eyes leaned back . . . and back, and back, until it seemed certain it would be simpler to lie down and stare upward. Only Wolf, eyes focused on the instrument board of the massive crawler, failed to succumb to the lure of the monolith.

  It towered above them, disappearing skyward in swirls of dust and low clouds, unbroken by ledge or window.

  “How huyukubwa?” Malaika finally managed to whisper.

  “How big do I make it? I couldn’t say too well,” answered Tse-Mallory. “Tru? You’ve got the best depth vision among us.”

  The philosoph was quiet for a long moment. “In human terms?” He lowered his eyes to look at them. If he could have blinked he would, but thranx eye-shields reacted only in the presence of water or strong sunlight, so he could not. His improvised goggles gave his face an unbalanced look.

  “Well over a kilo at the base . . . each way. It looked a perfect square from the air, you know. Perhaps . . .” he took another brief glance upward, “three kilometers high.”

  The slight jolting and bumping they had been experiencing abruptly disappeared. They were now traveling on the smooth yellow-white circle on which the structure was centered.

  Malaika peered down at the substance they were traversing, then back at the building. The heavy crawler left no tracks on the solid surface.

  “What do you suppose this stuff is, anyway?”

  Tse-Mallory had joined him in looking down at the even ground. “I don’t know. When I saw it from the air my natural inclination was to think, stone. Just before we grounded I thought it looked rather ‘wet,’ like certain heavy plastics. Now that we’re down on it I’m not sure of anything. Ceramics, maybe?”

  “Metal-reinforced, surely,” added Truzenzuzex. “But as for the surface, at least, a polymer ceramic would be a good guess, certainly. It’s completely different from anything I’ve ever seen before, even on other Tar-Aiym planets. Or for that matter, from anything I could see of the city as we came in.”

  “Um. Well, since they built their city in the lee of this bluff, as a windbreak, I don’t doubt, I’d expect any mlango to be on this side of the structure. Je?”

  As it turned out shortly enough, there was, and it was.

  Unlike the rest of the mysterious building the material used in the construction of the door was readily identifiable. It was metal. It towered a good thirty meters above the cab of the crawler and stretched at least half that distance in either direction. The metal itself was unfamiliar, dull-gray in color, and possessed of an odd glassy luster. Much like the familiar fogs of home, for Flinx. The whole thing was recessed several meters into the body of the building.

  “Well, there’s your door, captain,” said Tse-Mallory. “How do we get in? I confess to a singular lack of inspiration, myself.”

  Malaika was shaking his head in awe and frustration as he examined the entrance. Nowhere could be seen the sign of a single joint, weld, or seam.

  “Drive right up to it, Wolf. The wind is practically dead here. We’ll have to get out and look for a doorbuzz or something. If we don’t find anything that’s recognizably a handle or a keyhole, we’ll have to unlimber the rifle and try a less polite entrance.” He eyed the massive square dubiously. “Although I hope that alternative doesn’t become necessary. I know the stubbornness of Tar-Aiym metals.”

  As it turned out, the problem was solved for them.

  Somewhere in the bowels of the colossal structure, long dormant but undead machinery sensed the approach of an artificial mechanism containing biological entities. It stirred sleepily, prodding resting memory circuits to wakefulness. The design and composition of the approaching vehicle was unfamiliar, but neither was it rec
ognizably hostile. The entities within were likewise unfamiliar, albeit more obviously primitive. And there was an A-class mind among them. Likewise unfamiliar, not hostile. And it had been such a long time! The building debated with itself for the eternity of a second.

  “Hold it, Wolf!” The merchant had noticed a movement in front of the crawler.

  With a smoothness and silence born of eternal lubrication, the great door separated. Slowly, with the ponderousness of tremendous weight, the two halves slid apart just far enough for the crawler to enter comfortably. Then they stopped.

  “Utamu. We are expected, perhaps?”

  “Automatic machinery,” mumbled Truzenzuzex, entranced.

  “My thoughts also, philosoph. Take us in, Wolf.”

  The quiet man obediently gunned the engine and the powerful landcraft began to rumble forward. Malaika eyed the sides of the narrow opening warily. The metal was not a reasonably thin sheet. It was not even a moderate one.

  “A good nineteen, twenty, meters through,” said Tse-Mallory matter-of-factly. “I wonder what it was designed to keep out.”

  “Not us, apparently,” added Truzenzuzex. “You could have played your toy on that for days, Captain, and burned it out before you scratched the entrance. I’d like to try a SCCAM on it, just to see which would come out the winner. I’ve never heard of any artificial structure resisting a SCCAM projectile, but then I’ve never seen a twenty-meter-thick Hive-block of solid Aiymetal before, either. The question will undoubtedly remain forever academic.”

  They had rolled perhaps a few meters beyond the door when it began to slide heavily shut behind them. The silence of it was eerie. Wolf glanced questioningly at Malaika, hand on throttle. The merchant, however, was at least outwardly unconcerned.