‘Look, who says my soul needs saving anyway?’
‘You have flown ships in direct and open violation of the compact.’
‘If that's a sin in your religion, then you are just going to have to accept that I didn't know about it. Anyway, the crew fly the ship, I don't have anything to do with it.’
‘You have much to understand. We are not fools. We saw you coming across the plain in a ship and you were the only one in it.’
‘That was just a Jeep, not a ship. Now go and tell the Abbot that I frankly don't believe that he has the least interest in my soul and, if he wants technical information from me, this is a stupid way of getting it. None of it would be any use to him anyway.’
Brother Andrew returned to the Abbot and a heated discussion followed. Soon, the horses were brought, and they moved on in silence. They passed a few other travellers. One was clearly a messenger, riding a large horse with saddlebags but most were carrying farm produce on packhorses or in carts.
They continued until sunset and ate a meal in the fading light of the evening. The days on the planet were longer than earth-normal and Paul was too tired to contemplate escape before he lay down to sleep on a rough blanket.
They set off again in the early morning and eventually emerged from the forest again. He saw another set of the big stone structures that he had guessed were used for constructing the ships and Lynella had called crucibles. As they rode by he saw that they were all empty, and large trees growing up next to them had dislodged some of the stonework. A road lead up the hillside away from the source and he guessed that there must have been another settlement beyond the hills.
They proceeded in silence for the rest of the day. After a few hours riding on the following morning, they could see a large hill ahead of them which Paul estimated was almost due north of the centre of the source. At the foot of the hill, there were just two stone crucibles. They were smaller than most of those he had seen before, but he could see that one had a ship in it. They turned towards the hill, following a narrow path of well-worn flagstones which led around the edge of one of the crucibles and seemed to disappear into the trees at the foot of the hill. Moving into the trees, he saw a small paved clearing ahead with a group of men in it. There were some monks among them but most of them appeared to be servants and, when the party dismounted, some of these took the horses. Walking on, they turned sharply towards the hill and abruptly entered a cave.
The path was still smooth and paved and flickering lanterns revealed places where the rock had been cut back from it. In other places, there were carvings in the rock. Some of them were simple; others were highly ornate but all of them showed symbols of Christianity, crucifixes and figures of the Virgin Mary.
After a short distance, they came to a substantial stone doorway. The thick wooden door was opened as they approached.
‘Take him to a cell to contemplate his sins.’ The Abbot addressed the two large monks who had been guarding him.
‘What about that weapon he used? We have no auras to protect us from him.’
‘All right. Search him while I wait, but be quick.’ Paul's pack, jacket and the contents of his pockets were rapidly removed, and he was thoroughly searched. The monks were particularly interested by the bracelets that Lynella had placed on his wrists and showed them to the Abbot. Soon satisfied that he was no longer a threat, they took him through the door. Collecting a lantern from a rack just inside, one of them lit it from a candle which was provided for the purpose and they went through a maze of dark corridors deep into the hill. Along some of them, strange spheres hung from the roof, reflecting the light from the lantern as they passed. Finally, Paul was pushed through a doorway. He heard the door slam shut and a rusty bolt being pushed home.
9
Slowly, as Paul’s eyes adjusted, he realised that it was not completely dark. Above him, there was one of the glass spheres, and it was glowing. By its dim light, he could see the limits of his cell which contained nothing but a straw mattress. It was hot and stifling; the only source of ventilation appeared to be a small grill in the door. He lay down in exhaustion and soon fell asleep.
He awoke to find that some food had been slid through a small hatch at the bottom of the door. It was only bread and cheese, but it was fresh and tasted good and there was a metal mug of cool, clean water with it. After eating, he checked every inch of the cell but found that it had been roughly hewn out of solid rock and offered no chance of escape. By listening at the door, he could occasionally hear the sound of distant footsteps but, apart from that, he could neither hear nor see anything.
Some time later, he became aware of a gentle humming noise which seemed to come out of the rock from all directions at the same time. The noise slowly built up and began to pulse with an increase and decrease of intensity every few seconds. As it pulsed, the brightness of the sphere above him pulsed with it. The sound came and went like rain drops from a summer shower landing on a roof. Over a period of a few minutes, it grew and then receded, hesitating at times and building again but then fading. Shortly after it had stopped, he heard his door being opened.
‘The Abbot would like to see you. Please come this way.’ The guard looked almost friendly.
Soon, he saw a brighter light emerging from a doorway ahead and was taken in. The room had clean straight walls hung with oil paintings, every one of which showed a monk in a brown robe. He was shown to a comfortable chair facing the Abbot who was behind a large, beautifully carved, writing table. The room was lit by two ornate oil lamps hung from brackets to either side. Glass globes hung from the ceiling, but these were not lit.
‘I hope that you have now considered the needs of your soul, and will be more helpful with me than you were with Brother Andrew.’
‘It so happens that I have indeed considered the needs of my soul and would still appreciate an opportunity to pray here; that is, if you do pray. This is a monastery, isn't it?’
The Abbot replied in a firm but level voice, ‘There are many things that you do not understand about our Lord, and the first is that you should show due respect and deference to those whom he has chosen to speak his word. You see that I have an aura?’
‘Yes, it's a bit obvious isn't it?’
‘Then you must realise that it is a sign from God and shows that I have been chosen by Him. Since the time our landing on this planet, there have been just a few in each generation who have been chosen in this way and they have become the senior members of this order and held in respect by all.’
‘Looks more like some kind of Psi power being used to control a high frequency electromagnetic field to me. Very clever how it stopped the bullet but not a lot to do with religion. Is that what you use to make the lights work?’ He looked up at one of the unlit globes and added ‘When they do. Come to think of it, it's just a variant on the trick Lynella must have used to put these bracelets on - is she supposed to be Holy too?’
Once again, the Abbot kept his voice level, only showing his anger in his eyes. ‘Brother Andrew will see to the needs of your soul and ensure that you study the ways of obedience in due course, but for now the Lord has given me strength to suffer your irreverence in order to pursue his work. Tell me about Psi power and electromagnetic fields.’
‘I keep telling you that I can't help you. You probably know more about Psi power than anybody back home and I don't know anything at all about it, except that nobody has ever proved that it actually exists. I suppose I could teach you some basic electromagnetism, but it would take hundreds of years to develop the technology to build a ship like ours here and I don't know how most of it works anyway.’
The Abbot looked at him carefully, and methodically rearranged some of the papers on his desk, pausing to read a few lines of the neatly handwritten text. Paul looked back and wondered if the interview techniques taught in management studies had been invented by a man like this. He was not fooled. The Abbot had no more important business. Trying unsuccessfully to sound somewhat bored, th
e Abbott continued, ‘You were saying that I know about this thing you call Psi.’
‘You seem to use it for your aura.’
‘My aura is a miracle given to me by the Lord. Is that what you call Psi?’
‘No, quite the opposite. It's a way of describing things that are not miracles but cannot yet be explained by science.’
The Abbot looked pleased. ‘So, if you can't explain it, how do you know that it's not a miracle?’
Paul paused. He had a point. ‘My religion is based on faith, a sort of instinctive understanding. If your power came from it, I would know. Anyway, how do you explain Lynella's powers?’
‘Lynella is using the ancient powers of evil which have been forbidden by the compact for generations, and were believed to have died out with their perpetrators.’
‘Who says that she is evil, and you are good?’
‘The powers of evil killed and maimed thousands of innocents in the wars of the great mages. Your faith will show you the good and the evil.’
He looked at the floor and replied almost apologetically, ‘That's just the point. It doesn't tell me what you're telling me’.
Carefully leaning back in his chair and folding his arms, the Abbot gave Paul his full attention. ‘Why were you chosen to be sent on this mission? What special skills do you have?’
‘I wasn’t sent. The regulations said that nobody should leave the site. I broke them. I saw a marker stone and decided to investigate to see if the beings that made it were still here.’
The abbot smiled. ‘Yes, I can see you breaking regulations. But I actually wanted to know who sent you to this planet.’
‘Nobody sent me that time either. There were a lot of risks, but it looked like a great opportunity with good pay. You see this is the first ship from earth ever to go to another planet and I wanted to get away to somewhere new. Hyperspace travel was only discovered a few years ago.’ He suddenly stopped. ‘Except…. except how did your families get here?’
‘Our families were brought here by the power of their faith. What were you running away from? What regulation was it this time?’
‘I wasn’t running away from anything. I plan to go home and enjoy my bonus when I get back’
Above the desk, one of the glass spheres began to glow, pulsing slightly as before. By the light of the oil lamps Paul noticed two fine wires leading from the top of it.
‘So that power you are using for the lights. That can’t be used for your ships can it? Is that what you think I can do for you? Make it powerful enough. You have no idea.’
‘What were you running from? Was it another girl, like the princess?’ He leaned forward looking Paul straight in the eye. ‘An enraged family, father and brothers? She should be warned.’
‘No, you can’t threaten me with that. I wasn’t running away from anything. Why are you so keen to make ships fly? Where do you want to go? The magnetic lift system will only work over the anomaly at the source. You can’t use it to fly around this planet. Our ship has to use regular jet engines to speed up or slow down in orbit.’
‘It is the duty of every person of our faith to be a pilgrim. We must all strive to be pilgrims even if it cannot be done for many generations. But now the time may be near.’
‘Where do you want to go on this pilgrimage? Where are the shrines?’
‘Jerusalem of course. Has the earth forgotten?’
10
George Henry Turner III came from the nearest anybody had ever been to a spacefaring family. His father and his grandfather had worked for NASA and he wore his immaculate white overall with the Stars and Stripes and the NASA emblem on it with pride. The Mission Director scowled at it. Captain Turner scowled back at the space on the wall where the presidential emblem had been. The large Great River Mining company logo made him angry every time he saw it. He remembered the bitter day when he had been told that hyperspace technology had moved forward so fast that his ship would be obsolete as soon as they finished building it. He still couldn’t accept the idea of selling it like a used car.
‘The first piling rig is working well,’ the Director announced. ‘How soon will the rest be ready?’
‘They'll be ready by the end of the week, just like I told you. I'll give your man Evans that much. He may be a patronising jerk, but he certainly did some good design work on them. How is he getting on down there?’
‘He's gone’
‘He can't have. He's the only one there with any idea. This isn't a helicopter, you know. You can't just land it in a field. It's over a hundred thousand tonnes of very delicate spacecraft.’
‘You have accepted that you can't find anything wrong with his calculations and landing will halve our time here, so let's get to the point. Do you know where the piles have got to go?’
‘Of course I do. I did the drawings showing the support points for the ship, didn't I?’
‘Right. I want you to go down there and make sure they go there.’
‘No way. I'm not going down into that lot. Anyway, what happened to him?’
‘We don't know and it's none of your business anyway. The point is that in exactly six months from today, your precious ship is going down there, whether you like it or not, and if you don't go down there to get it right, then it will just be too bad, won't it?’
George remembered the first time he had met the Director. They had been in this same cabin, only he had been behind the desk. The Director had walked in and spelled out what was going to happen, and added that the Captain's cabin was now going to be the owner's cabin. He hated these meetings every time, but every time there was nothing he could do about it.
He left the room with as much dignity as he could manage, walked to the end of the corridor and looked out of the viewing port. The planet below was a mass of swirling clouds and did not look at all inviting. It was difficult to watch any part of it for any length of time because the rotation of the ship made it appear to turn around every 40 seconds; this was just sufficient to give the effect of normal earth gravity at the outer edge of the hub. He stood watching for some time, looking at the storms clouds below.
He took the lift up to the shuttle bay, holding on to the grab rails to counter the gyroscopic forces that pulled him across it, and the progressive weightlessness as he moved towards the centre of the hub.
‘Good morning, Captain,’ his officer on watch in the bay greeted him.
‘I'm going down to the planet.’ It hurt to say it. Time and again he had reassured his crew that none of them would have to leave their ship. The officer looked shocked but made no reply.
‘Shuttle 25 is prepared for flight. Sir. Depart in 5 minutes’
Descending through the clouds, he saw the rich green of the forest below him with the great circular scar of the landing field now clearly visible. The shuttle hovered over some clear ground and finally came to rest near some site huts. He looked out of the window in horror. He had seen the mud on the landing gear of the shuttles in the mother ship but never, in his worst nightmares, had he imagined it was as bad as this. The other shuttles were scattered around in no particular order. One was even leaning at a dangerous angle, almost down to its belly in the mud. The whole area was covered in massive deep ruts with pools of water in the bottom.
Just as the door opened, there was a crashing thump which made the ground shake. He looked up to see where it had come from. Another followed it. Every three seconds, it came and now he could see the pile driver driving the test piles on the far side of the compound. It looked like some great medieval monster hanging from the hook of the crane. The great piston rose slowly up and fell with a crash to rise up again in a cloud of black diesel smoke as the machine fired. Underneath it was the pile. They had no concrete and not much steel, so it was timber, most the trunk of a massive oak tree. Each time the piston fell, it was driven less than an inch into the ground but, as he watched it, he could see it slowly moving down. He could see now that this crazy scheme might just work, but that was just one
pile. They had to drive ten thousand of them and they had just six months to do it.
He walked over to the site huts and opened the door to the one with ‘WORKS MANAGER’ painted on the door in irregular letters. Inside, he saw a large man sitting behind a desk eating some stale looking sandwiches.
‘Hello, you're the ship's Captain, aren't you?’
‘I am Captain Turner.’
‘What the hell are you doing down here? I thought that you lot refused to come down?’
‘Did you?’
‘I was told that a new site manager was coming on the shuttle.’
‘That's me. I've got to run this site from now on’
‘Says who?’
‘The Mission Director.’
He paused to drink what appeared to be weak coffee from a chipped mug.
‘If that's the case, I wish you joy. Wait till you see the idiots I've been given to do the job.’
‘I'll bring some of my own men. At any time, I can spare about 50. They may not be experienced in this type of work but most of them helped build that ship up there.’
11
‘Attention all personnel on the ship. This is the Mission Director. At noon on Thursday; that is in exactly 48 hours from now, we are going to launch the first data bullet back to earth. Because of the strong magnetic fields in this part of space, using the accelerators to launch it will jolt the ship with 5 g moving to ship north for 5 seconds. Then we shall have to get it back into its proper orbit by pulsing the drive over the anomaly using 2 g to ship south the next minute or so. Everything must be secured, and I mean everything. If anybody lands up in the sort of bloody shambles that happened all over the ship when we came here, the full cost of the damage will be deducted from their pay. Is that clear?’
Ringships Page 6