‘This ship came from earth.’ He saw her nod her head but even as he said it, he found this idea incredible. It meant that these people had come here without help. It meant that at a time when the rest of the world was using sailing ships, a group had flown off and made a hyperspace transit. She was smiling, obviously pleased with his answer. ‘How did it get here?’ he asked, ‘Surely it can't fly this far from the source’
‘They dragged it here after the war,’ Lynella replied, ‘and rolled it some of the way. All the mages were dead. They couldn't even fly it to the edge of the source. It took years, but they were determined to have it, even if they couldn't get in.’ She walked up to it and touched it. ‘Nobody has been inside it since then,’ she was saying. ‘It has a mage lock.’
She walked round to one side, pausing at intervals to concentrate on it.
‘I always thought that the opening would be on this side, but I could never quite be sure.’
‘You've always known the ship was here?’
‘Yes. I used to come here years ago. The lock on the door to this room doesn't take much power to open. I used to think that nobody knew I was here, but I expect that they were watching to see if I could open the globe, so they could steal what's inside it’
Soon, she found what she was searching for and, as she looked at it, a small door began to swing open in the metal surface. Paul looked in amazement as the opening revealed the metal to be almost a foot thick.
‘Please wait there and use your gun to stop anybody who tries to get in,’ Lynella said as she climbed in head first through the small hole. This was not easy in the formal dress that she had worn for the evening meal, but she soon disappeared, leaving Paul standing outside leaning against the globe holding his gun.
A few minutes later, nobody had come, and Paul had decided that he was probably wasting his time. He called out, ‘How long are you going to be?’
There was no reply but, moments later, the metal he was leaning against seemed to come alive, giving off a gentle humming noise. He turned in surprise as Lynella called out, ‘You can come in now.’
‘What about guarding the door?’
‘Come in and I'll close it.’
The interior was formed of a series of wooden platforms at different levels. In the sealed environment, nothing had faded, and the wood still glowed with dark polish. All around the outer surface were bunks. From what Paul could see, there must have been over a fifty of them in all. Then there was space that would have been for animals and plants. Outside them, the copper wall was highly polished and was emitting a soft light which diffused throughout the ship. Ascending the steep steps in front of him, he saw Lynella sitting on the edge of one of three couches at the centre of the globe.
She was wearing the jewel which was glowing gently on her forehead, but this was not all. A matching stone was held at her throat by a short necklace while others from the set decorated an elaborate head-dress.
‘Welcome to my true home.’ She smiled at him. Before he had a chance to reply, the bracelets on his wrists started to pull him forward. He stumbled slightly, and they eased off enough for him to gain his balance.
‘What now?’ he asked, almost knowing the answer as she guided him carefully forward and down at her side. Her face looked proud and almost distant, framed by the ancient jewels. Her body was thin and slightly scarred but had grown strong and agile. Her touch was hesitant and sensual.
Hours later, Lynella was sleeping and he rose quietly and began to look around. The thick metal at the equator of the sphere was exposed at this level, revealing simple runic patterns. The heraldic devices of the three families were woven into the symbols in front of the couches. He imagined each couch occupied by a great patriarch during the flight. Had it been a patriarch or possibly a matriarch? Whoever it had been, their combined power had been so great that it had been able to produce a field intensity sufficient for hyperspace inversion. Between the three of them, they had done as much as the entire fusion ring on Atlanta. Had they known what would happen?
36
The Director looked at the screen with satisfaction. The Great River Mining Company logo was displayed in full colour; the NASA logo was conspicuously absent. This software had been written over the last three months and owed nothing to NASA. That was very satisfying but the message itself was unsettling. It read:
LANDING SEQUENCE. TOUCHDOWN IN 14 HOURS 30 MINUTES.
He was very uncomfortable and expected it to become progressively worse. In four months, he had grown used to the ship and the way it worked. The floors were slightly curved, but this could only be seen in the corridors. Apart from that, everything had seemed reassuringly solid. This was all about to change. Throughout the previous day, he had felt the pull of the planet slowly build up, as their orbital velocity decreased. While they had been passing over the anomaly, the ring had been fired to maintain their orbit. At other times, there had been the deafening roar of the altitude jets burning vast amounts of precious hydrogen and oxygen that had been brought up by the shuttles. Then finally, they had tipped the ring to use the curve of the field to stop over the centre of the anomaly where they now sat, in an eerie quiet with just the gentle hum of the fusion source. He felt the pull of the planet as strong as the pull towards the floor. The mountings on the equipment strained as everything tried to move towards the corner of the room.
ROTATIONAL FIRING SEQUENCE COMMENCING ...PREPARE TO LOSE INTERNAL GRAVITY.
This was the part he had been dreading. He had never heard these jets before. The ship had been rotating when he had arrived and had done so ever since. Now it was going to stop. The jets were mounted on the outside of the rim and scarcely audible but, over the next fifteen minutes, the effect was quite as bad as he expected. He felt completely disoriented; the floor was no longer the floor. The deceleration forces pulled him in yet another direction, leaving his senses completely confused. Finally, they stopped. Down was towards the planet now and that was the way it was going to remain for the next year. He thought of the mining crew in comfort on the planet. All non-essential personnel had been sent down. They had camped a mile away from the landing field. That was how far away you had to be, to be safe, if the altitude jets were fired near the surface.
Captain Turner felt nostalgic. This was how the control room had been while they had been building the torus. That was in the good old days when right was right and wrong was wrong, and the likes of the Mission Director were never allowed anywhere near the ship. At least the man looked uncomfortable. He insisted on staying so he would have to live with it.
SHIP ROTATION ARRESTED. COMMENCING DESCENT.
They felt the lift from the ring ease fractionally and they were on their way down.
‘I still don't see why you can't go down a bit faster. This is painfully slow.’ The Mission Director was looking more and more uncomfortable.
‘I am the Captain of this ship and I decide how fast we go. If we go any faster, we may not be able to stop.’ The Captain was beginning to enjoy this. Being an experienced spacer had its joys, even in this crazy organisation.
TOUCHDOWN IN 4 HOURS. ATMOSPHERIC ENTRY IN ONE HOUR. PREPARING TO CLOSE PRESSURE HULL DOORS ON TORUS.
They looked at the screens. Slowly, the familiar red glow of each of the radiant coolers disappeared from view behind the massive doors. Those doors and their seals had never been tested. If any of the atmosphere got into the ring, there would be a catastrophic loss of power. Now he could see the small maintenance floats carrying his men out to check them. He watched intently as each seal was checked with the ultrasonic probes. This was the first time anybody had been able to go near the ring since the ship had started rotating and, even now, the men looked clumsy working in the unfamiliar gravity of the planet. Many of them knew the structure intimately, but all of their training was based on zero gravity work.
RING TEMPERATURE 300 DEGREES AND RISING. CONFIRM ALL INSPECTION PERSONNEL CLEAR OF DOORS.
‘Is that the last o
ne clear?’ the Captain looked at the First Officer who was systematically checking the screens.
‘All clear. Let's see what it looks like’
The Captain entered the all clear on his keyboard.
NITROGEN COOLING SYSTEM ACTIVATED
Liquid nitrogen flowed out from the massive tanks in the hub along pipes in the spokes. When it reached the ring, it vaporised and blew out of vents on its outside.
‘Here we go!’
The First Officer could see the beginnings of a vapour cloud forming, as the nitrogen dispersed into the outer rim of the atmosphere. Slowly the screens went white as the cloud swirled and spread and enveloped the ship in an eerie cocoon.
The Abbot looked out from his vantage point in the upper levels of the monastery. Below him in the valley, he could see the great circular scar of the completed landing field and the enormous tented city near it. He had been watching the ship since dawn, when the red glow on the ring had been clearly visible against the dark sky. Then the first rays of the sun had let him see the sheer size of his enemy for the first time. Even thirty miles away, there was no mistaking the power of it.
‘We shall have to go under it and get it from below. We know where it has got to go, so it should not be difficult.’ He looked down at the ancient ship in its crucible at the edge of the plain below him. ‘We must begin.’
The message was passed down and a gentle hum came up from the depths of the hill beneath him. A hundred trained minds focused on the device that had been their lives’ work, each entity moving within its intricate networks seeking out others. As they met, they combined; gradually building, each with little power in their own right, but combining into a whole whose power exceeded the sum of its components. Slowly, the hum coalesced into pulses which surged through the channels and emerged into the growing daylight to flow into the iron ring. In the ring, it flowed around and around, pulsing ever more strongly now it had an avenue to escape and show its raw energy.
Captain Turner felt the ship lurch and felt fear flow through him, Paul must have been right. He reached for the microphone and switched to the intercom channel.
‘Paul, what the hell is going on?’
Paul looked around him. He too had been watching the ship from a hill at the edge of the source. He had seen the nitrogen cooling cut in on sequence and been quietly amazed by the cloud it formed. But now he could hear the distant roar of the altitude jets and he could see great plumes like dragons’ tails emerge from the bottom of the cloud, burning their last few reserves of hydrogen. For the Captain to dare to talk to a listed deserter on open intercom, they must be in serious trouble. He looked at Lynella. She was still sleeping under her web of electrical shielding as the soldiers quietly prepared a meal.
‘What's happened? Nothing to do with us.’
‘Severe distortion in the anomaly, pulsing, coming from the north.’
‘It's the monastery.’
‘This is Atlanta to shuttle craft on planet. We're going to have to go in. You heard what's happened. Take it out.’
Eight shuttlecraft took off from the compound and flew north. Within the hill, a slight tremor was felt as their missiles exploded in the earth, but the pulse never faltered. The ring was now slowly rising out of the crucible. A missile exploded on it, but it just rocked slightly and continued upward.
‘This is Shuttle Leader to Atlanta. The ring is out and moving towards the landing field. We are unable to stop it. I repeat, unable to stop it.’
Paul looked at Lynella who had risen and was standing by him, obviously in severe pain.
‘We're going to have to try,’ she said, her fear showing in her eyes.
They moved quickly down to the ship which they had prepared the night before, and climbed onto the small wooden platform they had attached to it with ropes. Lynella let her mind flow down into the ring. It was easier now because it was a way of deadening the pain. Paul looked on helplessly as she began to pour more and more into it.
‘Hold on tight, Atlanta. We're going to make it worse before we can make it better’
‘We can feel you now,’ came the reply, as fresh tails appeared from the bottom of the cloud and the noise of the jets grew louder.
Lynella was lying prone on the platform, her small body shaking as the energy was drained from it into the iron below. The ring began to lift, moving tentatively and swaying slightly as it rose. The jewels on her head and neck came to life, colours coursing through them. A cheer came up from the soldiers on the hillside. With increased confidence, she threw the rest of herself into the ring and began to explore it in a way which had not been done since the time of the Ancients. She found the pathways of purer metal which had been created at the time of the casting to enable her to set up eddy currents to control their flight. The knowledge that Paul had been able to give her about magnets, and the time she had spent exploring the rings on the globe helped her and she found herself able to control the swaying.
‘That's high enough. Now move towards the centre.’
Paul's instructions sounded as if they came from a different existence, but she knew that they were necessary. She was blind to everything except the ring. Within the ring her senses were growing keener and clearer. The other fields were no longer the blinding pain which pervaded her senses. Using the ring they could be seen with great clarity. Beneath her, she felt the reassuring but complex presence of the planet which she had been able to sense throughout her life and which now supported her. Ahead, she could sense a second field with its slow menacing pulse and above it, the third, far stronger with its searing, unnatural, high frequency.
‘How much more hydrogen have we got now?’ The Mission Director looked drawn and terrified. His only consolation was knowing that he would not be the only one to die if the ship crashed. There would be no survivors within thirty miles of the crash site.
The First Officer checked his screen. ‘About five minutes. If the ship below us is not removed by then we go down on top of it.’
‘And you think that Paul Evans can do that? Where the hell has he been all this time? Why was I not told? You say these ships work by magic? You seriously expect me to believe it? I'm going to sort this out once and for all when we get down.’
‘If we're alive.’ Having thus ended the conversation in the control room, the Captain switched the microphone on.
‘OK Paul. We have you both on radar. The other guy is almost directly below us now and you are about ten miles south. As far as I can see from the strength of the signal, you are definitely bigger than him. Are you going for a direct collision? You should be able to get rid of him that way’
Paul looked ahead ‘I would if I could hit him. Your vapour cloud is coming down all over the place; I can't see a thing over there. Lynella seems to be able to tell exactly which direction to go, but she can't tell exactly how high he is.’
The Captain looked at his screen. ‘I can cut the cooling for a few minutes. If you don't get him by then we're down anyway.’
The mist cleared from the ship and, over the next few minutes, it dispersed from the plain below it. Paul could now see the whole picture in the clear morning light. The camp in the forest with the deep ruts between the lines of tents. The fearful crowd who had been drawn to look to the sky by the sound of the altitude jets. The dull grey ring floating above the landing field and slowly rising towards his ship. Seen in the context of the features of the landscape, the great vessel dwarfed all below it. It was slowly descending. There was no visible sign of the struggle for its survival. The altitude jets could be heard but, without the vapour to show them, the burning hydrogen could not be seen. They were a menace quite as deadly as the ring below them.
37
Lynella was conscious of the speed of their flight and the battle that lay ahead. As her mind finally assumed total control of the ring, she formed images that were quite different from those which Paul saw. There was a great city spread across the plain in front of her with tall graceful towers
and spires built from gleaming metal. The city had no wall or palisade for its defence, but the towers had balconies at the highest level, and archers on them were launching volley after volley of arrows from their long bows. Through the arrows came the ships. On each ring, there was a solid platform, surrounded by thick shields to protect the mages inside them. Across the city, she could see, in places, the devastation that was caused when one of the rings hit a tower. The terrified defenders were thrown into the air to crash to their death some distance away. But the rings were not aiming to hit the towers; the arrows were a mere nuisance. This was a battle between ships. It was a battle of despair for the mages knew that few, if any, of them would survive this final encounter. Forming the image of the whole plain, Lynella could now see the defending ships moving towards the attacking fleet. The great crash rang out as the first two ships hit and the smaller of the two broke, killing the mind inside it in an instant. The victorious ship showed no visible damage, but it seemed to falter and fall below the others that were pressing home the attack. The realisation of what had happened left her with a cold dread of what lay ahead. The ring had not broken but great fractures had formed, blocking the current and throwing the mind out of many of the intricate circuits inside it. This left the mage crippled and unable to control his final descent to a crash that few survived.
The Abbot looked out at the scene that was now revealed. The ring below the Atlanta was now being drawn up towards it with increasing speed, but not fast enough to avoid the newcomer. He gave the command to take avoiding action.
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