by J F Bone
Each new vista that opened to them left them feeling more tiny, more alone in this immensity of steel, plastic, and technology. The thousands of empty rooms, the hundreds of passageways and cross passageways mocked them with their silence. The vast mass of the structure simply couldn’t be grasped by the human mind in its entirety. It was an enormous achievement by a race far more advanced than their own. And yet about the whole building there clung an air of tragedy, an impression of cosmic failure appalling in its completeness.
Bennett wondered what the original inhabitants had been like. It seemed strange that they left behind no pictures. There were no portraits and no statues. The decorations were either abstract or geometric, and to Bennett this was the strangest survival aspect of all. He had never encountered a race which did not glorify itself in metal or in stone. It was almost as though the original inhabitants had been ashamed of themselves, if not of their achievements.
That they had been humanoid was obvious from the furnishings of the quarters, and the controls of the machines. But that was natural enough. An upright gait and handlike forelimbs were characteristic of every intelligent race so far encountered in Man’s exploration of the stars.
The secret of intelligence—and of technology, for that matter—seemed to reside in a thinking brain and hands that could meddle—along with a posture that left the hands free, and unconstrained. It would have been far stranger if the original inhabitants had not been similar to men in that respect.
III
IT WAS NEARLY A month before they found the crawler. The prosaic little track layer proclaimed its terrestrial origin in every line and plane of its functional body. It was hidden behind a curtain of vines that blocked off one of the upper passageways—vines that had grown from their confinement in one of the hydroponics rooms and extended in a mass of living green from end to end of the corridor. The assortment of gear and equipment piled in its cargo compartment was easily recognizable as having been salvaged from a spaceship.
Bennett looked at it, and sighed with relief and satisfaction. It resolved one mystery completely. At least he knew now precisely how they had come to this place. Judging from the variety of items there had been plenty of time to strip the ship intelligently, so it could not have been wrecked too badly. Perhaps it had not been wrecked at all. Perhaps it had merely run out of fuel.
With the crawler they found a passageway to the outside—a charred tunnel filled with the burned remnants of old vines, and the burgeoning growth of new. The tunnel led upward at a gentle slope to a great metal valve that stood ajar. The valve opened on a level expanse covered with low dunes of fine, windswept sand, which proved to be the top of a gigantic mesa. It rose a full five thousand feet in a staggeringly sheer sweep of gleaming, vertical wall above the big brother of the little desert on its summit.
As far as the eye could reach there stretched a lifeless expanse of yellow dunes gleaming harshly under a brazen sky. Overhead an enormous yellow sun dipped slowly toward an oddly close horizon. It was twice the size of Earth’s sun but it must have been cooler, for the air was not too hot to endure.
It was hot enough, however. The dryness sucked at the body with impalpable thirsty mouths, imparting a fleeting coolness to the skin as the alien sun’s hot rays bounced with uncompromising harshness from the surrounding sands.
It was a grim land, Bennett reflected—sterile and lifeless. He stared for a long moment in silence at the mesa’s level summit and the low dunes that slowly swept across its surface to disappear over the leeward edge and rejoin the sands below from whence they came.
The formation of dunes so high above the ground surface of this world bothered him a little, but even as he thought of how this unusual phenomenon might occur, the sun dropped below the horizon, and with its passing came coolness. The coolness was accompanied by a wind. Not the gentle evening breeze of Earth, but a ripping blast that picked up the desert sands and hurled them along with stinging force!
In a moment they were caught, whirled, and half blinded by a raging gale that continuously increased in violence. The dustlike sand seemed to lift bodily from the surface, to ride the rising wind in a dense pall that blinded the vision and filled the eyes and nose with gritty particles which stung like fire!
Fortunately they were close to the opening below when the wind came, and before it reached full force they had staggered choking and coughing into the tunnel. For a moment they watched the howling storm outside, and then with mutual consent turned back to the safe interior.
From the material in the cargo compartment of the crawler, Bennett came upon what he first thought was a real find. It was a stack of about twenty technical manuals with plastic covers, neatly packed in a thin-walled metal container. It was a find all right, but its usefulness was debatable. A pessimist might even have inferred, straight off, that its usefulness was nil.
Take the one entitled, “Operating Instructions for the Mark V Chronotrine Converter”. That little gem was typical. The title was completely intelligible except for one word—the key word. Just what in hell was a chronotrine?
Laura looked at him with troubled eyes. She had been reading something far less obtuse, which also had come from the crawler. It was called, “Flame of Klystra”, and was from all appearances a good, meaty book in which sin, sex, and sadism were skillfully blended.
“What’s the matter, George?” she asked.
“Just what do you make of this?” he asked.
“Of what?”
“Listen.” He tapped the page and began to read. “ ‘To advance the chronotrine helices for Cth yellow operation, remove the cover bindants. This will expose the discontinuant facies. Apply tensive forces of three dynes magnitude to the exposed facies. Caution! Under no circumstances should liquid discontinuant be employed on these surfaces as the submolecular energies will be severed rather than withdrawn, resulting in an Ericsson Effect of the second order!’ ”
“It sounds dangerous,” she said. “What does it mean?”
“Damned if I know. There are words in there I’ve never seen.”
“I thought you were an engineer?”
“I am, but the stuff’s Ancient French to me.”
“Then why read it?”
“I’d like to know what’s happened to technology—”
“What good will it do you if you don’t understand it?”
“Maybe I will some day.”
“Well, don’t bother me with it now. I’ve just got to the part where Rayt Maxim has entered the Temple of Love disguised as a priest, and I want to find out what happens.”
“Just how did that penny dreadful get mixed up with useful cargo?” he demanded. “I haven’t gotten a civilized word out of you since you found it. And you’re only half through!” he added with mild bitterness.
She laughed at him as he turned back to the tech manual. Technology must have taken some fantastic strides in those eleven lost years of his life. It was not too surprising, of course, because space was a problem that challenged the best brains of the Confederation. Knowledge had a tendency to increase along a logarithmic curve, and even in his remembered time it had been obvious that the problems of interworld travel had to be solved if the Confederation was to become effective.
The objective time-lag effect of hyperspace travel made interworld relations factors of risk and uncertainty. One never knew precisely what one would find at the end of a journey, for months or years might pass in what was but a matter of subjective days to the traveller. And that particular problem was only one of many.
That a considerable number of them had been solved satisfactorily was apparent from the information he could extract from the manuals. The one entitled, “Problems in Fourspace Navigation”, made no mention of the time-lag effect that had bothered spacemen ever since the days of the legendary Einstein.
He looked across the room at Laura. She might be Laura Latham as she once had claimed, but the old she-wolf had vanished behind a facade of shapely camou
flage. And she might well be as ruthless and adaptable as before. Certainly she had accepted their situation with far better grace than he had. She was taking it calmly, and in stride. While he stewed and fretted about his lost years, she relaxed in the strange surroundings and accepted them as normal. It bothered him—as did her obvious ambition to make him an intimate part of her life.
Propinquity had a hand in it. It drove them together, and what had started out as a close association for mutual support alone was turning into something quite different. He smiled sourly. If it wasn’t for his Navy conditioning it would have taken no effort on her part to gain her ends. But junior officers weren’t supposed to form attachments, and a paternal Navy made sure that they wouldn’t by strategically-placed psychic blocks which were more effective than any lecture from a Commanding Officer.
Laura sighed, rose to her feet and left the room. She wouldn’t go far, he knew. She never did. In fact it was difficult to keep her in her own section of the suite they occupied. His early suggestion that they occupy separate quarters had fallen on sterile soil. She simply refused to see it his way and he was utterly powerless to overcome her stubbornness.
He stared at the door through which she had vanished and swore softly under his breath. What he needed was a few more defense mechanisms. His present supply were getting rather frayed around the edges. With a sigh he turned back to the tech manual.
He was drowsing over the pages when she poked her head through the half-open doorway. Her “Hey! George!” woke him up.
“What now?” he asked.
“What’d you like for dinner?”
“Steak, french fries, green peas, a tossed salad with roquefort dressing, coffee and a piece of deep-dish apple pie.” He grinned. “I’d like it, but I’m not going to get it.”
“Dreamer!” she laughed.
“There’s no harm in dreaming. Frankly, I’m getting sick and tired of this vegetarian diet. Didn’t the people who built this place ever hear of meat?”
“Maybe they did,” Laura said. “But you’ll have to take pot-luck. Come on in, my lad, and I’ll cook you a dinner like grandmother used to make.”
“With what? Imagination? Besides, if that’s the best you can do I’d rather not. My grandmother was a terrible cook.”
Laura grinned at him as he came reluctantly out of the chair. She stepped into the doorway and stood there provocatively, one hand on a rounded hip, a peculiar smile on her face.
She was developing some new and highly strategic curves, and he paused a second while his conditioning took firm hold of the idea and shook it back into the darker recesses of his brain.
“Come in and sit down,” Laura said, gesturing at the low table in the center of the room. “I’ll be with you in a minute. She turned toward the wall with its enigmatic double row of buttons, and in a moment turned back to him with a square platter in her hand that smelled delicious.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“What you’ve been asking for,” Laura said in a casual tone. “Steak and all those other indigestible things!”
“But—”
“I’ll get the pie later,” she added, completely ignoring his startlement.
“But how in heaven’s name did you manage to—”
She cut him short with a deprecatory wave of her hand. “While you’ve been messing around with those silly tech manuals, I’ve been doing some experimentation with our present gadgetry.” She pointed to the row of buttons on the wall. “Look. Press this one, and the panel over those eight buttons lights up. Then just think of what you want, and it pops out of the slot underneath. Simple isn’t it?” She removed another square platter. “I like Iamb chops,” she added unnecessarily.
“How does it work? Do you know?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea. I was just fooling around with it earlier today, and I was thinking how wonderful a chocolate malt would taste, and—so help me if I didn’t get one! So I figured if it could give me that, I could get anything else I wanted in the way of food.”
“And up to now we’ve been eating just the raw materials, so to speak. I wonder what sort of a hookup converts this stuff. It must be an electronicist’s nightmare.”
“I don’t care. All I know is that it works.”
He sighed. That was a woman for you—the ultimate nadir in mechanical curiosity. Workability was her sole criterion. She’d fiddle around until something happened, hut she didn’t give a tinker’s dam why. The result was enough.
His features relaxed in a smile. At that, he had to admit that Laura had accomplished more practical results with an alien technology than he had. There was no denying the appetizing realness of that steak. And if Laura’s imagination was any criterion on her culinary ability, Earth had lost a master cook when she’d turned her hand to business. His happy stomach found an echo in his voice.
“I’ve never really appreciated you,” he said. “That’s the truth,” she replied. “You never have.”
“That was a wonderful steak,” he conceded, with unqualified admiration.
“The old-timers were right when they made that famous remark about the way to a man’s heart,” she said obliquely. “I hate to share my moment of glory with a steak, but it’s better than nothing.”
“The glory’s all yours,” he said magnanimously. “I only wish that I could do something in return.”
“You know perfectly well what you can do!” Bennett flushed.
“And if you’re not going to do anything,” Laura said grimly, “I suppose I’ll have to take steps.” She moved toward him, took his face between her hands and kissed him passionately on the mouth. It was a thorough, skillfully executed job.
“There,” she said. “Now if that doesn’t do anything to you, I’ll give up. I’ve tried everything else. You don’t realize how discouraging it is when a woman has to do all of the lovemaking.”
Bennett had the good sense to accept defeat without reproaching himself. Conditioning only could go so far. Her nearness, her undeniable beauty, and now—well, the Navy couldn’t expect miracles! His arms went around her without a sign of reluctance.
“It was a hard fight, darling,” she said unsteadily, “but I won!”
“Are you sure you didn’t lose?”
“I’m sure.”
“It was that damn Navy conditioning,” he explained without explaining.
“What’s that?”
“You ought to know. Navy Regulations insist that ensigns remain bachelors.”
“So?”
“So in my time they enforced that regulation with a full set of psychic blocks.”
“That wasn’t nice of them.”
“Frankly, I never gave it much thought until recently.”
“And you’re still conditioned, I suppose,” she said glumly.
“I don’t think so.”
“Well, there’s one way of finding out—beyond any possibility of doubt.”
He looked at her. “I hope that you’ll remember that it was not I who suggested that positive proof might be desirable.”
“I’d never dream of accusing you,” she said a trifle bitterly. “I’ve been throwing myself at you for the past month, but you’ve lived up to the Junior Officer’s Code like a gentleman. Now what are you going to do?”
Bennett grinned. “You asked for it,” he said, “and now you’re going to find out.”
He picked her up easily in his arms.
“My big, brave, manly hero,” she murmured. There was a note of sarcasm in her voice that made Bennett look at her with a slight twinge of misgiving. But he did not set her down.
IV
IF IT HADN’T BEEN the calendar which Laura kept religiously, Bennett would have been unable to keep close track of the passing days. The calendar wasn’t accurate, of course, for they had no idea of how long they had slept before their strange “wakening” and the “days” could hardly have been the right length. But the calendar was of some help. According to the record it
was over ninety days since the last of his Navy conditioning had been irrevocably lost, and in that time he had worked methodically at unraveling the puzzle of Earth’s new technology, as expressed in the manuals.
Now he wiped his forehead with a grimy cloth and leaned against the flank of the crawler. His latest discovery, the means to unlock the interpenetrant surfaces of the crawler’s engine housing, had been successful, and a new facet of Earth’s technological advance was catalogued in his mind for future reference.
Behind his actions was the conviction that someday he would find the ship which had brought them here, and he wanted to be in a position to take full advantage of the discovery when it was made. There were a number of reasons that kept his nose to the proverbial grindstone. Idly, very much as Robinson Crusoe might have done, he catalogued them.
One: Pleasant as this place was, it was finite, and he had no way of leaving it. And despite Laura’s companionship he was lonely. He missed the crowds, noise, and confusion of civilized society. The gigantic emptiness depressed him.
Two: That eleven year gap in his life bothered him. He didn’t like unfilled spaces—and if he found the ship that had brought them to this world it seemed likely that he would find a record of the past he had lost.
Three: The treasure trove of this building would be a god-send to the Confederation. Unless technology on the Fifty Worlds had progressed far beyond what one would expect, Laura and he possessed rights to a fabulous store of science. They were literally sitting on top of billions of credits worth of technology they couldn’t understand or even use effectively—credits that couldn’t be cashed until Confederation scientists had been given an opportunity to explore and investigate. The secret of rejuvenation alone would be worth a good slice of the Confederation—and there were other scientific discoveries and achievements here that could literally change the face of civilized society overnight. He hated seeing them go to waste.