John Maddox Roberts - Space Angel Page 15

  "I appreciate it. Kelly, you can come along. And you, Nancy. We'll take the Vivers, just in case. Homer, how about you?"

  "I would be most willing to go. I would be little help in repairing the ship, I fear. Also, I should like to see this world. A planet of such sublime devotion to a cause must be most inspiring."

  "We don't need inspiration," the skipper said. "We need a nice quiet place to repair the ship and figure out a way to distract the Guardian. This looks like it."

  Torwald pointed to Nancy, Kelly and Finn. "All right, then, you three get your gear together. Nancy, round up K'Stin and B'Shant. Kelly, put together some emergency rations from the galley and load them in the AC."

  Kelly went to the supply room and checked his equipment. He and Torwald had fabricated new body armor to replace what had been abandoned on the jungle world. He helped Nancy with hers, and they inspected the gear they would be taking. The heavy packs they had taken before wouldn't be necessary since they would be traveling by AC. All the heavier equipment they might need—axes, spades, crowbars, and the like—went into bundles to be stored in the AC'S cargo space.

  The intercom tooted twice and Ham's voice rang through the ship: "Planetfall in thirty minutes. All hands to quarters and strap in."

  Kelly trudged aft to his cabin and strapped himself into his bunk—an awkward procedure in his bulky armor. He lay back and stared at the overhead. He wondered whether this would be their last planet-fall before returning to Earth. Earth seemed curiously remote, now. The ship was his home, not the planet where he had been born. He remembered the day in the spaceport, when his adventure had begun. Probably close to two years, now. He thought to check it out on the bridge, then discarded the idea. It didn't really matter, anyway. Suddenly the landing klaxon blared and his mind was on other things.

  Torwald and the skipper were standing in the AC bay hatch when Kelly and Nancy arrived. Kelly threw his bundle into the AC and pushed his way forward to see what the two were staring at. His eyes widened like theirs.

  "What's it look like?" Nancy asked as she shoved past Kelly. "Oh," she said in a small voice as she reached the hatch.

  It was a sight to take the breath away. The landing site was the flat top of a mountain overlooking a flat plain five thousand meters below. They could sweep at least a hundred kilometers with their eyes and every square meter was covered with ships or spaceport facilities. Not only the plain but also the mountain were covered with docks, hangars, landing pads, and structures of indeterminate function.

  Towers like splinters of steel thrust into the cloudless, yellow sky, some of them far taller than the mountain peak upon which the Angel rested. Ships of all sizes and shapes marched row on row to the horizon. Everywhere was the gleam of metal. Except for the small patch of bedrock beneath the Angel„ not a scrap of nonmetallic material could be seen. The structures began just a few meters downslope from the Angel's resting place.

  "Okay, Tor, you and your team pile into the AC and start looking."

  "What exactly are we looking for, Skipper?"

  "How should I know? Look for something that doesn't look like everything else. There must be some kind of command center on this planet, and this is the biggest installation around, so it's the most likely spot to check out first, Now, stop jawing and get to work. Call in when you find something interesting."

  "This could get tiresome." Torwald climbed into the AC. The others piled in with him. They needed no breathing equipment on this world, so they were mercifully spared the necessity of wearing enclosed helmets, although they were taking along battle helmets in case of trouble.

  "What keeps the oxygen level so high?" asked

  Kelly. "Nancy says the vegetation's too thin to account for it."

  Torwald was interested. "That so, Nancy?"

  "Right. No oceans, therefore no plankton to account for it. No forests or grasslands. Most of the planetary surface that isn't sealed under these spaceports is rock desert."

  "How about bacteria?" asked Finn.

  "Maybe, but it would have to metabolize at a tremendous rate to make this much oxygen. By rights, the oxygen content of this atmosphere should run a fraction of 1 percent. Instead, it's nearly Earth-normal."

  Kelly turned to the crablike alien. "What do you say, Homer? Ever run into anything like this before?"

  "Quite possibly. However, it's not a subject I delve into very much. Poetry is my main interest, so I rather seldom bother with tilings like atmospheric composition."

  Fixm chuckled. "Great. We have among us what may be the galaxy's most widely traveled resident, and all he's interested in is poetry."

  "When one visits as many worlds as I do, it is best to specialize."

  Torwald nodded. "He's got a point there."

  Installations flowed endlessly beneath them—ships, hangars, fueling-stations, and what appeared to be repair shops—but there was no sign of life.

  After several minutes Finn turned to Nancy with a puzzled look on his face. "Strange. It'd look just like a Navy installation at one of the big wartime bases, but there's nothing that looks like barracks, or offices, or messhalls. Not even a latrine."

  Nancy nodded. "Maybe the creatures that built this facility didn't need such things."

  "Maybe they were robots," Kelly added.

  Torwald listened to the speculation with some annoyance. "Maybe this is all hallucination! Let's go down and have a closer look. We'll try that ship." He directed the AC toward one of the taller ships: a flat-sided spire with featureless metal hull plates. It stood on thin, stiltlike legs that seemed too fragile to support its bulk. Next to the ship sat a low, domed structure.

  Torwald squeezed the AC alongside the small building and all got out to have a look around. They could find no access to the building, so they turned their attention to the ship itself. The vessel was, likewise, devoid of hatches.

  "Why did they hide the entrances, Tor?" wondered Nancy.

  "Didn't want intruders, I imagine. Come on, let's try someplace else."

  They spent much of the day checking out more of the buildings and ships. The result was always the same—buildings and vessels were sealed. Torwald finally ordered a return to the ship. On the following day they would return with the shortbeams.

  Torwald stood on a jury-rigged platform at the base of one of the tall ships, hefting a cutter. "I hate to do this, Skipper. Seems a shame to take a cutter to a perfectly good ship."

  "Just do it," her voice said tinnily from their radio receiver. "It wasn't going anywhere, anyway."

  Torwald made a preliminary cut. Nothing untoward happened, so he expanded the slice into a continuous rectangle. When the metal cooled, he attached clamps and lifted the section free. Inside, a maze of pipes and cables was visible, but little else.

  "I don't see any deck." Kelly craned his neck and directed a light upward. "No ladders or any other kind of footing, either. What kind of creature used such a ship?"

  "Creatures without feet, probably," Nancy offered.

  Torwald turned to Homer. "How about taking a look inside? You can get around in there, and we can't."

  "Certainly." The alien extruded several climbing limbs and scrambled inside. Kelly managed to keep him centered in the beam of the searchlight until Homer disappeared into the upper reaches of the ship. He returned a few minutes later.

  "What did you find?" Torwald asked.

  "Very little. There seems no provision for life at all. What seems a guidance center is located in the center of the ship. It is a metal box about the size of your head. No life-support mechanism, no writing that I could detect in any visual range. I think this must be a robot ship."

  "I wonder if they all are," said Kelly.

  "Let's try a building," said Torwald.

  They tried several. Once again, they had to cut their way in. None of the buildings had visible entrances, exits or windows. Inside, they found instruments, power plants, fuel, reactors, repair shops for the ships, but no sign that life had ever
been there. There were hangars with maintenance facilities for many types of ship, all of them fully automated.

  "I don't get it, Torwald. The ships we found in space were abandoned because of an emergency. But this place? It's like somebody built it and forgot about it."

  "I know, Kelly I—" Torwald cut off short as a distant roar sounded. They ran to the AC where the others were gathered. K'Stin and B'Shant sprang to the weapons.

  "It comes from above!" said K'Stin. "North and 95 degrees." They all searched the northern sky. "I can see it on infrared," K'Stin exclaimed "a bright light, swiftly descending."

  By then the others could see it, a bright point of light, roaring louder as it neared the ground.

  "Get this thing off the ground and head north at low speed," ordered Torwald.

  "Is that a ship landing, Tor?" The skipper's voice came through the AC speaker.

  "Looks like it, Skipper. I'd be willing to bet it's from one of the formations in orbit."

  "Most likely. I hope we haven't attracted notice."

  "Not likely. With all the firepower around here, there'd be no reason to bring a ship out of orbit. I'll bet it's just routine maintenance. If so, that ship's getting orders from somewhere. See if you can get a bearing on a transmission. It could save us years of searching this planet."

  "Good idea. I'll get right on it."

  "Meanwhile, we'll go check out this ship. Torwald out." He turned to his search party. "How far, Finn?"

  "About twenty kilometers due north. We'll be there in a few minutes."

  They sped toward the spot where they had lost sight of the descending light only to find a huge depression filled with housed machinery of incomprehensible function. When they arrived, the ship had already set down, one of the small, round variety. But that was not what attracted their attention. The ship sat on a metallic apron, and around it bustled machines, most of them rolling on soft tires, attaching cables and hoses to fixtures in the hull of the vessel. The majority of the items being attached rose from the apron itself. The machines operated smoothly, efficiently, in almost complete silence.

  "It's spooky, Finn," Kelly said. "They don't make any sound."

  "They must be self-servicing, repairing and maintaining each other long after their designers have forgotten them, or died off."

  "It is unseemly that mere machines should possess such longevity." K'Stin's bearing reflected disgust and frustration—emotions normally foreign to Vivers. After a few minutes, the wheeled machines pulled away from the ship and the apron slowly began to sink. The ship gradually disappeared into a well, and when its nose had cleared the rim, a cover slid out and closed over it.

  "Drydock!" Torwald yelped. Suddenly a beep sounded from the AC transceiver.

  "I've got a fix on the control center," the skipper announced. "It's on the other side of the planet. Return to the ship."

  Back aboard ship, the skipper briefed them on the latest findings. "This planet is covered with ancient mining operations." She hit a switch, and the main bridge screen displayed a panorama of an abandoned open-pit mine. "This is a detail of one of the pictures we took from orbit. There's nothing to judge scale by here, but that pit's six kilometers across. No sign of mining equipment, and it's ancient. See the erosion around the rim. Sergei says on this planet that means the pit was excavated at least twenty tousand years ago. And the planet's covered with 'em. What do you make of that, Homer?"

  "I think I may have an explanation. An ancient poem comes to mind."

  "Let's hear it," said Ham. "Always liked poetry, myself."

  "I fear that some of the nuances would escape you. It is in a sixteen-tone language, and the proper effects are achieved by speaking words in pairs, each unit of each pair being enunciated in eight of the tones, the other in the other eight."

  Bert coughed, fought to suppress a laugh. "A subtle form, true. Perhaps a translation then?"

  "A recitation would take some years."

  "Give us a summation of the pertinent verses," Michelle urged. "The suspense is killing me."

  "Long ago, there lived a great and powerful race, masters of many star systems. They engaged in a war with another species—over what disagreement the poet knows not. The first race was far less numerous than the other and sought to compensate by raising great fleets of warships that required no living beings to be operated. They refined this practice to such a degree that, not only were the fleets self-operating, they were also self-constructing."

  "Self-constructing?" The skipper arched an eyebrow.

  "Yes. Even so. In the van would go the construction vessels. They would land on a suitable world and locate mineral deposits, their machines would gather raw materials. They would then build factories, which would produce warships, their necessary support apparatus, and more construction vessels. When all was completed and in readiness, the construction vessels and ancillary machinery would move on, leaving behind a world turned into a gigantic military base, awaiting orders to attack. The poet says that these facilities continued to be constructed long after the war was over, even after the races themselves had vanished into oblivion. It is said that the Center is dotted with such bellicose relics, but in all my long lifetime, this is the first evidence I have seen to indicate that the poem was based on true events."

  "Thousands of years," the skipper said, "and it's still operational."

  The control center was disappointingly small. To control a whole planetful of spaceports and all the fleets in orbit, the crew had expected something the size of the major Earth spaceport. Instead they found a low dome about thirty paces around. Torwald, the tallest of the standard humans, could see over it easily.

  Place me on the dome.

  K'Stin was the only one whose reach was long enough, and he gently set Sphere on the center of the dome. Instead of rolling off, Sphere stuck to the dome as if glued. Time passed.

  I am ready. Return me to the ship.

  They started involuntarily. Sphere's communications had been so infrequent in recent months that they had grown unaccustomed to the sudden intrusions of its mental thrusts.

  "Maybe this is it, Tor."

  "I hope so, Skipper. I'm beginning to miss the fleshpots of civilization."

  K'Stin returned with Sphere and positioned it on the mess table. Around the mess, the crew waited attentively. The being held in its power their return to human-controlled space. Without its help, they would be lost, drifting helplessly among the stars like the derelicts they had encountered. If it had at last found a means of accomplishing its mission, they felt they might be able to return with some of the wealth they had found. There was a good deal of tension in the air as they awaited its decision.

  I think I may have found a decoy sufficient to distract the Guardian.

  There was a general releasing of long-held breath.

  The vessels of this facility are fully functional.

  "All of them?" the skipper was aghast.

  That is correct. In addition to those on and in orbit around this world, others are on or orbit the worlds, and satellites of this system. All have been well maintained since their construction.

  "How many?" asked Torwald.

  Seven million, eight hundred thousand, four hundred twenty-two. This figure includes warships, cargo carriers, and tenders.

  "Can you get them all launched?" the Skipper asked.

  1 have begun the launch sequence. The command instrumentation has been cleared of its former data and reprogramed with my instructions. When the

  fleets are in space, I shall convert their engines to

  the power system that now moves this ship.

  "And then?"

  Then we go to the Core Star.

  Kelly, Torwald, Nancy, and Michelle sat in the navigator's bubble, downing coffee. Homer sat on one of the gun controls, sipping a mixture of prussic acid and turpentine which seemed to be making him a bit tipsy. With Homer, though, it was hard to tell.

  "This is most exhilarating. Like an old e
pic. In all my wide experience, no race has ever attempted a feat as heroic as diving into the Core Star with nearly eight million ships, to do battle with the Guardian."

  The others favored him with looks of little enthusiasm. Finally, Michelle spoke. "In our experience, nobody's dived into any star and survived."

  "One hopes that Sphere will be able to cope with this difficulty," said Homer.

  "One hopes, indeed." Torwald snorted. "I, for one, have my doubts about that talking football's ability to preserve us from frying."

  Homer's visible antennae quivered. "It does seem to have some extraordinary capabilities, though." The crustacean extruded a siphon and sipped delicately at the turpentine.

  "Nearly eight million!" Kelly's voice was a hoarse whisper. "That'll be a sight." He turned to Michelle. "How many ships do you think the human worlds could get into space at one time?"

  "I once saw nearly four thousand in mass formation. That was before the Li Po invasion. Of course, not many of those returned."

  "And this is just one installation," said Nancy. "Do you think humans will ever achieve such power, Tor?"

  "Probably. We made it through the last couple of centuries without wiping ourselves out, hard as we tried. There's nothing to stop us from doing this kind of thing, given time and inclination. I do hope we put our efforts to less pointless uses, though."

  "So great a quantity of ships is rather unnecessary," said Homer. "Especially as none of them have anything to do."

  "Well, they have a job now," Torwald said.

  The stars, which had seemed fixed above their heads, began to shift. Nancy was the first to notice. "The skipper's rotating the ship."

  The edge of the nameless planet rose into their view, ascending until its full bulk hung over them, a great, baleful globe encircled by the brilliant stellar display of the Center. The rest of the crew began drifting into the bubble. Last of all came the skipper. "We're about to witness a fantastic display. Keep your eyes on the planet."

  They watched. Nothing happened for a few minutes, then a tiny, brilliant white dot shone against the featureless yellow. Immediately dozens of other dots appeared, then hundreds, then thousands, and still they increased, until the whole hemisphere was alight, covering the face of the planet in a web of diamonds as spectacular as the stellar backdrop.