John Maddox Roberts - Space Angel (13 page)

"If the ramp was their access to the deck below," said Nancy, "then they couldn't have been more than a meter high. Look how close together the levels of the ramp are."

"They probably weren't very quick, either," said Achmed. "Everything we've seen move, moves slowly."

"Last one down's a landsman." With that, Ham stepped over the edge. The rest followed suit, taking about six seconds to make the drop to the deck. When they landed, they looked about in wonder.

"I think we've found them," said Michelle.

They were standing in another, narrower, corridor, in the biggest room any of them had seen. It seemed to stretch to infinity in both directions, like the corridor above, but it wasn't confined between walls. Along both sides were racks of glasslike cylinders, stacked almost to the ceiling. At regular intervals, narrow lanes ran at right angles from the main corridor into rows of racks as far as the eye could see.

The cylinders lay on their sides, about one and one-half meters long and two-thirds meter in diameter. One end sprouted a system of wires and tubes, the other was flat and featureless. Inside, beings floated in a clear liquid.

The creatures were flattish and circular, slightly domed on the upper surface, the lower surface was flat and covered with tiny-mushroom-shaped protrusions, possibly the creatures' feet. Around the circumference of the body were dozens of appendages ranging from threadlike cilia to tentacles as thick as a man's thumb and sixty centimeters long. The bigger tentacles were flat on the lower side and ridged on the top, apparently for gripping power. The skin was smooth and peach-colored. The small nodules between certain tentacles might have been eyes or sensory organs of some other kind.

"Anybody see a mouth?"

"There's a small slit between two of the smaller tentacles on this one, Ham," Nancy said. "Could be a mouth."

"Will some of you kindly hold still long enough for me to get a look at one of those things?" the skipper asked. "Nancy, do a slow scan and show me every part of one. Ham, will those cylinders lift free?"

"I think so."

"Good. Then bring a couple back with you. They shouldn't be too heavy to carry in that gravity. Do you think those are the creatures that built the ship?"

"The size is in keeping with the spiral ramp," Nancy said.

"They look even softer than you people!" K'Stin noted. "Still, if they
did
build this ship, then they were a great and powerful race, and not to be despised."

"Could be livestock," Torwald said. "Or maybe embryos."

"Useless to speculate," said Ham. "Kelly, you and Lafayette each take an end of this thing and hoist it off the rack. Be sure to take care of the little box those wires go into."

The two did as they were instructed, lifting one of the cylinders free and carrying it to the bottom of the spiral ramp. They then attached lines around it, climbed to the main corridor deck, and hoisted the thing up, an easy task in the weak gravity field. Carrying the cylinder back to the ship was a tedious task, and Kelly fretted because he was missing the further exploration of the alien vessel. Soon after they had the cylinder stowed, under the skipper's careful direction, Finn and Achmed showed up with a second, which was similarly disposed of.

The exploration of the alien vessel proceeded for the next few days, the
Angel's
crew making as complete a visual record as they could manage, and picking up a few souvenirs here and there. They were compelled, for lack of space, to confine their gathering to small items. Sphere found nothing to his interest in the ship's memory banks, but informed them that the builders of the ship had been in search of a new home planet, in anticipation of the blowup of their own sun. The derelict had been one of thousands of identical vessels.

The second ship was different.

"What is this thing, Skipper, a flying palace?" Torwald asked as he scanned the towering spires around him.

"That's what we're here to find out, Tor."

They were standing in the center of what appeared to be a plaza, surrounded by towers, domes, tetrahe-dra, and structures in the shape of just about every possible configuration of solid geometry. A gravity field was still working at full efficiency, and they were standing comfortably at something near Earth-normal. They faced the center of the platter-shaped craft, where a cluster of structures towered kilometers upward. Beyond the central cluster, the crew could make out the bulk of the immigrant ship, which had impaled the platter near the far edge.

"They must have maintained a field that kept in their atmosphere," said Bert.

"It didn't keep that ship out, though," the skipper observed. "I'd say that central complex is the best place to start looking. Let's go." They began the long walk to the center of the platter, their boots making prints in the thin layer of dust that the ship's gravity had attracted over thousands of years. They passed what appeared to be parks or gardens, their plantings long since turned to dust. All longed to examine the buildings they were passing, but the huge structures at the center promised better pickings.

From time to time, they came upon sculptures, but most seemed abstract and probably conveyed no idea of what the inhabitants of the ship had looked like. At regular intervals, they passed large, skeletal structures that looked as if they had once supported something, but all were empty. A good deal was speculated about the function of these objects, until Torwald hit upon the likely explanation. "I'll bet those things are lifeboat racks. The crew and passengers must have had time to evacuate before the other ship struck. That's why they're all empty."

The skipper agreed. "You're probably right. If so, they must have left plenty behind. You don't take much except necessities on a lifeboat—what have we here?" Before them another statue occupied a low pedestal; this sculpture was not abstract, but a realistic representation of a being remarkably human in appearance, though the legs and arms were very long and slender and its torso much too thin in the eyes of humans. The hands each bore six long, tapered fingers, and the fingers had at least four joints each. The head was quite human, with rather rectangular eyes. The nose consisted of two vertical slits, and the mouth was lipless and very wide. The alien seemed to be smiling. There was some graceful lettering on the pedestal.

"So that's what they looked like," said Torwald. "At least it's more reassuring than those giant oysters on the other ship."

After several minutes of, excited discussion and frenetic recording, the crew hurried onward to the platter's center.

The first building of the central cluster was a few paces beyond the statue. The main doorway was sealed by an airlock, which proved easy to decipher and operate. Once again, they stood inside an alien airlock as it filled with air.

"Analysis?" said the skipper.

"You can breathe it!" Michelle said. "Pressure's a little lower than we're used to, but everything we need is in it, and nothing that'll do us any harm."

"All right, everybody, unhelm," said the skipper, "but be ready to rehelm at a second's notice."

They took off their helmets and felt their ears pop in the lighter air pressure. The air seemed quite fresh and carried no odor. They hardly had a chance to comment on their good luck when the door before them slid open noiselessly.

Once again, they marveled. The first ship had been so spare and functional that much of its strangeness was cushioned by simplicity. This craft was completely different. The first room was entirely upholstered in a sheer fabric dusted with stylized embroidered stars and flowers. Vases and pitchers, cushions, and odd spindly furniture vied in ornateness with sculpture and hanging mobiles. Everything was so highly embellished that it was difficult to tell the functional from the decorative, if, indeed, the owners had even made such a distinction. Some slight disarray was apparent, but not the utter devastation they had been expecting.

"They had something a lot more powerful than any grav field," the skipper commented. "The impact of the spindle plowing into this should have destroyed the whole interior."

The next room was covered with murals depicting slender humanoids engaged in various activities, mostly incomprehensible. Everywhere were the sculptures, of metal, of crystal, of stone, some mobile and some stationary, some projecting strange fights and colors, some singing to themselves in an unfamiliar musical scale. In another cabin they located large bowls and tiers of shell-like basins, which began to fill with colored liquids as they crossed the threshold.

Lights played through the liquid and struck reflections from glittery hanging sculptures. Sergei
used his in
struments to make a chemical analysis of one of the liquids.

"It's mostly water," he reported, "but heavily tinged with acids, sugars, and carbohydrates. At a guess, I'd say these fountains are running wine."

"Do you realize what we have here?" Torwald exclaimed. "This is a spacer's dream, a hedonist's paradise, floating adrift in space. It's cloud-cuckoo land. We used to talk about discovering something like this on long watches in the Navy."

"Did the aliens live like this all the time, I wonder, or was this a luxury liner?" Finn mused.

They jerked around in surprise when apertures opened in the wall behind them and small wheeled machines rolled out. The machines ignored them and rolled to the fountains. Some extruded trays bearing crystal goblets and began filling them with a siphon.

"They were an indolent bunch." Michelle stared about her, mouth agape. "They couldn't even be bothered with filling their own glasses."

"They built to last, though," the skipper said. "Come on, let's look for the control center. That's where the records and memory banks will be." She led the way out, taking a bearing on her directional indicator. They managed to cross three rooms before coming to an abrupt halt. The fourth was a banquet hall, with rows of low tables flanked by cushions. The tables were set, with small robots scurrying about, bringing out new dishes, pouring flagons of beverages. They all sniffed.

"Smells good," Kelly said tentatively. The crew had been eating freezedrys for a long time now.

"Hold it!" the skipper yelled. "Nobody touches that stuff until Michelle makes an analysis. Just because they breathe the same mixture we do doesn't mean their food won't poison us."

"It won't poison us," K'Stin noted caustically.

"You two could probably eat the sculpture. Go ahead." The Vivers sat and started shoveling in the fare on the table. Vivers were conditioned to be abstemious with food when it was in short supply, but they could consume incredible amounts when it was unlimited, storing the excess as fat within their thoracic and abdominal cavities.

"The metals and plastics I can understand," Finn mused, "but, how can those food items have lasted this long? From the accumulation of space dust outside, I'd guess this ship has been abandoned for millennia."

"They must be synthesized from chemical tanks, Finn," said Nancy. "We've been trying to solve that problem for years. Just keep supplies of the right molecules on hand, feed the proper formula into the control computer, and instant lobster Newburg."

"If we could get the secret of that and take it back home," said the skipper, "it would be worth millions of times the value of all that diamond crystal in the hold."

"These dishes are all right, except for that green jelly," Michelle said. She proceeded to the next setting. "The jelly won't kill you, but it will act as a violent laxative."

"While we're waiting for the verdict on the rest," the skipper said, "we might as well get a little exploring done. Torwald, you and Kelly look in that room there." She pointed to her right. "Finn and Nancy, look into that one." She pointed left. "Achmed, you and Bert take those stairs and check out the room up there. Bring back anything intriguing and portable. Sergei, help Michelle with her chemical analyses."

The room Kelly and Torwald explored seemed empty, its floor bearing only some cushions like those around the banquet tables. The walls were free of murals, and there were none of the by now inevitable sculptures.

"Now, what could—" Torwald's question was cut off abruptly when, without warning, a figure appeared before them. The alien was about seven feet high, clad in a close-fitting garment of silvery blue. Its skin was pale yellow, and its eyes were translucent green, without white, iris, or pupil. It made a gesture resembling a bow, its mouth moving in speech, but making no sound. Kelly and Torwald reached for their pistols, then stopped as the figure made no threatening move.

"It isn't possible, Tor! The ship and furnishings, yes. The food, maybe, but not a living alien!"

"Not living, I don't think," Torwald commented tersely. He reached out and placed his fingers against the being's chest. They encountered no resistance, just disappeared into the chest. The figure continued its pantomime of speech without taking notice. "It's some kind of holographic projection. We must have activated it when we entered the room." The figure disappeared and the fights went out.

Suddenly, the walls came to life with light and color. Streaks and balls and particles of multicolored light darted through the air, seeming to pass through their bodies. Alien music wafted through the chamber, and they sat down to enjoy the show. Some of the flying bits of fight merged and coalesced into the likenesses of weird creatures. The creatures danced and darted to the alien music, then burst into thousands of particles once more. Enthralled, Kelly lost track of time, until he felt a tap on the back of his head. It was Torwald, beckoning him to leave. Reluctantly, he did so.