John Maddox Roberts - Space Angel (20 page)

"That was a splendid piece of piloting, Skipper," said Sergei. "Tell me, just what kind of craft did you serve in during the War?"

"Oh, I piloted a Marauder. Ham was my master gunner."

"That explains a great deal."

Indeed, it did. The small, heavily armed craft had spearheaded nearly every fleet action and planetary invasion of the conflict. They were considered absolutely necessary—and totally expendable. And they had been expended at a terrible rate. Fewer than 10 percent of the personnel who served on Marauders had survived the War.

Everyone looked up as Michelle entered. "Achmed'll pull through," she said, drawing coffee from the bulkhead spout. "Lafayette's just bruised and battered. He'll be okay." There was a general sigh of relief from around the table.

"That wraps it up, then," the skipper said, lighting up a fresh cigar. "Any other reports or questions?" She looked around the table for a response, but with the exception of Michelle, Sims, and the Vivers, all of the crew members were slumped in their chairs or facedown on the table, sound asleep.

Seven

Repainting the hold had been a disagreeable job. With months on their hands while the
Angel
continued her random search for a solution to the problem of the Guardian, Ham had hit upon the bright idea of having Kelly and Lafayette scrape the old paint off the hold and repaint the whole thing. It was not, officially, an act of punishment. However, both knew that, had they not caused quite so much trouble on the jungle world, they would have been spared this particular task.

Kelly had washed up and put on clean clothes and was enjoying having nothing to do. Since they had recovered Lafayette, no one had referred to his blunder, although the hold-painting project demonstrated that his misbehavior had not been forgotten. Suddenly he heard a scuttling noise behind him, and Homer appeared at the hatch of his cabin. Teddy sat perched on Homer's shell. "What sadness lengthens Kelly's hours?"

"Homer, have you been going over that Shakespeare stuff again?"

"It has a certain precision and beauty of expression that is lacking in your present language."

"Well, no sadness is lengthening my hours. Relief from scraping paint is shortening them, if anything."

"Then why are you brooding?"

"Like everybody else, I guess. We could spend the rest of our lives out here without finding a good decoy to distract this Guardian. What could occupy something that powerful for any length of time?"

"I see." Homer extruded a tiny-fingered hand on a long arm with six elbows. He used it to scratch Teddy's ears. "I often forget how important these time spans are to you humans. Let me see ... the Guardian will attack a single ship that strays too close. It will engage a fleet, also. Suppose a truly enormous fleet were to approach, spread out on a wide front. Might that not occupy the being long enough for Sphere to accomplish his mysterious purposes?"

"Maybe. I don't think anybody would lend us a fleet, though, Homer. Especially since it would be destroyed."

"We might find such a fleet, though."

"Huh? What are you getting at?"

"I have heard many rumors and poems concerning planets converted into gigantic fleet bases at some far distant date in the past. Often, the ships found there are still operational and have been utilized by races such as the Tchork that can build no better craft of their own."

"Can you find one of these planets, Homer?"

"One of the poems gives a set of coordinates . . . they will have to be translated, of course; they would mean nothing to your computers." Homer began to mutter to himself, but by that time Kelly was out the hatch and headed for the bridge.

Nobody could believe the screens: monstrous floating docks, surrounded by quiescent fleets of ships, stacked level on level, dwindling beyond the range of human eyesight. A monitor would hold on a particu-

lar formation for a few minutes, then switch to another. Each screen registered at least ten such installations per minute.

"The planet's the same way, folks. Nothing but spaceports from pole to pole."

The crew remained silent for a few moments, then Ham spoke up. "I don't think all the ships I saw during the whole War would amount to a single one of those floating fleets. I think we've hit the jackpot."

"You suppose we could get some of those ships moving?" Torwald's expression and tone of voice betrayed his doubts.

"You'd better hope so," the skipper replied. "Enough to distract the Guardian, anyway. We could get awfully old looking for a better prospect. I intend to locate the biggest of the ground installations —that'll be the likeliest place to find a headquarters. After that, we'll just have to play it as we find it."

"We've found the place," the skipper announced. "Biggest spaceship installation imaginable. There's a mountain sticking up out of it and we'll land on top of that. It's the only spot for a hundred kilometers around that isn't sealed under metal. The people who built this must have stripped this whole system of metals. It's unbelievable." The skipper turned to Torwald. "Put together a ground party. Make it a small group, this time, three or so besides you. The rest can help put the final repairs on the ship."

"Right. Finn, were you planning anything for today?"

"To be sure, my jewel, I was planning to work on my memoirs, but I can spare an hour or two."

"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."