Perry Rhodan Lemuria 1: Ark of the Stars (24 page)

Eniva had been too surprised to protest, and by the time she recovered, the Terran commander had already disappeared—though not without reminding her that as a "guest" on the
Palenque
she only had limited freedom, and she was best advised to remain in her cabin and keep quiet.

Eniva understood what was meant by "best advised" as soon as she attempted to leave the cabin. A massive cleaning robot blocked the way. It was coincidentally occupied with cleaning her door, which in its opinion urgently needed a thorough scrubbing, since the scraping of its brushes simply wouldn't stop.

I'll just try something else!
Eniva decided, and occupied herself with the cabin's computer terminal. The Terrans had no idea who they had caught. Eniva was the
Las-Toór
's computer network expert and as such she was used to stretching out her feelers in a syntronic way. The
Palenque
's computer network had been the reason she had volunteered to be a hostage. When else would she ever have the opportunity to give a Terran network a thorough going over?

Eniva sat upright on the too-soft bed, took a deep breath—through her mouth, in order to avoid the mold smell—and went to work. Five minutes. She didn't give the Terran computer more than that before it surrendered to her.

Five minutes became fifteen, then half an hour. Eniva cursed to herself, at first in a low voice, then loudly, but it didn't help. Either the Terrans had guessed who they were dealing with after all or they were cautious sorts. In any case, the cabin syntron had been cut off from the ship's systems, not just on the software side—Eniva could have hacked a block like that—but physically.

The cabin syntron was a self-contained system, and not a very intelligent one.

It was essentially an improved tri-vid that offered her only two choices: unimportant tourist information about various LFT worlds or tri-vid films. In her desperation—Eniva had the feeling that she would die of boredom even before the mold fungus had poisoned her lungs if she didn't occupy herself with
something
—she surfed through the films. Without exception, they turned out to be cheap trash. Tales of secret agents in which heroic Terrans foiled the sinister plans of Akonians who were out to subvert Terran supremacy, or comedies in which Akonians were caricatured as horribly nasal Intercosmo-speaking fops who were just as vain as they were stupid.

Is this what they really think of us?
Eniva thought angrily.
Why did I vote against blasting them out of space? We could have easily pulverized this garbage can, and I could now be investigating the Lemurian ship instead of rotting away here!

Eniva turned off the syntron. Tears of rage and disappointment welled in her eyes. How could she have been so naive as to come here expecting to learn something? She would
die
here! The Terran commander had imprisoned her. If only something would happen that she—

A buzzer sounded.

Eniva jerked up, not certain if she had only imagined the noise. Now she noticed that the scraping of the brushes on the door had stopped.

The buzzer sounded again.

Eniva stood up, adjusted her clothes as well as the limp material would allow, rubbed the tears from the corners of her eyes and activated the door opening.

The door slid to the side. In front of her stood a Terran who was uglier than anything she could have imagined in her worst fantasies.

It was a man—or maybe a troll. The Terran was only as tall as her chest and was so thin that it was a miracle he hadn't snapped in half long ago. His skin was blacker than space, and his curly hair had grown out to a mane that made his head seem oversized. Two big, bright eyes looked at Eniva.

"Hello," the troll said. "I'm Alemaheyu Kossa, the communications officer for this outfit. Sharita sent me." He bared two rows of shining white teeth as he smiled.

"Sharita ... the commander?"

"The one and only," the little man confirmed, smiling all the more brightly.

"But why would she send you? She stuck me here with complete satisfaction."

"Oh, she played her little game with you, did she?" The troll shook his mane reproachfully, as though they were talking about a misbehaving child. "Don't let it bother you. She does that to everyone. But afterwards she feels sorry about it. That's why she sent me. I'm supposed to look after you."

Again the troll smiled.

"And why you in particular?"

"Oh, because I don't have anything to do at the moment. Communication with the exploration team has been broken off, and—"

"Broken off?" Eniva interrupted him, horrified. "What happened?"

"It's nothing to get excited about. I expected this would happen. Probably has to do with that Lemurian ship's hyperdetection shield. We haven't detected any energy emissions, and we certainly would have if there had been a fight or an accident." The troll pulled at the headband that kept his hair from falling over his eyes and blocking his vision. "So I'm at loose ends right now, and besides, I'm the most charming host you could find on the
Palenque
."

"You're
what?
"

"Still skeptical?" the troll asked and smiled again. "Come with me, you lucky stiff. You'll see!"

Hesitantly, Eniva ta Drorar followed the Terran, suddenly wishing for nothing so fervently as to remain in her stinking cabin and watch wretched Terran movies.

The light caressed her face, beckoning her.

Solina Tormas ignored Pearl Laneaux's cry of warning and climbed up the steep stairway toward the light. Her beamer hung in its holster, where she had stuck it to leave both hands free for her work on the Lemurian ship's computer network terminal.

The stairs ended in a shelter whose roof had fallen away and blocked the view to one side. Solina blinked in the light. She couldn't make out a single source, no equivalent of a sun. The light shone evenly from the "sky" above her, a gentle reddish tone that was very different from the cold blue light she knew from Shaghomin or Drorah.

And anyway, that "sky" ... Solina knew she was inside a gigantic cylinder, and stood on the inner surface of its hull. When she lifted her head, she really had to be seeing the opposite side. Instead, her searching gaze was lost in an intangible haze of the reddish light.

"I think the builders put in several decks," Rhodan said. There was no reproach in his voice for her incautious plunge ahead. No criticism; the light of the ark seemed to soften even the immortal Terran's mood. Solina wondered why the Terrans seemed so nervous. Did they know something dangerous about the ark that they had kept to themselves? Solina couldn't imagine anything that would pose a danger. The ark's inhabitants lived at a low technology level; their spacesuits' defense screens would protect the visitors from any potential attack.

"Possibly," Solina replied. "But perhaps we're simply looking at the center of the ark. I can't make out any details."

"Nor can I. But there are at least three reasons that argue for several decks. First, if there weren't any, it would be an inexcusable waste of space, an enormous unused volume. I can't believe people who could construct such a ship would allow that inefficiency."

"Sounds logical. And the other reasons?"

"Another would be gravity. On this deck, the gravity is one and a half times that of Earth's. If they're trying to preserve the heritage of their home world, that isn't a very good solution. The ship's inhabitants would be forced to develop a new culture within a few generations in reaction to the changed environmental conditions." Rhodan looked down from the "sky" and at his multi-function armband. "And third is the radiation level. It wouldn't be dangerous to stay here, even for weeks. But over a span of years and decades, the effect of cosmic rays would be enormous, leading to an increased rate of genetic damage. If the ark's inhabitants lived continuously on this deck, they would be facing extinction before many generations."

Solina had been listening to Rhodan's explanation with only half an ear. What he said sounded valid, but the next hour or two would show whether it was actually correct. People, whether they called themselves Akonians, Terrans, or even Lemurians, were not logical beings. Quite the opposite: the more Solina delved into history, the more her conviction grew that human societies based on logic were the exceptions. A certain amount of logic was to be found in all human societies that endured for any length of time, but only a certain amount. Often the seed of destruction lay in the premises on which a society was based. When those premises were erroneous, that society headed inevitably toward its downfall.

What judgment could be made of the ark's society, they would find out as soon as they came across the first Lemurians. The ship was huge, but still too small for any such encounter to be long in coming. And Solina wanted to use the time until that happened to investigate the ship in a way that no encounter with the inhabitants, no instruments, however refined, could substitute for: she wanted to feel out the ship herself.

Solina lowered her eyes from the sky and looked to either side. To her right and left, the ground rose evenly, as though she were in a valley. In a manner of speaking, she was: the ark's outer hull presented an evenly curved surface. No matter where she was on the ark, she would always find herself at the bottom of a valley. Like the bow and the stern, the evenly rising "cliffs" were lost in a haze.

Was the haze an accident, an unintended side effect of the ark's ecosystem? Or had the builders planned it in order to give the inhabitants the feeling of distance they would have otherwise done without?

The rest of the team had reached the surface of the deck. The hatch had closed behind them, but there was no cause for concern; it was an automatic security function. Pearl Laneaux and Hayden Norwell had drawn their beamers in order to protect the group. Pearl's face had turned red as she whispered constantly into her spacesuit's microphone. She didn't want to accept what had become obvious in the lower corridor: comm contact with the
Palenque
had broken off. Solina had a certain amount of sympathy for her anxiety; it could be disturbing to be on one's own in unfamiliar surroundings.

But it did not escape her professional ear, which didn't miss a word spoken around her, that the Terran was, in all seriousness, addressing the person with whom she was trying to communicate as "Mama."

Rhodan had closed his eyes and was breathing deeply. He seemed to be following an exploration strategy similar to her own. Hevror ta Gosz had gone several steps further and was kneeling in the grass surrounding the collapsed shelter. His long bag stood out on his back like the quiver of an ancient bowman.

Solina walked over to see what he was doing.

Hevror had dug a hole in the ground with a collapsible spade. Next to the hole lay the clump of grass he had pulled out. Solina fingered the stalks; they were markedly softer than the grass on Shaghomin, and felt like a comfortable carpet. Then she felt the roots—or rather she tried: the roots recoiled from her touch as though they were independently alive.

She cried out in surprise.

Hevror grinned crookedly as he pulled out of the soil one of the measuring instruments that he always wore on his belt. "In case you're doubting your senses, the roots really did twitch."

"You can't be serious! These are plants."

Hevror nodded. "It's true. But plants can move independently. Consider flowers that open and close."

"Yes, but that process happens in relatively slow motion, and this ... "

" ... is the same process, just a bit faster." Hevror took a soil sample from the tip of his probe and placed it in an analyzing instrument.

"How do you explain it? Spontaneous mutation as a result of centuries of exposure to cosmic rays?"

Hevror glanced up. "No, it's a deliberate genetic alteration. This soil ... " He reached into the dislodged dirt. The dark, damp soil crumbled into small pieces as he rubbed it with his fingers. "This soil feels like soil from an Akonian world, but it lacks something very critical."

Solina reached into the dirt. It was warm and damp and reminded her of the garden at her family's big round house on Shaghomin. What was so special about it, other than the fact that she had found it in a steel tube that had been racing through space at near light-speed for more than fifty thousand years?

"I'll tell you," Hevror went on, reading the puzzlement on her face. "There aren't any animals. The tiny insects and worms that normally live in soil and loosen it by their movements. In their absence, the grass has been altered to perform the same function with its movable roots. I don't think that's by chance."

"How long are you going to dig around in the dirt?" Pearl demanded. She waved her beamer vaguely forward. "Let's get going."

Solina chose to agree with the Terran's wishes and signaled Hevror to gather up his equipment. Pearl Laneaux seemed convinced she was in command of the group, and Solina preferred to let her believe it. It kept the Terran woman occupied and reduced the risk of her acting on any really stupid ideas.

They walked on. The two teams had agreed to not use their suits' flight systems for the moment. Despite its impressive size, the ark was a small world; it would not be long before they met its inhabitants. How that encounter would play out, no one could predict. So it was best to keep a card up their sleeves. The ark's inhabitants didn't have artificial gravity; they would not anticipate their visitors having antigrav capability.

As expected, Pearl took the lead. Solina walked next to Rhodan and devoted her attention to their surroundings.

Walking through the ark gave her a strange feeling. Part of it had a simple explanation: They were moving through an unknown environment, and didn't know what they would meet. The rest Solina grasped only after a few moments of hard thought: the Lemurian ship simply didn't feel like a ship. The narrow path that they were taking between fields wasn't paved. In some places it was soft; in others, hard stones pressed unpleasantly through the soles of their boots. The air carried a spicy scent that occasionally gave way to a distinct stench. The haze that blocked their view of the distance suggested an endless vista that didn't exist, and gave them the deceptive feeling of being able to walk forever without reaching the end of the ark or meeting another human being.