Rocket from Infinity (8 page)

“Do you feel what I feel?” she asked.

“As though you're sinking into something soft?”

“Yes—as though we haven't got any footing. I have to keep looking down to be sure I'm not sinking in.”

Intrigued, they both squatted down to check further into their joint reaction. Pete laid his gloved hand flat on the dull, sheenless metal of the hull. He stared at his hand for a few moments and then looked up at Jane.

“It's weird. My sense of touch tells me I'm sinking in up to my elbow. But my eyes say my hand is lying on a hard surface. I don't know which to believe.”

“There's something very weird about this hull—this metal.”

“Your perception astounds me,” Pete said dryly.

Jane refused to be baited. “I think the sinking-in phenomenon is a side effect. This is a highly specialized metal with specifics and capabilities beyond our knowledge.” She raised her eyes. There was awe and a certain fright in them. “This ship wasn't built in our system.”

Pete was surprised. “You sound like an upper class-man in an engineering school.”

“Maybe I'm not very smart, but I was with my father a lot. He was a brilliant man. I couldn't help learning a little about spaceships.”

Unaware of how much that
little
was going to turn out to be, Pete came to his feet and looked about helplessly. “Well, at least the tub isn't throwing us off.”

“How did you plan to get inside? No matter how far we sink, we're still out here.”

“I assumed that if the ship is empty it had been abandoned. In that case, there should be an open hatch someplace. If not, maybe I can climb in through a jet tube.”

“Did you see any while she was swinging her tail around?”

“No, as a matter of fact, I didn't.”

“Neither did I.”

“Then we'd better start hunting. We're probably on borrowed time.”

“What do you mean?”

“If Homer Deeds and his two friends aren't smart enough to track us here, it would be a big surprise to me.”

Pete glanced around at the circular walls of the ominous pocket they were in; a pocket formed in a clump of asteroids jammed together and moving as a single body.

“Another thing—if an asteroid blunders into range and activates this tub's crazy responses, we'll get thrown into next week.”

At that moment a new and ominous grinding of rock on rock was telegraphed through the asteroids across the Badlands.

“How far away was that?” Jane asked.

“I don't know, but it's a lot too close. Let's hurry.”

As they moved—as though walking through molasses—toward the ship's tail, the same thought was in both their minds. They'd been rather proud of the victory they'd achieved in putting their boots to the hull.

But they seemed to have merely won their way into greater trouble.

CHAPTER TEN

THE BRAIN OF A KILLER

“It doesn't look like a jet to me,” Jane said.

“Maybe it's just a steering tube, but it's still a hole,” Pete replied. “I'm going in.”

“And leave me out here all alone?”

This wail from Jane, Pete thought, was refreshing after a fashion—a definitely feminine reaction from a girl who could be very unfeminine a great deal of the time.

“Well, we can't squeeze in together, and until we find out the score, it's safer out here than in there.” Jane watched as Pete eased himself into the narrow, circular opening feet-first. A few moments later he pushed his head out.

“It isn't a jet or a steering tube. It's an escape hatch of some kind. Come on.”

Jane lost no time and Pete pulled her into a small chamber with enough room for three or four people to stand comfortably. Jane pointed to the inner wall.

“That's the outer seal of the airlock, but how do we open it?”

Pete ran his hands over the surface of the inner wall. Then he looked at Jane strangely, took off his gloves, and repeated the examination.

“It's warm!”

Jane frowned. “That doesn't make sense!” She took off her own gloves and touched the wall and her expression changed. Perhaps it didn't make sense but nonetheless the wall was a hundred degrees warmer than the unchanging temperature of the Belt.

“Pete, I'm scared.”

“So am I, but—”

“There's too much here that contradicts logic. In the first place, this ship could easily be a thousand years old. The pittings on the hull alone indicate great age and passage through the kind of bombardments we just don't get in the System. Any sort of creature we find inside would have to have an incredible life span. That and other things give us ample reason to believe the ship is an ancient, lifeless derelict. But its walls are warm!”

“Don't panic,” Pete advised. “Just keep on using your precious logic. There must be something inside that can create heat indefinitely.”

“A ship powered by fusionable material with a half-life of more than a thousand years?”

“Exactly.”

“But atomic fusion isn't the method here. Where are the jets?”

“Let's not turn this into a debating society or there's going to be a gun poked in at us and it won't matter. I'm wondering how to crack that outer air seal.”

“That shouldn't be too difficult,” Jane said. “The control of the hatches and the ports must be centered in the cybernetic brain.”

“Sure, but it didn't open on entry. So what's the signal?”

“There shouldn't have to be any. This is a spaceship, not a bank vault.” Jane tapped on the panel of the air seal. Nothing happened.

“Looks as though the brain isn't receiving today,” Pete said.

“Pressure might be the key,” Jane said. She put both hands on the seal and pressed her weight against it.

The seal opened.

“Sure,” Pete said. “The seal is controlled by a memory bank adjusted to pressure.”

“All it takes,” Jane said with understandable smugness, “is a little common sense.”

Pete followed her into a larger chamber and the door closed behind them. In a moment they could hear air hissing in. At the same time a narrow panel over their head began to glow. It reached apparent capacity quickly, throwing a faint light into the chamber.

“Pretty stingy with the electric power,” Pete said.

“If you were a light panel you'd be pretty feeble too, after a thousand years,” Jane said.

“You seem to be pretty sure of your time span.”

Jane ignored his doubt. “This ship hasn't been in out of the void long, either.”

“Of course not. The atmosphere in the Belt is too thin to sustain life, but it would be enough to rust that seal tight in, say a hundred years.”

Jane was a little disappointed at having the point of her observation snatched away. “Aren't we smart, though,” she said. Then, before Pete could think of an answer, the inner seal opened and the bowels of the strange and frightening ship were open to them.

The light was a little brighter inside and a metal stairway led downward.

“She's got a magnetic field of her own,” Pete said.

Jane didn't comment on the observation. Pete had stated the obvious. Even with their boots turned off, they could move by their own weight. The strength of the field was proven by the fact that the ship sat horizontal. The magnetic drift of her asteroid captor was not enough to turn her from an even keel.

Pete went down the stairs. Jane followed. Twenty feet down, a narrow companion way leveled off, leading them forward. “We're walking on the keel plate,” Pete said. “There are no escapeways from stern to prow.”

“Not necessarily strange,” Jane replied. “We agreed that this ship wasn't designed in the System.”

“At least not in the Inner System. It could have come from Jupiter.”

His observation was based on a point of history. It was accepted as fact that space explorers from Jupiter and perhaps beyond had penetrated the Inner System. Why they had never followed through was a mystery couched in many theories. The most universally accepted one was that a deterioration in Outer System civilization had destroyed the technology that made space travel possible.

But neither Jane nor Pete were greatly interested in history at the moment. The long, brooding companionway held greater fascination. As they approached the forward end, Jane stopped suddenly and grasped Pete's arm. There was a rapt look on her face.

“Can't you feel it?”

“Feel what?”

“I don't know. A presence. An intelligence. I can't explain it.”

If she expected a cynical rebuff from Pete, he certainly must have surprised her with his reply.

“I think you're very lucky.”

“Please don't laugh at me.”

“I'm not laughing. A first-year psychology student in this day and age knows the value of a highly developed sixth sense. It has many names. Extra-sensory perception—high-vibratory sensitivity—electro-intelligence affinity. But it adds up to the same thing—conscious receptivity at levels above the human norm.”

Jane blinked. She was on the verge of a defensively cynical reply herself, but then she simply said, “Are you sure archeology is your field?”

He ignored the question. “You certainly know what's happening to you, don't you?”

“I'm not sure.”

“You're mentally picking up the synthetic thought patterns that are coming out of the memory of the cybernetic brain controlling this ship.”

Jane stared blankly and Pete shot a quick question. “Where is the unit?”

Jane replied instantly, without thought. She pointed upward and forward. “It's in the control room just behind the nose of the ship.”

“Why wasn't it smashed when the ship hit the asteroid?”

“Because it's fifty feet back—behind a three-foot crash wall of…”

“Of what?”

Jane shook her head and then passed a hand across her brow. “I don't know! I…”

“But
almost
knew—you almost read the name of the material out of the brain's thought patterns. The brain knows—it was told.”

Jane's eyes showed disbelief but she did not contradict Pete. She pulled her head piece down. “You don't have to wear that thing. There's plenty of air in here.”

Pete grinned. “Which proves something else.”

“What?”

“That this ship came from an oxygen breathing world.”

Jane's eyes widened. “Then it can't be Jupiterian. It had to come from so far out—”

“From so far out that it couldn't have possibly reached our system.”

“But it's here.”

“It's here,” Pete said grimly. “Let's take a look at the brain.”

Jane led the way, moving forward as confidently as though this were the bowels of the
Snapdragon.
She climbed the stairs at the end of the companionway and went through a doorway that led to a higher one running in the same direction. There, she turned forward and opened another door.

“It's in there.”

The cabin was singularly bare. Some twenty feet square, its walls were of a bright metal and there was a control panel on the forward wall.

In the center of the cabin, surrounded by a waist-railing, a slim pedestal reared out of the floor supporting a bright metal globe with a ten-foot diameter.

“That's it,” Jane said. “Can you hear the hum?”

“No.”

“I can. It's very faint. Not even like a sound.”

“Your receptions are fine enough to record it.”

“What is it?”

“The synthetic thought stuff coming from the memory banks of the thing. I read a book of experiments on cybernetics at school. If you're highly sensitive, you should translate what comes to you as a mood.”

“I think it's sick,” Jane said.

Pete regarded her in silence. He was struck by the change in her. The subtle forces she was encountering had temporarily submerged and blanketed her extrovert personality pattern.

What she'd just said dawned on her and she looked frightened. “Pete! That's crazy. What's wrong with me? Calling a machine sick!”

“There's nothing crazy about that. The unit is out of order. It's the same thing.”

“You mean it's talking to me?”

“Of course not. You're merely interpreting emotionally because it's the only way you can express what's coming to you. Let's forget the brain for a while and do a little checking.”

Jane followed Pete forward where they studied the control panel. “There are a few things to be learned here,” he said grimly.

“The symbols on the dials. What kind of a language is that?”

“The closest thing I've seen to them are the ancient Earth languages. Egyptian—Sanskrit—maybe even ancient Chinese. It would take real scholars to make them out. But there's something else of interest here.”

“What, Pete?”

“A couple of things, so we'll take them one at a time. When we were outside, did you see any ports on this ship?”

“No.”

“Then I guess you haven't noticed—we can see out.”

“Pete! You're crazy!”

“Am I? Face the bulkhead squarely and look straight ahead of you. What do you see?”

Jane obeyed. Her eyes widened in amazement. After staring for a few moments, she turned her gaze on Pete. “I can see the rocks out in the Belt—out in the Badlands!”

“You're looking out through a round port.”

“But it's impossible.”

“It's some kind of strange refraction. I noticed it when we walked forward. As you move along the bulkhead, the window goes with you. At right angles to the eye the plates of this ship are transparent. Shift the angle about ten degrees in any direction and the visibility ceases.”

Phenomena following after each other so rapidly had dazed Jane. “There's one thing I noticed all by myself,” she said. “That soft, muddy sensation when you walk—it's not on the inside. Everything is solid here. Even the inner sides of the plates.”

“You're right! I've been so busy looking at other things I hadn't noticed. Then the characteristics of the metal that produce that effect are only on the outside.”

“What do you suppose it means?”

“I don't know—the characteristics were brought out through know-how we're unfamiliar with. I'm sure the outer softness is a phenomenon involved in the greater durability of the metal. At least that makes sense.”

Again Jane seized Pete's arm. She moved close to him and looked into his face and when she spoke it was in a whisper. “Pete. It turned! The brain! I'm scared.”

Pete looked blankly at the big metal globe. “What do you mean it turned?”

“It can turn on that pedestal. And it did turn—as though it's listening to us.”

“But you're facing away from it and there was no sound…how…?”

“I don't care where I'm facing. The darn thing knows we're here and I want to get out.”

Pete shrugged. “That's not so strange. It knows when an asteroid comes too close, so why shouldn't it know when we're standing right next to it?”

Jane stood close, needing the comfort of feeling Pete near her. “I don't like it here. Let's go someplace else.”

“All right,” he said cheerfully. “We'll explore. But don't start letting that cybernetic unit scare you. You're going to have to help it get well.”

“Pete! Stop being silly.”

“I'm not being silly. There has to be a self-repairing component in a unit that brought this ship from far outer space. It knows what's wrong with it.”

“Why does there have to be? The technicians and the crew would make repairs.”

“Maybe,” Pete said cryptically. “Let's see what's aft at this level.”

They went back into the companionway and chose the first of two doors that were offered. It opened on a cabin about half the size of the one that housed the brain. It was of the same shining metal and was filled with black rectangular boxes piled row on row in neat stacks.

“The memory banks,” Pete said.

Jane gasped. “All those? The brain must be able to remember things back to the dawn of time!”

“No, it was given just enough to go where it was supposed to and find its way back.”

Jane clung to his arms as she stared at the cabin's contents. “I don't like it here. Let's get out.”

“Are the thought emanations hostile?”

“No…no…” Jane's nose wrinkled and her brow furrowed. “It has to sound idiotic but I get a feeling that it's crying.”

“Not idiotic at all. That could be the emotional translation of its own synthetic thought reactions to its breakdown. Let's see what's in the next cabin.”

It was a vast enclosure going up to the apex of the hull plates.