The Fenris Device (9 page)

“Can we reach it?” I asked. At first I couldn't see it. Then I spotted it, well under the belly. It was high above us, but in the shelter of the ship we could erect a ladder from the maiden. If Ecdyon could get us inside, then we could see for ourselves what kind of ship it was.

Eve drew to a halt, and commented: “It's a good thing we found it when we did.”

“Why?” asked Maslax.

She pointed. There was no way of knowing how much of the
Varsovien
there still was, extending into the fag and the rain, but there was no doubt at all that the rest would not be easy to get to. Ten yards in front of us, there was a dip in the ground, and the shelf of rock along which we had been driving came to an abrupt end. Beyond the lip of the rock was swamp. Beyond that, probably the sea.

Ecdyon and I labored to extend a ladder to the port while Maslax held his gun on Eve in the privacy of the iron maiden. I was grateful for the opportunity to exchange a few words with Ecdyon, but the exchange revealed absolutely nothing. I told him that this was no time to be holding out, and that if he'd told me any lies he'd better amend them right away. Bearing in mind the desperate state of our situation, I expected him to tell me the truth. Perhaps he did.

He claimed, in fact, that he already had.

“Now look,” I said. “This just does not make sense. You claim you know nothing except what Stylaster has told you. You did not know anything about this ship other than the fact—if it is a fact—that it was left here a thousand years ago? But you also didn't know that the Gallacellans had ever used weapons?”

“What I have said is what I know,” he persisted.

“What about what you told Maslax? Do you have any idea what Stylaster intended to do once we brought him here? Could you lift the ship, if it could be lifted?”

“That was true as well.”

“You're a great help,” I told him. “So who told Maslax about the Fenris device?”

“There is no such thing,” he said. His voice was difficult to catch because of the noise of the storm.

“Well,” I said, “let's not be too sure of that. Your ignorance, it seems, is limitless. Suppose there is a Fenris device. Just suppose. Who told who?”

“I do not know. But....”

“That's what I wanted to hear,” I said, as he paused. “Come on. Tell me the but.”

“I do not know whether it is true....'

“Tell me anyway.”

“The hierarchy is not united on this matter. Stylaster has not the backing of many of the castes. We have no quarrels, you understand. We are a peaceful people. But there are people who might not want the
Varsovien
recovered. I do not know why. I have heard only rumors that this is so. There is a ship called the
Cicindel
....”

“The ship that wouldn't answer,” I said, remembering. “In the system, heading toward the
Saberwing
after the mayday call.”

“That is right. The
Cicindel
is rumored to represent other interests in this affair. It is from another system. It might have been sent to...observe...the progress of Stylaster's plan. The
Cicindel
has been in the system for some time. It has not come to Iniomi. But it has landed once. On Pallant.”

“Now there's a thing,” I said. “The Gallacellans have their little games to play as well.”

It dawned on me then how unfair it was of me to expect Ecdyon to know all things Gallacellan. Did I have encyclopedic knowledge of human affairs? True, I could give a quick rundown of who was liable to play what dirty trick on who within the foreseeable future, but I was certainly not privy to the inside information—only to the rumors and the speculations. What would I tell an alien who asked about Caradoc's precise plans for furthering its commercial stranglehold on known space? What could I tell him? And Ecdyon, despite his association with Stylaster, was less likely to be in a position of omniscience than I, with my proximity to Charlot. I wanted to apologize to him, but I couldn't see how to do it without a lengthy explanation of why I was sorry. And the ladder was in position. There was no time. I never did get to give Ecdyon that apology.

It didn't prove to be difficult to get into the
Varsovien
. Any child could have done it. The airlock was vast—it accommodated all four of us easily. Personally, I wasn't happy about all four of us boarding her. I would much rather Eve—and perhaps Ecdyon too—had stayed in the maiden. But Maslax reckoned to need them both—Ecdyon to help me sort out what was what, and Eve to hold as the hostage I would least like to see shot to pieces. We all came up the ladder, and we all entered the ship.

Beyond the lock there was a cylindrical chamber which appeared to have no other door save the lock itself. On the wall was a panel with a whole sequence of buttons. I say “wall” although the room was oriented at right angles to the natural direction of gravity—obviously the cylinder was supposed to be stood on end with a single circular wall. But the ship was laid on its side. We had to crouch down and crane our necks sideways to inspect the writing beside the buttons.

“What does it say?” I asked Ecdyon—then, with sudden doubt: “You can read, can't you?”

“I can read,” he said. “This is an elevator shaft. One of the buttons is labeled ‘control level.' Shall I press it?”

“Go ahead,” said Maslax.

Ecdyon pressed one of the buttons. Nothing happened.

“It's all switched off,” said Eve.

“Is there an activator button?” I asked the Gallacellan.

“This one here is marked only with a symbol,” he said. “I do not understand the symbol. Shall I press it?”

“Might as well,” I said. “If it isn't the activator it won't have any effect, will it?”

Ecdyon pressed the button, and we fell.

For once, I'd been thinking just half an instant ahead of my actions. Even as I told Ecdyon to press the button I was realizing that when the elevator was activated the artificial grav-field would come into play. Then down would very rapidly become sideways, and we would all end up in a heap on the tail-end of the cylindrical chamber.

As we fell, I was all ready to grab Maslax's gun and blast a hole in his left arm just below the elbow. It would have to be a real trick-shot, but with the wind to help me I thought I could pull it off. But I failed. Even as Maslax fell, his hand clutched more tightly around the gun. He hadn't taken his finger away from the stud. It went off.

I was already reaching for him, but in the split second while his hand convulsed, the wind realized what was happening, and I snatched my hand away. The beam barely touched the gauntlet of my suit, and didn't do any real damage.

Ecdyon was not so lucky. He intercepted the beam with his upper torso.

Maslax relaxed his grip almost instantly, and the beam cut out. The suit gave the Gallacellan a lot of protection, and it no doubt saved his life, but he was literally writhing in pain on the floor. His flailing limbs caught me in the midriff and threw me backward, robbing me of all the thin hope I retained of being able to disarm Maslax in the confusion. Eve was already crumpled up against the wall.

Maslax was the first to his feet. He was almost screaming.

“You should have warned me,” he whined, and the note of hysteria was starkly clear in his voice. “That was your fault. I didn't mean to shoot him. I didn't!”

I knelt over Ecdyon, trying to get some idea of the damage. The wound on his flesh was blue-black, but so far as I could see there was little leakage of blood (I presumed Gallacellans had blood). He stopped writhing within the minute, and sounds came out of his hind mouth. He was trying to talk, but nothing was getting through except clicks and whistles, as though he couldn't make up his mind whether to groan in Gallacellan or in English.

Eventually—in a matter of minutes—he quieted. I peered through the visor of his suit, and I saw him deliberately blink his eyes.

“He's alive,” said Maslax, still with the high-pitched tone in his voice. “I didn't kill him.”

“Are you sure you have the guts to murder twenty-five million people at one stroke?” I asked him sourly, as Eve knelt to help me get Ecdyon to his feet.

Ecdyon tried to say something. It came out garbled, but English.

“Say again,” I said to him, gently.

“I said: the air is....” He didn't manage to finish. But I nodded to signal that I got his meaning. The air was good. The hole in his suit hadn't done for him.

“We'd better not...,” I began, intending to say that we had better not take off our helmets because Gallacellan air, though enough like ours to be breathable, wasn't ideal, and we had plenty of spare in the maiden. Then I thought better of it. Sometime or other, I was going to have to persuade Maslax to take off his suit so I could at least see the bomb trigger.

I started again: “We'd better not waste our own supplies,” I said. “Close off the bottles and take off your helmets.”

We all exposed our faces to the atmosphere. “A thousand years old,” I murmured, “and still as fresh as they left it.” It felt fresher to human senses than it really was, owing to traces of carbohydrate that were enough to register a scent, but quite harmless. There was a shade too much oxygen in it, which might have a mildly intoxicating effect, but I didn't mention it—there was no point in alerting Maslax to the fact.

“Which button do I press?” demanded Maslax, now returned to his customary harsh and hoarse tones.

Ecdyon reached out and pressed it for him. He whispered, “I'm all right.” But I kept hold of his arms. He was heavy, and if he were to become a dead weight I probably couldn't hold him up. But I could give him a little assistance in standing.

The elevator went up. I remembered that we were now traveling along the ship, out into the swamplands.

The journey seemed to take an age, though it was only two or three minutes. There were no flashing lights on the panel to show our progress.

When we stopped, the room revolved slowly so that the door was now oriented in the opposite direction. It still had to be opened manually. There was another door beyond it, and when we had passed through that one we found ourselves in another elevator. The only difference so far as I could see was in the pattern of the buttons on the control panel. These were arranged in a square rather than a column.

Ecdyon leaned over to read all the labels.

“Where do we want to go?” he asked.

“The control room,” I said.

“There is no control room,” he said.

“This is the control level.”

“Yes.”

“Then there must be a control room.”

“No. Virtually all these labels refer only to repair facilities. There is only an observation room and a monitoring room. No reference to controls at all, in the sense that you mean.”

“What other sense?” I asked quickly.

“I cannot tell,” he said, “but there is something about these buttons which implies that the ship is completely automatic.”

“That's not very practical,” I said. “Even if it uses only a robot pilot there has to be some provision for programming a flight plan.”

“There is no button,” said Ecdyon.

“Get on with it,” said Maslax.

“It's all very well for you to say get on with it,” I told him. “Suppose you choose. Pick a button...any button.”

But Ecdyon cut short any argument that might have developed by reaching out a large finger and pushing one. We began to move again—not up or down, but sideways. The trip this time was much shorter. Only a matter of seconds.

Again, we found a double door giving us access into another chamber with only the one entrance/exit. This one was much larger, though, and it certainly wasn't an elevator. I didn't have to ask which button Ecdyon had selected. This was the observation room. There was a row of couches, and a plinth in the center of the room on which were mounted more buttons—presumably to control the screen.

I didn't wait for Maslax to object. I lurched forward with Ecdyon, and with some help from Eve I managed to get him into a reasonable coil on one of the softly cushioned couches. He spread himself into a much flatter coil than the one I'd seen him adopt previously, and he looked more like a python than ever.

“Do you want to get out of the suit?” I asked him, as I placed both our helmets on the next couch.

“Please,” he said, “a moment of rest first.”

Maslax was standing back in the doorway, looking around. Eve, having put down her own helmet, went forward to the plinth and punched a button. The lights went out. Maslax had hardly begun to frame a wordless cry of anger when she contrived to reverse the process and said, “Sorry.”

The next button she pressed brought the screen to life. It hummed very faintly for a few seconds, then stopped as an image appeared in glorious Technicolor. It came as no surprise to find that we were looking out into the atmosphere of Mormyr. Presumably, we had a view from the bow of the ship, because all we could see was storm and sea. The water was dark and ugly, lashed into a fury by wind and rain, bubbling and hissing like boiling milk. The hissing, of course, was suggested rather than heard. It was silent as a tomb so far inside the
Varsovien
. In the outer lift shaft, we had been able to hear the clatter of the hail against the outer hull transmitted through the metal, but that noise had been slowly muffled as we moved into the heart of the ship, and now, with the door of the observation room having been closed by Maslax, there was no sound at all.

“Not very interesting,” I commented.

“Shall I try for a different picture?” asked Eve, studying the other buttons ruminatively.

“No,” said Maslax. “Let's go.”

“Where to?” I asked.

“He mentioned a monitoring place,” said Maslax, pointing at Ecdyon with the hopping gauntlet at the end of his left arm. As the limp material of the suit moved I could see the outline of the triggering device, held in his left hand.

“He's hurt,” I said. “He can't go traipsing all over the ship. Can't we leave him here?”

“No,” Maslax said abruptly. There was no real need for an explanation. Only Ecdyon could read Gallacellan.

Only...? I suddenly thought, as I remembered the passenger in my mind. Hey, I said silently. Can you read?

Naturally, he said.

You might mention these things, I rebuked him.

I took it for granted...he began.

Hell! I said, suddenly—almost aloud as a new thought struck me. I bet you can speak it too. You can talk Gallacellan.

Well, he said, I don't know about that. I can understand Gallacellan, though the language has...matured...a little in a thousand years plus. But whether I can speak it—I mean, with your vocal cords. That's another matter.