Non-Stop

by Brian W Aldiss

‘Have you told anyone else you have this?’ Zac Deight asked, turning the heat gun over with interest.

  ‘No. Only Laur — Inspector Vyann knows; she’s asleep at present.’

  ‘It should have been handed to the Council for us to make the best use of we could,’ Zac Deight said gently. ‘You ought to have realized that. Will you come to my room and tell me all about it?’

  ‘Well, there’s not much to tell, sir…’ Complain began.

  ‘You can surely see how dangerous this weapon could be in the wrong hands…’ There was something commanding in the old councillor’s tone. When he turned and made down the corridor, Complain followed that Gothic back — not happily, but without protest.

  They took a lift down to the lower level, then walked five decks forward to the councillor’s apartment. It was absolutely deserted here, silent and dark. Bringing out an ordinary magnetic key, Zac Deight unlocked a door and stood aside for Complain to enter. Directly the latter had done so, the door slammed behind him. It was a trap!

  Whirling round, Complain charged the door with all the fury of a wild animal — uselessly. He was too late, and Deight had the heat gun with which he might have burnt his way to freedom. Savagely, Complain flashed on his torch and surveyed the room. It was a bedroom cabin which had been disused for some while, to judge by the dust everywhere; like most such rooms throughout the length of the ship, it was spartan, anonymous.

  Complain picked up a chair and battered it to bits against the locked door, after which he felt better able to think. An image swam up to him of the time when he had first stood close to Vyann, watching through a spyhole when Scoyt left Fermour alone in the interrogation room; Fermour had jumped on to a stool and tried to reach the ceiling grille. Obviously, he had expected to find an escape route that way. Now supposing…

  He swung the bed into the centre of the room, tossed a locker on top of it and climbed rapidly up to examine the grille. It was similar to every other grille in every other room of the ship; three feet square, latticed with thin bars widely enough spaced to allow a finger to be poked between them. The exploring torch revealed these spaces to be silted up with dust sticky as rheumy eyes; such breeze as drained through in the room was faint indeed.

  Complain heaved tentatively at the grille. It did not budge.

  It had to budge. Fermour did not stand on that stool and stretch upwards just because he needed some physical jerks. Here too, if the grilles opened, would be an explanation of the way some of Scoyt’s previously captured Outsiders had escaped from guarded cells. Complain stuck his fingers through the grille and felt along its inner edge, hope and fear scampering coldly through his veins.

  His index finger soon met with a simple, tongued catch. Complain pressed it over. Similar catches lay on the upper surface of the other three sides of the grille. One by one, he flicked them over. The grille lifted easily up; Complain angled it sideways, brought it down and put it quietly on the bed. His heart beat rapidly.

  Catching hold of the aperture, he drew himself up into it.

  There was hardly space to stir. He had expected to find himself in the inspection ways; instead he was in the ventilation system. He guessed immediately that this pipe ran through the strange inter-deck world of the inspection ways. Clicking his torch off, he strained his eyes down the low duct, ignoring the breeze that sighed continuously into his face.

  One light only lit the tunnel, filtering up from the next grating along. Struck with the idea that he must look much like a cork in a bottle, Complain dragged himself forward and peered through the grille.

  He was staring down into Zac Deight’s room. Zac Deight was there alone, talking into an instrument. A tall cupboard, standing now in the middle of the room, showed how the niche in the wall which housed the instrument was normally concealed. So fascinated was Complain with his novel viewpoint that for a moment he failed to hear what Zac Deight was speaking about. Then it registered with a rush.

  ‘… fellow Complain causing a lot of trouble,’ the Councillor said into the phone. ‘You remember when your man Andrews lost his welder a few weeks back? Somehow it has now got into Complain’s hands. I found out because I happened to come across a gaping hole in the wall of one of the compartments on Deck 22, Inspector Laur Vyann’s room… Yes, Curtis, can you hear me? This line is worse than ever…’

  For a moment, Deight was silent, as the man at the other end of the line spoke. Curtis! Complain exclaimed to himself — that was the name of the Giant in charge of the mob who captured him. Looking down on the councillor, Complain suddenly noticed the give-away ring with the octagonal stone on Zac Deight’s finger, and began to wonder what ghastly web of intrigue he had blundered into.

  Deight was speaking again. ‘I had the chance of slipping into Vyann’s room,’ he said, ‘while your diversion down on the Drive Floors was in full swing. And there I found something else the dizzies have got hold of: a file we never knew existed, written by the first man to captain the ship on the way back from Procyon V. It contains far more than the dizzies should know; it’ll set them questioning all sorts of things. By a stroke of luck, I have managed to get both file and welder into my possession… Thanks. Even more luckily, nobody but Complain and this girl Vyann yet know anything about — or realize the significance of — either file or laser. Now then, I know all about Little Dog’s ideas on the sanctity of dizzy lives, but they’re not up here coping with this problem, and it’s getting more difficult hour by hour — if they want their precious secret kept, there is one easy way to do it. I’ve got Complain locked in next door to me now… Of course not, no force; he just walked into the trap like an angel. Vyann is asleep in her room. What I’m asking you is this, Curtis: I want your sanction to kill Complain and Vyann… Yes, I don’t like it either, but it’s the only way we can possibly retain the status quo, and I’m prepared to do it now before it’s too late…’

  Zac Deight was silent, listening, an expression of impatience creeping over his long face.

  ‘There isn’t time to radio Little Dog,’ he said, evidently interrupting the speaker. ‘They’d procrastinate too long. You’re in charge up here, Curtis, and all I need is your permission… That’s better… Yes, I do consider it imperative. You don’t think I enjoy the task? I shall gas them both through the air vents of their rooms, as we’ve done before in similar awkward cases. At least we know it’s painless.’

  He rang off. He pushed the cupboard back into place. He stood for a while hesitating, gnawing his knuckles, his face seamed with distaste. He opened the cupboard and removed a long cylinder. He looked speculatively up at the ceiling grille. He took the blast of Complain’s dazer right in his face.

  The colour fled from Zac Deight’s brow. His head flopped on to his chest and he collapsed, sprawling, on the floor.

  For a minute, Complain lay where he was, his mind attempting to adjust to events. He was brought back to the immediacy of the present by a horrible sensation. An alien thought had somehow drifted among his thoughts; it was as if somebody’s thickly furred tongue licked his brain. Flipping on his torch, he found a tremendous moth hovering before his eyes. Its wing span was about five inches; the tapetum lucidum in its eyes reflected the light like two cerise pin points.

  Sickened, he struck at it but missed. The moth fluttered rapidly away down the air duct. Complain recalled another moth in Deadways which had left a similar delicately dirty fingerprint on his mind. Now he thought, ‘This power the rabbits have — the moths must have it in lesser degree. And the rats seem to be able to understand them… Perhaps these moths are a sort of airborne scouts for the rat-hordes!’

  This notion scared him a great deal more than hearing Deight pronounce his death sentence had done.

  In a sweat of panic, he flicked back the four tongues which kept Zac Deight’s grille in place, slithered the grille along the duct and dropped down into the councillor’s room. Pulling up a table, he climbed on to it and moved the grille back into its proper position. Then he felt sa
fer.

  Zac Deight was not dead: Complain’s dazer had been turned only to half power; but he had been at close enough range to receive a shock of sufficient strength to keep him senseless for some while. He looked harmless, even benevolent, huddled on the deck with hair fallen over his ashen forehead. Complain took the councillor’s keys without a stir of compunction, collected his heat gun, unlocked the door, and let himself out into the silent corridor.

  At the last moment he paused, turning back into the room to flash his torch up at the grille. Sharp little pink hands grasped the bars, a dozen sharp faces hated down at him. Hair prickling up his neck, Complain gave them the daze. The little burning eyes lost their brilliance at once, the pink hands relaxed their grip.

  Squeals following him down the corridor told Complain he had also winged concealed reinforcements.

  His ideas flowed fast as he walked. One thing he stubbornly determined: Councillor Deight’s role in this affair, and all that he had said on the strange instrument to Curtis (where was Curtis?) should be mentioned to nobody until he had discussed it with Vyann. They could no longer tell who was on their side and who was not.

  ‘Just supposing Vyann…’ he began aloud; but he quickly tucked that dread away. There was a point where distrust merged with insanity.

  A practical item worried Complain, but he could not quite formulate it. It was something to do with the rescue of Fermour… No, it would have to wait. He was too anxious to reason coolly; he would consider it later. Meanwhile, he wanted to give the heat gun, the welder, as Deight had called it, over to somebody who could make best use of it: Master Scoyt.

  The excitement round Scoyt had gloriously increased; he had transferred himself into the centre of a whirlpool of activity.

  The barriers between Forwards and Deadways had been broken down. Sweating men busily tore down the barricades, relishing the work of destruction.

  ‘Take them away!’ Scoyt shouted. ‘We thought they guarded our frontiers, but now that our frontiers are all round us, they are useless.’

  Through the broken barriers, the tribe of Gregg came. Ragged and filthy, male or female or hermaphrodite, well or wounded, on foot or on rough stretchers, they docked excitedly among the watching Forwarders. They bore bundles and bedding rolls and boxes and panniers; some pulled crude sledges they had dragged through the ponics; one woman drove her belongings before her on the back of an emaciated sheep. With them all flew the black midges of Deadways. Such was the fever of excitement which simmered over Forwards, that this animated gaggle of squalor was greeted with welcoming smiles and an occasional cheer. The tattered legion waved back. Roffery had been left behind; he was considered near enough dead to make any trouble expended on his account worthless.

  One thing at least was clear: the outcasts, wounded though many of them were from their encounter with the rats, were prepared to fight. Every man jack of them was loaded down with dazers, knives and improvised pikes.

  Gregg himself, accompanied by his weird henchman, Hawl, was conferring with Scoyt, Pagwam and Councillor Ruskin behind a closed door when Complain arrived on the scene. Without ceremony, he thrust his way into the room. He savoured an unprecedented confidence which even their shouts at his intrusion did not sap.

  ‘I’ve come to help you,’ he said, facing Scoyt as the natural leader there. ‘I’ve two things for you, and the first is a bit of information. We’ve discovered that there are trapdoors on every level of every deck; that is only one way the Giants and Outsiders can escape. They also have a handy exit in every single room!’

  He jumped up on to the table and demonstrated to them how a grille opened. Climbing down again without comment, he enjoyed the surprised look in their faces.

  ‘That’s something else for you to watch, Master Scoyt,’ he said. And then the point about Fermour’s escape that had been troubling him slid into his mind without effort; instantly, a slice more of the puzzle became clear.

  ‘Somewhere in the ship, the Giants have a headquarters,’ he said. ‘They took me to it when they caught me, but I don’t know where it is — I was gassed. But obviously it’s in a part of a deck or level cut off from us, deliberately or by design. There are plenty such places in the ship — that’s where we have to look.’

  ‘We’ve already decided that,’ said Gregg, impatiently. ‘The trouble is, things are in such a muddle, on most decks we don’t know when a bit’s cut off and when it isn’t. An army could be hiding behind any bulkhead.’

  ‘I’ll tell you one such place near at hand,’ Complain said tensely. ‘Above the cell Fermour was kept in, on Deck 21.’

  ‘What makes you think that, Complain?’ Scoyt asked curiously.

  ‘Deduction. The Giants, as we have realized, went to an enormous amount of trouble to lure everyone away from the corridors so that they could get to Fermour and rescue him via the trap-doors. They could have spared themselves all that bother if they had simply pulled him up through the grille in his cell. It would not have taken them a minute, and they could have remained unseen. Why didn’t they? My guess is, because they couldn’t. Because something on the level above has collapsed, blocking that grille. In other words, there may be chambers up there we have no access to. We ought to see what’s in them.’

  ‘I tell you there are a hundred such places –’ Gregg began.

  ‘It certainly sounds worth investigating –’ Councillor Ruskin said.

  ‘Suppose you’re right, Complain,’ Scoyt interrupted. ‘If the grille’s blocked, how do we get through?’

  ‘Like this!’ Complain levelled the heat gun at the nearest wall, fanning it horizontally. The wall began to drip away. He switched off power when a ragged archway had formed, and looked challengingly at them. For a moment all were silent.

  ‘Gawd’s blood!’ Gregg croaked. ‘That’s the thing I gave you.’

  ‘Yes. And that’s how you use it. It’s not a real weapon, as you thought — it’s a flame projector.’

  Scoyt stood up. His face was flushed.

  ‘Let’s get down to Deck 21,’ he said. ‘Pagwam, keep your men pulling up trap-doors as fast as you can circulate that ring. Complain, you’ve done well. We’ll try that gadget out at once.’

  They moved out in a body, Scoyt leading. He gripped Complain’s arm gratefully.

  ‘Given time, we can pull the damn ship apart with that weapon,’ he said. It was a remark which did not fully register on Complain until much later.

  Chaos reigned on the middle level of Deck 21, where Fermour’s cell was. All the manholes were exposed, each being now guarded by a sentry; their covers were flung aside in untidy piles. The few people who lived here — mostly men of the barriers and their families — were evacuating before further trouble came, straggling among the sentries, getting in everyone’s way. Scoyt elbowed his way roughly through them, pushing squeaking children to right and left.

  As they flung open Fermour’s cell door, Complain felt a hand on his arm. He turned, and there was Vyann, fresh and bright of eye.

  ‘I thought you were asleep!’ he exclaimed, smiling with the delight of seeing her again.

  ‘Do you realize it’s within a watch of waking?’ she said. ‘Besides, I’m told things are about to happen. I had to come and see that you didn’t get into trouble.’

  Complain pressed her hand.

  ‘I’ve been in and out of it while you were sleeping,’ he said cheerfully.

  Gregg was already in the middle of the cell, standing on the battered crate which served here as a chair, peering up at the grille above his head.

  ‘Roy’s right!’ he announced. ‘There’s an obstruction on the other side of this thing. I can see some crumpled metal up there. Hand me up that heat gun and let’s try our luck.’

  ‘Stand from under!’ Complain warned him. ‘Or you’ll shower yourself with melted metal.’

  Nodding, Gregg aimed the weapon as Scoyt handed it up, and depressed the button. The glassy arc of heat bit into the ceiling, drawing a red wea
l on it. The weal broadened, the ceiling sagged, metal came gooing down like shreds of pulverized flesh. Through the livid hole, other metal showed; it too, began to glow lividly. Noise filled the room, smoke cascaded about them and out into the corridor, bitter smoke which rasped their eyeballs. Above the uproar came a crackling explosion, and just for a second the lights flashed on with unexpected brilliance then died away to nothing.

  ‘That should do it!’ Gregg exclaimed with immense satisfaction, climbing down from his perch and eyeing the gaping ruin above him. His beard twitched in excitement.

  ‘I really think we ought to hold a full Council meeting before we do anything as drastic as this, Master Scoyt!’ Councillor Ruskin said plaintively, surveying the ruin of the cell.

  ‘We’ve done nothing but hold Council meetings for years,’ Scoyt said. ‘Now we’re going to act.’

  He ran into the corridor and bellowed furiously, producing in very short time a dozen armed men and a ladder.

  Complain, who felt he had more experience of this kind of thing than the others, went to fetch a bucket of water from the nearby guards’ quarters, flinging it up over the tortured metal to cool it. In the ensuing cloud of steam, Scoyt thrust the ladder into place and climbed up with his dazer ready. One by one, as quickly as possible, the others followed, Vyann keeping close to Complain. Soon the whole party stood in the strange room above the cell.

  It was overwhelmingly hot; the air was hard to breathe. Their torches soon picked out the reason for the blocked grille and the collapsed inspection way below their feet: the floor of this chamber had undergone a terrific denting in some long-past explosion. A machine — perhaps left untended in the time of the Nine Day Ague, Complain thought — had blown up, ruining every article and wall in the place. A staggering quantity of splintered glass and silicone was scattered all over the floor. The walls were pitted with shrapnel. But there was not a trace of a Giant.

  ‘Come on!’ Scoyt said, trampling ankle deep through the wreckage towards one of two doors. ‘Let’s not waste time here.’