'Now there is a true artist; the Doctor commented, as they joined the fringe of the crowd.
'Why?'
'Because she's recording not only the obvious focus of interest but also those witnessing the scene. She's searching for the response in others that will put the spectacle into context.'
The photographer caught sight of the Doctor and gave him a look of searching interest. He hooked his thumbs into his lapels, lifted his chin and struck a pose. She grinned and snapped a couple of rapid shots of him.
The Doctor smiled back at her and made a slight bow.
Sam felt a pang of jealousy, which she tried with only partial success to smother. Chiding herself for raking over old bones, she looked away.
There was a shorter, older man orbiting round the couple, who seemed to be attempting to marshal the crowd.
'Now Mr Delray and Ms Wynter just want to take a look like the rest of you,'
he was saying loudly.'Please give them a little room!'
'What do you think of the alien ship, Mr Delray?' somebody called out.
'Must be quite a problem to park,' he replied lightly, causing a ripple of laughter.
His voice exactly matched his appearance: deep and resonant with a hint of gravel. The man's a classic cliche film star, Sam thought dismissively, finding herself staring at him nevertheless.
'Why do you think the Nimosians are interested in it?' somebody else asked.
'Even a burned-out hunk of scrap would interest them - it would still be an improvement on their own ships. But we found it first, and if they don't like it that's too bad.They've got to learn that's the way civilised people behave.'
That reply brought forth a general murmur of approval.
'What do you think of the alien ship, Ms Wynter?'
'I wish we could get closer,' the blonde woman said. 'It's got a wonderful textural quality to it, almost as though it was sculpted.
Whoever built it must be very different from us .This might be the first contact with a new race. Even if it's abandoned we could learn a lot about them.'
'Would you like to take a look inside it?'
'Of course.'
Sam saw Delray glance disapprovingly at his companion, then quickly change the expression to a resigned smile.
Xyset's always ready to go anywhere for a picture,' he commented. 'Even when it might be dangerous and she should know better,' he added meaningfully.
Before Lyset Wynter could respond to this, somebody called out loudly,"The warship's moving!'
They all flowed to the rails again.
The angle between the Nimosian craft and the derelict had begun to narrow. Clearly it was edging towards the alien vessel. Then the slow drift of stars caused by the Cirrandaria's own orbit about the derelict changed as the liner activated its own manoeuvring thrusters.
The public-address system came to life.
'We are making a minor adjustment to our orbit to maintain our relative position to the Nimosian ship,' said a reassuring voice. "There is no cause for alarm.'
A fresh babble of voices broke out as they strained their eyes to see what was happening. Sam looked around for somewhere to get a better view.
There were several large pairs of binoculars mounted on pedestals along the rails rather like those found at seaside resorts, presumably so the passengers could observe the sights directly rather than over the ship's screens. But they were all occupied. The Doctor reached around the large man in a floral shirt who was monopolising the nearest of them and tapped him urgently on the shoulder. As he turned about, surprised to find nobody there, the Doctor slipped nimbly between him and the instrument and pressed his face to the eyepieces.
'What's happening?' Sam demanded, ignoring the large man's angry glare.
'They're holding a stationary position with the thrusters,' the Doctor said. 'A hatch has opened... a small craft's coming out... It's moving very slowly towards the alien ship.' He pulled back from the eyepieces and looked resignedly at Sam.'Sometimes your kind are too ingenious for their own good. I was hoping they hadn't thought of that.'
Chapter 3
Pendulum
The service pod hung between the Indomitable and the alien vessel, being lowered like a cautious spider on the end of an almost invisible, woven, single-molecule line.Within the pod,Technician Arvel Kerven mentally reminded himself, once again, that the line's breaking strain was ten thousand kilos.It was not that he seriously expected it to fail, he merely wanted nothing to distract him from the task in hand.
Kerven did not consider himself a particularly brave man; indeed his colleagues, if asked, would probably say he was too cautious and unimaginative to be courageous. He had volunteered because he was the best-qualified person to carry out the mission. But it would provide a useful talking point. Next year, when he retired from active service and took up his tutorship at the space engineering sciences college, he would use the incident as an illustration of how the job of maintenance and EVA pod operative could have its unusual moments.
'Twenty-five hundred metres run out,' came the voice of his commander, First Tech Reng, over the comlink. 'Anything to report?'
'No, Chief,' Kerven replied. 'Internal systems still functioning normally.Your signal's breaking up a little, though.'
The transmission was conducted via a comm laser feeding into the small receptor dish on the dome of the pod.This system should have been immune to all normal interference, yet already there was a distinct background crackle and wavering of tone. By the time he reached the alien craft conventional communications might be impossible. However, that eventuality, and all other foreseeable contingencies, had been provided for.
Of course, that still left the unforeseeable.
The already cramped interior of the pod also contained chemical heater packs, spare oxygen cylinders and a catalytic carbon dioxide scrubber unit.These, together with Kerven's pressure suit - which he was wearing with the visor up - would substitute for the pod's own systems should they foil due to the interference from the alien vessel. That same interference made remote operation of the pod impossible and necessitated Kerven's presence. Despite everything, Kerven felt a certain satisfaction in knowing there were some situations that still required direct human presence.
As he passed the twenty-seven-hundred-metre mark he began to notice a faint but distinct sensation of weight within the tiny cabin. That was almost unknown inside a pod except for the acceleration forces generated when its small drive motor was operating. Kerven checked the direct-reading mechanical-strain gauge on the line: it was creeping up to a little over twenty kilos.
The bulk of the alien ship, visible through the direct-vision ports that ringed the top of the pod, was filling a quarter of the sky. As he examined its dimly lit form he was assailed by a most unexpected sense of déjà vu , which momentarily disconcerted him until he identified its source. It was a historical vid he had seen showing the descent of a primitive miniature submarine into the sunless depths of the ocean to salvage a sunken surface vessel. Yes, the parallel was a good one. Even he could easily imagine that the stars around him were flecks of plankton caught in the lights of his submersible, and that the craft below was really a familiar vessel with its outlines strangely distorted by marine growths, silt and decay. How often did life repeat itself, albeit on a grander scale? Here he was descending through the depths of space towards a derelict many thousand times larger than that ancient lost ship, and certainly of far stranger origins.
At twenty-nine hundred metres' deployment, the soft whir of the air pump, normally almost inaudible, rose to a shrill whine, stuttered, then recovered again. But he could hear its tone deepening raggedly. He cut its power, opened an oxygen cylinder and activated one of the chemical repleiu'sher packs clipped to the wall beside his head. He watched the sensitised patches on the outside of the pack until they changed colour, then reported his actions.
'Have shut down air system due to interference. Backup operating normally.'
He felt a slight jerk as his descent ceased.
'Are any other systems affected?' Reng asked, his words fading and intermittently drowned by the wash of static.
'Not yet, Chief...'
The gyro motor began to falter and Kerven cut its power.
'Correction,' he said. 'Gyro motor has just malfunctioned. Letting it freewheel. Should be enough inertia stored to stabilise me for touchdown.
Continue lowering.'
'Understood,' Reng replied, and Kerven's descent resumed.
At thirty-one hundred metres the lights on the control panel began to flicker.
The atmospheric-integrity alarm gave a half-hearted wail, then was silent.
Calmly Kerven disabled it in turn. His suit would protect him if there was a genuine loss of pressure.
After another hundred metres the controls of the pod's thruster pack flickered and one gave a brief pop of expelled gas. He hurriedly cut their circuit along with the rest of the operating controls. It was better to travel inert than with systems he could not rely upon. Now the only illumination in the pod's interior was the soft green glow emanating from the bioluminescent tube he had stuck to the wall at the beginning of his descent. He reported back again. Reng's reply was almost unintelligible but Kerven thought he could detect a note of concern behind the words. Who'd have thought it of the old man?
At thirty-three hundred metres the comlink finally failed and Reng's voice vanished into a howl of static.
Kerven cut its power and uncoiled the bypass optical fibre that linked directly with the external dish, fitted a cup over the end and placed the lens of his powerful hand torch to it.The simple chemical cell and filament bulb functioned normally as he tapped out the pulses. The light should be clearly visible through the telescope the Indomitable had constantly trained on him. He withdrew the torch and applied his eye to the cup.
The slowly pulsing comm laser flickered back the reply, RECEIVED: CONTINUE LOWERING.
When he was a thousand metres above the derelict, spotlights from the Indomitable blazed into life, their invisible beams illuminating the vast hull in two-hundred-metre-wide circles with the cold starkness of bright moonlight. Suddenly Kerven found the alien ship had become an artificial landscape under a coal-black sky, with all but the brightest stars washed from sight. The Indomitable was a tiny brilliant point directly above him, the Emindian liner a dimmer irregular speck two-thirds the way down towards the derelict's lateral horizon. He was descending equidistant from the ringed ends and just below the derelict's tower-like superstructure -
hopefully as near to the centre of gravity as they could estimate it. The line load showed he and the pod now had a combined weight of almost fifty kilos in the derelict's unnaturally steep gravitational gradient.
Kerven studied the vast hull the best he could through binoculars without their normal electronic augmentation.
It seemed to be a single mass of pipework, of all sizes and cross sections.
Some, raised on short pylons, ran straight and unbroken from one end of the vessel to the other like monotrain tubes, while others wriggled like snakes: curling, branching and merging with each other. Some of them had to be twenty metres across. If they were conduits of some kind, what could they possibly carry? Briefly he turned his attention to the blurred end of the ship, but could make out no more details than he had from further out.
Radar pulses had come back oddly distorted from that section, and until they understood its nature he had been briefed to keep well clear. His immediate task was to find some spot where he could set down safely.
At a hundred metres up he signalled a halt while he surveyed the surface beneath him closely. The pod bobbed slightly as, four kilometres above him, Chief Reng was playing the line in an attempt to steady him against the intermittent action of Indomitable's thrusters, which were holding the ship stationary. The increasing weight of his pod must have been causing the Indomitable to drift and Kerven knew Commander Vega could not risk the ship getting any closer to the derelict. The motion was unsettling.
Kerven gulped dangerously for a moment and hurriedly cut in the gyro to impart what remaining stabilisation it could, and then forced himself to concentrate on the topography of his potential landing site. A pod was no place to be motion sick.
A little to one side of his current position was a node where a dozen conduits converged, feeding into a structure resembling a flat-topped drum some thirty metres across. Close by was one of the 'monotube' support pylons, arching over like a flying buttress on an ancient cathedral, to bury itself amid the bundles of pipes and tubes. It was of solid latticework construction, probably connected to the craft's main structural frame, and looked sound enough for his purpose.
He signalled, LEFT 150. By the convention he had agreed with Reng before he started, the tower-like structure was up, the opposite down, and the two long arms of the vessel left and right.
After a few seconds he felt the line tighten and he began to drift along the length of the alien craft. Using direct linkage he extended the pod's external manipulator arms, flexed them experimentally, then left them locked spread wide.
Just before he reached the pipework node he signalled: STOP. The line tightened, swinging him up in a long lazy arc over the target area, then back again. The pendulum-like motion faded surprisingly after only a couple of minutes. It must have been damped by interaction with the alien ship's energy field. At least the interference effect had some benefits.
When he was still again, he signalled, DOWN 50.
He felt the drop this time as the drum surface spread to meet him. He hoped the Indomitable would hold still for the next few seconds. He halted, swaying and bobbing. He estimated his distance again and sent, DOWN
Another drop. He was now ten metres clear but drifting towards one edge of the drum top. Quickly he sent, FREE.
The line ran out on a friction clutch. The multiple shadows of the pod cast by the Indomitable's searchlights merged into one. Kerven braced himself.
There was a thud and bounce, then the pod fell forward on to its outstretched arms, making a tripod with its base. Twenty metres of slack line fell behind him, then stopped. He was down.
Kerven found he had been holding his breath and exhaled shakily. He sent, DOWN SAFE.
With the normal monitors nonfunctional, he checked for external radiation by observing a simple gold-leaf electroscope and self-developing film strip mounted on the pod's outer shell. After five minutes the levels still showed normal for open space. He signalled, COMMENCING EVA, then closed and sealed his visor and activated his suit's simple chemical life-support pack. It was good for only two hours but he had replacement sets.
Hopefully his task would not take that long. He shut down the pod's improvised air system and cautiously opened the purge valve. His suit tightened about him slightly as the air hissed away. He unlatched the access hatch set in the back of the pod and climbed slowly out on to the surface of the alien ship.
The ground under his boots glowed a dull crimson under the vertical light from the Indomitable . But the colour was not constant, and he could see swirls of deeper purple mingled with the occasional streak of surprisingly brilliant green. The marbled pattern suggested half-mixed paint allowed to dry. He could even make out a faint ridged pattern matching the swirling colours. The surface felt hard and unyielding, and he could not determine whether it was metal, ceramic or some unknown composite.At least the texture gave good traction in the local gravity field, which, he estimated, was about one-half standard.
Kerven looked about and, for a moment, was overwhelmed by the sheer intimidating artificiality of the structure. Behind his back the massive cylinder of the hull curved away sharply. Before him was the base of the encrusted tower, which by his orientation was tilted almost horizontally, its plated growths and stanchions forming a veritable forest that faded into the shadows beyond the reach of the Indomitable's lights. To either side the twisted mat of pipework flowed towards the far ends
of the ship where, two kilometres distant, the flaring spire rings appeared like horned moons rising over the edge of the world, the one to the right made even more mysterious by virtue of its eerie translucency.
Suddenly he felt very alone, without even the usual open comlink for company, and he found his hand sliding to his holstered regulation pistol as though seeking reassurance from its presence.With an effort he drew his hand back, reminding himself that he was a practical engineer and he had a job to do.
He undipped the line from the pod and fastened it to his suit harness. Its drag would be negligible over a short distance and it meant he could be hauled back up to the ship in an emergency. It would also serve, once he fixed it to the support pylon, as a guide down which they would lower the heavier tow cable.
They had used all their store of single-molecule mooring line, emergency repair filament and tape to fashion the tow cable. Reng had estimated maximum working load would only be two hundred and fifty tonnes. Even if it had been greater, the Indomitable's engines were incapable of accelerating the huge mass of the derelict to any useful velocity. But a token gesture was all that was required. Simply having it under controlled tow would give them legal possession and so deny the Emindians any claim.
Kerven could send and receive signals directly, now he was clear of the pod, so he clipped the torch to his belt. Then he walked over to the edge of the drum and stared out across the humps and valleys of the pipes.
Seeing them closer to, he became less certain they were necessarily all conduits. Apart from their mottled colouring, they were of very organic appearance, some tapering distinctly along their length and dividing in a dendritic fashion like the branches of a tree. Or vines, perhaps. He had a sudden impression of the true hull many metres below smothered by a growth of huge, clinging creepers. Or perhaps it was intentional. Did they form part of the craft's external structure, providing support and bracing to the skin of the hull? Crystals 'grew'; could you grow a vessel this size?
Vanderdeken's Children Page 3
