Kim thought about it then shook her head. "We want them to get through. We don't want to be doing this on our own."
"I am still unaware of what it is we are attempting to achieve," Meledrin said. "You have not made it clear."
She hadn't made it clear because she wasn't exactly sure. Get away from the Americans, first. Done, for the moment. Talk to the hurgon and end the war. She'd certainly made progress in that direction but wasn't sure how being on this new world would help, beyond evening out the playing field with the Americans. She knew as much about this place as they did.
"We see if we can find people on this world and see if they are technologically advanced." The dusty room they were in did nothing more than muddy those waters. "And we try to contact the hurgon and see what the hell we can do about this war. They don't want this any more than we do. Not really."
"You are basing this assessment on the fact that one hurgon failed to kill one elderly human?"
"Yes. And this hurgon right here is friendly enough. He's obviously someone we can get along with."
"So," Keeble said, "we need to find a radio so Cuto can fix it and we can talk to the rest of them."
"Yes."
"Right. Well it won't get done standing here." He shifted his toolbox to his good hand and stumped from the room. Though Cuto could not have understood a word of what was said, the alien followed. Tuki waited until first Kim and then Meledrin followed as well.
"This world may be in worse condition than the others we have seen," Meledrin said. "The hurgon may already have been victorious and moved on."
Hurrying after Keeble, Kim sucked in a deep breath as she started to catch up with reality. She was on another world. Another world. Her companions were all primitive people who still believed in magic. Hell, Keeble could do magic. Crossing between worlds was probably not such an impossible thought for them. They also wouldn't understand the odds of finding a group of worlds that were so alike.
It was all so unlikely. So impossible. Ending a war should be easy in comparison.
As far as Kim could tell, they were in some type of military installation. On the first level was a mess hall with a huge kitchen. There was what looked like a first aid room and a laundry. There was an office with twenty desks lined up with regimental precision. There was what could have been a rec' or torture room. Or something else entirely.
Every surface was covered in a few centimeters of dust and looked to have been that way for centuries. They left a storm of it in their wake.
At the end of a long hall, with a utility room and workshops that Keeble had to be pulled away from, they found a door that opened at the push of a button, and a set of stairs. Up was the only option. Kim went slowly, pausing at the next level, ear against the door to listen.
"What do you hear?" Keeble whispered.
"Nothing. Come on."
Beyond was more hallway and more quiet, dusty rooms. Kim didn't know what half of them were for, and she wasn't interested in the ones whose purpose she could guess. There wasn't anything that looked like machinery.
More stairs at the end of the hall, and more rooms above. Then the same again. They hadn't even found a door leading outside, or a window. Just fifty meters of straight, dusty blandness with stairs at either end. Keeble and Tuki checked every door as they went past, long after Kim had given up hope. They could have passed a dozen radios already, without realizing. Cuto didn't look particularly interested, though it was probably all very strange to it.
At the end of the hallway on the fifth level, Kim leaned against the door. "We might as well go back," she said.
Keeble shook his head. "The Americans are probably through by now."
"Right. Of course. We might as well wait here, then. They'll catch up soon enough."
"They will not return us to prison?" Meledrin asked as she straightened her hair.
"Of course they will. One made entirely of metal."
"And you desire this."
Kim sighed. "No."
"Then perhaps we should continue on."
"Come on, then." Kim levered herself off the door so Keeble could open it and followed him up the inevitable stairs beyond. And there was another door at the next landing.
"Do we look at this floor or choose floors at random or go straight to the top?" Kim said before the dwarf had a chance to open the door. But she knew what his answer would be. Skipping floors would be leaving the job half done, and that wasn't right.
"No shirking, dwife. There may be a radio right through here."
There wasn't. There was a hallway. But the hallway was wider, higher, and shorter than usual. And it was filled with all types of furniture and rubbish scattered around like a fall of autumn leaves. Kim didn’t know what the mess might mean, so she gave it no thought. The one door that marred the right hand wall was three meters wide and went all the way from floor to ceiling. There was no door at the far end, just an opening that took up the entire wall.
"Well," Kim said, striding down the hall as if her plan was finally coming together. Keeble stopped halfway to open the door, but Kim didn't slow. She went all the way to the end and through the opening. On the other side, she stopped so suddenly Meledrin almost ran into her.
"The door won't open," Keeble was saying as he caught up. "I think it's hydraulic. There's a panel near it but Cuto climbed up to have a look through the window and said there wasn't anything worth seeing."
"Cuto told you?" Meledrin asked.
But Keeble didn't answer. Kim decided he was probably staring at the same thing she was. The room was the size of a football field and filled with row upon row of spaceships. It was a pretty amazing sight, even if Meledrin didn't think so. Most of them were not much larger than the one they had already flown, but some were the size of a house, and there was an arch that led through to some even larger ships.
Keeble went to run his hand along the nearest hull, but Kim headed for the other hangar. Meledrin wandered along behind as if she didn't care either way. Tuki followed because that was what he did, and Cuto said something but followed before Meledrin had a chance to answer. The next room was five times the size of the first, and it needed to be. The smallest ship was a vaguely plane shaped thing about the size of a jumbo jet. The largest was a sphere more than a hundred meters across. It was massive. She couldn't believe something that size could ever move, let alone get all the way into space. Maybe it was just another plane. Maybe it was a building. Maybe it was a moon.
No vehicle could be that big.
Kim was still staring, with the others gathered behind, when Keeble caught up again.
"Don't just stand there blocking the door," he said, pushing his way through. "Trust women to just stand around looking." But he stopped to stare as well. He went for a closer look a minute later. Kim watched as he went to rub his hand along a hull nearby.
Cuto broke the silence, and Kim jumped. Meledrin and the alien spoke and waved their arms for a few seconds before the elf translated.
"Cuto is adamant that someone is on the level below us. Cuto suggests we might want to either move on or make our way into one of these ships."
"There'll probably be a radio in the ships," Kim said.
"In that case, which one shall we enter?"
"How would I know? Ummm... a medium sized one."
"For which reason?"
"Because..." Yes, why? "Well, a little one might not carry us all properly, and a big one might be too hard to fly." Kim looked around and saw a fifty-meter sphere halfway across the huge hangar. It was probably larger than she wanted, but steps led up through a network of scaffolding that stood by its side. "That one there?" Examining it, she felt like one of the Amish trying to fool a used car salesman into thinking she knew what she was talking about.
Keeble had apparently heard the conversation, or liked the look of the scaffolding, for he was already making his way in that direction. He didn't climb the stairs though. He wandered slowly around, looking up at the curve of th
e hull and the huge funnels, like intake vents, that were all over the ship. There were also thousands of other holes, a few centimeters across, spread all over the ship.
Kim started to follow, but her shadow stretching out before her caught her attention. She turned and discovered that the hangar door was open. The door was huge, obviously, and offered up a view of a strange world. Kim went closer. There was a platform outside, then the land fell away into an enormous, densely forested river valley. On the far side, ten miles away or maybe twenty, sharp-edged mountains bit at a faintly purple sky.
Kim stood in the doorway, staring. The air seemed so much clearer than on Earth. The forest so much greener. It was like some primordial world that was untouched by the destructive hands of advanced creatures. Except there was a hangar full of spaceships and... Kim looked at the ground.
She looked back into the hangar and saw all her companions. Meledrin had hardly moved at all. Keeble and Cuto were examining the ships, and Tuki was not far away from Kim, also examining the valley. She took a step backwards.
The untouched valley. Except there was the hangar and a strange set of footprints in the dust. Boot prints, to be more precise. Actually, there were two sets. Who ever made the first set was big, either that or had stolen boots off someone big. Kim didn't want to try to steal shoes off somebody that big. She licked her lips and looked around. The other prints might have belonged to a child.
Heart racing, Kim followed the prints to the end of the platform where they went down a flight of worn stairs and disappeared into the forest.
"What is it, mo'shi?" Tuki asked. He was still standing by the door, as if afraid to venture any further.
Kim glanced back. She wiped her hands on her jeans, chewed her bottom lip. "Nothing." But she saw something just beyond the bottom of the stairs. It looked like a book. "Wait there." She didn't think he was likely to follow anyway.
She glanced around then hurried down. Then she hesitated before actually stepping down onto the hard, dusty ground. A small puff of dust kicked up when her foot touched. Just like Neil Armstrong, she thought. She looked around at the forest. It crowded in close, dense, and shadowed, except for a narrow path that snaked away along the side of the hill. Another sign of life, one that seemed a lot more real, a lot more permanent than the boot prints or even the hangar. Kim felt as if she were being watched. She snatched up the book and raced back up the stairs. Tuki watched, wide-eyed, as Kim approached. He took a step back.
"What is it, mo'shi?"
"A book."
"That is a book?"
As if it were some mystical talisman. Perhaps it was. Kim nodded. The red leather cover was worn and cracked, stamped with strange, indecipherable symbols. The pages were brittle with age.
"What does it do, mo'shi?"
"Nothing." There were pictures and lists and what might have been maps. It didn't matter what it was if nobody could read it. "Come on. Let's go look at the ship." Keep moving. Don't lose momentum. She made her way quickly to the scaffolding, trying not to notice that she was backtracking along the trail of footprints. She almost ran up the steep stairs. They ended above the ship's equator, but a platform reached out the side to touch the ship.
The hull was rough and pitted. There was an inset, round-cornered rectangle, about three meters to a side. "It looks like a door." Kim looked for a hidden handle or a panel that would reveal a handle, without really expecting to see anything. She ran her hands around the outside edge of the door. Then around the inside edge. She felt nothing unusual.
She laughed. Nothing unusual? My hand is on the side of a spaceship and I can't feel anything unusual?
She poked a finger into one of the holes on the hull and leant out over the rail to look inside. She couldn't see or feel anything.
She followed Keeble back down to the ground.
"What do you reckon, Keeble?"
"That panel there, between those two funnels," the dwarf pointed. "It's stone."
Kim examined the patch of hull. She could see a slight difference in color, but she thought it was just a trick of the light. "Are you sure?"
"Yes."
Kim narrowed her eyes as if concentrating would help. Eventually she shook her head. "If you say so. So you can sing us in then?"
29: Rugby
Keeble found a smaller scaffold and dragged it over so he could climb up to look at the panel. First Kim, then Tuki and the alien helped. When it was in place, they all climbed the steep stairs.
Cuto said something but Meledrin didn't bother to translate for everyone else. The alien spoke again, and Keeble turned to see it glaring at Meledrin. The elf sighed. "Cuto is not surprised that our civilizations failed if we are somehow able to lose two whole rooms full of huge ships such as these."
Keeble gave a small grunt and smiled, but quickly turned back to the ship. "I'm not sure if I can do it," he said, reaching out with his good hand. The stone was like nothing he'd ever felt. It was even stronger than the stone on the ship they'd flown from America and would withstand as much, if not more, than the metal sections of the hull. It was so dense and compact that it was a wonder it didn't collapse under its own weight.
"What do you mean?" Kim asked. "Why not?"
"The stone is amazing. It's so strong."
"Well, give it a go. Just don't hurt yourself."
Cuto spoke and Meledrin translated. "Cuto wishes to know how your singing works."
But Keeble was already building his Song. It was even stronger now. He'd passed through another gate and could add the knowledge he'd gained to his Song. He hummed the foundations carefully, making sure everything was right, before building up the Song with a wordless, dancing cadence, and sealing the joints with a series of clicks. When it was all there, he kept it going perfectly, all of the sounds combining like the stones of the mountains, or the water of a stream. He could feel the power washing through him.
After he'd been Singing the completed Song for more than a minute, Keeble started to change it again, condensing it, whittling away the edges, honing it until it was focused tightly at one small section of the stone panel on the hull.
He stepped forward. He reached out towards the focus of his Song. And paused.
Whistler's Mother, Meledrin is an elf. He wondered how he hadn't known. He wondered how he'd gone all this time with a woman and an elf as a companion. He felt his Song falter but clung to the rhythms tenaciously.
"Meledrin's an elf," he said, working the words into his Song. "She's an elf. And Kim is a human." The Song carried on, even with the revelations. He took a deep breath and concentrated. "Chess is an amazing game. Exact. Proper. But rugby is fun as well."
And even if Meledrin was an elf, she was part of his work gang. A work gang is like family. Keeble took a deep breath. She'd argued with that other elf at Grovely to let me stay. If not for her, I would not be here.
He looked at the elf, gave a small nod, and changed the Song again, spreading the focus until he had created a hole large enough to climb through. He put his head inside the ship, pulling himself up to get all the way through the wall.
Inside, everything was dark.
"It's dark," he said when he was back out in the open. "Like, can't-see-my-nose dark."
"Doesn't light get through the stone?"
"A bit, but the hull's about a meter thick."
"Shit." Kim looked around as if a torch might suddenly appear. It sort of did. "In my pack. There's a torch in my pack. Quick, Tuki."
The moai removed the pack and looked at it in confusion. "How do you open it?"
"It's a zipper," Kim said. As if that would help.
Keeble shook his head. "You realize he has no idea what a torch looks like, don't you?"
Kim grabbed the pack and rifled through it until she found a small torch. Keeble took it, found the switch, and stuck his head inside the ship again. After a moment he climbed in completely, surveyed his surroundings, then spun around and poked his head out to talk to Kim. The woman was
waiting impatiently, chewing her lip, shuffling her feet, and glancing towards the door the Americans would enter by.
"It's just a box," he told her. "It's sixty centimeters square and runs 2.3 meters directly into the ship. The inner end's made of stone."
"What?"
"It's just a box."
"But that's crazy."
Keeble recognized the moment Kim came up with the idea.
"It's an airlock."
"Why does it need an airlock?"
"Because there's no air in space."
"There isn't?"
"No. Look, I think you're in a maintenance hatch. If you sing through that inner wall, you'll be in passageways or something."
"How do you know?"
"Just trust me"
Keeble wasn't so sure. Apparently it showed on his face.
"Just get in there and sing, and we'll follow you."
"There's no way Tuki or Cuto will fit."
"Oh. Right. Damn it." Kim chewed her lip some more. "Here's the plan, then. We'll go and wait by the door up there, and you open it from the inside."
Keeble nodded, "Right," and went back into the ship. "Go open the door," he muttered. "Sounds easy." He stopped, stuck his head out and looked at Kim. "Somebody bring my tools." It wouldn't surprise him if they couldn't even manage that between them.
Back inside the ship, he adjusted his mechanical hand to hold the torch and crawled along the passage. He Sang his way through the next wall and entered an intersection. He grunted and muttered as if Kim might hear him if he swore out loud.
After a moment he picked a direction at random, left, and crawled. Then a turn to the right. When he reached the end of the passage, if his calculations were correct, he was nine point seven meters from the outside of the ship. There was no reason why his calculations wouldn't be correct.
A ladder led upwards.
Keeble rose to his feet and climbed. His metal hand, still gripping the torch, clanked against the rungs, his good hand was slippery with sweat. At the top, he climbed out into another low passage.
"This is almost like home," he said to himself. He had spent a good part of his work gang apprenticeship crawling through the ventilation ducts of Tab Cavern.
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