by Chris Walley
After ten minutes of travel down tunnels and along corridors with only the briefest of glimpses of space and stars, Merral and Vero were unloaded at the lower entrance to the Heinrich Schütz. They walked into the gravity transition corridor and at the other end floated their way out into the crew and technical section.
As Vero asked for the locations of the couches for Sabourin and Diekens, Merral looked around in awe. He had, he supposed, been unimpressed by the interior of the Shih Li-Chen, which had seemed little more than an exaggerated and overlarge general survey craft. But this was different.
Merral knew, of course, that the Heinrich Schütz, as an inter-system liner, was one of that order of vessels known as the “Great Ships.” Other than their size, the distinguishing feature of their order was the fact that their designers had had a freedom to work denied to them in the lesser craft that had to fly through atmospheres. He had seen many illustrations of the interior design of the Great Ships, but to be inside a real one, rather than a simulation, was somehow a very different experience. The results, honed over generations, were, to Merral’s eyes, an outstanding and eye-catching triumph.
His first thought as he looked around was that it reminded him of being in some enormous and fantastic seashell with a spiral-curved floor sweeping upward above him and linking fluidly with the walls and the central column. The impression of being in a natural organic structure was aided by the scarcity of straight lines, the pale milk-and-honey coloring, and the smooth porcelain texture of the walls. Abundant lighting, whose source appeared to be everywhere and nowhere, lit the interior so that the whole ship seemed to glow as if it were a translucent shell illuminated by sunlight.
Then, suddenly, Merral’s point of view changed, and he saw himself at the base of a high ancient tower with a vast snowy marble ramp sweeping gracefully through buttresses and archways up a score of levels in smooth, gentle, stepless curves. In the end, he concluded that both views were true; the interior was both organic and architectural.
“Over here.” Vero’s voice intruded into Merral’s contemplation.
“Sorry. I was just taken aback by it. It’s beautiful.”
Vero gave his friend an amused grimace as he gestured to a pair of couches. “It’s some compensation for the turbulence when we go through Below-Space. But I have to admit that the Assembly designers were surely right in thinking that a purely functional form was not an adequate response to the privilege of traversing Below-Space. You were told Horfalder’s maxim?”
Merral tugged himself forward on a strap and floated over to where couches protruded at the edge of a fluted ridge curving out from the towering central column. “Horfalder? I remember something, but you tell me.”
“She was head of the design team for the Composer Class; she said that as the average distance covered by an inter-system liner between Gates was equivalent to around fifty years of space flight, the least they could do was create a structure that you could live with for a half century. Even if you were only in it for a few hours.”
Merral looked around again, considered Horfalder’s wisdom, and found it good. Then, having stowed his holdall and the plate sample in a compartment under the couch, he lay down, trying not to float off, and stared around again. Now, though, as he looked harder, he realized that underneath his first complementary images of the shell and the tower he could see the ship as a machine. As he stared upward he could imagine the twenty-odd levels above him as distinct compartments, and glancing around he could see, concealed in one way or another, all the lockers, access panels, handholds, and information screens that such a ship needed.
With the final preparations being made around him, Merral strapped himself down and found a switch that lowered a screen down just in front of his eyes. On it he was able to read about the composer Heinrich Schütz, and he marveled again that anybody could have dedicated music to the Almighty during a war that lasted thirty years. Then as he chewed the simple food that was passed around, he glanced at the explanatory section on the ship itself.
He could easily imagine how much his father would have enjoyed reading about the Composer Class (prototype built in 9101, the Heinrich Schütz being the twenty-fifth of the second series) and its lifespan of around a thousand years before a complete renovation was needed. Yet now, more than ever, he found himself with little appetite for machinery or mechanics. With more interest, he went through the elementary introduction to Gate travel with a well-done and elaborate version of the traditional analogy of the two ways of getting across a narrow but deep estuary.
Travel in Normal-Space, it reminded him, was analogous to the long, slow journey round the edges, while the Gate travel was like taking a shortcut through a tube running directly through the waters. It was a familiar illustration, but now, on the verge of taking that shortcut, it had a new relevance. The illustration was developed to explain some of the Below-Space features such as the notorious turbulence, which was here portrayed as being analogous to the buffeting of the estuary’s water against the tube. Then, balking at a treatment of plasma engines, Merral allowed the screen to retract.
Eventually, just before ten o’clock, the last door closed and Captain Bennett gave her welcome from the speakers. After that the Assembly hymn was played and there was the traditional solemn appeal to the sovereign Lord on undertaking Below-Space travel, with its acknowledgement that such travel was a privilege and its request for safe arrival.
At exactly ten o’clock, just as the “Amens” were dying away, there was a dull thud as the linkages detached themselves. Slowly, Merral heard a gentle low-frequency rumble begin behind him and his couch began to sway ever so slightly. He lowered the screen to where he could read it and checked the flight plan. They would swing in a wide arc clear of the station to align themselves exactly above the hexagon at what was known as the burn-point. There, at 10:40, the plasma engines would ignite at full burn to start the rapid straight-line acceleration that would give them the ten-thousand-kilometers-an-hour speed needed to coast quickly along the Normal-Space tunnel linking the Gates. At 10:55 they would enter Farholme Gate, emerging a mere ten and a half minutes later at Bannermene Gate. Forty light-years away.
Merral lay back, feeling pushed slightly down into his couch by the acceleration’s comforting semblance of gravity that a wall sign declared to be 0.6 g. He was still tired, and in his brain a thousand thoughts seemed to be chasing each other.
Some of the dozen people around him in this part of the Space Affairs section were busy monitoring the ship and the passenger levels, while others were plainly relaxing or sleeping. One or two were walking buoyantly from the lift section in the middle of the ship.
Eventually Merral closed his eyes, wondering if he was tired enough to sleep through both burn-point and the Below-Space transit. He was aware that some people claimed to have slept through Gate passage, but most stayed awake due to the buffeting and those various psychological effects such as disorientation that were common, but which still eluded comprehension. Merral tried to get his mind to relax and encouraged it to concentrate on nothing. Imagine a white snow field, he told himself, during a blizzard.
“Sentinel Enand? Forester D’Avanos?” The voice was urgent.
Startled, Merral opened his eyes to see a man in a dark blue uniform bending over him, clutching the side of the couch.
“Yes? I’m Merral D’Avanos,” he answered, wondering with some alarm how this man knew his name.
“I’m Charles Frand, Second Communications Officer.” The angular face with a thin black moustache had an expression that seemed to request immediate action. “Captain Bennett needs to see you both now. There’s been an odd message. Can you both come forward to the bridge please? Immediately. We will be at burn-point in minutes.”
A look of profound alarm crossed Vero’s face as he gingerly unstrapped himself. “Odd . . . ,” he murmured.
Together, they walked unsteadily across the floor to the elevator tube, aware of others watching them. As
they accelerated up through the central spine of the ship, Vero, gripping a hold-bar tight, stared at Merral. “I don’t like it,” he muttered. “I don’t like it at all! There is barely half an hour before we leave the system.”
The door opened into the high-roofed command cabin. Merral was vaguely aware that the spiral theme continued here, with the space being dominated by a single sweeping floorway that ran in a smooth curve from the base up to the vaulted ceiling. On this grand sweep was a series of pastel-colored consoles all facing one high, flat wall, on which an enormous image of the Gate appeared. Merral felt sure that the screen surface must match a plane of the hexagonal outer surface.
“Created gravity here, careful,” Officer Frand said. “Captain’s up to the right. Blue console.”
Gripping the sculpted handrail, they walked up the gentle sweep of the floor. As they did, Merral looked across at the screen, recognizing that the image was a computer-generated illustration showing the Gate from an oblique angle. Incomprehensible data readouts shimmered around the edges of the screen.
A lean woman with blonde hair in a tightly coiled braid rose stiffly from her seat and turned to them as they approached the cluster of three consoles grouped on the top of the slope that evidently formed the bridge. The captain, Merral thought, seeing the two yellow flashes on her shoulders.
She greeted them with an abrupt and rather cool handshake.
“Captain Leana Bennett,” she announced in a precise, truncated way that mingled authority with perplexity. Looking at her tanned face with its fine etching of lines, Merral realized she was his mother’s generation, but of a very different character. There was a tautness and precision about Captain Bennett’s frame, face, and manner that told you immediately why the Assembly trusted her with over three hundred lives and an almost priceless ship.
“And you are not Engineers Sabourin and Diekens. Rather, you are instead a sentinel and a forester. How very irregular.” She looked sternly at them for a second with piercing dark brown eyes. “But that can wait. This came in five minutes ago. Comms, show it, please.” She pointed to a small screen on one of the adjacent consoles.
A flickering image of Perena Lewitz appeared. “Captain Bennett, this is Perena Lewitz, Captain of the Nesta Lamaine.” Merral strained to hear the voice, which was slightly distorted.
“This is very urgent. I am unable to access you through normal channels. I have just received an unusual message, which I think I trust. It says that your ship must not enter the Gate. Repeat: not enter the Gate. There is a peril there. The problem is related to Sentinel Enand and Forester D’Avanos who are occupying the couches of Space Affairs Engineers Sabourin and Diekens. They may be able to explain the situation. But, I repeat, I have been warned that your ship must not enter the Gate. I suggest you return to Gate Station and—”
The image on the screen froze, broke into lines of static, and faded away.
“Return to Gate Station?” Vero whispered in alarm. “But we have to go through. . . .” Then he stopped and stared at Merral, his eyes glinting. Intuitively, Merral knew they both had the same thought: Is it her?
Vero turned to the captain. “I suppose the message is, well—authentic?”
“Authentic? That’s an odd way of putting it. Charlie?” The captain turned stiffly to Officer Frand who gestured his bewilderment with a shrug and an opening of his hands.
“Captain, gentlemen,” he said, “all I can say is that it came in just now by one of the backup communications links. One of the old laser systems. Out to the Gate Station and then bounced on to us. It’s hard to verify. I mean, we take these things on trust. But—” He turned a perplexed gaze to the captain. “Why wouldn’t it be authentic?”
“Don’t ask me, Charlie.” She looked bewildered. “Why are these men not Sabourin and Diekens? This is beyond me. But it looked and sounded like Captain Lewitz to me.”
“Two minutes to burn-point, Captain,” came a quiet voice from the console to the right. Merral glanced at the wallscreen to see that they were now nearly face-on to the hexagon and that in the bottom right corner, one set of digits had just counted down below 120.
“Helm Officer,” the captain responded crisply, “proceed as scheduled.”
Then her brown eyes turned back to Vero and Merral, shifting from one to the other in careful scrutiny. “Naturally, I immediately tried to contact her. I also instigated a check on the Gate and have asked Gate Control for a full update.”
With a quick gesture of a finger she summoned a slight young man with cropped brown hair from a console at a lower level. He bounded up energetically toward them with an active datasheet in his hand. Then she lifted an inquiring eyebrow at Officer Frand, who had been checking an adjacent console screen with another officer.
“Captain,” Frand said, “still no response from her diary. It’s apparently switched off. But it’s the Lord’s Day and meeting time, so there’s no surprise there.”
“Yes. Except if she did try and call us.” Captain Bennett turned her troubled face to the man who had just arrived. Merral noticed a neat yellow hexagon badge on his blue overalls.
“Gateman Lessis,” Captain Bennett said in an urgent way. “review the Gate systems. In view of this message.”
The Gateman turned to her, his back straight. “Captain, I report that the Gate seems normal.” The tone was intelligent, confident, and unruffled. “I have reviewed all our data and that from Gate Control. All readings are within normal limits.”
Merral had the impression of a man with a sharp mind, thorough training, and total mastery of his field. He would, he told himself, have expected nothing less.
“Thank you, Mikhael. Please stay for a moment. So you see, gentlemen, I have a real problem. I know Perena slightly but there is not enough evidence for me to abort. Indeed no evidence. If we return to Gate Station it will be at least six hours before we can reenter the Gate. That will throw up a lot of problems for connections.” Captain Bennett turned pensive eyes first on Merral and then on Vero. “Do either of you have any new data?”
“Captain,” Merral appealed, “I need to talk to my friend here. For a moment only.”
The captain flicked a glance at the screen. The image now was of a fully symmetrical hexagon, and in the corner of the screen the seconds counter now stood at ninety seconds.
“You have just over a minute,” she said politely, and turned to peer at the Gateman’s datasheet.
Merral and Vero took a step back and faced each other.
“Vero, is it a trick?” Merral asked, searching to see any indication in his friend’s eyes as to whether they should trust the message.
“It must be. . . . Surely it’s a trick to stop us from leaving?”
Merral forced himself to think. He was aware that he was tired, aware that it was a complex matter, aware that the seconds were ticking away, but also aware that he had to make a right decision. It sounded like Perena, but now he did not automatically believe anything on a screen. And to be summoned back now? Lord, grant wisdom and overrule if we get it wrong.
A sudden revelation struck him. Supposing I look at the problem the other way about, as with an inverse logic? Think like a sentinel. Put myself in the shoes of the intruders. If I wanted to stop this ship, would I have done it this way?
“No!” he blurted out, suddenly certain. “It’s a genuine message. The intruders would have faked a direct message to the captain. To do it this way makes no sense.”
“Right.” Vero blinked nervously. “Yes, I back you.”
They turned to face the captain, who was looking expectantly at them.
“It’s a real threat,” Merral said with as much urgency as he could muster. “Believe me. It’s unparalleled, but it’s real.”
Behind her he could see the screen saying there were twenty seconds left. The captain’s cool, unflustered eyes flicked to Vero.
“Yes,” Vero added, “a genuine warning of genuine peril. Please return to Gate Station.”
Captain Bennett bit her lip and glanced at the screen. “Gateman Lessis, you are completely happy with the Gate status?” Her face stared at him, as if seeking the slightest hint of doubt.
The Gateman paused, blinked, glanced at his datasheet, and returned the stare with wide, confident eyes. “Captain, all the information I have suggests no hint of anything untoward.” He glanced at the image as more words tumbled out. “If I may say, the last significant Gate problem was a generation ago and half the Assembly away. That was only a Class One failure and automatically fixed within hours. The Gate’s reputation for reliability is well merited, Captain. As you know. There are at least two levels of duplicate safety mechanisms on every system.”
The seconds scrolled down to zero.
The captain looked at the screen, shook her head, and then gestured to the man at the console to her right.
“Helm Officer,” she ordered, “initiate burn.”
19
Merral stared at the wallscreen as the figure of 00:00 was replaced abruptly by 15:25 and a new countdown started immediately. Captain Bennett turned around to face Merral and Vero with a face that bore an uneasy expression. “My apologies,” she sighed. “But under standing orders I had no choice. Now”—her tone acquired an inflexible edge—“I need you off the bridge, please. Acceleration will be building up in the passenger area. But I will need a full explanation at Bannermene Gate Station.”
“Yes, of course,” Merral answered, trying to suppress feelings of frustration and alarm. “But I still think there is a risk. Can we still abort?”
“I’d rather not,” she said, shaking her head. “Composer Class ships aren’t built for maneuvers at speed.”
The look on her face seemed to Merral to say as strongly as possible that the interview was over. So that is that, he thought despondently.
