spaceship. We're five hundred meters under the surface and just
floating with the current.
They won't know we're there until we bump up alongside."
The scientist received Luke's reassurances with a dubious expression.
"You've done this before, I trust?"
"No, never," Luke said.
"Oh, my--" "But I saw it done, not too long ago."
Eckels swallowed. "I trust that you've been practicing since then, at
least."
Eyes still closed, Luke smiled. "All the way here.
Relax, Doctor. I learned this trick from people who were at the top of
their class in the business of hiding."
He paused. "But even so, you might want to let me concentrate."
Pressing his lips together in a line, Eckels slumped against the back
of his seat and stared at the vagabond, which now filled half the sky
ahead.
"Lando."
At the sound of his name, Lando stirred and reached slowly for his
comlink.
"What is it, Lobot?"
"Someone is here."
"Where here?" Lando said, suddenly shaking off his sleepy lassitude.
"Outside, near the bow." Lobot paused. "We are
puzzled. There is a touch, and yet we cannot find the source."
"They're knocking on the door," Lando said impatiently.
"Open it up and see what comes in."
There was a long silence. "The visitors are in the interspace," Lobot
said at last.
"So who or what are they?"
"We do not recognize them."
"I'll check it out," Lando said gruffly. Fatigue and hunger had left
him in a state of permanent annoyance.
"Artoo, let's go--power up. Artoo--" The droid remained inert like
Threepio days before, its power supply was finally exhausted.
"Sure," he grumbled. "Make me be the one to check out the noise in the
dark. It'd serve you both right if I never came back."
"Ahoy the ship," a new voice crackled over the comlink. "Anyone
home?"
Lando blinked, trying to force his mind to recognize what it was
hearing. "Luke? Luke, is that you?
What are you doing here?"
"I could leave, if it's not a good time--" "You leave without me, and
I'll hunt you down and kill you one cell at a time," Lando warned, with
no trace of humor in his voice. "Stay where you are. I'm coming
out."
"We're already in," Luke said. "The vagabond's hull opened up and
swallowed us whole."
"Nooo" "It's all right. We're in some sort of zero-g hangar area
between the outer and inner hulls--we even seem to be tethered. I'm
suiting up to come to you," said Luke. "Stay put and talk us in."
Grabbing a liter of water from Dr. Eckels, Lando drained it so fast
that his stomach balked and threatened to reject it.
"Luke," Lando said, flipping the container away.
"Can you believe it? This whole monstrosity is nothing but a museum--"
He stopped to swallow the bitterness climbing his throat, and started
coughing when the taste reached his mouth.
"Go easy, Lando---" Lando waved off the concern. "A museum! And
when--when have you ever known me to go near a museum?" He laughed
hoarsely. "And you don't even know the funny part--none of the
treasures is real. It's all just modeling clay--nothing of any
value."
"Do you know what he's talking about, Dr. Eckels?"
"Possibly," Eckels said, digging in the supply pouch for a FirstMeal
food pack.
Lando continued to babble, his tone turning sorrowful, almost
maudlin.
"Can only look--can't take anything with you. No souvenirs. What a
waste of time, Lukewhat a miserable waste of time. Like picking
flowers. Pretty today, dead tomorrow--" He suddenly noticed the food
pack and snatched it away, turning his back on them as though
protecting it against poaching.
"Lando, where's Lobot?"
The answer came after a long draw on the food pack's straw. "He has
new friends." Lando shrugged.
"He hardly talks to me anymore." He chortled abruptly. "He's lost his
mind. You'll see."
"Take us to him," Luke said firmly. "We need to take care of him,
too."
Somersaulting slowly, Lando waved a hand absently toward the
interior.
"In there. Left, left, right, right, center, right, center. Something
like that." The food pack expired with a sucking sound. "You can't
miss him. He's the one with legs."
Luke and Dr. Eckels found Lobot curled up in a side tubule, floating,
his eyes closed, his hands cupped against the side of his head. The
transparent leads of his split interface tethered him to the rounded
mass at the far end of the tubule.
"Do you have any idea what we're looking at here, Doctor?"
Eckels peered into an adjacent tubule for an unobstructed view. "These
are the size and geometry of the Qella remains we recovered from the
ice," he said in hushed awe.
"These don't feel like remains to me," Luke said, entering the tubule
where Lobot was floating. "Lobot--it's Luke. Wake up, fella--your
relief's here."
"Are you saying that they're alive?" Eckels demanded. "I had
discounted those reports as unreliable."
"Why?"
"Why, it's unprecedented--unthinkable--" "This whole ship feels alive
to me, Doctor," Luke said "Though with a different quality than I'm
used to."
"Different how?"
"Usually this much power is matched with much greater awareness. It's
almost like--sleeping. Just like Lobot here seems to be sleeping."
Frowning, Luke reached out and dug his fingernails into Lobot's
elbow.
"Hey--talk to me."
"But these bodies have no limbs," Eckels protested.
"The creatures on the surface were quadrupeds."
"I'm not trying to tell you what they are, Doctor.
I'm just telling you that what Lobot reported is true--these things are
alive, and this ship is alive I'll let you tell me the relationship
between them."
Lobot was stirring by then. "Waiting," he murmured in a trancelike
monotone.
"Waiting for what?" Luke asked. "What question is that an answer
to?"
Behind him, Eckels was frowning. "Physically, the relationship mirrors
one that exists inside the Qella, between the Eicroth bodies and--" His
eyes widened in surprise. "Luke, I must see the rest of this vessel at
once.
I must see these exhibits Lando spoke of."
"Lobot, talk to me," Luke was saying. "What do you need from me?"
"We wait," Lobot said dreamily.
"What are' 'we'?" Luke asked.
"Answers," said Lobot.
"Yes, I need answers," Luke said. "What are you waiting for? What do
you need?"
The words came haltingly. "We wait... for . . the thaw."
Luke looked questioningly back at Eckels.
"I must see the ship," he insisted. "I will not make wild guesses When
there is evidence at hand."
Nodding agreement, Luke said, "I think we need to break up Lobot's new
friendship, anyway--I can hardly find a boundary between his mind and
everything else.
Know anything a
bout neural interfaces, Doctor, or should I just pull
the plug?"
Eckels grimaced. "Do what you think best. I'll wait outside."
It was nearly an hour before either Lando or Lobot was fit for their
final duties as host and guide. For Eckels, it was an hour of
maddening impatience. For Luke, it was an opportunity to bring the
droids back online and begin repairs to Threepio's damaged arm.
"I'm very glad to see you, Master Luke," the droid said. "You won't
believe the stories I have to tell you. I don't know why i was sent on
this mission in the first place. Why, I was nearly vaporized by the
vagabond, and then we were attacked by an entire fleet of warships.
Master Calrissian abandoned me to be captured by intruders--" Luke
grinned. "It's good to see you, too, Threepio.
And I promise to let you tell me all the stories, later.
Twice, even, if you need to."
"That's very kind of you, sir."
When the droids had been moved to the skiff, Luke went off to explore
with Lando, while Lobot led Eckels on a separate tour. But before long
Lando decided the familiar comforts of a starship, however humble, had
greater appeal than Luke's company, and excused himself from
sight-seeing.
By then Luke understood the geometry and instrumentality of the
vagabond well enough to manage on his own. The "museum" rooms and the
interspace gallery were equally astonishing, but Luke found himself
drawn back to the interior, to the maze of tubules and the clusters of
what Luke had begun calling Eckels bodies.
They were the center of the vagabond's limited consciousness, the focus
of the flow of energy through the ship. Four hours vanished in an
eyeblink before Luke even thought of rejoining the others. Another
hour and a half passed before he actually did.
They were all there--Lando asleep in the bunk, Lobot stretched out on
the floor of the systems compartment, Threepio strapped into the
right-hand seat, and Artoo contentedly plugged into both the data port
and the power port at the interface board.
Eckels was in the pilot's seat, bending forward over the ship's small
data displays with a frown while keying the datapad on his lap fluidly
by touch alone.
"I believe I have an answer for you now," Eckels said without looking
away from his work. "Shall we wake the others?"
"No," said Luke. "They've done their part let them rest. Let's
compare notes first. If we find we have questions for them, we can
take care of that later."
"I was able to get the benefit of Lobot's thoughts while he showed me
around," said Eckels. "He has an admirably disciplined mind."
"People have been underestimating him for as long as I've known him,"
Luke said. "So what do you have?"
Eckels sat back in his seat and pointed to the data display. "Lobot
was right," he said. "The moons are the key."
"The moons they saw in the orrery."
"Yes," said Eckels. "With the assistance of Colonel Pakkpekatt, we've
analyzed the recordings Artoo-Detoo made the first time the expedition
reached the auditorium and viewed the diorama. The orbits depicted for
the moons turn out to be unstable."
"Check me if I've missed something, Doctor, but Maltha Obex has no
moons."
Eckels nodded. "But Qella did. Unremarkable moonsmnothing to inspire
a grand mythology. At least not until one of them fell from the
sky."
"The ice age is the result of a moonstrike," Luke said, his expression
gravely thoughtful.
"Yes, it would appear so," said Eckels. "The smaller moon was a
capture moon, with an irregular orbit. Working backward from Artoo's
recordings, we found that the gravity of the larger moon disturbed the
capture moon into a decaying orbit--a hundred years, in round numbers,
before the fall."
"And the Qella saw it happening. They knew what lay ahead for them,"
Luke said. "And they used the warning, and the time they had left, to
build this vessel."
"The ultimate and supreme achievement of their species," said Eckels.
"Judging from what I saw, they did not have the means to destroy or
repulse a moonm even the small moon of Maltha Obex dwarfed this vessel
and its power. Nor did they have the means to evacuate a populous
planet--the culture depicted in these serographs numbered hundreds of
millions, if not more."
"It would have taken thousands of vessels this size," Luke said. "An
impossible task in the time they had."
"But they could build one, and send it away before the end came,"
Eckels said. "When the expedition looked at the orrery, they saw this
system as it was when the vagabond had last seen it--before the
moonsrike, the destruction of the Qella, and the death of their planet
under a blanket of ice."
Eckels gazed out the front of the cockpit at the faces of the
gallery.
"Your friend Lando was wrong," he went on. "What's here is very
real.
This ship isn't a collection of objects--it's a collection of ideas.
We may never know why, but the Qella valued these ideas more than their
lives. And that which we value is that which
gives meaning to our lives. What a grand gift they have given us what
a gloriously defiant futility."
"Futility?" Luke asked. "What about those things in the interior?
Lobot keeps wanting to call them Qella. You said that they looked like
the Qella. And now the ship has brought them home."
Frowning, Eckels looked down at his datapad.
"But there are only a few thousand of them, on a vessel that could have
held many more." Eckels shook his head. "No, it cannot be. This is
not an ark, or even a lifeboat. Those bodies are the controllers and
protectors of this vessel, not its treasure. The real treasure of this
vessel is in ideas and memories--a thousand years of history, a
thousand years of art, this splendid bio-mechanical science. No, this
is no museum. This is a monument, Luke."
"No," Luke said stubbornly. "There's something more here." Turning
away, he dropped gracefully through the open entry hatch. Catching a
handhold on the hull, he catapulted himself forward, away from the
skiff and into the silence and darkness of the interspace.
There, drifting slowly in front of the Qella gallery, Luke extended his
senses to the planet below. He found only a great stillness. There
was no halo of life energy, no reservoir of the Force. The ice-encased
surface had the same profound quiescence as the mass of rock below
it.
"What are you looking for?"
"A reason to wait for the thaw," Luke said.
"So it can finish its journey," Eckels said. "It meant nothing more
than that."
"Shhh," Luke said. He had drifted close to the outer skin of the
vagabond, and he reached out and drew himself to it. He listened to
the complex rhythms of the ship and allowed them to resolve into the
deep, fundamental pulse of its being. He listened only to that pulse
until he had absorbed it. completely, knew it utterly.
Then
he extended himself toward the planet once more, this time
quieting his own urgency and desire, seeking that most profound state
of egoless connection in which everything could be heard without
distraction or distortion.
And suddenly there they were, like millions of grains of sand falling
slowly to the surface--a collective heartbeat so faint and so languid
that the slightest whisper of impatience would obscure it. With an
exultant cry, Luke pushed himself away from the wall in a backward
somersault.
"What? What is it?" Eckels exclaimed. He jetted across the open
space to intercept Luke, catching him just before he reached the
gallery.
But Luke twisted away from Eckels's grasp, turning to trace the lines
of a Qella face with both hands. "The bodies you found--the Qella Who
roamed the iced those weren't the survivors," Luke said. "They were
THE BLACK FLEET CRISIS #3 - TYRANTS_TEST Page 44
