by Andre Norton
Travis found himself nursing a small wicked desire to have the cabbage-beans do their worst to Ross, not with as devastating results as the jelly—he wouldn’t wish that on anyone! But if they would just make themselves felt enough to prove to Murdock that food testing was not as easy as all that….
“Waiting for them to turn me inside out?” Ross grinned.
Travis flushed and then the stain spread and deepened on his cheeks as he realized how he had given himself away. He pushed the cracker-bread to one side and got up to select with inward—if not outward—defiance a tall cylinder which sloshed as he pried at its cap.
“Misery loves company,” Ross continued. “What does that smell like?”
Travis had been encouraged by his discovery of the bread. He sniffed hopefully at the cone opening and then snatched the holder away from his nose as a white froth began to puff out.
“Maybe you have the push-button soap,” Ross commented unhelpfully. “Give the stuff a lick, fella, you have only one stomach to lose for your country.”
Travis, so goaded, licked—suspicious and expecting something entirely unpalatable. But, to his surprise, though it was sweet, the froth was not so sickly as the stew had been. Rather, the result on the tongue was refreshing, carrying satisfaction for his craving for water. He gulped a bigger mouthful and sat waiting, a little tensely, for fireworks to begin inside him.
“Good?” Ross inquired. “Well, your luck can’t be rotten all the time.”
“This luck is mixed.” Travis capped the foam which had continued to boil wastefully from the bottle. “We’re alive— and we’re still traveling.”
“Traveling is right. A little more information as to our destination would be useful and comforting—or the reverse.”
“The world the builders of this ship owned can’t be too different from ours,” Travis repeated observations made earlier by Ashe. “We can breathe their air without discomfort, and maybe eat some of their food.”
“Twelve thousand years…. D’you know, I can say that but I can’t make it mean anything real.” Ross’s hostility had either vanished or been submerged. “You say the words but you can’t stretch your imagination to make them picture something for you—or do you know what I mean?” he challenged.
Travis, rasped on an ancient raw spot, schooled down some heat before he replied. “A little. I did four years at State U. We don’t wear our blankets and feathers all the time.”
Ross glanced up, a flicker of puzzlement in those cold gray eyes.
“I didn’t mean it like that—for what it’s worth.” Then he smiled and for the first time there was nothing superior or sardonic in that expression. “Want the whole truth, fella? I picked up what education I had before I went into the Project the hard way—no State U. But you studied the chief’s racket—archaeology—didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“So—what does twelve thousand years mean to you? You deal with time in big doses, don’t you?”
“That’s a long span on our world, jumps one clear back to the cave period.”
“Yeah—before they put up the pyramids of Egypt—before they learned to read and write. Well, twelve thousand years ago, these blue boys had the stars for theirs. But I’m betting they haven’t kept them! There hasn’t been a single country on our world, not even China, that has had a form of civilization lasting that long. Up they climb and then—” he snapped his fingers. “It’s kaput for them, and another top dog takes over the power. So maybe when we get to this port Renfry believes we’re homing for, well find nothing, or else someone else waiting for us there. You can bet one way or another and have a good chance of winning on either count. Only, if we do find nothing—then maybe our number’s up for sure.”
Travis had to accept the logic of that. Suppose they did come into a port which had ceased to exist, set down on a strange world from which they could not lift again because they had not the skill to pilot the ship. They would be exiles for the rest of their lives in a space uncharted by their kind. “We’re not dead yet,” Travis said.
Ross laughed. “In spite of all our efforts? No—that’s our private battle cry, I think. As long as a man’s alive he’s going to keep kicking. But it would be good to know just how long we’re going to be shut up in this ship.” His usual half flippancy of tone thinned over that last as if his carefully cultivated self-sufficiency was beginning to show the slimmest of cracks.
In the end their experiments with the food were partially successful. The crackers Travis continued to label “com"; the foam and Ross’s cabbag-beans could be digested by the interior apparatus of a human being without difficulty. And they added to that list a sticky paste with the consistency of jam and a flavor approaching bacon, and another cake-like object which, though it had a sour tang that puckered the mouth, was still edible. Greatly daring, Travis tapped the aliens’ water supply and drank. Though the liquid had a metallic aftertaste which the drinker could not relish, it was not harmful.
In addition the younger members of the involuntary crew made themselves useful in the cautious investigations carried on by Ashe and Renfry. The technician was in an almost constant state of frustration during the hours he spent in the control cabin trying to study machines he dared not activate or dismantle for the fuller examination he longed to make. Travis was seated behind him one morning—at least it was ten o’clock by Renfry’s watch, their only method of time-keeping —when there was a change to report, to report and take action on.
A shrill buzz pierced the usual silence, beeping what must be a warning. Renfry grabbed at the small mike of the ship’s com circuit.
“Strap down!” He rasped the order with rising excitement. “There’s an alert sounding here—we may be coming in to land. Strap down!”
Travis grabbed at the protecting bands on his chair. Below they must be scrambling for the bunks. There was vibration again—he was sure he could not mistake that. The ship no longer felt inert and drifting—she was coming alive.
What followed was again beyond his powers of description. The action came in two parts, the first a queasy whirl of sensation not far removed from what they had experienced when the ship had been whirled through the time transfer. Limp from that, Travis lay back, watching the vision plate which had been blank for so long. And when his eyes caught what was not appearing there, he gave a cry of recognition.
“That’s the sun!”
A point of blazing yellow set a beacon in the black of space.
"A sun,” Renfry corrected. “We’ve made the big hop. Now it’s the homestretch—into the system….”
That blaze of yellow-red was already sliding away from the plate. Travis had an impression that the ship must be slowly rotating. Now that the brighter glare of the sun was gone he could pick up a smaller dot, far smaller than the star which nurtured it. That held steady on the. plate.
“Something tells me, boy,” Renfry said in a small and hesitant voice, “that’s where we’re going.”
“Earth?” A warm surge of hope spread through Travis.
“An earth maybe—but not ours.”
9
“We’re down.” Renfry’s voice, thin, harsh, broke the silence of the control cabin. His hands moved to the edge of the panel of levers and buttons before him, fell helplessly on it. Though he had had nothing to do with that landing, he seemed drained by some great effort.
“Home port?” Travis got the words out between dry lips. The descent had not been as nerve- and body-wracking as their take-off from his native world, but it had been bad enough. Either the aliens’ bodies were better atuned to the tempo of their ships, or else one acquired, through painful experience, a conditioning to such wrenching.
“How would I know?” Renfry flared, plainly eaten by his own frustration.
Their window on the outside world, the vision plate, did mirror sky again. But not the normal Terran sky with its blue blaze which Travis knew and longed to see again. This was a blue closer to green, assumi
ng the hue of the turquoise mined in the hills. There was something cold, inimical in that sky.
Cutting up into the open space was a structure which gave off a metallic glint. But the smooth sweep of those dull red surfaces ended in a jagged splinter, raw against the blue-green, plainly marking a ruin.
Travis unfastened his seat straps and stumbled to his feet, his body once more adjusting clumsily to the return of gravity. As much as he had come to dislike the ship, to want his freedom from it, at this moment he had no desire to emerge under that turquoise sky and examine the ruin pictured on the plate. And just because he did have that reluctance, he fought against it by going.
In the end they all gathered at the space lock while Renfry mastered the fastening, then went on to the outer door. The technician glanced back over his shoulder.
“Helmets fastened?” His voice boomed hollowly inside the sphere now resting on Travis’ shoulders and made a part of him by a close-fitting harness. Ashe had discovered those and had tested them, preparing for this time when they had to dare a foray into the unknown. The bubble was equipped with no cumbersome oxygen tanks. It worked on no principle Renfry was able to discover, but the aliens had used these and the Terrans must trust to their efficiency now.
The outer port swung back into the skin of the ship. Renfry kicked out the landing ladder, turned to back down it. But each of them, as he emerged from the globe, glanced quickly around.
What lay below was a wide sweep of hard white surface which must cover miles of territory. This was broken at intervals by a series of structures of the dull red, metallic material set in triangles and squares. In the center of each of those was a space marked with black rings. None of the red structures was whole, and the landing field—if that was what it was—had the sterile atmosphere of a place long abandoned.
“Another ship….” Ashe’s arm swung up, his voice came to Travis through the helmet com.
There was a second of the globes, right enough, reposing in one of the building-cornered squares perhaps a quarter of a mile away. And beyond that Travis spotted a third. But nowhere was there any sign of life. He felt wind, soft, almost caressing, against his bare hands.
They descended the ladder and stood in a group at the foot of their own ship, a little uncertain as to what to do next.
“Wait!” Renfry caught at Ashe. “Something moved—over there!”
They had found weapons in the ship; now they drew those odd guns, twin to the one Ross had had when Travis had first met him. The wind blew, a fragment of long-dread vegetation balled before it, caught against the globe and then was whirled away in a dreary dance.
But out of an opening at the foot of the red tower nearest to them something was issuing. And Travis, watching that coil snapping straight for them, froze. A snake? A snake unwinding to such a length that its reaching head was approaching their stand while the end of its tail still lay within the ruin where it denned?
He took aim at that swaying coil. Then Renfry’s hand struck his wrist pads, knocking up the barrel of the blaster. And in that moment the Apache saw what the other had noticed first, that the snake was not a thing of flesh, skin, supple bones, but of some manufactured material.
More movement was continuing to issue in a mechanical writhing from the door through which that snake had crawled. This newcomer strode forward by jerks, paused, came on, as if compelled to advance against the dictates of ancient fabric and long wear. The thing was vaguely manlike in form, in that it advanced on stilt legs. But it had four upper appendages now folded against its central bulk, and where the head should have been there was a nodding stalk resembling the antennae of a com unit.
Its jerky walk with the many pauses conveyed more and more a sense of internal discord, of rust and wear, and the deterioration of time. How much time? The four Terrans stepped away from the ship, giving free passage to the strange partners from the tower.
“Robots!” Ross said suddenly. “They’re robots! But what are they going to do?”
“Refuel, I think.” Ashe rather than Renfry answered that.
“You’ve hit it!” The technician pushed forward. “But do they have fuel—now?”
“We’d better hope there is some left.” Ashe sounded bleak. “I’d say we aren’t supposed to stay here—better get back on board.”
The threat of being trapped here, of locked controls raising the ship and leaving them marooned, induced a wave of something close to panic in all three hearers. They raced to the ladder, began to climb. But when they reached the air lock, Renfry remained at the open door, retailing the movements of the robots.
“I think that animated pipeline’s been connected—underneath. Can’t see what the walker’s doing—maybe he just stands by in case of trouble. And there’s something coming through the hose—you can see it swelll We’re taking on whatever we’re supposed to have!”
“A fueling station.” Ashe looked out over the wide stretch of crumbling towers and checkerboard landing spaces. “But see the size of this place. It must have been constructed to handle hundreds, even thousands, of ships. And since they couldn’t all be in to refuel at the same time, that predisposes a fleet”—he drew a deep breath of wonder—"a fleet almost beyond comprehension. We were right—this civilization was galaxy-wide. Maybe it spread to the next galaxy.”
But Travis’ eyes rested on the splintered cap of the tower from which the robots had come. “By the looks no one has been here for some time,” he observed.
“Machines,” Renfry answered, “will go on working until they run down. I’d say that walking one down there is close to its final stop. We triggered some impulse when we landed on the right spot. The robots were activated to do their job-maybe their last job. How long since they worked the last time? This may have kept going for a long part of that twelve thousand years you’re always talking about—an empire dying slowly. But I wouldn’t try to measure the time. These aliens knew machinery, and their alloys are better than our best.”
“I’d like to see the interior of one of those towers.” Ashe said wistfully. “Maybe they kept records, had something we could understand to explain it all.”
Renfry shook his head. “Wouldn’t dare try it. We might raise before you got inside the door. Ahh—the walker is going back now. I’d say get ready for take-off.”
Thev made tight the open port, the inner door of the space lock. Renfry, out of habit, went on up to the control cabin. But the other three took to their bunks. There was a waiting period and then once more the blast into space. This time they did not lose consciousness and endured until they were once more in space.
“Now what?” Hours later they squeezed into the mess cabin to hold a rather aimless conference concerning the future. Since no one had anything more than guesses to offer, none of them answered Renfry’s question.
“I read a book once,” Ross said suddenly with the slightly embarrassed air of one admitting to a minor social error, “that had a story in it about some Dutch sea captain who swore he’d get around the horn in one of those old-time sailing ships. He called up the Devil to help him and he never got home-just went on sailing through the centuries.”
“The Flying Dutchman,” Ashe identified.
“Well, we haven’t called up any Devil,” Renfry remarked.
“Haven’t we?” Travis had spoken his thoughts, without realizing until they all stared at him that he had done so aloud.
“Your Devil being?” Ashe prompted.
“We were trying to get knowledge out of this ship— and it wasn’t our kind of knowledge,” he floundered a little, attempting to put into words what he now believed.
Scavengers getting their just deserts?” Ashe summed up. “If you follow that line of reasoning, yes, you have a point. The forbidden fruit of knowledge. That was an idea planted so long ago in mankind’s conscience that it lingers today as guilt.”
“Planted,” Ross repeated the word thoughtfully, “planted.
“Planted!” Travis echoed
, his mind making one of those odd jumps in sudden understanding of which he had only recently become conscious. “By whom?”
Then glancing around at the alien ship which was both their transport and their prison, he added softly, “By these people?”
“They didn’t want us to know about them.” Ross’s words came in a rush. “Remember what they did to that Red time base—traced it all the way forward and destroyed it in every era. Suppose they did have contacts with primitive man on our world—planted ideas—or gave them such a terrifying lesson at one time or other that the memory of it was buried in all their descendants?”
“There are other tales beside your Flying Dutchman, Ross,” Ashe squirmed a little in his seat. None of the chairs in the ship was exactly fitted to the human frame or provided comfort for the modern passengers. “Prometheus and the fire—the man who dared to steal the knowledge of the gods for the use of mankind and suffered eternally thereafter for his audacity, though his fellows benefited. Yes, there are clues to back such a theory, faint ones.” His eagerness grew as he spoke. “Maybe—just maybe—we’ll find out!”
“The supply port was long deserted,” Travis pointed out. “There may be nothing left of their empire anywhere.”
“Well, we’ve not found the home port yet.” Renfry got to his feet. “Once we set down there—I hadn’t intended to say this, but if we ever get to the end of this trip, there’s a chance we may get back, providing—” He drummed his fingers against the door casing. “Providing we have more than our share of luck.”
“How?” demanded Ashe.
“The controls must now be set with some sort of a guide-perhaps a tape. Once we are grounded and I can get to work, that might just be reversed. But there are a hundred ‘ifs’ between us and earth, and we can’t count on anything.”
“There’s this, too,” Ashe added thoughtfully to that faintest of hopes. “I’ve been studying the material we have found. If we can crack their language tapes—some of the records we have discovered here must deal with the maintenance and operation of the ship.”
