The door was clearly marked 235 with BOOK ROOM printed beneath the number. Glyn pressed the usual button in the centre of the door and it obligingly hissed open, revealing a small and cramped chamber beyond.
He entered the chamber, the door hissed closed behind him, and the old feeling of fear returned. He shook it off, looking around for the air suit he knew he would have to wear in order to enter the actual book room.
It hung on a peg high up on the wall, a long flexible tube protruding from the back section which then snaked around and disappeared into a socket on the wall.
As Glyn struggled into the suit, he wondered how they had decided what size to make it, and found the designers had indeed been generous in their specifications, as it hung on him like a lose fitting bag and would therefore fit anyone, if fit was the right word.
The head gear was a cumbersome thing to have to contend with, and he could well see this was yet another reason why this room wasn’t the most popular one on the ship.
Clamping the helmet into place, he took a couple of steps towards the entrance door of the room, and was pulled up short by the air hose. Realizing that he would have to disconnect it, he did so, instinctively holding his breath.
The inner door opened to reveal an odd shaped room, the walls lined with what he thought were the books, with a dim light over a table in the middle. Just inside the door was a socket for the air hose, and he reconnected it hurriedly, gasping in a breath of fresh air.
The shape of the room wasn’t the normal square or oblong enclosure he was used to, but more reminiscent of the space when several odd shaped rooms were brought together, and the book room was that left over space where they joined.
He went over to the nearest wall and slowly pulled a book from the shelf where it had rested for several hundred years. Fearful that it might disintegrate, he gently laid it down on the table and opened the cover.
‘A Collection of British Butterflies’ adorned the top of the first page, and beneath it was a picture of a butterfly with spread open wings, a glorious golden thing.
Having never seen one before, Glyn didn’t know what a butterfly actually was, but he was able to identify it as a member of the insect family as he had seen insects in the hydroponics gardens, but none as beautiful as this.
A strange lump came up in his throat, and all thoughts of his purpose for being there fled as he slowly turned over the pages, drinking in the sheer beauty of the illustrations and wishing these creatures were needed to pollinate the gardens on the ship.
It took a while to go through to the end, and with a sigh he reluctantly replaced it on the shelf, and set about trying to find how he could identify the book he had come for.
Set in the wall between the books was an oblong panel, with the word INDEX at its top. There didn’t appear to be any controls to work the index, no buttons or switches that he could see, so he laid his hand on the main panel to see if it would respond to his presence. There was a slight flicker of light, a hint of some lettering, and then it went blank and stayed that way, despite repeated touches and not a few thumps from a very frustrated Glyn.
He gave up fiddling with the inoperative index after a while, and returned to the shelves of books, which he found to his amazement were in no special order that he could discern. They certainly were not filed by author or subject, and he supposed that over the years they had been put back in a random fashion by those who had used them.
Selecting another book at random, he sat at the table and opened it. It appeared to be a condensed history of earth from the time of the Romans, who ever they were, up to the time of the smelting stations which had encircled earth. It seemed that raw materials were in very short supply, and the asteroid belt was being mined for anything useable in the way of minerals.
The end of the book seemed to be contemporary with the period in which the Great Ship had been built, although there had been no mention of it that Glyn could find.
He had only a scant knowledge of the history of the Great Ship, as it was referred to, and that was on a ‘hand me down’ basis from his forebears. His interest in the ship had been reawakened by the book, and he decided to find out as much about it as possible, but first he must locate the necessary data to stop the awful nightmares.
Several random selections provided a mine of interesting things to study, but so far there was nothing about dreams.
It was only when he began to feel hungry that he was aware of how long he had spent in the company of the books, and checking his time piece he realized that he would have to hurry if he was to get to the eating room before it was too late for the midday meal, and a panic ensued at his absence.
The journey back to a familiar area of the ship took less time than he expected, and he began to wonder if he had accidentally taken a short cut, but later when he consulted the map of the area, he knew he hadn’t, he’d just been very hungry and in a hurry.
During the meal Glyn explained to Mia what he had been doing, but although she listened intently, and asked the right questions, she showed little interest in joining him in his quest for knowledge.
He now had a new interest in life, and impatiently waited for the rest of the ship’s members to finish eating so that he could get back to the books.
The bowl of fruit had just been passed around the table, when the screen above the food hatch lit up, a gong sounded and the voice of the Captain echoed across the eating room, his words printed out on the screen as he spoke.
‘There has been a malfunction in hydroponics garden number H233, please attend at once and correct.’
The Captain had never been seen, and rarely spoke except in an emergency, so everyone took what he had to say very seriously. It was rumoured that he was just an extension of the vast computer system which ran the ship, but no one was sure.
For a moment Glyn forgot about his books as he and three others volunteered for the duty call, and went immediately to the equipment room to collect whatever the ship deemed necessary for the operation.
‘Looks like we’ll have to suit up.’ one of them said as four bright yellow anti-contamination suits spilled out onto the floor from a locker.
‘Something must have gone horribly wrong for us to have to wear suits.’ Glyn added, a feeling of dread welling up from his stomach.
There had been a spate of mishaps in the hydroponics department of late, and the worrying events seemed to becoming more frequent.
‘Better check the route for the shortest possible journey, as this is one I don’t know.’ one of the team said, looking up at the spider web like corridor map on the wall.
‘It’s down three levels and off to one side of where we are now, and that’s quite a distance. You’d think they would have put in some form of simple transport, wouldn’t you?’
‘At least it gives us some exercise,’ Glyn said, ‘and one or two of us could well do with it.’ he added, with a glancing grin at one of the team who was a little over weight.
Just then there was a loud thump as a purple canister with a white skull and crossbones on it came out of a chute and rolled across the floor of the equipment room.
‘This must be serious, I’ve never seen one of these before,’ Glyn said to no one in particular, ‘and what do we do with it? There are no instructions on it as far as I can see.’
‘I don’t like the sound of this event. I thought the Captain’s voice was a little strained when he spoke to us earlier, so maybe this is a major catastrophe.’ one of the team said.
‘Oh, come on, the Captain is only a computer voice, it can’t show any emotion like we can.’ Glyn felt sad that any of them should be so naive as to give credence to the story of the Captain being human and aloof from them all, hidden away in a little place of his own.
‘Well, it’s never been proved one way or the other, and I think there may well be something to it. After all, most things have broken down or developed a fault at some time, but the Captain never has, so perhaps he is real after all.’<
br />
‘Come on you two, we’ll sort this out later on if you really must, but drop it for now and let’s get on with the problem of the hydroponics cell.’
The four of them staggered out of the room laden with an assortment of equipment that should fix just about anything, or so they thought.
Clanking and rattling their way along the corridor, they came to the first of the lifts they would have to use. It was a tight squeeze to get all four of them in, and the equipment, but they made it, just.
The lift was silent in its movement, and they only knew they had reached the lower level when the door hissed open to reveal a service tunnel.
‘I thought we were using the normal corridors.’ said Glyn.
‘So did I,’ Brendon added, ‘but it looks as if there is something wrong with the corridor we want or the lift doesn’t know what it’s doing.’
‘Let’s go back up and try coming down again, that should prove the point.’ Glyn suggested.
One of the team shuffled round, found the correct button and they returned to the corridor they had started from.
‘Right, now let’s see what happens.’ and the lift descended once more to stop at the service tunnel.
‘I didn’t know such tunnels existed.’ commented one member of the team.
‘I’ve never seen one, although I did hear about them some time ago,’ added Brendon, grumpily ‘and I don’t like the idea of going in. We would have to bend up double and with all this equipment, I don’t think we could make it.’
Glyn poked his head cautiously into the tunnel and looked up and down it. The light level was very low and it had a dry dusty smell about it, and then he spotted a very good reason for not entering.
‘It looks as if there are two rails sunk into the floor and that can only mean that something on wheels goes along it. If we are in the tunnel when whatever it is comes along......’ He didn’t need to finish the sentence.
‘Looks like we shall have to try and find another connection to the corridor we want, but is it above us or below?’ Arki, the tall one asked.
‘Damned if I know. Perhaps we should go back up again, go along the corridor and try another lift.’ Brendon offered.
‘Good idea.’ replied Glyn, and they all wriggled round so that one of them could reach the control button, their equipment making a cacophony of clanks and rattles in the confined space of the lift, and up they went.
The next lift was some way along the seemingly never ending maze of passageways in the Great Ship, and it was a disgruntled bunch of men who eventually piled into the box like space which had been designed for two in comfort, and three at a squeeze.
‘Let’s hope this one works correctly.’ said Glyn, thumbing the button a little more firmly than was necessary.
The lift dropped to the required level as far as they could tell, and when they emerged into the lower corridor, the number sequence on the doors corresponded with those they’d seen on the ship’s map back in the equipment room.
‘We shall have to go back up that way,’ indicated Glyn, ‘until we come to an intersection, and then turn off to the left.’
‘No, to the right.’ Arki said, but with little certainty.
‘I’ve got a bit of paper here somewhere, let’s draw out the route you memorized from the wall map, and then we can put in the diversion we’ve just made.’ Brendon said, looking at Arki.
Although they referred to it as paper, it was really a thin sheet of plastic material on which they could write, and then wipe off the writing in order to use the sheet again. Old names for commodities still stuck long after the materials from which they were made had been replaced with something else.
Arki drew out the map, made the corrections for the diversion, and apologized for his mistake.
‘One day someone is going to get lost in this labyrinth.’ he added, still not happy that he had made a mistake which could have caused even more problems for the group.
‘Never happened yet, as far as I know.’ Glyn added, trying to add a note of cheer to the proceedings.
They trudged on, coming at last to the door marked H223 and paused before it, putting down their equipment.
‘Better suit up, we can’t go in there without protection as there is a flashing red light on the door.’ Brendon commented, sourly.
‘How do you know that?’ asked Arki, still smarting from his mistake.
‘Don’t know really, must have heard it somewhere, anyway that light isn’t there just to make the door look pretty, it’s a warning.’
They struggled into their protection suits, locked the head pieces into place and checked their radio communications units. All seemed well.
‘OK, let’s do it.’ said Glyn, who seemed to have assumed leadership by default.
He pressed the pad to activate the door’s opening mechanism, and after a pause it obligingly slid to one side. The four of them crowded into the small space of the airlock, the outer door slid to and a green light came on to indicate that they could proceed into the problematic hydroponics chamber.
The chamber was vast, stretching upwards into a mist shrouded ceiling which they assumed was there, but couldn’t see. A long wide walkway stretched off into the distance, each side of it shrouded in banks of deep green foliage, some of which had decayed and drooped downwards to block the centre path in places, a general mistiness hung in the air adding to the sense of gloom.
‘What are we supposed to do?’ asked Brendon, looking around nervously as if expecting something nasty to come out of the foliage at them. They put their equipment down and looked around at the vast green jungle.
Glyn was just about to ask the same question when the ‘ping’ which heralded the voice of the Captain sounded, but with a strangely muffled sound to it.
‘Please look around you and tell what you see. The optics in this unit have malfunctioned and I am unable to observe the situation.’
They all looked at one another in astonishment, the captain didn’t usually ask questions or require their help, he, if it was a ‘he’, just gave orders and made announcements.
The other three looked at Glyn, Brendon raising his hands and shrugging his shoulders. Glyn realized that they had unanimously chosen him to be their spokesman on the subject of the chamber without saying a word.
He quickly looked around the vast cavern of greenery to make sure he hadn’t missed anything important, and said,
‘This end of the chamber is nearly normal, as far as I can see, with only a few clumps of leaves showing signs of decay, but further on down the line I can see whole branches laden with a dirty green brown mess of decayed vegetation, some of it has actually turned into a liquid and is dripping off the ends of the branches. Good thing we can’t smell it.
‘There is a blockage further on down the chamber, I will try to get past it so that I can see what the rest of the chamber looks like.’ He walked up to the first branch which had bent right down to ground level, the slime from the dripping end forming a small pool of disgusting bubbling liquid which he was very careful not to tread in or get on his suit.
Glyn went to push the blocking branch to one side, and as his hand touched it there was a soggy snapping sound and it fell to the ground, a thin drizzle of brown liquid oozing out of the broken end which was still attached to the main growth. The piece which had fallen split open along its length, adding more of the putrefying liquid to the slime pool in the middle of the path.
He bent as close to the ruptured branch as his stomach would allow to see if there were any signs of living creatures in the remains which might have caused the disintegration, but nothing moved except the turgid liquid still oozing out of the collapsed branch.
Carefully he stepped over the nauseous looking mess on the path and slowly walked on down between the towering ranks of plants, most of which showed signs of succumbing to the rot in varying degrees.
Brendon had followed him a few paces down the track way and was getting nervous, calling over the radi
o link
‘You are disappearing into the mist, I can only just make out your shape. Do you think it wise to be out of sight?’
Glyn hesitated for a moment, he didn’t like the idea of being out of sight just in case something went wrong, and no one knew about it.
‘OK, as the mist begins to hide me, come forward, keeping me just in sight, and then the others can do likewise as you begin to fade from sight. That way we shall all know what’s going on and can render help if necessary.’
Slowly Glyn edged his way past fallen branches and pools of slime, which were becoming more numerous as he proceeded down the pathway between the towering plant growth.
‘What do you see now?’ the voice of the Captain sounded uneasy, but Glyn put it down to his imagination as he felt sure the Captain wasn’t really human.
‘More of the same, except that it is getting worse, every plant is affected to some degree, some have collapsed completely.’
A few minutes later and the foursome had gone as far as they could, spread out along the pathway and keeping each other just in sight.
Glyn had reached a point where he thought he could see the end of the chamber wall in the now very steamy conditions, and called back on the radio that he wasn’t going any further as his way was blocked by too many fallen branches.
Again the attention getting ‘ping’ sounded, to be followed by the sonorous tones of the Captain.
‘Take the purple canister up to the end of the chamber, pull the tab on the top, the end will come off. This reveals a valve. Hold the canister vertically, turn the valve until the arrow points to the mark and then raise it up as high as you can. Turn to face the way back to the entrance port. Press the button next to the valve and walk back to the port.’
As the canister in question was back at the point where they had all come in, there were a few muttered curses as the foursome trouped back to recover it.
When the little group had reassembled at the pile of equipment they had dumped earlier, it was the fourth member of the team, Bolin, who volunteered to activate the canister which brought an audible sigh of relief from the other three.
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