Hawke agreed with Light Bender’s suggestion to check the deck above. He reasoned that the existence of an electric plant above the reactor gave the presence of a life support facility on the same floor a high probability.
Now that there was lighting in the passageways, it was easier to gauge the sheer enormity of the ship by the length of the corridors. It was impossible to see the end of the corridor even though all the lights were functional.
They located the stairs they had navigated before and took those to the level above. They hadn’t even started down the passageway before Sky Listener came rushing toward them.
“Hawke, I think I found the room!” Sky Listener hollered, coming to a halt several yards away.
He motioned for them to follow him back toward the direction from which he came. Hawke ran ahead of the others, meeting up with Sky Listener who was already headed down the hallway.
“We’ve found a large noisy room back there by the stairs that has to be related to electricity, and since it’s operating, it’s safe to assume it has nothing at all to do with life support,” he said, still leading the way down the hall, “We found enormous water tanks on the lowest deck, but the nearby machinery related to the water systems isn’t operating even after the electricity came on. The tanks aren’t frozen by the way, because someone conveniently stored all the bane ore on those lower decks. The bane kept those two lower decks rather tolerable in temperature.”
“Bane?” Hawke sputtered, “W-wait, there’s bane ore on this ship?”
“Yeah, a lot of it actually,” Sky Listener said, stopping in the corridor and turning to him, “Is that unusual?”
“Well yeah! That ore is completely alien to me. I’d never seen it or heard of anything like it in my life,” Hawke said, stopping next to the man, “Does it look like they were storing it or actually using it for something?”
“There are three giant rooms just filled with it and it doesn’t look like those rooms were designed for any sort of ore storage. When you open the hatches, there are boards blocking most of the door to keep the mountain of ore from spilling out into the corridor,” he said, “I’d say they discovered our favored mineral and started mining it to take back to your planet.”
Hawke nodded, rubbing his chin, “Yeah, that does sound a bit plausible.”
Sky Listener shrugged, apparently unconcerned about pursuing the subject further. He then turned and pointed to a hatch marked “atmospheric management.” It was an odd way to refer to life support, but he could understand such a scientific title.
Sky Listener opened the hatch and led the way into the room. He had left the light on, revealing a long narrow room lined with what could only be giant furnaces on either side of a center walkway. The whole ceiling was a maze of ventilation ducts going off in all directions. At the end of the room was an enormous machine that took up the whole far wall with wide ductwork branching out from the upper half.
Hawke looked at the closest machine, identifying it as a possible furnace or air conditioner. Glancing down the length of the room, it appeared that the first ten units on each side of the room were identical. He couldn’t imagine twenty household furnaces being enough to sustain a ship of this size, but he also didn’t know if they had advanced the output efficiency of furnaces since his generation.
He opened the cover on the front of one of the furnaces and looked at the interior. It had all the makings of a typical electric furnace. The main power to this particular unit had been shut off from the inside, again revealing evidence of an intentional abandonment of the ship. He shut the cover and looked down the little walkway.
“It wouldn’t do us any good to turn the heat on if there is no air production or filtration,” Hawke said, staring at the enormous machine at the end of the row, “Let’s see what the rest of this room has to offer.”
“Is this the life support room you were looking for?” Fire Dragon asked.
He sighed, walking past the identical units, “It might be one of many. I don’t see how twenty regular-size furnaces could heat a ship this size, but maybe they can. Nine levels, each the size of ten to twelve football fields, two furnaces per level… I just don’t see it happening.”
“Then if these only sustain a portion of the ship, do you think it won’t be able to supply the air we need to breathe?” Kashuba asked.
The enormous machine at the end of the room wasn’t the only unrecognizable appliance. At the end of the rows of furnaces were two cylindrical contraptions that looked like those jumbled creations found at high school science fairs. A variety of clear hoses entered these two eyesores through a metal dome at the top. Dusty wires and pipes, braided together into a frightening serpent, sprouted from the bottom and led straight to the unidentified machine on the wall.
“What is that?” Sky Listener asked.
“I have no idea,” Hawke replied, “It could be anything. It could be an air purifier, or perhaps an oxygen creator, or maybe it simply scrubs the carbon dioxide from the air. You are asking the wrong man.”
“But either way, it’s something important,” Kashuba said.
“Most likely,” he replied, “Though I don’t see any way to turn it on.”
“Maybe it’s connected to the beige beast right there,” Sky Listener said, pointing to the enormous machine, “There are plenty of switches on that thing.”
Hawke looked at the thing Sky Listener was pointing to. It indeed offered a few switches on the right side to choose from. A small LCD display was lit up beside it. It merely showed an outline of the ship and nothing more.
He glanced at the switches and noted that the largest one was labeled as the emergency override switch. To Hawke, that meant the main shut-off switch, so he moved it into the other position. The machine made a few knocking noises, then became as silent as before. Several small lights came on at the bottom of the two odd units beside them.
“Nothing,” he muttered.
“This says the pilot isn’t lit,” Sky Listener stated, pointing to the LCD display, “Why does the pilot need light if he isn’t flying the ship yet?”
“Different kind of pilot,” Hawke said, stepping back and examining the machine, “Those furnaces behind us are electric. Why would there be a need to light any pilots?”
He located a metal service door at the bottom and pulled it open. He instantly located a valve to turn on the gas. Much further inside, he could see where the pilot light would be located. He reached in, feeling around for an electronic starter, but he couldn’t get his forearm past two of the pipes. He reached around any way he could, but alas, he was still unable to even reach the spot of the pilot light. The operators, he reasoned, must have had a special extension tool used specifically for lighting a pilot as inaccessible as the one here.
“Does anyone have a lighter or matches?” Hawke asked, “I can turn on the gas to the pilot light, but there’s no ignition switch.”
Fire Dragon dropped his utility bag to the floor and started rummaging through it.
“I have matches in here somewhere,” he said, digging around in the bag.
Hawke stood up and approached Kashuba who had been leaning against one of the furnaces.
“I need a favor from you,” Hawke said, lifting her hand in his, “Your arms are much thinner than mine and I can’t reach the pilot in order to light it.”
“What is a pilot anyway?” she asked, “You never explained.”
“A pilot is pretty much the same as an oil lamp that remains inside a machine. It stays on all the time, ready to light any gas that flows past it,” he said, “I just need you to reach in with a match and light it.”
“Sure,” she quickly accepted, “As long as I don’t get burned.”
Fire Dragon located a box of matches and handed it to Hawke. He then knelt down next to the open door and showed Kashuba where the pilot should be. She nodded, then took the box of matches from Hawke and lit one of them. Hawke turned on the gas and peered into the machine as she reached
in. Her slender arm slipped right between the two pipes. She stretched further before a small explosion of gas made her scream and draw quickly backward.
Hawke laughed, rolling backward with her in his arms as she glared upward toward him.
“That wasn’t funny!” she shouted, “I could have died!”
“No you couldn’t have,” he defended, “It was just a quick burst of burning gas. Look at your arm. You’re not even burned.”
“It was an explosion!” she snapped at him.
“You merely lit the pilot and some of the surrounding gas was burned away in the process,” he explained, “Seriously, if you had been in any danger, I wouldn’t be laughing.”
“Well, to me, that was dangerous and I don’t find it funny,” she said, quickly escaping his arms and rising from the floor.
Hawke peeked into the machine and verified that the pilot remained lit after Kashuba’s near death experience. He brushed the dust from his hands and then closed the metal door. He returned to the control panel and flipped the switch again in an effort to turn the machine on. The machine made a knocking noise like last time, but then suddenly came alive like a car engine starting up. Soon, a watery sound could be heard from the two science projects beside them. A moment after that, a fan or something similar came to life inside the machine, blowing air through the giant ventilation tunnels above their heads.
“Any idea if this is working properly?” Fire Dragon asked.
“None whatsoever,” Hawke grinned at him, “But I’m thinking we might want to get all these furnaces brought back online so we can finally take off these jackets.”
Twenty-one
It was the equivalent of early evening when all the “North Survivors,” as they had chosen to be called, returned to the gymnasium. The reactor had proven throughout the day to be fairly self-monitoring and sustaining. Even so, a person was required to stand watch in the control room at all times in case of emergency. Hawke’s standing rule was that if there was any doubt at all as to what a warning alarm was about, the person was to shut the reactor down. They could always restart it later but if there were a meltdown, all hope would be lost.
Air and heat were flowing throughout the ship and had been doing so for the past few hours. Unfortunately, that also meant that there was a lot of dust being stirred up throughout the ship. Allergies were the biggest problem at the moment - that and the question of where they would find food. Besides what they brought with them, there would be no available sustenance located on the ship. Had they discovered any food reserves, they would have most certainly been decayed beyond recognition.
Now, everyone had returned to the place it all started several hours before. Fire Dragon however had relieved Star Dancer from the tedious job of monitoring the reactor, so he was the only one not present for their first meeting.
“While it may not seem like much, we’ve got power, we’ve got air, we’ve got water, and we’ve got heat,” Sky Listener began, officially the leader of the group now, “No doubt that the food we are about to eat will be our last for a while. It’s no reason to lose hope because we are still searching for a way to get this ship out of the ice. I’ve caught wind that some are saying we’re going to die. Others say that the plan to bust our way out of the ice is just a far-fetched dream of mine. I’d like to let Meriwether Hawke answer to these rumors.”
Hawke joined Sky Listener at his spot in front of the filled bleachers. It was nice to stand there and see such a large group of people who didn’t have the same expressions of hopelessness he had seen earlier in the day. Unfortunately for Hawke, their hopes all rested on him.
“This ship operates like nothing you are accustomed to on Rain. Even the Shomani do not possess such a technology. I’d love to give you a detailed explanation on how it works, but you wouldn’t understand. Not that you’re too stupid because I know better than that. But rather because you have no experience with any of the prior technologies that the warp-generating system is derived from, so it would probably just be confusing,” he stated, “What I can tell you is that the ship runs on gravity. You all know about gravity because it’s the very thing that keeps us from flying when we flap our arms. It’s the very thing that draws objects back down to the planet.
“This ship creates its own gravity, but nothing even comparable to what you’ve seen on Rain. This ship creates a gravitational field that… well, let’s just say that it is so powerful that it bends the very fabric of space, folding it in on itself and causing a ship to basically leap from one location to another. If anyone wants, I would gladly explain more on this at a later date when things are a bit less eventful.
“I think Sky Listener wanted me to give you all some hope and personally, I think hope is something we definitely have. But I’m also one to give it to you straight and to not sugarcoat things. I can bring that engine online with no problem. What I can’t do is actually fly a ship and as of yet, we haven’t even located the bridge. I have no idea what the flight controls even look like. I sat as a co-pilot on a smaller ship though, so I’m not completely ignorant in this regard. I just wanted you all to know that there’s a chance of failure. I don’t believe we’re going to fail, but I just wanted it clear that the possibility exists.”
He then shrugged and returned to his seat next to Kashuba. She put her arm around him and pulled him close.
The woman he’d seen in the tunnel carrying a baby stood up with that same baby in her arms and walked to the spot where Sky Listener and Hawke had given their speeches. She turned to the group and forced a broken smile. Her eyes were red from dust allergies, giving the appearance that she had been crying.
“I’m Night Whisper and I’m not even supposed to be here. I’m just a courier who had delivered a wagonload of food from the Trader’s Bakery. I was on my way to the surface when the attack happened. I turned and ran back down the tunnel, abandoning my eldest daughter and my husband who were at work and at school. I can only assume they are dead now. But my baby was colic, so I chose to bring her to work with me this morning.
“Anyway, I don’t have much to offer but I do ask that you share in the food I brought down. I’m hungry and my baby will be hungry when she wakes up, so I was-”
“We are all part of the ‘North Survivors,’ Night Whisper! Of course we are going to share equally,” one of the men in the bleachers interrupted her.
“But I only brought food for the people who were supposed to be here today,” she said, rubbing her watery eyes, “I didn’t bring food for me and my daughter.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Sky Listener stated, walking over to her, “We are all equal and the food has already been divided by the medical crew in order to feed us all. None of the food will last until morning, so it’s in our best interest to waste nothing.”
She gave a quick nod, looking down at the floor. Then, as though an important thought came to her, she looked up suddenly at the group seated in the bleachers.
“Well, before I sit back down, I just wanted you all to know that I desired to find a way to help out since I felt so ‘out of place’. So while everyone was looking for machinery, I was looking for beds,” she said, looking at a woman seated in the front row, “On the deck beneath this one, all the rooms directly to the right of the stairs are devoted to sleeping places. I went into these rooms and took off the bedding and shook out all the dust into the hallway. Then I remade the beds in those rooms. I was going to wipe down the tables and dressers, but I ran out of time.”
Sky Listener nodded, then put an arm around her.
“We need all the help we can get, but you don’t have to earn your way into this group,” Sky Listener stated, squeezing her close, “And actually, you thought of something important that I hadn’t even pondered yet. So I’d like to be the first to thank you for making sure I had a place to sleep tonight.”
The woman she was looking at gave her a smile of reassurance. At the back of the group, a middle-age woman rose from her seat and walked do
wn the bleachers toward the crate on the floor. She opened the lid and then gestured for everyone to join her.
“We have a jar of water, a loaf of bread, and a half-portion of dried meat for everyone here,” she said to the group, “And despite what Sky Listener just said, the fruit that Night Whisper brought will last just fine until morning, so we will all get to enjoy a nice piece of lorma-sweet in the morning with a small portion of dried meat. So please enjoy this, knowing that it’s not your last meal.”
. . . .
Hawke and Kashuba spent the majority of their meal meeting the crew of the “North Survivor,” a name they christened their ship during the meal. He was encouraged not just by the sheer intelligence of the crew, but also by the high morale evident in their demeanor. Hawke was no more educated in ship operations than these people were, so he knew he would be relying heavily upon others for the remainder of his time here. After talking with the others, he was confident that they would find a way to get the ship off the ground.
Shortly after dinner, everyone resigned to locating their individual berthing on the deck below. Upon locating the corridor of living spaces, they started moving beds and other furniture around in order to accommodate the people with young children. They located a crib in a nearby storage room that would be suitable for Night Whisper’s infant.
Everyone worked together to ensure a certain level of comfort for each other. Kashuba and Hawke had taken a bed from another room in order to make theirs a share berthing. They had no need for another dresser, much less the one that was already in the room since neither of them had come prepared with changes of clothes.
“How long before people start going crazy?” Kashuba asked, “I mean, there are children here. In a couple days, the hunger will be pretty powerful and I’m sure no one wants to see children going hungry or starving.”
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