Echoes In Time # with Sherwood Smith Page 9

  Gordon's unvoiced worry was that some other ship would show up, and they'd have to deal with the beings—somehow— though the Terrans knew little about how to control the communications of the globe ship.

  He did voice one worry—that the reprogramming might somehow interfere with the communications. "When so much of the ship function is automatic," he said. "I wonder if tampering with it might cause some kind of signal to go out?"

  "We debated this," Zina replied without taking her gaze from the screen. "There is no way to know if we have sent a signal. We decided to take the chance. The question of fuel, and of defense against the inimical beings on that one planet, made us feel the benefits outweighed the risk."

  Gordon glanced at the communication board—still a total mystery. Was a signal going out—or not? There was no clue in the complicated series of lights and buttons.

  At least no other ships were in sight, he noted, as the globe sped toward the mysterious refuel planet. Now gees pulled at them, and the ship reacted to floating trash: even after the lapse of millennia, the nameless planet was surrounded by a haze of detritus left behind by visiting star-ships.

  The blue-green crescent resolved into a lush planet swirled with cloud systems. Gordon felt his body pressing into his webbing with more authority. Suddenly his viewpoint changed, though the position of the ship vis-a-vis the planet didn't: his inner ear registered down, and vertigo seized him.

  At the controls Boris now held his hands ready above his console, watching lights flickering and measurements of various types streaming across his computer terminal as the autopilot brought the ship down toward the apparently endless stretch of white cement that marked the ancient starport.

  Gordon swallowed fast, closed his eyes, and tried breathing slowly. They were in flight now, subject to the planet's 0.92 standard gee, which settled his stomach rapidly. The transition from orbit was not as bad as the emergence from the weird hyper-dimensional travel that none of the Terran techs—either Western or Eastern—could duplicate.

  Silence gripped the ship, except for the creaks and subsonic groans of entry into a gravity well. All the crew members were in their bunks, on Zina's orders—all except Boris, the pilot, and Zina and Gordon as senior officers.

  Gordon and Zina stayed with Boris as a kind of insurance—what kind, Gordon didn't know. He certainly couldn't operate the ship if something went wrong. It would have made more sense to have Renfry on hand—of course, Renfry and Valentin probably had wired up a viewscreen to their terminals, and were following the action from their cabin.

  It's probably a political gesture, Gordon thought. Showing us that everything's on the up-and-up, without having to say it. Establishing trust, which we've got to have if this mission is to succeed.

  Gordon opened his eyes again.

  They were almost down. There was the peculiar blue-green sky again; memory smote him with unexpected force. No moisture was evident in that sky. If the planet had weather, it was all elsewhere. Of course, that would make sense—to locate a spaceport in a desert.

  With a gentle bump, the ship settled onto the wide sweep of white cement. There was the rusty red ruin. There were the ghost ships, untouched since their last visit.

  The globe ship's position with respect to the nearest ghost ship even looked the same—Gordon wondered if the globes were programmed to set down on the very same landing pad.

  They'd have to, he realized belatedly. Or would the refueling bots come out no matter what land of ship set down— and would they know what kind of fuel to administer?

  Fueling bots!

  He turned his head; his neck cricked at the unexpected weight. "When we were here, the fuel bot was broken—"

  "We saw that, on your mission tape," Zina replied. Her voice was hoarse. "Our first mission was prepared for this problem, and were able to effect repairs on the robot."

  Of course. He'd forgotten that first Russian mission—the reason they were here!

  Gordon was embarrassed at his own stupidity, but only for a moment. From the way Zina rubbed at her temples, she was having difficulty adjusting to gravity again as well. Thinking was at least as difficult as moving.

  "Here he comes," Boris said, for the first time during the entire journey showing some emotion. "Good work, Vasili!"

  Gordon watched the viewscreen. The snakelike fuel robot slithered out to the ship and disappeared from view. But a moment later Boris gave a grunt of satisfaction, and indicated one of his measures. "Fuel."

  "What type of fuel does this ship run on? Your people figure that out?" Gordon asked.

  Boris shook his head. "Our analysis is much the same as yours—a type of slurry encapsulating some of the superheavy elements, triggered by a catalytic environment that we do not yet have the technology to fully understand."

  Gordon nodded. All the more reason to take extreme care when using the globe ships. The autopilot tapes might be safe enough—but the only fuel, as yet, was from this ancient starport, and who knew when it would run out?

  Boris gave another grunt, and touched a pair of controls. On the viewscreen, the robot hose began its steady retreat.

  The globe lifted again, accelerating rapidly. The journey out was far faster, and Gordon realized that some of the inbound maneuvering might be programmed in accordance with planetary defense strictures. Speculation about the gauntlet of ancient weapons they might have faced occupied him until he felt his weight disappear. Soon after came the wrenching transition to hyperspace.

  When that was over, he lay in his webbing until he felt recovered. According to that first journey, they now had exactly a week of travel before they planeted on the Yilayil world.

  Everyone was progressing well with the language, thanks to assiduous use of the hypno-tapes and keeping to the rules about only using the language in work sessions. They were about as well prepared as they could be, given the incomplete and somewhat bizarre data in the language tapes, and their scanty knowledge of a very complicated culture.

  What remained was the Terrans themselves.

  Gordon had made a point of trying to get to know each of the crew. Easiest were the younger Russians; at least, easy to talk to, he amended, thinking them over. Misha talked at least as much as Vera, but not about anything personal. He kept his inner self well hidden behind an impervious shield of friendly, joking insouciance.

  Hardest were the older Russians. Gordon's instincts told him not to press. He didn't think that Gregori or Elizaveta necessarily hated the Americans and didn't want to work with them, but their younger years had been spent in a rough political climate, wherein one did not reveal oneself easily. That they did talk to him—on such bland, unexceptionable topics as linguistic studies, science, and so forth—meant to him that they were trying their best.

  The last one was the toughest—Saba.

  Thinking of those intelligent dark eyes, and the smooth, softly accented voice, Gordon decided he'd lain inactive long enough.

  Time to get started.

  He unfastened his webbing, nodded to Boris, and pushed himself out. Glancing at the time as he sailed through the rounded corridor, he gave the schedule a quick mental review, and headed for the rec room.

  The noise of a video made him stop and peek in. Three of the Russians and Renfry were watching some documentary in Russian. He knew that several of the others were in the study right then, which meant that Saba was probably in her cabin.

  He stopped himself outside her door, grabbed a handhold, and tapped.

  The door slid open—Eveleen was gone; Saba was alone. Gordon saw her laptop terminal lit, the machine anchored down to the little desk. Earphones floated in the air next to the terminal.

  "Gordon?" she said politely. "May I talk to you?" he asked. She nodded once. "Of course."

  "Sorry to interrupt," he said, entering the cabin, which was small and very tidy.

  "It is all right," Saba said with a graceful gesture. She swiftly saved her work, then closed the laptop and laid her fol
ded hands on it. "Now. What did you wish to discuss?"

  The cabins were too small for visitor space. Gordon had hitched himself over Eveleen's bunk.

  "I've been thinking ahead," Gordon began. "We have no idea why that statue of you exists, but we can assume that our mission has something to do with it. It was probably carved as a result of our visit.

  Saba nodded; they all knew that.

  "Your assignment is to enter the House of Knowledge, about which we only know one thing: that only selected beings are permitted entry, and everyone else stays out."

  Again common knowledge. Yet she exhibited no impatience--she knew, then, that he was establishing the background to his thoughts.

  "I might not be able to get in, even as your """." He whistle/droned the word for runner/caregiver.

  "I have thought of that," she admitted. "But we do not have any evidence that the inhabitants of the House of Knowledge are prisoners, or how could the First Team have learned even what they did? I must assume that I can come out to visit you if need be.

  "No evidence except those anomalies in the language," he insisted. "You yourself noted that the odd tenses seem to deny free will at times, that they might indicate a cultural means of coercion. So I don't think we can count on that. What I'd like to do is establish a code, in both languages—English and Yilayil—that ideally we can use on our radio connection. One code for pulses—for emergencies—and another for spoken communication."

  "So you are assuming that we are going to be in a hostile environment, then," she said.

  He shook his head. "Given how many pieces are missing from the puzzle, I think it's best. I talked it over with Zina before we strapped down for the refuel, and she says she's had thoughts along the same line."

  Saba sighed a little, flexing her hands. Gordon realized she was tense, though she gave no overt signs.

  "Look," he said, "I hate to pile on the pressure."

  She shook her head, smiling a little. "It is already there."

  Gordon smiled back. This was her first admission of real human emotion. And he knew that the same thing could be said of him—that he hid his real reactions. But it would be a mistake to assume that he didn't have any, just as he couldn't assume that she did not feel normal human emotion.

  "Well, we can't get around the fact that you are going to be important in some way—if not for us, for them. Let's just hope that this means they think you're great, and give you a cushy position somewhere, doing something poetic in one of their rituals. Meantime…"

  Saba nodded again. "Your code is an excellent idea. Have you designed something?"

  "I thought that we could do that together," he suggested. "We got a little time before our shift turns in for sleep—how about getting a start on it now?"

  Her smile widened, just a bit. "I think that's a very good plan," she said.

  * * *

  THE HOUR AFTER Gordon came into her cabin to speak passed quickly for Saba. Once they'd begun to work, the man's remote countenance relaxed, his slow, careful speech— as if he were reluctant to speak at all—became normal. He was still too controlled for Saba to hear his natural rhythm. Controlled, cautious, but not inflexible. She could be patient.

  All people made music of some kind, Saba had discovered when she was a girl beginning her studies in English and French. In Ethiopia, music was very much a part of life for the peoples she had known, traveling about with her father, who was a doctor—the Dorze, her mother's people, and all the other peoples of Ethiopia, from Eritrea to the elusive Danakil, made music all the time, in every aspect of life.

  But in listening to the language instructors at her school, she had discovered that there was music in speech. Each language had a different music, and each individual interpreted that music differently.

  She'd lost that conviction for a time, when she moved to Addis Ababa to attend university. But after a time life in the large, sophisticated city had brought her old convictions back, once she'd gotten used to the noise of technology. There was a kind of music even in modern life. Some people made very little music, but what they had was dark, angry, ugly—jangling with disharmony. Some made the muscle-tightening music of fear. Others made quiet music, repeating patterns they had learned from generations of equally quiet people.

  Some—very complex persons—kept their music to themselves until they trusted. At first she'd wondered if Gordon Ashe had any music, but she'd come to realize he was one of these latter. He had a fast mind, and an attention to detail that she appreciated.

  In that hour of study that he had come so suddenly to request, they laid the groundwork for a series of signals, ranked according to need, that they could build on.

  When the bell toned for the shift change, Gordon seemed as surprised as she was how quickly the time had vanished. He said a polite good night—once again careful and remote— and left.

  Saba stayed in the open door, her mind ranging over the past hour. As yet Eveleen had not shown up. Saba wondered if she and Ross had managed to find a little time alone, and hoped it was so. Eveleen never complained, but there was a wistful expression in her eyes when she referred to her husband, so newly wed. Her voice, so pleasant, with sunny music very close to the surface, would convey shades of longing.

  A flash of long yellow hair caught Saba by surprise, and she looked up to see Mikhail Petrovich Nikulin hanging upside down, just a meter from her face.

  With a quick gesture, he oriented himself so that they were aligned in the same direction, then he gave her one of his grins.

  "Nice night for pairs," he said, pointing back over his shoulder in the direction Gordon had gone. His own music was exotic, quick with control and unexpected percussive accents. This Mikhail—called Misha by his Russian colleagues— was another complex person.

  "Perhaps," she said, feeling a spurt of amusement at his assumption that she and Gordon were romantically involved.

  "So do you like old men only, or have you a smile for me?"

  "Old? Men?" Saba asked.

  "Gordon Ashe might be tough as nails, but I'm younger and much more handsome," came the immediate retort.

  "Thank you for the information, Mikhail," Saba murmured.

  "Misha! I want two things, and I shall have them: you will call me Misha, and you will smile at me."

  "I will give you both, willingly, if I can then retire for rest," she said. "Good night, Misha." And she gave him a very polite smile.

  "A challenge!" He laughed. "That's a challenge, Saba."

  She closed the cabin door, and heard his laughter echo as he moved away.

  Eveleen appeared a moment later. "That guy!" she exclaimed. "Does he ever give up?"

  "You too?" Saba asked.

  "Ohhh, yes. I noticed him talking to you during rec time, what was it, day before yesterday? It's so easy to lose track— one day so much like another." Eveleen grinned as she wrestled out of her clothes and into her sleepwear. "You know," she added, her head muffled in her top, "I could get used to this nullgrav—all except getting dressed. I feel like an octopus, writhing around in midair!"

  Saba chuckled. "You are right. It is difficult."

  "So, back to Misha." Eveleen's head popped out, and she fixed her floating hair into its night braid. "He's, what, pressuring you for a date? Or does he just want you to admire his oh-so-fascinating handsome blond self."

  "He wants to make me smile," Saba said.

  "Well, that sounds harmless enough."

  "I have said it wrong," Saba corrected, and she lowered her voice, trying for his characteristic tone of voice—partly humor, partly challenge. "He wants to make me smile." She gave the verb a slight emphasis.

  Eveleen's brows winged up, and she whistled one of the Yilayil challenge responses. "So. What do you do?"

  "Continue to ignore him, and hope that Vera or perhaps even Irina will eventually occupy his attention."

  Eveleen hooked herself into her webbing, and fastened it over herself. "Never a dull moment, that's the
name for this mission, right?"

  "Right," Saba said, giving in to laughter at last. Then she too composed herself for sleep, and doused the light.

  * * *

  AND SO THE last days of zero grav passed. Saba felt the pressure of the imminent landing—they all did. No need to check the schedule anymore. Everyone was putting in as much preparation time as they could, the science team readying their equipment.

  Saba continued to meet with Gordon each day, and they rapidly set up a communication code that both could remember with very little prompting. They'd covered as many contingencies as they could invent, leaving room for possible combinations as the mission progressed.

  Misha, of course, continued his campaign, but even he seemed rather absentminded—as if he continued out of habit, or to hide how he, too, had emotions about what was soon to take place. She found those emotions difficult to interpret— but she was certain that they were there.

  Finally Boris sent the signal for the emergence from the transdimension, and they all retreated to strap into their bunks.

  Saba knew that landing on the Yilayil planet was now a short time away. She took her anti-nausea medication. Very shortly thereafter the wrenching weirdness seized her in its grip, making her body feel as if it had been turned inside out and then right again.

  When at last it was over, and she had recovered, she opened her eyes to see Eveleen groggily sitting up from her webbing, which was swaying gently from her movements.

  She unstrapped and hooked a foot around a hold, working through a series of movements that Saba had learned were very good for restoring circulation and muscle tone.

  In silence Saba joined her.

  When the two women were done, they left the cabin, and found the others gathered round the command center.

  There, on the viewscreen, was the system they were headed toward. A blue-white crescent loomed on one side, slipped away.

  "Passing second planet now," Boris reported.

  "Good riddance," Ross Murdock cracked.

  "Amen to that," Case Renfry said softly.