The Sleeper of the Ages Page 8

  After a few moments, his eyes had adjusted to the changed situation. He saw a deep black, lightless metal surface. When he shielded the spotlight and moved it slowly he found that it curved away on all sides. So the conclusion could only be ...

  "A sphere!" he murmured. "A sphere in a cube."

  The cube was a cubical cargo hold open to space. Kalymel recalled the dimensions: somewhat more than 108 meters long and just as wide and deep, next to the tanks on the deck on the outer hull of the OVIR. So the giant sphere has a diameter of more than eight times twelve meters, he thought. Between the cargo hold's walls and the curving sphere he thought he could make out colored points of light. Stars? Very possibly.

  He did not see whether and how the sphere was attached and secured in the cargo hold. But its surface was anything but smooth. He saw lines and hollows and something that looked like rows of large rivets. Small glass surfaces showed in the roaming spotlight beam. Portholes? Or maybe spotlights? His breath froze on the glass pane in front of his face while he stood there. His knees were weak and he allowed himself to be overwhelmed by the scale of his discovery.

  "What is that?" he groaned. "What can it be?" Then he shrugged. A landing shuttle that no one is supposed to know about? Suddenly he remembered in a searing hot flash his time limit. He ran the spotlight beam along the sphere's surface but did not learn any more.

  Puzzled, he left the airlock and forced the gap he had made in the hatch door back together. He attached his tools to his belt and crawled through the inspection tube back into the warm zone where the air did not smell of frozen, ancient secrets. He secured the large nuts in the deck plate more tightly than usual.

  He was the only one on board who had gotten close to the mysterious sphere. It was possible that not even Atubur Nutai knew of the true contents of the cargo hold. Possible, he thought, but not very likely. When Kalymel had reached the boundary area of the inhabited portion of his quadrant, he suddenly thought of a better way to get close to the black sphere—he would fly his shuttle over the strange object. And that was something he could do before very long. Until then, he would say absolutely nothing to anyone.

  Four days later, without any prior announcement, letters and diagrams appeared on the large vidscreens of the Common Area. Kalymel and Rasturi happened to be outside their cabins. Kalymel was inspecting what little personal baggage he had along with the last pieces of the equipment for his shuttle's first group. When the vidscreen glowed into life, the eyes of perhaps fifty Lemcharoys turned to the blinking lines of text.

  Simulation from original optical recordings. Speed increased by a factor of ten; no color correction. Due to capacity problems, three-dimensional display possible only for fifteen minutes per quadrant. Urgent warning: Serious danger in attempting to interrupt voyage and make intermediate landing!

  Rasturi and Kalymel read the message. Several moments later, an seemingly unreal, brightly colored image formed. They stared at it mesmerized.

  "I never imagined it would be so beautiful, so ... incredible and so real—more beautiful than any dream!" Rasturi whispered. Her voice was husky with emotion. She stood in the grass of the gathering place and observed Mentack Nutai, the fifth planet, whose globe slowly rotated in three dimensions on the vidscreen. Reddish reflections of sunlight on the icecaps, wonderfully blue seas, yellow, brown, and green continents. And above them an endless wave of clouds in swirls, chains, and individual masses. The shadow of nightside darkness from which the surface emerged. A moon drifted past. The Network flashed up explanatory captions at the lower edge of the image.

  "Data rot!" Kalymel murmured. "Too late, Net!" The figures on the chronometer suddenly ran backwards much too fast, just when he was searching in half-desperation for an area in which he would like to land, but he knew at the same time that it was a pointless effort. "You have too little information. When we're back to 10,000 or more, then we'll think of setting out again."

  The glowing image faded out and disappeared. In place of the planet, flickering, real-time depictions reappeared. Across the lowermost part of the display ran the debris wall of the asteroid belt. The inhabitants of his quadrant who had gathered here—Kebroids, Normals, Positive-Muties, Half-Leukors—gave the hooded globe of the Legendor one last look and then scattered. The glowing red eye went out.

  "Are you afraid, Kalymel?" Rasturi asked, putting her arm in his as they slowly walked back to their quarters.

  "Not of launching, but of the flight through the atmospheric layer. Everything depends on the power of the engines."

  "We will be summoned in time, won't we?"

  Rasturi would take the third seat in the shuttle cockpit. Macaire had demonstrated in three tests that he was the one to be co-pilot. They had already stowed the largest part of what little baggage they had on the shuttle, along with equipment and an extensive selection of weapons and defensive gear. Kalymel attached adhesive arrows on the walls along the way to the waiting room and the hangar, then marked them with glowing paint. No one knew what waited the Lemcharoys on the destination planet—when.

  "Of course, my love," he said. "And before the launch, there will be so much noise and commotion that I can guarantee that no one will oversleep."

  "When?"

  "In less than four days."

  Hour after hour, Atubur Nutai calculated, compared, estimated, observed, and tested. Chibis-Nydele brought him Huccar and small tidbits. Her loving care distracted him from self-doubt and the fear of failure. The Network's linked computers worked constantly at the limit of their capacity. Again and again, streams of data stopped dead at an unreliable operating node. The nuclear reactor provided energy to the inertial absorbers that were braking the flight. Within the inner ring, whose diameter was almost a kilometer, the colliding neutrinos created shining structures of energy. At long intervals, tiny bits of rocky debris impacted the thick protective surface of the forward end of the Star of Hope; because of its metal construction, loud gong-like hammer-blows resounded, and the protective force field in front of the command module's cockpit flared up simultaneously.

  The LEMCHA OVIR flew past the orbit of the nameless eighth planet. The scanner screens showed the enormous extent of the arching asteroid belt with its millions of rocky chunks and mini-moons of stone, ice, and metal ore. The Ship's speed decreased further still, and the loudspeakers cracklingly broadcast the Immortal's voice for perhaps the last time.

  "We have crossed the orbit of the eighth planet. In three hours we will leave the asteroid belt behind us and see the seventh planet, Ovir's Nexas, to the left of our course." His words were met with expectant, fearful silence. After a pause, Atubur Nutai continued.

  "Even the sixth planet, Lemcha's Reabion, would make our survival possible. In thirty days it will reach the point where we will cross its orbit. Ichest shines ahead. Accompanied by its three moons, Mentack lies before us and grows larger by the hour." The protective force fields were partly non-functioning. Again the echoes of a meteor impact rumbled and resounded through the decks. "We are precisely on the calculated course, which I am continuously overseeing. In seventeen hours, the Star of Hope will begin its descent to the fifth planet. May the Keeper be with us. And may the Legendor approve of my plan."

  Rasturi clenched her fingers in Kalymel's hand. "Seventeen hours!" she whispered.

  The fear-inducing sound of the absorbers running at maximum and the accompanying vibrations had faded away. Seventy passengers in protective suits crowded in the LEMCHA EDANA; the three occupants of the cockpit wore spacesuits. About two hundred passengers waited in the three shuttles of the other quadrants. More than seven hundred Lemcharoys remained behind and prepared for the black ringship's entry into orbit around the planet or for the returning shuttles. Kalymel knew the launch procedure by heart and calmly and systematically readied the shuttle for take-off.

  They waited with open hatches in the brightly lit hangar, which was still connected to the air circulation system. On a tiny monitor in the cockpit and o
n a second, larger one in the passenger compartment, they could follow events outside the ark. Many Lemcharoys were half-sick with tension and fear of the unknown, of leaving the OVIR for the first time.

  Again the absorbers roared, again the angular ring shook. The gravity shifted once more, and the shuttle's occupants hung for long seconds from their safety belts as the wall suddenly became the floor. The orbit of the sixth planet already lay far behind the ark, which seemed to be racing towards a point high over Mentack Nutai's pole. Time passed with agonizing slowness.

  Kalymel inserted a data chip and for the ninth time began to study the illustrated description of the planet Mentack Nutai on the monitor. He already knew it almost by heart.

  The extent of the icecaps at the poles are comparable with known Lemurian worlds (data from archives). The composition of the atmosphere corresponds to 98% of the ideal requirements for the Lemurian metabolism and is well within the recommended parameters for sustaining life. 50 % of the land masses and ocean surfaces have been surveyed (Survey not final.) The gravity is one-tenth above normal. The climate is rated as moderate. The sidereal day is 17.7 hours. The average temperature is 14 degrees Centigrade. The planet's axis is tilted at an angle of 12.8 degrees relative to its orbit around its sun, so seasons are weakly differentiated. In terms of its geological history, Mentack Nutai is an old world without rugged high mountains. Extensive forests, flat seas, deserts, and steppes along with swamps in the transitional areas highlight the planet on which we are making our stopover landing.

  The images from the remote scanning were, as expected, unclear and often hidden under clouds. Kalymel shrugged and removed the chip.

  They continued to wait. For an hour or more ...

  "We're flying past the planet, Kalymel!" Rasturi exclaimed and fiddled excitedly with the seams of her spacesuit.

  "That's intentional," Macaire said, shaking his head. "We're going into orbit. Wait, think of the gravitation of that huge mass!"

  The pauses between meteorite strikes became shorter. The roaring impacts, whose reverberation made the entire ship tremble, made it clear that the cosmic bodies were not only more numerous but more massive. Again the absorbers went into action. The apparent straight line of the ship's trajectory bent and the curve of the alien world came into view once more from below in the vidscreen image.

  Kalymel looked at the chronometer and said, "Close your helmets. Communicators on. Here we go."

  He waited until the signal lights on his console went out. All the shuttle's hatches were closed and sealed. Then, on a signal from the control center, a gap opened in the hangar ceiling. The screeching and rumbling of bearings on the guide rails and the howling of the engines were lost in the overall noise. The lights flickered.

  "Secure all safety harnesses and belts!"

  The effect of the vacuum outside pulled the shuttle's hatches outward against their seals. The last control light on Kalymel's console went out. The valves of the air supply closed with a cracking sound. The air that escaped into space was transformed for brief moments into swirling crystals. Glaring sunlight flooded through the gap between the hangar doors as they slid away from each other, and produced strangely shaped, moving reflections on the walls and on the floor.

  "Hang on!" Kalymel yelled over the communicator. "Check your belt fastenings!"

  The Commander ignited the braking engines for the final orbital entry maneuver. There had not been any test, but the risk seemed worth it: Powerful pumps injected a portion of the water supply into engines glowing from the heat of the nuclear reactors. Highly compressed steam shot out at 15 places on the 126-meter wide leading edge of the ring opposite to the direction of flight. The speed of the particles was less than the effect of the absorbers, but the braking maneuver took longer.

  During this delay, the hangar doors had completely opened. Kalymel pulled on a bright yellow switch. The jaws of the floor clamps snapped open and centrifugal force threw the shuttle horizontally out of the hangar.

  As the stocky craft had passed halfway through the opening, the entire ringship seemed to tip, rear up, and deviate from its course to the side. A primordial roaring shook the metal framework of the OVIR and thundered through every room that still held air. The rectangular opening seemed to tilt, and some part of the shuttle's landing skid struck the edge. Then the OVIR EDANA was outside, turning slowly and starting to go into a spin. The vast surface of the planet spread out below the cockpit's windows. For a long moment Kalymel looked out at the curve of the horizon—or was it the layer of atmosphere that stood out diffusely from the black of space?

  The four wings swung out and locked. What he saw next nearly stunned him. For the first time in his life he was confronted with a view of the actual starry sky with its glory of uncountable distant stars, glowing nebulae, and dark clouds. Fortunately, since the shuttle was turning around, the awesome vista did not have enough time to overwhelm him completely.

  Kalymel made out the two parts of the Ship. Two parts? The shuttle fell heavily between them. Screams and curses howled from the loudspeakers. Kalymel turned them off and gave full thrust to all the engines.

  He stared out the window and saw dust and rocky debris swirling on all sides, mixing with the enormous jets of steam from the Star of Hope's braking engines. The OVIR had been struck by a huge piece of rock and about a fifth of the Ring was missing. Box-like components and incredibly deformed black metal whirled around. A second shuttle shot ghost-like from out of the chaos and sped towards the planet.

  The detached piece of the Ship had been knocked away from the course at a right angle and rapidly grew smaller. The Ring still rotated, lurching, with a section missing, and the water from the tanks continued to be transformed into white steam.

  Kalymel brought the shuttle under control and once its orientation was stabilized, he struck a course for the center of the planetary surface, now too vast to see in one glimpse. Debris swirled around him. He thought he could see a stony meteor shining in the sunlight. The giant rock was surrounded by a cloud of hurtling debris and fragments, swiftly distancing themselves into the darkness of space.

  The jets of steam suddenly stopped, all almost simultaneously. The forward edge of the ark was now horizontal, relative to the planet's surface, and appeared not only to rotate faster but also to twist and bend within its incomplete ring. Everything happened almost silently and with ghostly slowness. Kalymel observed the spectacle with cold terror. He could not accept what he saw as real. It had to be another nightmare. The shuttle dropped towards the planet with hardly perceptible speed.

  Another part of the ring structure, perhaps a quarter, broke away and was thrown in the direction of the fall. Spinning over its axes. It followed the meteor that was now long out of sight. At that moment Kalymel was abruptly brought back to the real world by screams, blinking indicator lights, and the noise of the roaring engines. He saw out the corner of his eye a colossal, angular chunk of rock speeding out of brightness and shadow.

  Within a single second, it struck the hull of the LEMCHA OVIR, dug a triangular hole fifty meters deep, and then, in a cloud of exploding debris, its path was altered by the impact and it shot off into space where it almost immediately disappeared.

  Next to the point of impact, a huge chunk had been torn away from the Ship's structure. Kalymel realized what was happening. "Don't look at it!" he shouted. "Put your arms in front of your eyes!"

  He bent over and covered his helmet visor with his forearms. A second later, the nuclear reactor exploded as it spun away and flooded space with a sun-bright, long-lasting flash of light. A titanic red and white fireball, with smoke and steam that spread with flaring brightness over yet more debris torn away from the ship and the halved ring. Even in the shuttle's cockpit, metal and plastic seemed to be transparent for long moments.

  Kalymel had not looked into the core of the explosion, but it took some seconds before his eyes were functioning clearly again and he understood what he saw.

  H
e pulled the shuttle's nose up over the curved section of the planet in front of the window, accelerated the braking engines to maximum, and slowed the EDANA's fall perceptibly. At last, all the instruments on his console seemed to be operating reliably. The spherical black thing with a diameter of just under 100 meters had separated from the ark's debris and fell unbraked into the swirling clouds that covered the planet's surface. The black sphere! Some kind of spaceship? He suppressed the thought. Forget it! That's utterly unimportant now! Survival is what matters.

  Glowing, blazing, flaming, and mysterious, the sphere disappeared into the depths. Sunlight flooded into the shuttle cabin. The occupants clapped their dark visors down and as the shuttle tipped to the side, their cries rang out.

  "Quiet!" he shouted. "Let me work!" He sensed that his exclamation had reduced the tension. He felt as though he could see bodies whirling inside the air-filled remnants of the Ship, struck by pieces of heavy equipment and crushed. It seemed to him completely unreal that he thought of the trees that had to endure autumn, winter, and death in the cold and vacuum of space within a few seconds. Generations had carefully tended them, had made use of their fruits, and were rewarded with oxygen, colorful foliage, and lumber. No more. Freeze-dried in space to crumbling dust!

  Three fragments of the OVIR, he thought. They will drift eternally through space and never land. "Not even as burning debris," he murmured, and suddenly realized that tears were running down from his eyes and he still hadn't closed his spacesuit's helmet. The people inside the fragments were dying. The habitation sections were probably filled with injured and dead.

  Two more landing shuttles filled with passengers had been ready to launch—what had happened to them? Had they been able to eject? The lights on the radio blinked frantically, but neither sounds nor words came out of the speakers.