A Larger Universe (46 page)

She stood fully erect beside Tommy, her tail twitching
straight behind her.  "Yes, I will help you.  What is your plan?"

He glanced at her short arms.  "The People have never
heard of
baseball
, have they?"

Leegh stepped past the guard at Ull's door and entered
without ringing the entry chimes.

"Ull, I want to speak with you," she called.

She stood in the entryway, searching for movement or some
other sign of Ull. 

The waterfall's muted roar drowned other sounds, and a wispy
fog hung over the entire pond making it impossible to see the surface.  The
heavy odor of musk filled the humid air.

She has a male in here.  For years she avoids mating, and
now, when she thinks she is near death, she selects a male.

"Ull, we need to talk!" she called again.

I can wait
, she thought, as she squatted by the
door. 
Ull may be in the middle of something.

Ull's head surfaced at the edge of the pond in front of her.

"Why are you here?" Ull asked.

"We could talk better in your pool.  May I join
you?"

Ull hesitated. "If you must."

Leegh slid into the water, using her waving tail to hold her
erect but otherwise remaining motionless.  "The council was wrong,"
she said.  "You were wrong."

Ull turned in the water to look out the still open door. 
The guards she saw were those keeping her imprisoned.  "You joined
him!" she screeched, advancing toward Leegh.  "You joined the feral
human in stealing our ship!"

Leegh hastily backed away, her tail thrashing under her. 
"Why does that matter to you?  You and the council would have made us all
dust and gravel.  Tommy offers hope, at least."

Ull settled back into the water.  "He offered hope
before, and we face certain death because of it.  I ask again, why are you
here?"

"Our death is not as certain as you think.  Tommy took
the ship back to the nova, and the Kadiil ships that try to follow are dying as
they arrive."

Ull took a moment to consider. "And when our food is
exhausted, what then?  We will still die."

"That is what I thought, too, and my mind was filled
with despair.  I know that now."  She leaned forward, her black eyes fixed
on Ull.  "Not to fight back is irrational.  We are no better than the fish
in our ponds if we accept our destruction as inevitable. 

"You asked why I am here.  I am here to ask you to join
us.  Tommy has a plan for capturing one of the Kadiil ships.  It may contain
the solution we seek.  If you help us, others of the People would also.  We
have only a partial bridge crew, and only I have command experience.  Your help
would be invaluable."

"Why would Tommy trust me?  Why should I trust him? 
Will he return our ship to us?"

"No, he says he will not.  He will not allow his fellow
humans to return to slavery.  But he will give us our lives if he can, anywhere
we want to go."

"Why would you agree," Ull asked.  "Without
this ship, we are nothing."

"With this ship, we were nothing," Leegh
responded.  "With all of our ships, we were nothing.  Our ponds dry, and
we prey on each other, scavenging the components we need to stay alive.  With
no world to return to, were we better than the fog hanging above this pond? 
The first breeze will blow us away.”

"The drive in this ship draws the Kadiil.  If we leave
the ship, perhaps we can make a new start."

Ull swam to the pond's far edge.  As she climbed out she
called over her shoulder, "The feral human and I made a bargain before.  I
will not bargain with him again."

For three weeks, artisans in space suits tunneled to the
bore containing
My Flowing Streams
by setting explosive charges and carrying
out debris.  The effort continued around the clock, only stopping briefly when
one artisan was killed by a sharp crystal flung loose from the rock face. 

Breaking through the bore's wall revealed a shaft
illuminated by high-energy particles from the nova passing by the bore’s mouth
and by reflections from the clutter of Kadiil ships overhead. 

Artisans laid a communication cable through the passage and
strung a metal net across the bore, and they were ready to begin.

The idea was simple enough.  Tommy wanted to catch a Kadiil
ship in the bore, like catching a baseball in the pocket of a glove.  A
stationary "ball" in respect to the "glove" complicated
this, but a delicate use of the ship's drive should nudge the Kadiil toward
them.

The drive normally focused a point source gravity field
fifteen kilometers from the ship in the direction of travel.  If he ordered
that now, anything between the ship and the point field would accelerate with
the ship.  Anything on the other side of the point source would accelerate
toward the ship until the gravity field captured it.  They had to establish a
gravity field between the asteroid and a Kadiil ship to get the two moving
toward each other in just the right way, and then switch the field off.  Too
much closing velocity would crash the Kadiil ship through the net.  Too little
and the nova wind would blow the ship away from the target.

Leegh insisted that her contribution to the mathematics of
the drive and years of experience gave her the skills needed, and Tommy was
happy to give her the job. 

Leegh's placement of the field and its strength were
perfect, except she captured three Kadiil ships rather than one.  The net
caught the first ship, then sagged almost to the breaking point under ships two
and three. 

Tommy took one last look at the video feed from the passage
mouth and left the bridge to get a vacuum suit, with Leegh close behind.  They
were both obsessed with getting inside a Kadiil ship.

A group of warriors wearing armored vacuum suits and
carrying weapons met them at the entrance to the bore.

"Master Tommy, Lord Leegh," Fen's voice spoke from
the speaker next to his ear.  "You must allow us to go ahead of you.  This
is warrior work.  When we are sure you may enter safely, we will call
you."

"Just don't disturb more than you have to,” Tommy
responded “Anything might be a clue."

They waited quietly for a while.  Finally Tommy said to
Leegh, "If we get out of this, you might consider learning English.  You
would find it easier to follow the mathematics and physics humans are doing on
Earth."

Tommy saw Leegh's snout turn toward him inside her helmet. 
Her whistle vibrated shrilly from his speaker.  "I might consider many
things, if we get out of this."

Fen's voice spoke again.  "We have been unable to find
a hatch.  I called a crew of artisans with torches to force entry."

"Fen, if you cut through the hull, you may damage
something important," Tommy said.  "Is there another way?"

"There is a window on one end,” Fen replied.  “We are
going in there."

Tommy and Leegh moved aside as a group of artisans walked
onto the plank catwalk to the first ship.

Torches sparkled on top of the ship.

"Master Tommy, Lord Leegh," Fen said, "we are
inside, and the ship is empty!”

Using the scaffolding and ladders that the artisans had
built on top of the net, Tommy and Leegh circled then climbed onto ship’s
hull.  Except for the clear crystal of the window near one end, the dead black
hull absorbed the light from the spotlights scattered around and above the
slightly flattened cylinder.  Both ends of the cylinder elongated into a flat
edge extending across the cylinder’s width.  The window the artisans had cut
through crossed above one edge like the cockpit window of an airplane back on
Earth. 

Tommy carefully placed his hands below the cut surface of
the window and leaned his head into the ship.  “Leegh, this chamber is too
small for either of us to move around in.”  He leaned further inside.  “I see
some narrow passages that a space-suited artisan might crawl through, but nothing
that you or I could use.”

He pulled his head out and rotated his space-suited body so
he could see Leegh.  “Below this window would be the natural place to put
flight controls, except the space is empty.”

“Why break the hull, then?” Leegh asked.  “This opening may
be the source of ship’s vulnerability to the nova.”

“One more mystery to add to the list,” Tommy responded.

Fen climbed the ladder until he stood beside them. 
"The ship was airless when we broke through.  Artisans crawled inside and
reported the ship’s interior consists of a drive cylinder like that on
My
Flowing Streams
with nearly all of the remaining space filled with metal
boxes.  They found nothing that would indicate another living creature has ever
been aboard."

Some of the metal boxes were close enough for Tommy to reach
from his position on the hull.  After the artisans had padded the edge of the
window, he leaned in far enough to pull the front from one and look inside. 
"This is some kind of computer," he said.  A conclusion suddenly
seemed obvious and he said it aloud.  "This ship is run by
computers."

#   #   #

Three days later, the artisans had adjusted gravity in
My
Flowing Streams
to one one-hundredth normal and guided the Kadiil ship into
an empty hanger through one of the lander doors. 

With the hanger doors shut and the internal air pressure
restored, Tommy and Leegh removed their suits and glided in the low gravity
around the base of the ship.  When they reached the ladder leading to the
window, Leegh began pulling herself up the ladder’s rungs. 

Tommy watched her ascend for a moment, and then instead of
following he shouted “Up, up, and away!” and leaped to the top of the Kadiil
ship.  He leaned over the ladder and grinned down at Leegh.  “That was a lot
more fun than climbing.  You should try it next time.”

Leegh voiced a grinding whistle.  “I no longer use the water
slide in my chamber, and I have no desire or inclination to fly.  You should
consider what you now represent.  We have too much serious work to pass our
time in frivolous games.”

It is like flying, but Leegh’s right.  And I got us into
this, so….
  He leaned back on the scaffolding below the window and waited
for Leegh to join him.

“Do you have any ideas about what we should do next?” Tommy
asked as Leegh tried to find a comfortable position for her long body.

This time, Tommy interpreted Leegh’s whistle as mournful. 
“I do not,” she replied.  “We have another drive.  Three new drives, counting
the other two hanging in our net.  If we had the means, we could build three
new ships around them, but they are worthless in trade to the other starfaring
species, who can get them from the Kadiil simply by asking.”  Her dark muzzle
dropped toward her chest, and her tail curled around her feet.

Tommy grabbed her shoulder.  “I thought you were past that. 
I do have ideas, and I am not giving up until our supplies are exhausted.”

Leegh’s eyes focused on Tommy.  “I will try to control
myself, but it is difficult.  Until I saw what we captured, I thought seizing a
Kadiil ship would help us.  It is like nothing I have ever seen before.”

“I read about similar things on Earth,” Tommy responded. 
“In our military, computers fly aircraft and control land vehicles.  The idea
is the same.  These computers are probably a lot more complex, though.”  He
paused and gazed directly at Leegh in a way that would have been considered a
mortal insult a few months before.  “It is not hopeless.  That worthless drive
you mentioned looks exactly like our drive.  If it is, the Kadiil computers
could be using the same commands and responses to control it that we are
using.  We can work on that.”

Tommy stared at the hanger roof until Leegh asked, “What are
you thinking?”

Tommy started.  “I am thinking that we should take this ship
apart, piece by piece, and spread the components out on the floor. 
Investigators do that on Earth to determine the cause of a plane crash.  Maybe
we can use the same technique to determine how these computers work.”

Even as he said that to Leegh, he decided to keep his doubts
to himself.  He had deciphered the lords' computers, but he had many hints
along the way.  The computers in these boxes might be thousands of years more
advanced.

#   #   #

Tommy and Leegh decided not to worry about breaking
anything.  If they didn't learn anything from the first Kadiil ship, two more
hung in the net with another ship arriving every fifty-three minutes. 

Tommy watched from the wall of the hanger as an artisan
driving a large crane lowered gigantic hydraulic pliers onto the hull above the
window, where two men attached its claws to the Kadiil ship’s black skin next
to the window.

“What are they doing?” Tommy asked the artisan standing
beside him.

“The hull is featureless, except for the window,” the man
replied.  “No nuts to unscrew.  Nothing to grab on to except for the edge of
that window.  We’re trying to peel the skin back a little to see what’s there.”

Tommy saw the machine move slightly as a loud screech
hammered his ears.  He smelled melting plastic. 

The machine stopped and master artisans from the mechanical,
electricians, and communications guilds pulled themselves up the ladder.  They
squatted in front of the jaws of the machine.  After a period of pointing and
conversation, they stood and jumped off the ship.

The communications master bobbed his head slightly when he
reached Tommy.  “Master Tommy, the outside hull appears to be a molded non-metallic
carbon composite.  We don’t have the technology to make anything that size.” 
He smiled and bobbed his head again.  “But, obviously the Kadiil do.  Under the
outside layer is another layer of insulating material.  Under that we found
thin cables.”