Dragonstar Destiny (11 page)

If she was fishing for compliments, he decided not to bite. “Well, I’ve been around them longer than you, that’s all. Plus, I have a feeling that all soldiers think alike—no matter what the species.”

Up ahead, Takamura was signaling for the column to halt. His voice echoed along the passageway. “Let’s take a rest right along here. Any objections?”

Visigoth passed along the message to his troops, but the Saurians remained standing in the center of the gangway, nervously looking back and forth in the dim, amber light.

“I’d better see if I can help the General,” said Kate. “See you later.”

“Right,” said Phineas. “I’m going up and see how things are going with Takamura.”

He edged past the Saurians, unable to ignore their pungent body odor. They smelled particularly foul when they were in a fighting spirit. How in hell did Kate stand it? Cavoli and Krolczyk nodded as he passed, but Becky and Takamura did not look up from the portable instruments they had unpacked.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

The professor looked up for a moment, then back at the readout panel on the betatron scanner, “See this buttress right here?”

Phineas looked at the metallic brace which Takamura had indicated and nodded. “Sure.”

“Its molecular bonding is breaking down.”

“Why?”

Takamura shrugged. “Hard to tell. Age. Radiation. Stress from the FTL jump ... who knows? I’m going to test other points along the hull superstructure as we move through here to see how widespread the weaknesses are.”

“Which means?” Phineas hated the way scientists always assumed you knew what the hell they were talking about.

“Well, for one thing, I think we’ve found the cause of the ship-quakes. It’s like the tectonic plates in the Earth, with opposing pressures building up and building up and finally the plates slip a little ... and I see the same things happening here, but on a smaller scale, of course.”

“But large enough to cause problems,” said Becky.

Phineas wondered when she had become an expert in physics, but caught himself for being so damned petty.

“But how can parts of the ship be ‘slipping’?” he asked. “Isn’t it all connected together? Welded, or whatever?”

“Yes, of course,” said Takamura. “But that does not keep the ship from being subjected to various stress-vectors and torques. Imagine the hull being twisted along its longitudinal axis. Instead of actual slippage, the molecular bonding in buttresses such as this one get ‘stretched,’ and therefore weakened.”

Kemp nodded. “I’m going to have to take your word for it, Dr. Is the ship in any danger because of it?”

Takamura shrugged. “Possibly. It depends upon the extent of the bonding damage.”

“You mean this tub could just break apart at any moment?”

The idea stung him deeply. One more thing to worry about when things seemed like they might be going too well.

“Well, it’s not likely ... but it
could
happen, yes.”

Becky had slipped on a communications headset. “You want me to relay back to Dr. Jakes and the rest of the Council?”

Takamura nodded. “Yes, give them our position and the latest data. Tell them we’ll keep them posted.”

“How far along
are
we?” asked Phineas. “Now that you mention it.”

“We’re under the Saurian Preserve, about halfway till we reach ‘World’s End.’”

“And then what?”

Takamura grinned thinly. “I don’t know.”

“You about ready to find out?”

“Yes. Let’s get them moving again.”

* * *

The group pushed ahead for another two hours. Occasionally they paused to run instrument surveys on pieces of the hull’s superstructure; twice they encountered banks of machinery, which Takamura inspected. The alien machinery had a familiar “look” or design to it, but Phineas didn’t have the foggiest notion as to what any of it was. Bob Jakes and Takamura’s research team had supposedly been learning about the alien technology back when they still had access to the control-section of the ship. He had no idea what they had learned or not learned.

Phineas was tiring of the monotonous walking, with an infrequent glance over his shoulder. There was nothing to see back there, other than an endlessly long pathway, defined by amber pools of light which grew ever smaller and weaker in the distance. He considered calling out to Kate, to invite her back for some small talk as they walked along. He needed something to help pass the time. He considered the situation with Linden’s strange condition, but like Lombardy and Takamura, came up blank on the subject.

The Saurians seemed to have settled down. No longer were they snorting and hissing and turreting their heads back and forth almost constantly. They seemed to have accepted the alienness of the passageway and its apparently harmless nature. For the past hour or so they had been shambling forward, heads slightly bowed, shoulders hunched, and tails hanging low.

Abruptly that all changed.

Phineas watched all five Warriors’ heads snap up at once, immediately alert. They stopped walking, and Kate moved on ahead for about ten paces before noticing that something was happening. She paused and looked back, then signaled to Takamura.

“What’s the matter?” Phineas asked as he approached. Visigoth. A redolent aura of Saurian odors wafted over him. Was it the smell of fear? Of a fight? He could not discern it.

For a long moment, the caste leader did not acknowledge him.

The Saurian remained rigid, like his mates, as though they’d risked a look at Medusa.

Kate was suddenly by his side. She reached out and touched his arm, and Phineas could feel the warmth of her hand penetrate his sleeve. It was a pleasant warmth.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen any of them like this.” There was the first hint of panic in Kate’s voice.

Now Takamura and the others were crowding along the gangway, everyone looking from the Saurians to Kate and Phineas.

“What is it?” asked the professor.

“I don’t know,” said Kemp. “They were walking along and they all just stopped, got real tense.”

“It looks like they’re listening to something,” said Becky.

Phineas touched Visigoth’s muscular shoulder. “Hey, big guy ... anybody home?”

“Careful,” said Kate. “That might be the wrong thing to do ... we don’t know what’s wrong with them.”

Phineas nodded and stepped back several paces, raising the HK to his waist. if any of those lizards made a wrong move he’d cut them in half.

Slowly then, Visigoth lowered his head, blinked his eyes, and spoke to Kate. The other Saurians were in an agitated state again, and Phineas could see their nostrils flaring, their fingers tightening upon their pikes.

What the hell was going on?

“They
were
listening to something—” Kate said as soon as her translator completed the message in her headset.

“What?” said Takamura, interrupting her.

“Something up ahead,” she said. “Something coming this way.”

SOMETHING
was coming this way.

Kate’s words lingered in his mind like an unwelcome guest.

There was a fist tightening in Mishima’s throat, and at the same time, he felt as though he might have an attack of diarrhea. Just what he needed—to crap his pants just when things were getting complicated. Everyone was looking at him, waiting for his command, and here he was worrying about letting loose in his jumpsuit ...

But none of them could know that, and he
was,
after all, in charge of the expedition. He was responsible for everyone. That was what their looks were telling him. He had to
do
something.

“What is it?” he asked in a soft voice. “Did they tell you what it is?”

Kate shook her head. “No. They don’t know. But they hear its footsteps. ’Goth says it has ‘hard feet,’ like our boots, only harder. Like the walls.”

“Like metal?” asked Kemp. “Is that what he means?”

“Phineas, I’m not sure. He’s having a hard time expressing it. There might not be a Saurian word for it. I don’t know.”

“Great,” said Kemp.

“How far away?” asked Mishima as he addressed the Saurian General.

Visigoth tilted his head, listened to the translation, then barked out a reply.

“Too far for humans to hear,” said Kate.

“That doesn’t tell us a hell of a lot,” said Kemp.

“You want we should go on up ahead and see what it is, Doc?” Cavoli stepped forward, sporting an incongruous grin.

Mishima hesitated, wondering what might be the best decision in this case. He looked quickly from the tactical man to Kemp, who nodded almost imperceptibly. Mishima then turned back to Cavoli.

“Yes, do it while we still have the element of surprise. Take ’Goth and a couple of his friends along. I’ll come with you.”

“You got it!” said Cavoli. Patting the stock of his heavy assault rifle, he started forward.

Visigoth’s translator rattled off the last pieces of the conversation. The caste leader then selected two of his charges and gestured that they follow him.

Mishima looked at the rest of the group. Maybe it was just his imagination, but they all looked rather stunned that he was going along. He was a bit stunned himself. His stomach was ablaze, his bowels churning like a mill. He should face it: he was not cut out to be much of a hero.

But there was no turning back now.

Looking at Becky, he said: “I’ll keep in touch by radio. Just keep your channel open.”

“No problem. Be careful,” she said.

Mishima nodded, looked over at Kemp;, He wanted to say thanks, but he knew it would be inappropriate. “Colonel, you and Krolczyk can keep an eye on things back here.”

“I should think so,” said Kemp.

“All right, then. Let’s go.”

Mishima headed up the small group as they moved quickly down the gangway. Soon, they had left the rest of the team far behind, wrapped in the dull shadows of the passage.

What were they rushing forward to meet? A beast, somehow lost in the bulkhead? He wished it were something so simple, so familiar. No, it was unlikely that a dinosaur would have wandered so far away from its native environment. More likely it
was an alien species, one of the makers of the
Dragonstar,
stirring from some secret place in the control-section.

Mishima did not know what to make of such a thought. It had long been an accepted theory that the crew of the
Dragonstar
had abandoned the ship eons ago. Now, thinking that some of them might have remained on board was oddly terrifying to him..

And that should not be so. Hadn’t the alien designers of the vessel left elaborate dioramas and teaching machines to explain the purpose of
the “seed ship”? Such thoughtfulness spoke of a benign intelligence, did it not?

Perhaps. But the
Dragonstar
had recently turned upon its guests—unleashing the radiation which drove some of the Saurians mad, then sealing off the interior and jumping off into hyperspace. Didn’t sound very benign, did it?

Cavoli and Visigoth walked ahead of him, the other two Warriors behind him. The strong odor of the Saurians reminded him of graduate school summers when he worked as a masseur at the beef salon in Kobe. His job had been to feed the steers Kirin beer and give their flanks a tenderizing massage twice a day. He wished he was back in Kobe at this very moment. The Earth seemed so far away, so alien, as to be nothing more than a place in a fairy tale.

Mishima shook his head slowly. What a bad dream this all had become ... He wanted to see what was ahead, and yet he didn’t. Why had he tagged along? His presence would be a hindrance if there was trouble, and he should have admitted it to himself before volunteering.

Suddenly, the Saurian General stopped, tilting his head to the side, listening. He hissed and barked out a short-message which his translator—now on loudspeaker mode—processed as quickly as possible: “It comes closer.”

“Hey!” said Cavoli. “I hear it, too!”

Mishima moved past the Saurian General and concentrated. Yes, there it was—a rhythmic cadence which suggested a steady gait. Something walking toward them wearing hard-soled boots, which tapped out a telegraphic message of its journey.

For another moment, the group stood in silence listening to the steady
tap-tap-tap
of the footsteps. Whatever it was, it was moving briskly and with confidence. There was a steady, machine-like aspect to the sound.

“Hey, what’re we gonna do here?” asked Cavoli. “We can’t be all bunched up on this walkway—it’s too crowded!”

Mishima looked over the low railing. The gangway was suspended over the outer hull plates at a height of less than two meters. If everyone climbed over, they might gain an element of surprise. He offered his idea to the others, and before he realized it, Cavoli and the Saurians were heaving themselves over the side of the catwalk. He followed their example and hunkered down in the shadows next to a support beam.

From his position, he still had a good line-of-sight angle on the walkway. He would see what was coming before it had a chance to spot him unless it possessed sensory powers he hadn’t counted on.

The
tap-tap-tap
of its relentless approach was much louder now. It walked with a boldness which suggested that it didn’t care if it was heard or discovered. And that meant it was either very stupid or very confident.

“Jeez
,
it sounds like it’s gettin’ pretty close,” said Cavoli.

“Don’t do anything unless I give the word,” said Mishima, feeling suddenly silly, and inappropriate in the role of leader.

Visigoth passed along the command to his two charges, and the entire group remained huddled in waiting. The
tap-tap-tap
grew absurdly loud. Mishima looked up into the dwindling void of the gangway and saw a dim spidery shadow take form on the outer bulkhead. Whatever was coming toward them had just passed one of the amber auxiliary lamps.

“Get ready,” said Mishima.

Cavoli raised his weapon. The Saurians seemed to be coiling up like snakes ready to spring.

The approaching shadow suddenly took form and substance. Emerging from the darkness and ambling along as though it were out for a walk in the park, the thing strolled past the men and lizards who waited in ambush.

A robot!

Mishima was both shocked .and relieved to see the mechanical construct walk briskly past them. Looking like a four-legged daddy longlegs, the robot scissored along the gangway at a smooth pace. It sported two multijointed arms but with no hands, claws, or other recognizable ends. Standing up, Mishima clapped his hands, but the robot walked on, ignoring the sound.

“Where’s it going?” asked Cavoli.

“I don’t know,” said Mishima. “In the general direction of the others, it seems.”

Visigoth asked if they were planning to “kill” the metal creature, and Mishima told him they would follow it for a while, and only kill it if necessary.

The small group climbed back over the railing and trailed the walking robot. At first they remained, cautious, hanging back, stalking the machine like a predator, but as they moved along, it became obvious that their tactics were unnecessary. Mishima could see that the machine was rather single-minded in its purpose (whatever that might be), and that reacting to living organisms was not part of its programmed repertoire. Eventually the small party edged its way closer, until they were within several meters of the machine. Still, it ignored them.

He radioed back to Becky, reporting what they had discovered, and prepared them for the machine’s arrival if it indeed walked that far along the gangway. Mishima secretly hoped for a comment or possibly a line or two of advice from Colonel Kemp, but the ex-leader remained silent until the radio link was broken.

“I feel kind of silly,” said Cavoli, “just followin’ this tin can ...”

“I know,” said Mishima. “But I would like to observe it just a little, while longer.”

Mishima felt foolish himself, but followed a hunch that he should not act rashly. He kept wondering why the aliens would have built such an odd-looking device. And why have it walk on long, spindly legs? A wheeled or treaded device seemed more practical, he thought.

His questions were answered as the robot approached a bank of machinery lining the inner bulkhead. Nimbly it climbed over the railing and up the face of the machinery like a mechanical fly. Of course! thought Mishima. Wheels would not give it access to the machinery.

Access for what?

For repairs, of course. Mishima watched as his suppositions were verified. The robot paused as it hunched over an unidentifiable device. A panel opened in its body and it slipped one of its arms into the cavity. When the arm reappeared, there was a small tool-like appendage on the end of the forearm. Mishima nodded as he watched the robot begin to dismantle a piece of the larger machine. Using various tool-arm ends, the robot performed some sort of maintenance on the machinery.

Mishima explained what was going on to the others, then radioed back to Becky. Everyone agreed that the repair robots were most likely harmless, but that some caution should be exercised when encountering them.

“We’re right here watching the robot,” he said in a calm, modulated voice, no longer edged with the suggestion of panic. “Why don’t you get the group moving and we will meet you right here?”

“All right,” said Becky. “We’re heading out now.”

She signed off and Mishima listened to the idiot hum of the open channel for a moment before switching it off.

He should have realized sooner that they had chanced on some kind of maintenance mechanism. It had long been realized that the
Dragonstar
was a self-sufficient, self-repairing entity, but it was also true that no one had ever actually
seen
how any of the maintenance was effected. It was as if little elves slipped out of the woodwork when everyone was asleep and fixed everything, and nobody had ever been able to catch the elves at work.

Until now, that is ...

“All right,” he said, addressing the others. “Let’s relax for a minute or two, till the others catch up.”

“You mean we’re not going to mix it up a little with the tin can?” asked Cavoli.

Mishima could not discern whether or not the trooper was joking, but he smiled, anyway. “No, I don’t think it will be necessary,” he said. “But keep an eye on it when the rest of them show up. Just in case.”

“No problem, boss,” said Cavoli, grinning. “If it makes a funny move, I’ll turn it into spare parts.”

Mishima nodded. He wasn’t sure he actually liked this fellow, Cavoli, but he seemed like the type who would be good to have in your corner if things got sticky.

The group passed the next ten minutes watching the maintenance robot. It was an incredibly agile, delicately appointed machine. Mishima was fascinated as he watched it scramble nimbly about the rack of alien devices. It was quick and facile as it changed tool bits on its spider-like limbs, making adjustments and replacements. When its tasks were completed it climbed down from the bulkhead and mounted the gangway, heading back toward the control end of the vessel.

“Okay, watch it now,” said Mishima as the robot approached his group.

Everyone spread out, forming a gauntlet of bodies through which the walking machine could pass. The robot paused, as though sensing the presence of the possible obstacles, then proceeded to move carefully between them. Cavoli and the Saurians kept their weapons trained on the robot but it ignored them totally. As it cleared the corridor of their bodies, it picked up its brisk walking pace, and Mishima had an idea.