Infinite Day (16 page)

Merral realized an order was required. “Captain, match orbits and let's go for that flyby.”

“Aye aye, Commander,” the
Hyacinth
's quiet-spoken captain replied.

How extraordinary: I'm commanding a space vessel.

The next half hour was spent in adjusting orbits and surveying every square meter of the gray metallic hull. Merral gazed at the deep, scooped-out depression along the spine of the ship, recognizing where the slave vessel would have rested.
The vessel that I destroyed half a million kilometers away at Fallambet Lake.

He saw, too, the lines of scarring on it, and again Merral remembered the damage that he'd seen inside the slave ship.

“Well?” Ludovica's voice was barely a whisper. Merral turned to see her standing at his elbow, her eyes fixed on the ship.

We are looking for anomalies, for anything that doesn't fit with Azeras's story. But it does fit. At least so far.

“It seems . . . just as we have been told,” he said.

Ludovica nodded. “Better proceed.”

Merral leaned over to the captain. “Let's send a ferry craft over.”

“Aye aye, Commander.”

Merral took the microphone. “Seizure team, you have permission to take the vessel. Sarudar Azeras is on his way to join you. We will be watching. Hope it goes well.”

Merral and the others gazed at the screens as the ferry craft bearing the seizure team approached within a few meters of the
Rahllman's Star
and cemented a new docking collar around a hatch.

As the team entered the ship, they switched to the mosaic of images from the helmet cameras as the men and women wrestled with hatchways and walked down empty corridors. Merral glimpsed the gun barrels swinging this way and that and sensed the tense atmosphere. The sounds of strained breathing were broken only by terse comments such as “room clear” and “moving on.”

Within an hour, most of the main corridors and rooms on the upper levels had been searched by the seizure team. Her visor glinting in the harsh lighting, the head of the team addressed Ludovica and Merral. “Chairman, Commander: we have secured the bridge and the front of the ship and the upper three levels. We are continuing to check air quality. It seems okay, but biohazard checks are continuing. So far, negative. Ship's electronics are coming online. Gravity is patchy but stabilizing—not a very sophisticated system; it's locally uneven.”

“Sounds good. How soon can the chairman and I board?” Merral asked.

“You guys are in a hurry.”

“We have a long way to go.”

“True enough. Well, Commander, I think you can suit up and board.”

Twenty minutes later, the ferry craft took Merral, Ludovica, and Lloyd over. Clumsy in their untried suits, they waddled through the air lock into a dark, vaulted chamber with high, stained walls.

Beyond the air lock, Luke waited to meet them. At his side were two large men with weapons. His visor was open.

“You can breathe the air,” he said, “but you may not like it.” Merral cautiously undid his face plate with clumsy gloves.

“
Uuuh
,” he said. The air was stale and fetid.

“You get used to it,” Luke commented.

Merral gazed around, seeing the angular ugliness and pools of shadows in the corners.
It is an unattractive ship, but is it malign?

“Can we increase the level of the lighting?” Ludovica asked.

“Azeras is trying to,” Luke said, and Merral noticed that his face was pale.

“You okay, Chaplain?” Merral asked.

Luke breathed out heavily. “Guess so.” He nodded to the two men next to him. “We have cleaned up the ship. Or at least some parts of it. A lot of . . . material has been put in sacks and ejected. Technicians are cleaning some of the relevant data—and programs—off the computers.”

“Thanks.”

Luke looked away. “It had to be done. And there's all sorts of shrines and statues. Like up here.” He gestured to an alcove in which stood a bronze representation, perhaps half a meter in height, of what looked like a weird, eight-limbed reptile.

Merral stared at it. It troubled his mind as if it was something heavy that pressed on him. “What does Azeras say?”

“He says they are harmless and that they keep the powers happy.”

“And what do you say?”

“They can hardly be both.”

Luke wants me to make a decision.
Merral sighed. “This is now an Assembly ship. We travel under the protection of the One who allows no images of other gods. So unless you object, I will have them ejected.”

“I make no objection.” Luke gave a taut smile. “On the contrary, I would object to them being kept.”

“Ludovica?” Merral asked.

She grimaced and nodded agreement.

“Very well.” After orders were given, Merral turned to Luke. “Now, should we go to the bridge?”

The chaplain shook his head. “I think we have two visits to make first.”

I can guess where.
“Then lead on. But slowly. I am struggling to move in this suit.”

Five minutes later, the party stood before a strangely shaped, somber door and Merral found himself staring once more at the bilingual caution: “Warning! Steersman Chamber! Out of Bounds!” He looked up and decided they were now below where the slave vessel would have docked.

“I have seen this sign before,” he said. “Are we sure that the chamber is empty?”

“Azeras says so,” was Luke's comment, but Merral noted Lloyd and the two other men tightening their grips on their weapons.

“Watch out for slitherwings,” he commanded as they all squeezed into the air lock. There they sealed their helmets and opened the inner door.

The two armed men moved out first into the gloom beyond, and with Lloyd at his elbow, Merral—followed by Ludovica—walked after them. A few paces beyond the door they stopped in a wary semicircle, gazing nervously around. The chamber was similar to the one Merral had seen on the slave craft, but it was larger, and the lights on the ceiling that represented stars were fainter. There were pools of darkness, but Merral saw no sign of movement either on the floor or up on the roof beams. In the center of the room he could make out a high, empty chair and a hexagonal column.

Merral ordered that a small flare be fired, and as the dazzling sphere hung above their heads, they looked around again. Merral glanced down, seeing the white shards amid the dust at his feet. He poked around with his foot, recognizing some fragments of bone.
Are they human?

Lloyd nudged him and pointed out a strange, empty, dishlike structure. Merral pondered it for a moment before realizing it was the carapace of a cockroach-beast.

How sad
, he thought and realized that the chamber depressed him more than it frightened him.

One of Luke's men had cautiously opened his visor and raised his thumb. One by one, the party followed and opened face plates.

“It stinks,” Ludovica said with feeling and Merral nodded agreement. Yet as he tried to ignore the odor of decay, he realized that there was something stale and dated about it. Whatever process of rotting had occurred, it had been some time ago.
This is a crypt not a slaughterhouse.

Merral looked at Luke. “This is deserted. I see—and sense—nothing evil in it. It fits with what we have been told. I suggest we vent it to vacuum, then spray it with disinfectant and seal it.”

Luke considered the advice for a moment. “Agreed.”

Ludovica nodded her support.

“Lead on, Luke,” Merral said. “I think I know who we have an appointment with.”

Ten minutes later, they stood midway along a corridor two levels down staring at a broad and unusually ornate door sealed with bars.

“Azeras says he has unlocked it from the bridge,” Luke said. “Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

They slid the bolts off and the doors swung silently outward. Beyond the doors, soft yellow lighting switched on, revealing a long chamber with a low arched and buttressed roof. The walls were mantled with thick black cloth on which were embroidered gigantic and outlandish symbols in a solemn red. In the center of the room was a black plinth and on it, its base swathed in dark cloth, was a long, dull cylinder of crystal. Merral found that the cloth and the plinth somehow gave the room a feeling of a great and sad antiquity.

Merral stared at the cylinder, realizing that he wanted to look—and not to look—at the dark twisted form inside.

I must deal with this.
With slow steps, he walked forward. There seemed to be something about the room that absorbed sound so that he could no longer hear even the rustling of the space suit.

Merral stood by the side of the cylinder and peered down, seeing inside the glass a long, dark, waxy form out of which tubes flowed.

“‘Zhalatoc, Great Prince of Lord-Emperor Nezhuala's Dominion,'” he murmured.

Suddenly the twisted figure writhed.

Merral gasped and stepped back.

“Luke, did you see . . . ?” he began, but the chaplain, bending down by the plinth, didn't answer.