Chindi

Chapter 24

ALYX HAD MADE a mistake. The moment she saw George and the others disappear down the hatch into the chindi, she knew it. She wasn’t sure exactly what the nature of the error was, but she knew she didn’t like being alone on the Memphis while the people she’d been so close to for the last few weeks dropped completely out of sight.

What if something happened? If they didn’t come back—and the vast bulk of the chindi looked horribly daunting, looked like a place that people routinely wouldn’t come back from—at what point did she tell Bill to take her home?

After six hours, after their air supply runs out.

When their voices dwindled, and the carrier wave died, it had felt like a premonition, a signal of things to come. Alyx was not superstitious, did not believe in such things, and yet this experience was frightening. She was in a horror sim, waiting alone while the musical score intensified, the beat picked up, the score went deep, as it always did when the shadows closed in.

She’d gone up to the bridge and sat in Hutch’s chair. It made her feel as if she could exercise some control over events. Bill kept an image of the exit hatch on-screen, and she watched it, waiting for someone to pop out of the little hole that they’d cut in the door.

She’d expected they would be down there for only a few minutes, take a quick look around, enough so they could say they’d done it, and come back out. But she should have realized that George would not let go easily. He was scared, every bit as much as she was, and had he been alone she thought he wouldn’t have gone near the thing. But he was committed, and maybe they’d not taken him as seriously as they should, and his manhood had gotten caught up in it. She wasn’t sure. But Tor had been encouraging him, and even Nick, who she thought should have known better.

Boarding the chindi had been dumb. There was no other way to describe it.

There’d been studies over the years supporting the proposition that groups composed exclusively of women usually made intelligent decisions, that exclusively male groups did a bit less well, and that mixed groups did most poorly of all, by a substantial margin. It appeared that, when women were present, testosterone got the upper hand and men took greater risks than they might otherwise. Correspondingly, women in the mixed group tended to revert to roles, becoming more passive, and going along with whatever misjudgment the males might perpetrate.

Alyx had once participated in a management exercise in which several five-person groups, of various configurations, were stranded in a jungle setting when their simulated aircraft went down. Although wisdom dictated they stay with the plane, the mixed group had inevitably voted to march off into the wilderness, where the tigers got them.

Replace the three men on the chindi with women, and Alyx knew they’d have waited patiently for the arrival of Mogambo and let him take the risks. If that entailed allowing him to claim the credit, that was okay. There would, she believed, be more than enough for everyone.

She could have Bill bring the lander back, and then she could use it to go over to the chindi, where she could kneel at the exit hatch—but not go in—and try to raise them on the link.

But there was always a possibility they’d need to get away from there in a hurry. And if that happened while the lander was in the Memphis’s cargo bay…

So she waited. And asked Bill what he thought might be happening. Unlike Hutch, she was prepared to accept the illusion that someone was really there amid the transistors and relays. But Bill, of course, knew no more than she did. And he admitted to being the last one who’d want to guess. Or for that matter who saw any point in guessing.

The lander floated near the exit hatch. It looked forlorn and abandoned. A light blinked forward, down low near the place which housed the now-retracted treads. And there was a dim green glow in the cabin, probably from the instruments. The airlock had been left open. No one had said anything, but it was obvious that was to facilitate a quick getaway.

She wondered if the chindi had weapons.

“How long since they went down?” she asked Bill.

“Twenty-seven minutes.”

She got herself a cup of coffee and set it down in the holder. She sipped it once, then forgot about it.

HAD SHE HESITATED, had she taken a moment to think about it, Hutch would not have done it. The act was simply too fearful. But the moment was fleeting, the window of opportunity already virtually shut, and there was no time. Do it now or forget it.

So she jumped into the dark and plummeted deep into the chindi.

She had tried to get into the center of the shaft, away from the walls, which were already hurtling past in the uncertain beam from her lamp.

In her link, she heard Nick’s desperate cries. And the frantic voices of Tor and George. Screaming at her.

Screaming after her.

She fell. The walls, rough and cracked and stained, dissolved into a blur. Do not touch. Other passageways flickered past. Her lamplight slashed into them, and once or twice she thought she saw lights that were not hers.

She fought down a wave of panic.

Hold on.

“Nick.”

He was trying to breathe.

“Nick, keep your light on.”

There was only one explanation for Nick’s reappearance. This was a gravity tube, like the one she’d descended in the Wendy. Gravity tubes, when they were powered up, negated artificial gravity. They were used to move cargo and people from deck to deck in zero gee.

But the chindi wasn’t the Wendy Jay. It was enormously larger, and that was why Nick had come back. The tube passed completely through the ship, top to bottom. Except there was no bottom.

In Academy ships, gravity generators were located on the lowest deck. But the chindi was too big. If she was right, there was a deck running through the center of the ship. And gravity was generated in both directions from that deck. Stand on either side of it and you could look up. The chindi had no below decks. Everything was up.

Nick had passed through the central deck, gradually lost momentum, reached the end of his trajectory and fallen back. He’d become a kind of yo-yo, up and down.

“I’m behind you,” she said.

“—Happening to me?” She didn’t recognize his voice.

She felt a sudden rise and drop, as she might when a shuttle maneuver was completed with perfect technique. Gee forces squeezed her sides, then let go. She was beginning to slow. Moving up.

“I’m with you, Nick. I’m coming.”

She’d passed the central deck and was rising in the shaft, shedding momentum. She was upside down, feet up, head down, and her instincts tried to take over. Her body wanted to reverse its position.

No.

In a few moments, Nick would reach his apogee and begin to fall back. She had to get past him without a collision. “Nick, I want you to close your eyes.”

“What? Where—you, Hutch?”

“Close your eyes.”

“Why?”

“Do it!” If he saw her coming, he would try to get out of the way. That was what she didn’t need.

“Closed,” he said.

“Good.” She saw his light above her. In the dark. Getting brighter.

It looked to be right on top of her.

She watched it come. Knew it was an illusion. They were both, she thought, still ascending. But she was moving more quickly than he.

Gaining ground for the moment.

Then the distant light grew sharply brighter. He had begun falling.

“Keep cool, Nick.”

Coming fast. It was impossible to see well. But she took a quick look at the walls around her, which had slowed down so that she could see the cracks and stains again. Then she blipped the go-pack, pushing herself toward a corner, and he was past!

The wall came desperately close. She used another blip to get clear.

“Nick,” she said, “you can look now.”

She reached her own apogee and began to fall. Still head down. Ideally, she should have fired a short burst to speed things up, but she was already approaching a terrifying velocity and couldn’t summon the nerve.

The walls blurred again.

She did a quick calculation, eight hundred meters top to bottom, all apparently honeycombed with individual decks and compartments. Decks say five meters apart, 160 stories.

The world turned over again and another spurt of well-being flushed through her. She felt squeezed again, and released, a sensation so brief that she understood it happened as she passed the zero-gee level.

But she was right-side up now, her ascent already beginning to slow.

“Nick.” She hit the go-pack. Fired her thrusters. And picked up some lift.

“Help me, Hutch.”

“Coming.” Poor son of a bitch didn’t even know what was happening to him. “Nick, I’m behind you. Coming fast. Going to pull in front of you.”

“Okay.” The voice shrill.

“Grab hold of me when I pass. And hang on.” She watched his light, sometimes seeing the lamp, sometimes the beam sweeping around the shaft. “George.”

“Hutch, what the hell’s going on?”

“Give me some light. Need to see where you are.”

More lamps blinked on. High. Way up there.

“Don’t point them in the shaft.”

“Hutch—” Tor, sounding frantic.

“Not now.” She cut the thrusters, moved up close to Nick, long dark passageways blinking past as her lamp swept through them, but slowing down, rather like a sim losing power.

Above Nick, George’s light was coming too fast. The boost she’d given herself would crash her into the overhead. Couldn’t have that. As she approached Nick she twisted around, got her feet up, and the thrusters up. She moved past his legs, and presented him with her front to keep the go-pack away from him. She was, of course, upside down again.

He made a grab for her, got hold of her harness. His face was gray, his eyes round and the irises like marbles. Then the lamp angle changed, and she couldn’t see it anymore, but he had hold of her. Death grip.

She got one hand into Nick’s harness, whispered to him to hold on, and hit the power again. Just for a moment, just a blip from the thrusters, and then another one, enough to take off a little more momentum.

There was a cacophony of voices on her link. But she was too busy to listen. The passageways were almost distinct now as they flickered past.

She needed a place to land.

Couldn’t see above her. Didn’t know how far the roof was. But she’d be falling again momentarily.

Pick your spot, babe.

She twisted to get the thrusters horizontal to the passages. Tightened her grip on Nick.

Don’t hit the wall.

The passageways were opening up to her as she slowed. Her lamp swept each in turn and she tried to time them, now, now, now, getting into the rhythm.

Hit the button.

The thrusters ripped them sideways and took them into a tunnel. They crashed into something, an overhead, tore along it. Fell to the floor. Bounced. The lights flickered and went out. And then it was over and they lay sprawled in a tangle of arms, legs, thrusters, and air tanks.

She got to her hands and knees. One of Nick’s legs was bent the wrong way.

“How you doing?” she asked.

He managed a smile. “I’m hurting a little,” he said.

Hutch would not have believed it, but it had been just over one minute since she’d jumped.

“HUTCH, WHAT HAPPENED?” George leaned over and looked into the shaft. His stomach reeled as he peered into its depths. “Are you okay?”

“Yes.” She sounded relieved, jubilant, scared, ecstatic, all at the same time. “We’re a little beaten up, but we’re alive.”

“Where are you?”

“Below you. Wait…” A lamp beam appeared down in the dark and played up the side of the shaft.

“I see you.” They looked to be three levels down. Say fifteen, maybe twenty, meters.

Nick’s voice: “What the hell was that all about?”

“It’s a bottomless pit,” Hutch said. And she explained. Something about artificial gravity radiating both directions from the center of the ship. “You could fall forever,” she continued, “back and forth. Up and down.”

“We were worried about you,” Tor said, in what had to be the understatement of the mission.

“It looks as if Nick broke his leg.”

“Lucky that’s the worst of it. How badly?”

“It’s not through the skin.” And then, obviously talking to Nick. “You’ll be fine.”

“You’d really fall forever?” asked Nick in a strained voice.

“Until they scraped you off the walls.”

“Well, that’s charming.”

“Do you have enough lift power to get out of there, Hutch?”

“No.”

“We’ll look around,” said George. “There should be a stairway here somewhere.”

“I think we just tried the stairway.”

“Then what do we do now?”

“Go back to the lander. It’s got plenty of cable.”

“Okay.”

“You know where we keep the aid kit?”

“It’s in one of the storage cabinets.”

“Right rear as you face the back. There’s a collapsible litter. Bring it back with you.”

“On my way.”

“Stay together.”

“Somebody needs to stay here.”

“Why?”

“With you.”

“We’re not going anywhere.”

Of course not. George edged away from the precipice and stood up. Tor was already on his feet, starting back.

They hurried down the passageway, past all the doors, and reached the ladder that ascended through a short alcove in the overhead and then to the exit hatch. George was relieved to look up and see the stars. And the arc of the rings.

They climbed out onto the surface. The lander floated a few meters overhead. “Bill,” George told his commlink, “we need to get into the lander.”

“What’s been happening?” It was Alyx’s voice. He’d forgotten about her.

“Nick fell into a bottomless pit,” he said. And then, quickly, he explained what they’d been through, what they’d seen.

“He is okay?”

“Yes. He’s fine. Other than that I guess he’ll be limping around for a bit.”

The lander descended, and the hatches opened.

THEY RETURNED WITH the cable and the litter and passed down some pain killers which Hutch administered. Tor tied the cable to the ring in one of the doors, and they hauled first Nick and then Hutch up to the top level. Then they got him into the litter. He was still pale but seemed to have gotten his wind back.

“I thought I was dead,” he told them. “I mean, you fall all that way, you don’t expect to walk around anymore.”

George told him to lie still. He and Tor lifted him, and they started back toward the exit. They’d reached the ladder when Hutch signaled them to put out their lights and set him down.

“What is it?” whispered George.

“Something’s coming,” she said.

He turned around but saw nothing.

She pointed. “Other way.” Forward.

And he saw that the darkness ahead was lessening. A light was approaching from somewhere. A side corridor. There was another intersection up there.

“We could make a run for it,” said George.

Hutch’s hand touched his shoulder. “You wanted to say hello, George. This is your chance.”

A glow appeared on the floor about fifty meters ahead. George watched a round yellow lamp glide into the intersection. It was mounted on front of a vehicle. He pushed back and tried to melt into the wall.

“Nobody move,” said Hutch.

He was able to make out a single wheel and something that undulated above the light. A tentacle, he thought, and his blood froze.

“What’s happening?” asked Nick. Hutch was kneeling beside him, keeping him still.

The vehicle stopped in the middle of the passageway, and the lamp turned slowly in their direction, blinding him.

He thought he saw a squid on a bike.

Hutch produced the cutter.

George stared into the light. The thing turned slowly and advanced in their direction.

The moment, at long last, had come.

Gathering his courage, George stepped forward. Hutch’s voice rang in his ears, telling him to take it slowly. No sudden moves.

He shielded his eyes with one hand and raised the other. “Hello,” he said, pointlessely. Unless the thing was listening to his frequency, it could not hear him. Nevertheless he pressed on: “We were passing by when we saw your ship.”

The vehicle was a three-wheeler, one in front, two behind, with a pair of tentacles mounted where the handlebars would be. The headlight also seemed to be on a tentacle. The vehicle moved to within a couple of paces, and stopped, facing them.

George held his ground.

One of the tentacles touched him. He thought it looked polished, smooth, but segmented. The appendage looped smoothly around one arm. George wanted to jerk away from it, but he resisted the impulse. He heard Nick say something. Nick was sitting up, watching.

The tentacle was tipped by a small rectangular connector with three flexible digits.

“We’re friends,” he said, feeling dumb. Was anybody recording this for posterity?

Someone behind him, obviously thinking the same thing, laughed. In that moment, the tension evaporated.

“We’ve tried not to do any damage.”

The tentacle released him and went through a graceful series of swirls and loops.

“Nick fell into the hole back there. But fortunately he wasn’t hurt.” You should mark them.

Both appendages withdrew into the handlebar. Then the light swung away and the device started up again and trundled past. He noticed a stack of black boxes piled on a platform in the rear. A kind of saddle was mounted midsection. In case someone wanted to ride?

It continued to the intersection and turned right.

“SO WHAT DO we do now?” Alyx looked at George, and George looked at the image of the chindi, still gliding serenely above the roiling clouds.

They were in mission control. “We go back and try again,” said George.

Tor and Nick looked at each other. Nick was on a crutch. His leg was bound so he couldn’t move it. “He’s right,” said Tor. “We’re doing pretty well. We have a good idea what the chindi is about, and they don’t seem to be hostile.”

“They don’t even seem to be interested,” said Hutch.

“If it’s a scientific survey vessel,” said Nick, “how could that be?”

Nobody knew. “Hutch said earlier that it might be automated,” said Tor. “Maybe it is. Maybe there’s really nobody over there.”

George was chewing on a piece of pineapple. “That’s hard to believe.”

“If this is some sort of ongoing, long-range mission,” said Hutch, “which is what it’s beginning to look like, running it with an AI and an army of robots might be the only way to go.”

“The problem with going back over there,” she added, “is that we still can’t predict when it might take off. If it does, and we’ve got people on board, we could lose them.”

“That’s a risk I think we’re willing to take at this point,” said Nick.

George shook his head. “Not you, Nick.”

“What do you mean, Not me? I can get around.”

“I don’t think any of you ought to go back,” said Hutch. “You’re just asking for trouble.” But she could see they were determined to go. It looked as if the major danger was past. No people-eaters to worry about. “But George is right.” She looked at Nick. “If the chindi starts to move, we’ll have to clear everyone off in a hurry. There’ll be less chance of survival if you’re there.”

Nick stared back at her. But he knew she was right. And it was hard for him to get angry with Hutch. So he just sat back and looked unhappy.

George was obviously trying to weigh the risk. “This would be a lot easier if we had an idea how much longer they might be here. Hutch, are you sure there’s no way to guess?”

“Not without knowing how big their tanks are. Or how long they’ve been at it already.”

“Look,” said Tor, “suppose it did take off with some of us on it, what course of action have we? You said earlier we’d be able to follow it, right?”

“I said maybe.”

“Okay. So there’s a chance. How confident are you?”

“Depends on the technology. If they do things differently from the way we do, it could be a problem.”

“But if it uses Hazeltine technology, and it jumped, you could follow it to its target, and take us off there. If worse came to worst.”

“Maybe. We’d probably have no trouble finding the destination. But if it’s a long jump, you could run out of air before you got there. If it’s a short jump, we still have to find you within the confines of an entire solar system. It’s by no means a lock.”

“The air tanks,” Alyx reminded them, “only have a six-hour supply. That’s almost no margin at all.”

“I know,” said George. “But we can substantially improve that margin.”

“I’ve been thinking about that, too,” said Tor. “The whole business of having to run outside every few hours for a fresh pair of tanks would slow us down in any case.”

“And,” Alyx said to George, “your suggestion is…”

George raised both arms, a cleric revealing the divine truth. “Tor’s pocket dome.”

“My thought exactly.” Tor was beaming. “We set it up over there and use it as a base. It gives us the opportunity to penetrate deeper into the ship. And we can move it from place to place as we go.”

Hutch made a rumbling sound in her throat. “Tor, the dome has its limits.”

“What limits? It recycles the air. It can go forever. As long as we don’t put too many people inside.”

“It needs power cells.”

“Once every few days. I have two cells. They’ll give us six days each. When one goes down, I’ll send it over for recharge.”

“Well,” said Alyx, “you could put a transmitter on the hull. That way, if it took off, you’d be able to find it in the target system.”

“That’s what we’ll do,” said Tor.

“Wait.” Hutch was sitting in front of a glass of lime juice and a lunch that she hadn’t yet touched. “You’re assuming whatever jump it makes will be to a system close by. But suppose it heads for the Cybele Nebula. We’d need eighteen days to find you. At a minimum. Anything like that happens, and you’re dead.”

George shook his head. She was worrying for no reason. “If we judge by the positioning of the stealths, the flights have all been relatively local.”

“What about acceleration?” asked Alyx. “Won’t you get banged around if the thing takes off?”

“That’s a point I hadn’t thought of,” said Tor. “Acceleration. If it does go, the people inside might not survive.”

“You’re probably okay on that score,” said Hutch. “They have artificial gravity, which means they probably also have some form of damping field.”

“What’s that?” asked Alyx.

“We have one, too. It negates inertia. Most of it, anyhow. Keeps you from getting thrown around when we accelerate or make a hard right.

“That doesn’t mean, by the way, if the thing starts to move while you’re over there, that you shouldn’t get your back to a wall or something, okay?”

“Hutch?” Bill’s voice. They all turned to look at the wallscreen, but no image appeared.

“Yes, Bill.”

“The damage to the outer hatch on the chindi is repairing itself.” A picture blinked on. “It’s gradually filling in.”

“Nanotech again,” said Tor.

Alyx looked as if she were trying to make up her mind about something. “Hutch,” she said, “we know there’s a degree of risk. But I think what we’re trying to say is that we’re willing to accept that. Now why don’t we move on and figure out what we do next?”

That took George by surprise. “I didn’t think,” he said, “that you wanted anything to do with the chindi.”

She colored slightly. “I didn’t much like sitting by myself while you guys took all the risks.”

“Look,” said Tor. “Let’s set up over there for forty-eight hours. Then we’ll pull everybody out. And that’ll be the end.”

“No matter what?” asked Hutch.

“No matter what.” He grinned at her. “Unless by then we’ve established relations with the crew and we have an invitation to dinner.”

“Forty-eight hours,” said Hutch. She held out the cutter. “If you’re to have any chance of getting picked up when the trouble starts—and it will start—I’m going to have to stay with the Memphis.”

“Okay.”

“But I don’t want to be left wondering what’s going on in the chindi. We’ll use Alyx’s idea and put a transmitter at the exit hatch. And we’ll add a relay. That should make local communication a little easier.”

ALYX CHECKED HER tether. She was in the middle between Tor and George. They were all down on the rocky skin of the chindi, looking up at Hutch, who was watching them through the windscreen.

The cargo hatch opened and they unloaded the pocket dome, air tanks, two power cells, and a few days’ supply of food and water. When they’d finished, they waved, Hutch waved back, wished them good luck, and lifted off. Alyx watched the lander turn and move in the direction of the Memphis, which looked very small and very far away.

Alyx had never dreamed when she set out on this mission that it might actually come to something. The Society had always been more of a social organization than anything else. They’d sent people out to look at places where sightings had occurred, but everyone understood it was a game, it was a fantasy they all indulged. This trip had gone off-Earth, but she’d still thought of it as a party, as a break in her routine, a vacation with a few old friends. Yet here she was standing on the hull of an alien vessel. She was frightened. But she also felt more excited than she had at any time in the last ten years.

She didn’t wholeheartedly support Tor’s idea to set up a base. She’d have been satisfied to come over and put her head inside just so she could say she’d been here. Been part of the team that went on board the chindi. Carried the transmitter. She knew what that would be worth in publicity when she got home. But more important, she knew how it would make her feel about herself.

Tor was carrying the pocket dome, George had the compressed air tanks and some water containers, and Alyx was carrying the food. Even though there was no gravity on the outside, the packages were clumsy, and Alyx lost her grip at one point and had to watch while a parcel of frozen sandwiches drifted away.

George led them across the surface, the regolith, whatever one would call the rocky exterior of a starship. They walked between the ridges that bordered either side of the hollow, and stopped before the hatch. As Bill had warned them, it was sealed.

There was no evidence whatever that a hole had been cut through the hatch only the day before.

George handed the cutter to Tor, who patiently sliced another opening. He lifted the piece out and let it drift away. While they waited for the heated rock to cool, Alyx took the transmitter out of her vest and secured it just outside the hatch.

“Try not to go around too many bends down there,” said Hutch, from the lander. “They smother the signal.”

“Okay.”

“One more thing. If this thing does start to move, it might not seem like a lot of acceleration inside. But out on the hull, there’ll be no stat field.”

“No what?” asked George.

“Stat field. Anti-inertia. To keep you from getting thrown around when the thing takes off. What I’m trying to tell you is that if it goes, things might seem okay inside, as if you’re not moving very fast, but if you try to come out through the hole, it could rip your head off. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“So if things start to happen, don’t come out unless I tell you to. Everybody understand?”

They all understood. Alyx started wondering if she’d made another mistake.

“Good luck,” said Hutch.