Exiles at the Well of Souls

On Trelig’s Ship, Half a Light-year Out from New Pompeii—1210 Hours

The world returned suddenly. Mavra Chang looked around, slightly dazed, then checked the instruments. They read total nonsense, so she looked over at Renard and saw him groggily shaking his head.

“What happened?” he managed.

“We were caught in the field and carried along with them,” Mavra explained with more authority than she felt. She looked down at the instruments again, then punched a random search pattern. The screen flickered but remained blank in front of her. Finally, she turned the damned thing off.

“Well, that tears it,” she said, resigned.

Renard looked over at her strangely. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“I just punched the star chart navigational locator. Inside the little chip is stored every known star pattern, from every angle. There are billions of combinations. It went through them all—and didn’t flash once. We’re not in any section of known space.”

He envied her calm acceptance of the fact. “So what do we do now?” he asked apprehensively.

Mavra flipped a series of switches and then pulled back on the long handle to her right. The whine and vibration of the ship’s engines slowed. “First we see what the neighborhood looks like, then we decide where in it we want to go,” she told him matter-of-factly.

She punched up another series on the small control board, and the main screen in front of them, which usually showed a simulated starfield, showed something else entirely. There were stars there—more stars than either of them had ever seen before. They were so close together it looked as if the firmament were on fire with a white heat. It took some filters to get any definition, and that didn’t help much. There were also great clouds of space gas, glowing crimson and yellow, and there were shapes and forms never seen, not even in astronomical photos.

“We’re definitely in somebody else’s neighborhood,” Mavra commented dryly, and, after checking speed, started to turn the craft around. “We’re just about dead still now,” she told him. “I’m going to give us a panorama.”

The enormous clouds of stars and strange shapes did not diminish; they were surrounded by them. A small green grid to Mavra’s left was mostly blank, indicating nothing within a light-year or more of them. Then, suddenly, a small series of dots appeared.

“Look, Trelig’s robot guardians,” she noted. “Everything else is debris from the rest of that fragmented system. It seems the whole neighborhood moved. If that’s true—yes, see it? The big dot, there, with the slightly smaller one just off it. That’s New Pompeii and its would-be target.”

Renard nodded. “But what’s that huge object just to its right?” he asked.

“A planet. From the looks of it, the only planet in the system. Funny it took the whole solar system with it but not the star. That star’s definitely larger and older,” she pointed out.

“It’s moving,” Renard said, fascinated in spite of himself. “New Pompeii’s moving.”

Mavra studied it, punched in, got the data back. “It’s in orbit around that planet, a satellite of it now. Let’s get a good look at the place.” Again more button-pushing, and the screen zeroed in on the central object shown electronically on the green scope.

“Not a big place,” Mavra said. “Let’s see… about average, I’d say. A little more than forty thousand kilometers around. Hmmm… that’s interesting!”

“What?” Renard prodded, staring.

“The diameter’s exactly the same pole to pole,” she replied in a puzzled tone. “That’s almost impossible. The damned thing’s a perfect ball, not the slightest meter of variation!”

“I thought most planets were round,” he said, slightly confused.

She shook her head. “No, there’s never been a round one. Rotation, revolution, they all take their toll. Planets bulge, or get pear-shaped, or a million other things. Roughly round, yes—but this thing’s perfectly round, as if somebody—” she paused for a second, and an awed tone crept into her voice “—as if somebody built it,” she finished.

Before Renard could reply, she eased the ship forward, toward the strange world.

“You’re going there?” he asked her.

Mavra nodded. “Well, if we pulled through, so did the folks on New Pompeii,” she reasoned. “That means there’s a furious, probably murderous Antor Trelig somewhere back there, and a lot of scared people. If he’s still in control, the three of us would be better off blowing up this ship than landing. If he’s not, then we’d walk into a human hell.”

Renard’s expression was blank, his eyes somewhat glassy. Mavra, busy looking at the ship’s controls and the world that would be visible to them shortly, hardly noticed for a while. Soon the magnifiers were getting a better view, though; the planet was about the size of an orange. The green grid said that New Pompeii was about to go around the other side.

“It’s got a straight up and down axis!” she said excitedly. “It was built by somebody!” She turned to Renard, then her excitement faded, turning to concern. “What’s the matter?” she asked.

He licked his lips but remained with that vacant expression, staring not at her or at the screen but at nothing.

“The sponge,” he replied hollowly. “It comes in daily at eighteen hundred hours, from a roving supply ship. Your ship didn’t come with us, so it wouldn’t have either, if it was there at all.” He turned to look at her, and there was mild terror building in his eyes. “There’s no sponge today. There’s no sponge ever again. Not for me, not for them.”

Mavra understood suddenly what was going through his mind, and perhaps Nikki’s as well. She was under restraining straps in the back and they’d almost forgotten about her.

She sighed, wishing she could say something. Being sorry didn’t seem right, somehow, and her pity was too apparent to need expression.

“The only hope then,” she said at last, “is that there’s somebody living on that world out there, somebody with a good chemical lab.”

Renard smiled weakly. “Nice try, but even if there is, by the time we contact them, figure out how to talk to them, explain the problem, and have them mix a batch, you’ll be preserving a couple of naked apes.”

She shrugged. “What other choice is there?” Suddenly a thought came to her. “I wonder if the rest of the guards on New Pompeii have figured that out yet? What will they do when the shipment doesn’t come at eighteen hundred and confirms their fears?”

Renard thought that over. “Probably the same thing I’d do. Find Trelig and take a great deal of pleasure in torturing him to death.”

“The computer!” Mavra exclaimed excitedly. “It can cure sponge! If we can get in contact with it somehow—” She started frantically scanning all the Com bands, punching in a call sign. Obie would recognize it if he could hear it—Obie had her memories in storage.

The radio crackled and wheezed. Several times in the scan they swore they could hear voices of some kind, but speaking strange tongues, or so inhuman-sounding as to cause chills in them.

Then, quite abruptly, a familiar voice popped in.

“Well, Mavra, I see you didn’t make it,” Obie sighed. She returned the sigh, hers one of relief.

“Obie!” she responded. “Obie, what’s the situation down there?”

There was silence for a moment, then the computer replied, “It’s a mess. Dr. Zinder recovered first and got to me, and I have some of his instructions before Ben pulled him away. Two of the guards were there, and they heard me tell Dr. Zinder that we were in a different area of space. They started screaming about sponge, and Trelig shot them dead.”

“So they figured it out already,” she said. “What about Topside?”

“Trelig figured they had to go up and try and control the other guards. They could have trapped him down here. He hopes to bargain their processing through me to rid them of the sponge, but I don’t think he’ll have much success. Most of them wouldn’t believe he could cure them anyway, and the rest would be even more furious that such a cure was here and not used. They would, I feel certain, go along with him only long enough to get the cure, then kill him anyway.”

Mavra nodded. “And if you can figure that out, so can Trelig. He has no percentage in a cure.” She paused a moment, then said, carefully, “Obie, is there a way that we could get in to you? There’s Nikki—and one of the guards, an ally, Renard.”

Obie sighed again. It was weird to hear so human a voice and so human a reaction from a machine, but Obie was much more than a machine.

“I’m afraid not, at least not right now. The big dish is frozen in contact with the Well—the great Markovian computer that runs that world down there. It is beyond my control right now. It may take some time—days, weeks, even years—for me to figure a way to break off, if there is a way. As for the little dish, Trelig’s no fool. He left, but he first coded defense mechanisms beyond my control. If I had the big dish I could neutralize them, but I don’t. Anyone trying to get into the little room first has to pass over the bridge across the shaft. That bridge will kill unless Trelig’s code is given, and I don’t have it.”

She frowned. “Well, can you keep anybody else from blowing it?”

“I think so,” the computer replied uncertainly. “I have run a current through the shaft walls. That should keep anyone from getting to the bridge.”

“Okay, Obie, looks like I have to go in and save Trelig’s noble neck,” she said, and applied power. The new moon that was New Pompeii had disappeared around the strange planet, and she established an intercept vector.

“Wait! Don’t!” Obie’s voice called. “Break off! You’ll have to come in under New Pompeii to hit the Topside area, and that will swing you too close to the Well.”

But it was too late. The ship was already closing on the planet, felt its pull, and used it to whip around to the other side.

Here was an incredible sight. The world, close up, shimmered like a dream-thing, and yet it somewhat resembled a great, alien jewel. It was faceted, somehow; countless hexagonal facets of some sort, and below whatever was causing the faceting was a hint of broad seas, mountain ranges, and fields of green around which clouds swirled. That is, that was the case below the equator. The equator itself looked odd, as if it were designed for a child’s globe. A thick strip, semitransparent but with an amber coloration, like a broad plastic band around the world. The north—it, too, was faceted hexagonally, but the landscapes there contained nothing familiar; eerie, stark, strange. The poles, too, were strange—areas of great expanse, yet of a nonreflective darkness, almost as if they weren’t there at all.

The sight spellbound them. And the proper boost and cut had been preapplied. To get out of it, Mavra would have to swing around the planet tangentially to the equator anyway.

“Too late! Too late!” Obie wailed. “Quick! Get everyone in the lifesaving modules!”

Mavra was puzzled. Everything seemed normal, and she suddenly caught sight of New Pompeii, half green and shiny, half covered with the great mirror surface.

“We better do what he says,” Renard said quietly. “Where’s the lifeboat? I’ll get Nikki.”

“Bring her here,” Mavra told him. “The bridge will seal if anything goes wrong.”

“I’ll hurry,” Renard replied, worried now about the immediate threat. Mavra couldn’t see any threat; she was breaking, coasting toward New Pompeii, swinging about a third of the way to the planet below in a standard approach that would take her once around New Pompeii and in. It was all so normal.

“Damn it! I’m okay!” she heard Nikki almost scream. She turned and saw the girl enter, an angry expression on her face. Renard followed.

“Your father’s alive, Nikki,” Mavra told the girl. “I’m in contact with Obie. Maybe we—”

At that moment the ship shuddered, and all the electronics, including the lights, flickered, then winked out.

“What the hell?” Mavra tried punching everything she could find. The bridge was pitch-dark, and there was no motor noise or vibration of any kind. Even the emergency lights and safety controls were out, although they shouldn’t be. They couldn’t be.

Her mind raced. “Renard!” she called. “Get Nikki into your chair, then get in mine with me! I think we can both fit! Nikki! Strap yourself in as tight as you can!”

“Wha—what’s happening?” the girl called.

“Just do what I say! Quickly!” the small woman snapped. “Somehow we’ve lost all power, even the emergencies! We were too close in to the planet! If we don’t get power back—”

She heard Nikki stumble, flop into the seat. She felt Renard’s hand almost grab her in the face. Her own eyes, Obie-designed, adapted to infrared immediately. She saw them—but nothing else. There was no other heat source on the bridge!

She managed an, oath, reached up, pushed Renard into the chair. It was a very tight fit, and it didn’t quite work. That damned tail! she thought angrily.

“I’m going to have to sit in your lap,” she told him, shifting.

“Ouch!” he exclaimed. “Move down a little! That tailbone is pressing on my sensitive area!”

She shifted down slightly, and he just barely pulled the straps over both of them, then wrapped his arms around her, squeezing tightly more from nervousness than anything else.

Suddenly, everything flicked back on again.

The screen showed that they’d lost tremendous altitude during the blackout. They could see a sea ahead, and, beyond that, some mountains.

“We’re over the equator into the south, anyway,” Mavra managed. “Let me see if I can boost us out of here.”

She started to undo the straps when, suddenly, the screen showed that they had cleared the ocean—and everything went black again.

“Damn!” she swore. “I wish I knew what the hell was going on here!”

“We’re going to crash, aren’t we?” Nikki asked, more resigned than panicked.

“Looks like it,” Mavra called back. “We’ll start breakup soon unless the power comes on.”

“Breakup?” Renard repeated.

“There are three systems on these ships,” she told him. “Two are electrical, one mechanical. I hope the mechanical holds, because we have no power, none at all. In two of the three, including the mechanical, the ship separates into modules. In the mechanical mode it will deploy parachutes thirty seconds after breakup, then use air resistance to trigger the main chutes. It’ll be a rough ride.”

“Are we gonna die?” she heard Nikki ask.

“Might as well,” she heard Renard murmur to himself, too low for the girl to hear. She understood what he meant. This would be quicker, by far, than sponge.

“I hope not,” she responded, but there was a tinge of doubt in her voice. “If we had a complete failure in space, we would—we’d use up the air. But down there—I don’t know. If we can breathe the stuff, and if we survive the landing, and if the chutes open, we should make it.”

A whole lot of ifs, she thought to herself. Probably too many.

The ship shuddered, and there were loud noises all around. Separation had been achieved.

“Well,” she sighed. “Nothing we can do about it now, anyway. Even if the power came on again—the engines aren’t attached to us anymore.”

There came now a series of sharp, irregular bumps. Renard groaned, catching both the effects of him against the chair and Mavra against him. Then there was a single very sharp jerk that almost made them dizzy.

“The chutes!” Mavra exclaimed. “They opened! We have air of some kind out there!”

It was now a dizzying, swaying, rocking ride in total darkness. A few minutes of this and they all began feeling a little sick. Nikki had just started to complain when there was a much stronger, almost violent series of jerks.

“Main chute,” Mavra sighed. “Hold on! The next one will be one hell of a bang!”

And it was. They felt as if they’d slammed into a brick wall, then they seemed to be rolling over and over, coming to a stop hanging upside down.

“Easy now!” Mavra cautioned. “We’re resting on the ceiling now. The gravity feels close to one G—about right for a planet of this mass. Nikki! You all right?”

“I feel awful,” the girl complained. “God! I think I’m bleeding! It feels like every bone in my body’s broke!”

“That goes double for me,” Renard groaned. “You?”

“I’ve got burns from the straps,” Mavra told them. “Feels like it, anyway. Too early to tell the real damage. Right now it’s shock. Let’s get down from here first, then we can treat any injuries. Nikki, you stay put! We’ll get you down in a minute.”

She felt the straps holding them. Only a few centimeters were still in the clasp. One more bang, she thought, and we’d have come loose.

“Renard!” she said. “Look, I can see in this darkness, but you can’t, and I can’t get down without dropping you. See if you can grab onto the chair when I release the straps. It’s about four meters, but it’s smooth and rounded. Then I’ll get you to the floor.” She guided his arms, and he got some kind of grip, but he was facing the wrong way to have any leverage.

“Maybe I could have done it years ago,” he said dubiously, “but since my body changed—I don’t know. I don’t have much strength in my arms.”

“Well, try to swing free, jump when you have to,” she told him. “Here goes… Now!”

She hit the master stud, and the belt-web dropped away. She dropped immediately to the floor and rolled. Renard yelled, then let go, coming down in a heap and sprawling. She went over to him, examined him, felt his bones.

“I don’t think there’s anything broken,” she told him. “Come on! I know you’re a mess of bruises, but I need you to help Nikki down!”

He had twisted his ankle, and it hurt like hell to stand, but he managed on sheer will power. Carefully, they managed to get him under Nikki, and, by reaching up, he could touch her.

He wasn’t strong enough to support her, but he did manage to make her fall less severe, and she landed somehow on her rump. It was painful and she moaned, but, again, Mavra detected nothing broken. Bruised and twisted they were, and sore they would be, but they all had come through miraculously well.

Renard tried deep-breathing exercises to ease the pain, all the time rubbing his sore legs with his equally sore arms. “Just out of curiosity, Mavra, how many times have you made a landing like this?” he gasped.

She chuckled. “Never. They say these systems are too impractical. Many ships no longer even have them. Once in a million they’re usable.”

He grunted. “Umph. That’s what I thought. Now, how do we get out of here?”

“There’s an under and over escape-hatch system,” she told them. “The thing’s an airlock, but it won’t pump, of course. You’re going to have to lift me up so I can trip the safety switches. The ceiling one’s no good to us.”

He groaned, but managed. She reached out, just barely getting the controls, and, after several tries and one or two drops, there was a hissing sound and the hatch dropped. More long minutes passed while she tried to jump from his shoulders and grab the edge of the hatch. Finally, when they’d almost given up and Renard was complaining he couldn’t take it any more, she got a grip, hoisted herself in, and flipped open the outer lock.

“Suppose we can’t breathe out there!” Nikki yelled to Mavra.

Mavra looked down at them. “In that case we’re dead anyway,” she told them. Actually, she knew the odds were against the air being something they could use, but there had been an ocean and green trees, and that held hope.

She pulled herself out of the lock, and stared.

“Smells kind of funny, but I think we’re all still alive,” she called back. “I’ll get some tether cable from the work locker. It was supposed to anchor spacesuits, but it should hold you.”

Nikki was the toughest. She was very heavy and not very athletic, and while they pulled in the darkness—Renard had climbed the anchored tether cord on his own—both Nikki’s arms and theirs seemed ready to give out. They were working on adrenalin now, they knew, and that energy would not last forever.

But they did get Nikki clear of the first hatch, where the ribbed sides gave some sort of tenuous leg supports, and they managed to get her out.

Once off the bridge module, they sank on what appeared to be real grass, exhausted, the landscape swimming by them. Mavra put herself through a series of body-control exercises and managed to will away much of the pain but not the feeling of exhaustion. She opened her eyes, looked back at the other two, and saw them sprawled out, asleep and breathing hard.

She scanned the horizon. Nothing looked particularly threatening; it was around midday, and their surroundings looked like a quiet forest scene from any one of a hundred planets. Some insects were audible, and she saw a few very standard-looking birds floating on air currents high above, but little else.

She looked again at her unconscious companions and sighed. Even so, somebody had to stay awake.