Quest for the Well of Souls

Aboard the New Harmony Shuttle

It took four days to raise, position, and lock in the ship, and another two were required for Yulin to check out the systems. Some vital power systems had discharged over the years, but were easily replenished by Bozog technicians. The craft was banged up, but a lot less so than the engineer would have believed. It needed a bit of internal work, but the engines and command computer needed only reenergized secondary systems to come to life again. The atmosphere of Uchjin had preserved everything marvelously.

The ship had been designed for humans. This presented little problem to Yulin or Renard, and neither the Yugash nor the Bozog required much, but the bulk and odd shapes of Mavra and Wooley presented real difficulties, and Vistaru’s wings could not be pressed into a seat for long without damage. Tearing out some seats in the passenger compartment and replacing them with heavy cushions held down by wide belts solved the larger problems, and Vistaru decided she could live strapped on her stomach for a time.

Yulin spent another day assisted by Mavra—who seemed to be taking some interest in things again—checking out computer operation, programming, and control functions. Both were extremely rusty, but they soon found that their remembered abilities were complementary. Between them they could probably work out what was necessary.

“I still wish we had somebody who has done this recently,” Yulin told her worriedly. “Damn! After a twenty-two-year layoff, we’re going to program this ship through a series of maneuvers beyond half the pilots we ever knew! I’m damn sure I wouldn’t trust a pilot who’d been away that long!”

“Second thoughts?” she taunted. “I can always have Renard follow my instructions, you know.”

He laughed. “No, I’ve come too far and waited too long for this. I’ll go or die.”

“Or both,” she responded dryly.

In two days New Pompeii would be in the proper position and the proper code words Mavra Chang knew for the robot sentinels would come up. They’d go.

“Initial test, two percent thrust!” Ben Yulin broadcast to ground control and throughout the ship. He flipped a switch. A satisfying whine and vibration were the response. He held the power at that setting for four seconds. The instruments showed steady output to less than a thousandth of a percent, then cut back.

“Initial test on the nose,” he reported. “Give me lift data.”

A Bozog voice crackled back at him. “On our count, switch to internal at one hundred; build up at ten percent per decade count on our mark. Release restraints at the ten mark. Full boost on automatic within one second of our count. Link and synchronize.”

“On my mark… one hundred,” Yulin said crisply.

“Hold to our mark. Linkage established. Switch to internal. Mark one hundred.”

Yulin punched a board. “Internal link, aye. Thrust ten at ninety.” Slowly, eyes on the instrument panel, he flipped a series of switches. “Fifty-one at fifty, go,” he told the control.

“Down, area cleared, all restraint away, thirty,” replied the Bozog.

“Seventy-two at thirty,” Yulin responded. “Stand by.”

“Ninety at ten.”

“Ninety at ten coming up. Mark!”

“Ten… nine… eight… seven… six… five… four… three… two… one… full boost!” called the Bozog launch control.

Yulin pulled back on a long lever. He didn’t have time to think, which was good.

He was scared to death.

They felt a sudden impact, as if some huge thing had struck the ship, and a tremendous, crushing weight on them.

Mavra was in the prone position to absorb shock. Not designed to lie down, she blacked out in seconds; Wooley was not far behind. The others remained conscious although all, even the Ghiskind, were tremendously uncomfortable.

Yulin, pressed back into his seat so hard he could feel the metal support fifty centimeters behind, watched the controls wide-eyed. It was out of his hands now and up to the computer.

An eternity passed, and the pressure on him was unbearable. He fought with himself to keep from blacking out, even as he watched the displays, unblinking, fearful. The sequencing timer seemed to crawl, the seconds ticking off in slow motion. Forty-six… forty-seven…

He knew he was going to die now. He would never survive the eternity until that clock reached sixty-one, he was sure.

And then, finally, it hit sixty and seemed to hover there for the longest time. It flipped, and the thrust was reduced. Even though he was ready for it, the sensation of sudden release, like falling over a precipice, caught him by surprise, propelling him forward. The restraints bit into him.

He sighed, looked over at the screens. They were still heading outward, into deep space. The indicator showed an altitude of over one hundred kilometers and climbing.

They had made it.

The screens flipped on. The group wasn’t out of the woods yet, he knew. Now he had to take the ship to high orbit, loop, and approach New Pompeii, making certain that at no point in his initial approach did he fall to within eighty kilometers of the surface. The ship swung around. The console screen showed the Well World, projected trajectories, and the ship’s current position. A string of figures ran down one side, constantly changing, showing the computer working to put them in the preplanned slot.

He activated the intercom. “Everyone okay?”

“Some bruises, and Mavra and Wooley are out cold, but I think we all came through,” Renard replied.

Yulin turned his attention to the controls. They had made orbital insertion while he talked, and were only a few kilometers per hour from the optimum and less than a fifth of a degree off-orbit. Easily correctable, and he told the computer to make the adjustments.

The large screen came on, providing a remarkably detailed picture of what was ahead. The Well World filled most of the area below them, and, as he watched, New Pompeii rose. He would make one pass as a check before going final approach.

On the screen, columns of figures shot by at speeds barely slow enough to read, and graphics showed angle, speed, and destination. The computer was locking in for Phase Two.

But the critical human element was gone now. It was the computer’s job to follow the carefully programmed instructions and do all the work. The passengers could only hope that the systems would continue to function as well as they had so far.

“How’s it going back there?” Yulin asked over the intercom.

“All right now,” Vistaru’s soft voice answered. “We have Wooley back with us again, and we’ve undone Mavra’s straps and got her to her feet. That’s all right, isn’t it?”

“Fine,” he responded. “There will be only slight motion problems now that the ship’s in its element. We’re braking over North Zone, and the screens say it’s a perfect intercept. All we can do is watch and wait.”

“On track,” Yulin announced. “Locked in. All right, people. Hold on. Here we go.”

The big screen showed the Well World, ship, and New Pompeii clearly. Small dotted lines indicated the ideal and actual trajectories. The multicolor graphics were of no use to Yulin’s color-blind eyes, but he knew which trajectory was which by the pattern of characters that composed each curve. He felt slight jerking motions as the computer adjusted speed and direction. Slowly but steadily the two traces were merging into a single perfect flight path.

Suddenly the radio popped on.

“Code, please,” a mechanical voice demanded pleasantly. “Correct code within sixty seconds or we will destroy your ship.”

Yulin almost jumped out of his skin; panic suddenly rose within him. He’d been so intent on the takeoff and approach he’d just about forgotten about the robot sentries. He could see them on the screen, little dots moving to intercept and take him out. He gulped.

His mind was a complete blank.

“Fifty seconds,” the voice said pleasantly.

He punched the intercom. “Is Chang awake yet?” he screamed.

“Still groggy,” Renard replied. “Why?”

“I need the damned code!” he yelled.

“Forty seconds,” said the voice.

“I thought you knew it,” Wooley responded accusingly.

“I can’t remember, damn it! Ask her the goddamned code now!”

“Thirty seconds,” said the voice. The little dots were in perfect attack position now.

Suddenly a new voice came in over the radio on the same frequency. It was a man’s voice, soft and pleasant.

“It’s Edward Gibbon, Volume One, Ben,” said the voice.

He was startled but he grabbed at it.

“Twenty seconds,” said the robot sentry.

“Edward Gibbon, Volume One!” he screamed.

There was silence, and he watched the LED clock tick off. It passed ten seconds, and there was no new warning. Now it counted off the last ten. As it did he glanced up and saw the little blips break formation and resume their stations. Ben Yulin almost fainted.

“It’s Edward Gibbon, Volume One, Ben,” Vistaru said pleasantly.

“I know, I know,” he growled, out of breath. “If I had to depend on you we’d have died thirty seconds ago.”

But who had given him the code? Not the Bozog. Though almost certainly they were monitoring the radio, it was too human a voice for that. A familiar voice, somehow, from the distant past. But this was a journey into that past, as much as into the future, he thought.

He flipped on the interspace radio and called, “Obie? Is that you?”

“Yes, Ben,” came the reply. “How have you been?”

“Obie—how the hell? Are you alone down there?”

“Oh, yes, quite alone,” responded the computer. “It’s been a long time, Ben. A lot longer for me than for you. I’ve followed some of your progress through the Well, though. Who wound up on the ship? I can’t tell that from here.”

Yulin told him, then asked, “Topside—what are the conditions there?”

“You know I have no voluntary circuits Topside,” the computer reminded him. “The atmosphere, pressure, and temperature have been maintained, and the electrical system is functioning normally. Beyond that I can’t say. I’ve nothing with which to monitor.”

Yulin thought for a moment. The ship was closing on the spaceport airlock as they spoke. “Obie—have you been incommunicado all this time? I mean, if you can talk to me, do you talk to others?”

There was silence at the other end.

“Obie? Did you hear me?”

“I heard you, Ben. We’ll talk again when you get here,” the computer said.

He tried to raise Obie several more times, but there was only silence. He sat back and thought for a moment. The computer was fully capable of deceit; it was as human as he in many ways. The fact that it had refused to answer his question was in itself an answer. The computer had been talking these past years with someone—and there was only one person who would know how to build the proper receiving equipment.

Dr. Gilgam Zinder, discoverer of the Markovian mathematics and creator of Obie, was still very much alive back on the Well World.

But back there, Yulin told himself confidently. He knew all the Southerners aboard, and Zinder would not have been processed as a Northerner. Zinder could talk with Obie, even consult the great machine, but he couldn’t actually operate it, change the programming. Only someone at one of the control panels inside Obie itself could do that, and even if Zinder were there, he did not know about Ben Yulin’s innovative circuit design. When he’d used it, he’d stunned Zinder to unconsciousness.

No matter what surprises Zinder and Obie had planned for him, they were in for a nasty shock, Ben Yulin thought confidently.

He watched the console. The ship closed gently. The first of the two locks was damaged; he probably had done that himself in his panic during the flight from New Pompeii, he reflected. The other was fine, though, and the computer headed for it.

A sudden scraping sound forward, and a wrenching jerk as the ship slipped into its berth and straightened itself heralded their safe landing.

They were back on New Pompeii.

He switched the ship to external power, drawing from the New Pompeii power plant. The instruments flickered briefly and it was done. The last step in the chain.

He undid his straps and stood, for the first time realizing the brutality of the takeoff.

Painfully, limping slightly, the minotaur made his way aft to see about his passengers.