Sargasso of Space

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: THE HEART OF LIMBO

All at once Mura’s weight was gone, the strain on his shoulders no longer pulled him apart. Dane looked over the edge of the wall. A series of holes, black near him, still glowing red farther down, were clear to see in the gloom. His aching fingers released hold on the belts and they clattered to the floor.

When the red faded from the last of the holes the blaster had cut, Dane pulled on the gloves, clipped to his tunic cuffs against the cold of Limbo, and swung over to test the ladder. Though it ended well above the floor, he dropped the last few feet without difficulty.

Mura had out his aid kit and was working on Ali’s beaten face as Dane came up.

“The torch,” the steward ordered impatiently, “give me some light here !”

So Dane provided the light needed for the job of temporary patchwork. When the steward was done, Ali was able to see a little and had been supplied with a vita-cube and a limited drink of emergency stimulant. He could not twist his battered features with a smile, but some of the old light tone was back in his voice as he spoke:

“How did you get here—by flitter?”

Mura got to his feet and gazed up into the vast dome which arched above the maze.

“No. But one could be of use here, yes—”

“Yes is right!” Torn and swollen lips kept Kamil’s words a mumble, but the engineer-apprentice was determined to talk. “I thought I was coasting with dead jets all right until you showed up. When that Rich shut me in here he said there was a way out if I were just clever enough to find it. But I didn’t think it meant you had to have wings!”

”What is this anyway?” Dane asked. “Their prison?”

“Partly that, partly something else. You know what’s going on here?” Ali’s voice was shrill with excitement. “They’ve found an installation left by the Forerunners—and the thing still runs! It brings down any ship within a certain range—smashes ’em up here. Then this gang of Patrol Posteds goes out and loots the wrecks!”

“They’ve got the Queen pinned down,” Dane told him. “If she tries to lift she’ll crash—”

“So that’s it! They have had to run the machine at a more steady pace than usual and there was some talk—before they threw me in here—about how long it will go without a rest. Seems that before it switched on and off mechanically after some impulse pattern they don’t understand. Anyway, the key to the whole set up is somewhere here in this blasted puzzle house!”

“The installation in here?” Mura eyed the walls about them as if he were ready to pull the secret out of their very substance.

“Either that, or something important concerning it. There is a way through here—if you know the trail. Twice since I’ve been wandering around I heard people talking, once just on the other side of a wall. Only I never could get through to the right halls—” Ali sighed. “I had about reached the end of my orbit when you came jetting out of the ether.”

Dane buckled his belt around him and now he drew his blaster. With it on the lowest pressure he began to use it, methodically burning a series of holds up to meet those Mura had left at a higher level.

“We can go and see,” he said as he worked.

“You will go,” Mura told him. “And you will do it with secrecy—avoiding as much as possible any trouble. Ali cannot walk the walls, not now. But see if from above you can find this trail he talks of. Then with your guidance we can move—”

That was sensible enough. Dane waited for the pocks to cool, listening to Mura explain all that had happened since Ali had disappeared, hearing in turn Kamil’s account of his own adventures.

“There were two of them waiting in ambush and they jumped me,” he said with open disgust at his own lack of caution. “They had individual flyers!” There was awe in his tone. “Something else they found here. Great Space, this place is a storehouse of Forerunner material! Rich is using things he doesn’t know the meaning of—or why they work—or anything! These mountains are a regular warehouse. Well, with those flyers on they nipped me up and out—knocked me out. And when I came to I was tied up on one of those worm crawlers of theirs. Then I had a little question session with Rich and a couple of his burn-off boys—” Ali’s voice sounded grim and he did not go into details, his face gave evidence enough of that period. “Afterwards they made a few bright remarks and shoved me in here and I’ve probably been going around in circles ever since. But—do you realize—this place, it’s what everyone had been hunting for for years! Forerunner material—good as the day it was made. If we can get out of here—”

“Yes, first the getting out,” Mura cut in. “Also the matter of the installation—”

Dane glanced at the top of the wall. “How am I going to find you here again?”

“You will take bearings, Also,” Mura brought out his torch, set it up on end and snapped the low power button. “When you are aloft, see what kind of guide this makes—”

Once more Dane made use of the holds and scrambled up on the wall. He looked back. Yes, the beam from the torch cut straight up in the gloom. In a very inferior way it was not unlike the beacon on the Queen. He waved his hand to the two below and started out, heading for the centre of the maze where Ali believed the secret of the installation lay.

Walls angled, curved, took him right or left, so he had to retrace time and again. And nowhere did he see any hall below which led through the puzzle without interruption. If there was such a one, its doorways might be controlled by sonics and so hidden to the casual search.

But through his body coursed the heavy beat of the hidden machine. He must be nearing the source. Then he was conscious of a heightened glow in the greyness ahead. It had none of the sharp quality of a torch ray—rather it was as if the spectral radiance of the walls had been stepped to a more concentrated degree in that section. He slowed his pace to a shuffle as he neared that centre, afraid that the click of his metallic boot plates might betray him.

What he came to first was a double wall forming an oval area, a space of three feet between the two smooth surfaces. Determined to see what lay within, he made a risky jump from one to the next and then crouched on his hands and knees, creeping up to peer down into a room which was in stark contrast to the territory about it.

There were machines here—huge towering things—each sealed into a box coating. And a good third of the encircling wall was a bank of controls and dials, centred by a wide plate of smooth metal which bore a likeness to the visaplates he knew.

But that screen mirrored no scene from the outer world on its surface. Instead it was uniformly black and across it moved sparks of light.

Watching this were three men. And, by the brighter light, Dane was able to recognize Salzar Rich as well as the Rigellian who had come in on the Queen. The third man, in a seat just before the screen, his hands resting on a wide keyboard, was one he had never seen before.

This was it! This was the rotten heart of Limbo which rendered the blasted planet a menace to her particular corner of space! And as long as that heart beat, as it was doing now in waves which he could feel through his whole body, the Queen was tied to danger and her crew were helpless—

But were they? Dane felt a tiny thrill of excitement. Rich was making use of machines he did not really understand. And under other hands the whole set-up could be rendered harmless. Perhaps by watching now he himself could discover how to control the broadcast which kept the Queen a prisoner.

The points of light moved on the screen and the three men watched with a concentration of interest which argued of some anxiety. None of them made any move to touch the levers or buttons on the panel. Dane wriggled on his belly towards a point from which he could overhear any orders Rich might give. So he was flattened out of sight a few minutes later when the sound of running feet startled him. Someone was coming through the maze. It was one of the outlaws and he wove a path from the crooked hall to angled room in a manner which proved that he knew the secret. As he came up against the barrier he threw back his head and shouted, his voice ringing in the vast dome over their heads:

“Salzar!”

Rich whirled and then he flung out his right hand and made some adjustment on the panel. A section of the wall slid back to admit the newcomer.

Rich’s voice, chilly with irritation, floated up to the watcher above:

“What’s the matter?”

The runner was still puffing, his beefy face showing flushed. “Message from Algar, chief. He’s coming in—with the Patrol riding his fins!”

“Patrol!” the man at the keyboard half turned in his chair, his mouth slightly agape.

“Did you warn him that the pull was on?” demanded Rich.

“Sure we did. But he can’t evade much longer. He either earths or the Patrol nets him—”

Rich stood very still, his head slightly cocked so that he could see the vision plate. His other assistant, the Rigellian, spoke first:

“Always said we needed a com hook-up down here,” he stated, with some of the content of one who is at last proved to be right in a long argument.

The man at the controls had a quick answer for that. “Yes—and how are you going to cut through the interference to hear anything over it?” he began when Rich snapped an order to the messenger:

“Get back up there and tell Jennis to order Algar to go inert at once. In exactly two hours,” he was consulting his watch, “we’ll off the pull for an hour—an hour, that’s all. He’s to set down, make the best landing he can under power. It doesn’t matter if he smashes the ship—he’ll work to save his own skin all right. Then we’ll snap on the power and net the Patroller when she comes in for the kill. Get it?”

“Two hours and then off pull—keep it off for one, and he’s to make a landing then—then on pull,” parroted the messenger. “Got it!”

He turned and pounded out of the room, back into the maze. For a moment Dane longed to be twins so that he might follow that flight and so find the way out of the puzzle. But it was more important now to see how Rich was going to manipulate the installation to neutralize the power for the landing of his subordinate’s ship.

“Think he’ll make it?” asked the man at the control board.

“Twelve to two he does,” snapped the Rigellian. “Algar’s a master pilot.”

“He’ll have to take the pull coming in and be ready to snap on his braking rockets the minute it fades—tricky stuff—” It was plain that the other was dubious.

Rich was still watching the vision plate. Two new lights appeared on its surface. But their fluttering across it was so erratic that Dane, not being briefed on the use of this alien recorder, could make nothing of that weird dance.

Rich’s lips were moving, counting off seconds, his eyes going from his watch to the plate and back again. The atmosphere grew more tense. At the control board the man’s shoulders were hunched, his attention glued to the row of buttons at his finger tips. While the Rigellian strode with the peculiar gliding walk of his kind to the far end of the wall panel, his scaled, bluish six-fingered hand outstretched to one lever there.

“Wait—!” It was the man at the keyboard. “It’s pulsing again—!”

Rich spat a blistering oath. On the screen the dots were moving up and down in a crazy race. And Dane was conscious that the hum of the installation varied, that the beat had developed a tripping accent.

“Get it back!” Rich sped to the keyboard. “Get it back!”

The man showed a face damp with sweat. “How can I?” he demanded. “We don’t know why it does this.”

“Shorten the beam—that helped once before,” that was the Rigellian. Of the three he showed the least emotion.

The man pressed two buttons. All three stared at the screen for the results of that move. The wildly flying dots settled down to a pattern not far different from the one they had made when Dane had first come upon the scene.

“How far out does it pull now?” asked Rich.

“Atmosphere level.”

“And the ships?”

His underling squinted at the board and consulted some dials. “They won’t come into the pull for one—maybe two hours. When we cut like that it takes time to build up the power again. Anyway this doesn’t affect that blasted trader any—she can’t lift.”

Rich took a small box from his pocket, poured some of its contents into the palm of his hand and licked it up. “It is pleasant to know that something is going right,” he observed with a chill in his voice which made Dane’s skin prickle.

“We don’t know much about this,” the man thumbed the edge of the keyboard. “None of us has been trained to use it right. And it was alien made to begin with—”

“Let me know when and if you can get it back on full power again,” was all the answer Rich made.

Two hours before they could turn on the full power, Dane thought. Now if in those two hours he and Mura—and maybe Kosti and Ali—could move—that lever the Rigellian had reached for—it must control something important. And if they could take over this room and the men in it, they would learn even more about its operation. Suppose the Patrol ship could make a safe landing on the tail of the outlaw they were pursuing—! What should be his next move?

Rich decided it for him. His jaws moving in a rhythmical chewing, the outlaw leader walked towards the hidden door. “You say two hours,” he spoke over his shoulder as he went. “It’ll be much better all around if you halve that, understand? I’ll be back in an hour—be ready to cut in the full beam then.” He nodded curtly to the Rigellian and stepped through the opening in the wall.

And this time Dane was ready to follow. He allowed Rich a good start and trailed the other through the winding ways which the outlaw threaded with the ease of much practice. Before they had drawn level with the small beacon provided by Mura’s torch, a beacon Rich could not sight from the floor, Dane had the secret of the maze. Two right turns, then one left, and then three right once more, skip the next passage opening and repeat. Rich had made the same pattern four times and Dane was sure that it would continue to carry him to the outer door of the puzzle. But, having learned that, the Trader waited on the wall for the other to work his way five corridors ahead before he crossed to the room where he had left Mura and Ali.

He found Kamil up and walking about now, restored by the steward’s first aid. And as Dane climbed down their crude ladder they closed in on him.

“—That’s it,” he ended his report. “The Patrol’s riding in on this bird’s jet stream. As long as they both stay out of the atmosphere they’re safe. But once the pull is working full power again—” he snapped his fingers.

“Our move!” Kamil got out the words between his swollen lips. “We’ve got to cut that power off—totally!”

“Yes,” Mura crossed to the holds on the wall. “But first we collect Kosti—”

“How can you get him here? He said he can’t walk the walls—”

“A man can do anything if he is forced to it,” Mura replied. “You will stay here—I shall bring Kosti. But first show me the route which takes one to this ‘heart’—”

Dane reclimbed the wall behind the steward, led the way across the three intervening spaces to that corridor he had seen Rich traversing. And there he repeated the pattern the outlaw had followed. Mura smiled his placid smile.

“It is very simple, is it not? Now, you wait with Kamil—and do nothing foolish until I return. This is most interesting—”

Dane obediently went back to the room where they had left the engineer-apprentice. Kamil sat on the floor, his back against one of the walls, his battered face turned to the torch light. As Dane’s boots hit the pavement he turned his head.

“Welcome aboard,” he mouthed. “Now tell me about that installation—” he went on into a series of questions about what Dane had seen, which sometimes left the cargo-apprentice floundering. Of the machines he had seen little because of their casings. And he could not describe the control panel very well, having been at the time more intent on the actions of the men by it. He admitted this with some of his old feeling of inadequacy. A Trader kept his eyes open, a Trader had to use both his eyes and his brain at one and the same time. Here he had had another opportunity which he had apparently muffed. And a little of the old antagonism sparked to life inside him.

“What is their source of power?” Ali demanded of the room about them. “We’ve nothing like it—nothing at all! There must be things here which will put us years ahead—generations—”

“Providing of course,” Dane broke in a little sourly, “that we get to use them. We aren’t the winners yet.”

“Neither are we licked,” Ali retorted.

It was as if their roles had been reversed. Now it was Kamil who was building castles, Dane who did the under-mining.

“If Stotz and I could have a couple of hours in that place! By the Black Hole, we did pick a winner when we bid on Limbo—”

Ali seemed able to ignore the fact that Rich was still very much in command of the situation, that the Queen was pegged down, and that the enemy had a force which could render their headquarters impenetrable. The more Kamil enlarged on the future to come, the more flaws Dane could see in their actions in the immediate present. But they were both lifted out of their thoughts by a soft hail from above.

“Mura!” Dane jumped to his feet. The steward had been successful in his mission, a second man stood on the wall above, one hand resting on the steward’s shoulder.

“Yes,” was hissed down at them. “Now it is for you to climb. Up quickly, both of you, time runs out !”

Ali went first, and once or twice he bit off an exclamation as his exertions wrung his sore body. Dane caught up the beacon torch, snapped it off, and went after.

“Now this is what we shall do,” Mura was clearly in command, as he had been all the time since they had entered the mountain. “Kosti and Ali shall go by the regular path to the room of the installation. While you and I, Thorson, will take the route along the wall top. They are expecting Rich to return there. Your entrance in his place should surprise them long enough for us to go into action. We must get at that switch and immobilize it. And do whatever else we can to make this devil thing incapable of action in the future. So—now we move—”

They made their way back to the path Rich had used, Kosti walking slowly with his hand on the steward’s shoulder, visible shudders shaking his big body. There once more they used the linked belts and lowered the jetman and Ali to the floor of the maze.

The brighter glow of the installation section was their guide now and they reached the oval wall easily. Mura gestured at Kosti and the jetman raised his voice in the same call the messenger had given earlier. The other three stood tense, ready to move if it worked.

“Salzar!”

Dane’s attention was fixed on the Rigellian. The Alien’s head went up, his round eyes sought the hidden doorway. It was going to work because that blue hand went to the proper button among the controls. And outside the barrier Kosti stood waiting, his blaster drawn and ready to fire, the unarmed Ali behind him.