Perry Rhodan Lemuria 1: Ark of the Stars (26 page)

The hours passed. Denetree's tears dried up, and the constant airflow through the shafts evaporated the teardrops that had fallen. The growling in her stomach increased to an ache. There was food at the supply tent that the Kalpen set up each morning, but in order to eat she would have to mingle with the others and listen to their coarse talk. No, it was better to endure the hunger.

After a while, Denetree found herself reaching for her tool, taking it out, and beginning to patch the leaks she had been assigned. Already during the two weeks that she had been with the Kalpen, she had developed a certain routine. It wasn't especially difficult to patch a leak once you got the hang of it. There were different sizes of leaks, but in the end they were all alike. The pipes and shafts consisted of the same metals and Denetree only had one set of tools and materials. Once you had patched one leak, you had patched them all.

Her hands cut screens and put them in place; she sprayed them with sealant, checked her work and felt for the next leak, constantly increasing her speed. Denetree sweated, her breath and her pulse came faster. All she saw were the shaft, the leaks and her job. What did she care about the stars, the Seekers, or her dead brother? They weren't important. The Kalpen weren't important—yes, the entire Ship and its mission weren't important. What mattered was that she found all the leaks. That evening she would fall into her cot exhausted and satisfied, fall asleep on the spot and after a dreamless night look for new leaks, and go to sleep again, and again ... .

In the strange enthusiasm for work that had overcome her, it took a long time for the change to penetrate Denetree's consciousness. She finally noticed it after her rapid breathing had calmed somewhat. She was reaching for a new screen and suddenly recognized a unique level of noise outside. It was louder than she'd ever heard it.

The airshafts crisscrossed all the decks on the Ship. If someone had drawn a diagram of them, it would have resembled one of the screens they used to patch leaks, a fine-meshed network of twisting pipes. This network let the Ship's air circulate, along with sound. But Denetree was only beginning to be able to clearly pick out individual sounds from the background noises of metach in the fields, the many thousands of conversations going on at any given moment on the Ship, or the operating sounds of the Ship's systems. The Kalpen, who spent their lives in the shafts, quickly developed the ability to split the cacophony into its individual components. They often sat in front of their forbidden fires in the evening and spoke of what they had overheard during the day. The Kalpen knew everything, knew even that side of a story that the Ship withheld from the metach. Except ... there was no other side for the Star Seekers.

Denetree knew how to gauge the overall mood from what she heard. It was generally muted, a reflection of the stoic mental attitude expected of every good metach. Several times during her time with the Kalpen, Denetree thought she had detected traces of fear, when terror of the traitors and what doom they might bring to the Ship won the upper hand. Sometimes the mood was triumphant—when another traitor was apprehended.

Now she sensed something new: panic. The Ship trembled beneath the hurried steps of metach who left behind everything and ran away, their loud cries echoing and infecting other metach with their fright.

Denetree listened helplessly to what was going on. What had happened?

The vibration and the cries faded out, lost in the distance. And then Denetree heard a new sound, one that frightened her: the scraping of the Kalpen sliding through the narrow shafts.

The Kalpen were fleeing!

Had the Ship been right? Were they being attacked? Had Venron brought disaster down on them?

Denetree heard thumps coming closer, underscored by a hectic scraping. Someone was coming toward her! She took the heaviest of her tools and clutched it, ready to defend her miserable existence. A pale light emerged from the darkness, then a wrinkled face became visible in the beam of a forehead lamp. She saw it was Tekker.

"Tekker!" she called out to him. "What's going on? Why is everyone running away?"

"I'll tell you in a moment," he replied. "You don't have time now. Come with me."

Tekker turned around smoothly in the cramped shaft and crawled away. Denetree crawled after him as fast as she could, leaving her tool behind. She had a feeling that she wouldn't need it again.

After a few meters, Tekker turned to the right, into a larger shaft, then made another right turn, so that they had made a complete 180-degree arc.

"Tekker!" Denetree gasped. "This isn't the direction they're all going!"

Without a word, the Kalpen crawled onward.

Finally they reached one of the large main shafts that cut through the Ship's decks like an underground highway system. Denetree's bicycle was leaning against the wall.

"My bicycle! How did it get here?"

"I brought it."

"But why?"

"Because you'll need it. You've got to be fast, girl."

Denetree ran to the bicycle and snapped down the front carrier frame. "Jump on, Tekker!" she exclaimed. "We can get out of here faster than the air blows through the shafts!" She motioned for the Kalpen to get on the carrier.

Tekker shook his head. "No, I'm not going with you."

"But why not? Something terrible is happening. Everyone is fleeing, even the Kalpen! You can't expect me to leave you behind. You saved my life!"

"Let them run." Tekker didn't move. "They don't know any better. The metach are dumb. All they know is their own Metach'ton and the scary stories the Ship tells them. They chew on those stories until they believe that's all there is. Anything that's strange scares them so much they lose their heads."

Denetree leaned against the handlebars. "And the Kalpen? They're running away, too!"

"The Kalpens' mouths are bigger than their brains." Tekker cackled. "Believe me, I ought to know. They think they're different, but in the end they're just plain metach. But you, girl, you're different, and your path leads somewhere else." He stepped close to Denetree and seized her wrist. The pressure of his fingers was painful. "Listen to me, girl. Strangers are on board! I don't know who they are or what they want, not even what they look like. I just know you've got to go to them. Right now. They're your one chance. You don't belong to us."

"But ... but you said yourself that I belonged to you, at the campfire!"

"It was a lie. I lied to you. To you and myself. You want to get out of here, girl. I can sense it. You've got to get out of here or you'll die. Go to the strangers! Go!" Tekker released her wrist and slapped her so hard on the back that she stumbled forward. She lost her balance. The handlebars drove into her hips. She suppressed a cry of pain, fought her way back upright, and turned to the Kalpen.

"What are you waiting for, girl? Do I have to beat you black and blue before you obey?"

"You ... you said this is my chance," Denetree stammered. "But it's yours, too. If the strangers won't do anything to me, they won't do anything to you, either! Come with me, Tekker!"

The Kalpen stepped toward her without speaking. Denetree ducked in anticipation of the blows. Tekker didn't hesitate to use force to get his way. She had witnessed it more than once.

But Tekker didn't strike her. "Look at me, girl," he said. "Look at me real good. Look at the wrinkles that forty years in the shafts have dug into my face. For forty years I've crawled through the Ship's guts. Do you think that's what I dreamed of doing all my life? What I was looking for? I took this life because it was the best that I could get, one that I could stand—and now it's the only one that's possible for me. Without the Kalpen and the shafts I'm just an ugly old man with a shrill laugh who nobody would want to have anything to do with. But you're still young. Find yourself a better life!"

Tekker grabbed her by the shoulders and pushed her with all his strength. This time, Denetree was prepared and caught herself. He feet found the pedals and her legs began to pump. Tekker remained behind.

"Now pedal as fast as you can!" was the last thing she heard him say. "Pedal,
Denetree!
"

The welcome daily routine had been restored. Lemal Netwar, who had no reason to doubt that peace on board would soon be reestablished—the elimination of the traitors was imminent—enjoyed occupying himself once more with trivial daily business.

On the display in front of him was collected all the Ship's vital statistics: energy production and consumption, birth and death rates, agricultural and manufacturing figures.

Over the years, he had become increasingly convinced that while the Ship may have been built of steel and plastic, it now functioned more like a living organism. Like a person getting on in years, it showed signs of aging and had good and bad days for which Lemal was unable to determine the causes.

And like a person, it often took only a slight nudge for a complete turnaround in its physical constitution. A rearranged distribution of energy to the various sectors, a targeted spurt of energy or oxygen here or there could work wonders. Over the years, Lemal had developed a sense of what was required, and increasingly he spent his mornings giving the Ship what it needed, what he called "stroking" it. The Naahk's electronic feelers were free from the disease that otherwise made every movement a torment.

Nothing was more satisfying than the interplay of the various numbers on his display. If he changed one variable, it affected all the others. And often, on good days, he even managed to elicit performance levels from the Ship that were close to the maximums envisioned by its builders.

This day was an average one for the Ship, which was welcome to the Naahk. It tickled his ambition, and it would divert his thoughts, which kept returning to the traitors who were even now living their last hours. He resolved to achieve a good day for the Ship.

He checked over the individual performance data. Energy production was exceptionally good. The number of be'ketren had plummeted by a dangerous percentage in recent years, but the remaining engineers performed their duties with nearly superhuman self-sacrifice. Today they were producing so much energy that he could foresee a surplus in the Ship's storage banks by day's end. Lemal called up the data on the various Metach'ton. Here, too, in the figures reflecting the situation of an hour earlier, all the values were above average. The metach were healthy, their motivation extraordinarily high, surely the beneficial result of the events of recent weeks. The Ship's community had passed with flying colors the test put to it by the traitors. The metach had been brought even closer to each other.

Lemal looked at the data with satisfaction. Only after a while did he wonder, why was it just an average day if all the most important figures were well above average?

Now feeling uneasy, he called up more data, and after a while he found the problem: the oxygen supply.

"What is it? Are the Kalpen doing shoddy work again?" he asked out loud. He didn't need to address the Net directly; it was always present.

"Their work performance is precisely in accordance with their assigned goals," the Net answered.

That was good. The Kalpen had a tendency to take liberties to which they weren't entitled. The Naahk would have liked to do without their services, but all his attempts to replace them with typical metach had failed. Either the metach achieved even less satisfactory results or within an extremely short time they turned into rebellious and stubborn Kalpen themselves, and the Naahk was right back where he started.

"Are the assignments insufficient?"

"No. You approved them yourself in the framework of the last ten-year plan. Since then, the Tenarchs have continued to monitor them in accordance with your projections."

Lemal called up additional data without taking the trouble to answer. The Net, never lacking for a reply, was a demanding conversational partner, but it had one indisputable advantage: it was not a human being. Unlike with the Tenarchs, he didn't have to think about whether he offended the Net or behaved impolitely.

A schematic diagram of the Ship appeared on the display. Sectors where the oxygen supply met or exceeded the required amount were shown in green; sectors in which it was below the optimal amount but still within the acceptable range, which was unavoidable in such a large and complex ecosphere as the Ship's, showed in blue; and sectors where intervention was required were in red.

The Inner Deck was filled with green and blue fields, the usual readings. The nearly complete lack of plants guaranteed these results. The Middle Deck glowed in unbroken green. The Outer Deck was green except for one sector in the area of the bow.

"What's going on there?" the Naahk asked. He didn't have to state his question any more precisely. The Net knew what data to show on his display.

"I do not understand your question."

"In Sector XVI F of the Outer Deck, there has been a drop in pressure." What was the Net up to? Was it playing one of its games with him?

"I do not understand what you are referring to. All readings are normal."

"And what's this I have here on the display?"

"Green readings, of course. I said so already."

"Yes, of course, now I see it." Lemal's fingers trembled as he took a closer look at the sector. A system failure. The behavior of the Net could no longer be explained by the modifications he had made to its interface. The Net behaved like a human being as a result, often resisted and hesitated, but up to now Lemal had never noticed it had the ability to lie.

There was only one explanation for the Net's behavior: a system failure. That of the Net or the hardware that supported it. He hoped that was the explanation.

He manually connected to the sensors in that sector. With one exception, they responded to the diagnostic routine with green reports. They were operational. The failure had to lie within the Net.

Lemal ran the diagnostic routine a second and third time. Perhaps he had been mistaken, perhaps it was only a defective sensor, not the Net itself, on whose failure-free operation the survival of the community depended.