The Shadow and Night (53 page)

But was it really enormous? The scale was impossible to tell, and for a moment, Merral had a fancy in which all he was looking at was merely some tiny but immaculately crafted model a few centimeters across. Then, floating over the fuel storage tanks and casting a tiny distorted pitch-black shadow below, he made out the shape of a general survey craft, some sister vessel to the
Nesta Lamaine,
and the sense of scale became apparent.

Then there was another course change, and one by one the dazzling bronze yellow Gate beacons rotated into view. He peered at the midpoint of the six beacons, straining his eyes until he saw, glinting dully, a minute metallic object.
The Gate,
he said to himself in awe.
I can see the Gate with my naked eye!

The call came to return to seats before deceleration, and he drifted back and buckled himself in.

With what Vero sleepily remarked was “typical Assembly caution,” it took fifteen minutes from the first gentle echoing tap of the
Shih Li-Chen
docking with the Farholme Gate Station until, to the accompaniment of various whistles and hisses, the hatchway opened to reveal a corridor into the station. Floating over to the exit, laden with their bags and the plate samples, they left the
Shih Li-Chen,
drifted into one end of the gravity transition corridor, and walked out of the other at the ferry car system.

After ten minutes of travel down tunnels and along corridors with only the briefest of glimpses of space and stars, Merral and Vero were unloaded at the lower entrance to the
Heinrich Schütz.
They walked into the gravity transition corridor and at the other end floated their way out into the crew and technical section.

As Vero asked for the locations of the couches for Sabourin and Diekens, Merral looked around in awe. He had, he supposed, been unimpressed by the interior of the
Shih Li-Chen,
which had seemed little more than an exaggerated and overlarge general survey craft. But this was different.

Merral knew, of course, that the
Heinrich Schütz,
as an inter-system liner, was one of that order of vessels known as the “Great Ships.” Other than their size, the distinguishing feature of their order was the fact that their designers had had a freedom to work denied to them in the lesser craft that had to fly through atmospheres. He had seen many illustrations of the interior design of the Great Ships, but to be inside a real one, rather than a simulation, was somehow a very different experience. The results, honed over generations, were, to Merral's eyes, an outstanding and eye-catching triumph.

His first thought as he looked around was that it reminded him of being in some enormous and fantastic seashell with a spiral-curved floor sweeping upward above him and linking fluidly with the walls and the central column. The impression of being in a natural organic structure was aided by the scarcity of straight lines, the pale milk-and-honey coloring, and the smooth porcelain texture of the walls. Abundant lighting, whose source appeared to be everywhere and nowhere, lit the interior so that the whole ship seemed to glow as if it were a translucent shell illuminated by sunlight.

Then, suddenly, Merral's point of view changed, and he saw himself at the base of a high ancient tower with a vast snowy marble ramp sweeping gracefully through buttresses and archways up a score of levels in smooth, gentle, stepless curves. In the end, he concluded that both views were true; the interior was both organic
and
architectural.

“Over here.” Vero's voice intruded into Merral's contemplation.

“Sorry. I was just taken aback by it. It's beautiful.”

Vero gave his friend an amused grimace as he gestured to a pair of couches. “It's some compensation for the turbulence when we go through Below-Space. But I have to admit that the Assembly designers were surely right in thinking that a purely functional form was not an adequate response to the privilege of traversing Below-Space. You were told Horfalder's maxim?”

Merral tugged himself forward on a strap and floated over to where couches protruded at the edge of a fluted ridge curving out from the towering central column. “Horfalder? I remember something, but you tell me.”

“She was head of the design team for the Composer Class; she said that as the average distance covered by an inter-system liner between Gates was equivalent to around fifty years of space flight, the least they could do was create a structure that you could live with for a half century. Even if you were only in it for a few hours.”

Merral looked around again, considered Horfalder's wisdom, and found it good. Then, having stowed his holdall and the plate sample in a compartment under the couch, he lay down, trying not to float off, and stared around again. Now, though, as he looked harder, he realized that underneath his first complementary images of the shell and the tower he could see the ship as a machine. As he stared upward he could imagine the twenty-odd levels above him as distinct compartments, and glancing around he could see, concealed in one way or another, all the lockers, access panels, handholds, and information screens that such a ship needed.

With the final preparations being made around him, Merral strapped himself down and found a switch that lowered a screen down just in front of his eyes. On it he was able to read about the composer Heinrich Schütz, and he marveled again that anybody could have dedicated music to the Almighty during a war that lasted thirty years. Then as he chewed the simple food that was passed around, he glanced at the explanatory section on the ship itself.

He could easily imagine how much his father would have enjoyed reading about the Composer Class (prototype built in 9101, the
Heinrich Schütz
being the twenty-fifth of the second series) and its lifespan of around a thousand years before a complete renovation was needed. Yet now, more than ever, he found himself with little appetite for machinery or mechanics. With more interest, he went through the elementary introduction to Gate travel with a well-done and elaborate version of the traditional analogy of the two ways of getting across a narrow but deep estuary.

Travel in Normal-Space, it reminded him, was analogous to the long, slow journey round the edges, while the Gate travel was like taking a shortcut through a tube running directly through the waters. It was a familiar illustration, but now, on the verge of taking that shortcut, it had a new relevance. The illustration was developed to explain some of the Below-Space features such as the notorious turbulence, which was here portrayed as being analogous to the buffeting of the estuary's water against the tube. Then, balking at a treatment of plasma engines, Merral allowed the screen to retract.

Eventually, just before ten o'clock, the last door closed and Captain Bennett gave her welcome from the speakers. After that the Assembly hymn was played and there was the traditional solemn appeal to the sovereign Lord on undertaking Below-Space travel, with its acknowledgement that such travel was a privilege and its request for safe arrival.

At exactly ten o'clock, just as the “Amens” were dying away, there was a dull thud as the linkages detached themselves. Slowly, Merral heard a gentle low-frequency rumble begin behind him and his couch began to sway ever so slightly. He lowered the screen to where he could read it and checked the flight plan. They would swing in a wide arc clear of the station to align themselves exactly above the hexagon at what was known as the burn-point. There, at 10:40, the plasma engines would ignite at full burn to start the rapid straight-line acceleration that would give them the ten-thousand-kilometers-an-hour speed needed to coast quickly along the Normal-Space tunnel linking the Gates. At 10:55 they would enter Farholme Gate, emerging a mere ten and a half minutes later at Bannermene Gate. Forty light-years away.

Merral lay back, feeling pushed slightly down into his couch by the acceleration's comforting semblance of gravity that a wall sign declared to be 0.6 g. He was still tired, and in his brain a thousand thoughts seemed to be chasing each other.

Some of the dozen people around him in this part of the Space Affairs section were busy monitoring the ship and the passenger levels, while others were plainly relaxing or sleeping. One or two were walking buoyantly from the lift section in the middle of the ship.

Eventually Merral closed his eyes, wondering if he was tired enough to sleep through both burn-point and the Below-Space transit. He was aware that some people claimed to have slept through Gate passage, but most stayed awake due to the buffeting and those various psychological effects such as disorientation that were common, but which still eluded comprehension. Merral tried to get his mind to relax and encouraged it to concentrate on nothing.
Imagine a white snow field,
he told himself,
during a blizzard.

“Sentinel Enand? Forester D'Avanos?” The voice was urgent.

Startled, Merral opened his eyes to see a man in a dark blue uniform bending over him, clutching the side of the couch.

“Yes? I'm Merral D'Avanos,” he answered, wondering with some alarm how this man knew his name.

“I'm Charles Frand, Second Communications Officer.” The angular face with a thin black moustache had an expression that seemed to request immediate action. “Captain Bennett needs to see you both now. There's been an odd message. Can you both come forward to the bridge please? Immediately. We will be at burn-point in minutes.”

A look of profound alarm crossed Vero's face as he gingerly unstrapped himself. “Odd . . . ,” he murmured.

Together, they walked unsteadily across the floor to the elevator tube, aware of others watching them. As they accelerated up through the central spine of the ship, Vero, gripping a hold-bar tight, stared at Merral. “I don't like it,” he muttered. “I don't like it at all! There is barely half an hour before we leave the system.”

The door opened into the high-roofed command cabin. Merral was vaguely aware that the spiral theme continued here, with the space being dominated by a single sweeping floorway that ran in a smooth curve from the base up to the vaulted ceiling. On this grand sweep was a series of pastel-colored consoles all facing one high, flat wall, on which an enormous image of the Gate appeared. Merral felt sure that the screen surface must match a plane of the hexagonal outer surface.

“Created gravity here, careful,” Officer Frand said. “Captain's up to the right. Blue console.”

Gripping the sculpted handrail, they walked up the gentle sweep of the floor. As they did, Merral looked across at the screen, recognizing that the image was a computer-generated illustration showing the Gate from an oblique angle. Incomprehensible data readouts shimmered around the edges of the screen.

A lean woman with blonde hair in a tightly coiled braid rose stiffly from her seat and turned to them as they approached the cluster of three consoles grouped on the top of the slope that evidently formed the bridge.
The captain,
Merral thought, seeing the two yellow flashes on her shoulders.

She greeted them with an abrupt and rather cool handshake.

“Captain Leana Bennett,” she announced in a precise, truncated way that mingled authority with perplexity. Looking at her tanned face with its fine etching of lines, Merral realized she was his mother's generation, but of a very different character. There was a tautness and precision about Captain Bennett's frame, face, and manner that told you immediately why the Assembly trusted her with over three hundred lives and an almost priceless ship.

“And you are not Engineers Sabourin and Diekens. Rather, you are instead a sentinel and a forester. How very irregular.” She looked sternly at them for a second with piercing dark brown eyes. “But that can wait. This came in five minutes ago. Comms, show it, please.” She pointed to a small screen on one of the adjacent consoles.

A flickering image of Perena Lewitz appeared. “Captain Bennett, this is Perena Lewitz, Captain of the
Nesta Lamaine.
” Merral strained to hear the voice, which was slightly distorted.

“This is very urgent. I am unable to access you through normal channels. I have just received an unusual message, which I think I trust. It says that your ship must not enter the Gate. Repeat: not enter the Gate. There is a peril there. The problem is related to Sentinel Enand and Forester D'Avanos who are occupying the couches of Space Affairs Engineers Sabourin and Diekens. They may be able to explain the situation. But, I repeat, I have been warned that your ship must not enter the Gate. I suggest you return to Gate Station and—”

The image on the screen froze, broke into lines of static, and faded away.

“Return to Gate Station?” Vero whispered in alarm. “But we
have
to go through. . . .” Then he stopped and stared at Merral, his eyes glinting. Intuitively, Merral knew they both had the same thought:
Is it her
?