door open. She kept pushing the buttons in desperation, one after the other,
hoping to catch the right button at the right point. It had to work. It just had
to.
The red light suddenly came on, and a bell sounded. Sabatini stopped for a
moment, and through the small glass window they could see his expression of
desperation. He pounded, swore, then renewed his attack on the lock, but now Chu
Li was on the wheel. The whole procedure took perhaps forty seconds, yet it
seemed like years.
Since it was a pressurized burial, the outer door opened pretty quickly.
Deng Ho’s body moved right out, but Sabatini grabbed hold of the wheel. His body
was horizontal, his hands gripped the wheel, his face was pressed in fear
against the viewing port, but the air was exhausted in an instant, and the
artificial gravity plunged him back down.
Chow Dai, exhausted, slumped to the floor, followed quickly by her sister. Do
you think—you can close— that outside door? she managed to ask.
Not yet. Not for many minutes, Chu Li responded. I do not know if someone can
live in space with no air, but I do know that no one can hold his breath for
more than five minutes. We will give it ten. She sank down, also exhausted. Her
arms and shoulder muscles ached, and she felt as if she’d sprained both wrists.
Still, it had been worth it. That one moment of stark terror on Sabatini’s face
was payment for much inflicted misery, brutality, and indignity. Deng Ho’s
gesture had not been in vain.
Chow Dai crawled over and gave Chu Li a kiss. Welcome back, she said.
Not for long, but I do not regret it. We have killed him, and the ship will
know it. The gas should come at any moment.
Chow Dai looked disappointed. I had forgotten about that. I suppose that was
why he was so confident. Foreign devils have no idea of what honor is. Still, it
would have been nice to have won completely.
Chow Mai listened, thinking. It would seem to me that if this gas was coming,
it would have come by now. Either it is not going to come or he is not dead.
Chu Li felt a new shot of energy and stood up. You are right. She looked
through the air lock window and saw the interior, still lighted. She could not
see the area right by the door, but there was no sign of anyone or anything in
the air lock, and the outer door was definitely open, the alarm bell still
ringing. There was certainly no air in there, and she knew that space had to be
very cold, yet there was something nagging at her brain, troubling her.
Gravity. They had weight here, even if they felt lighter than back home. The
whole section had gravity, including the air lock. Sabatini clearly had not been
sucked out with the air, although it had been close. Why was there now no body
slumped down, hands frozen to the wheel in a death grip?
The ship had been elaborately and illegally modified, and there were all sorts
of compartments and gadgets built into the walls. Might there not also be some
sort of emergency compartment in the air lock? She couldn’t see how a body could
stand a vacuum, even for a few moments, but what if it could? There was better
than two meters of air lock. Something had to be inside those thick walls.
We must find something to jam this door. Before we close the outer door, which
will automatically flood the compartment with air, we must jam the wheel so it
cannot be opened from the outside. He might be alive in some rescue compartment
there. We must examine as much of the ship as we can to make sure such a one
cannot otherwise reenter the ship.
If he was in there someplace, he’d be in a small, probably dark compartment much
like a closet, with some sort of breathing device but little in the way of food
and water for more than a day and certainly no bathroom. The only way to make
certain, though, was to risk keeping the outer door open, jam the inner, and
somehow make contact with the ship’s pilot.
She reached down and picked up his headset. She had not brought honor, glory, or
dignity to herself by serving him, but she had always been observant. Now she
thought she could imitate his odd, animal-like growls that commanded some of the
locks. The headset had been bent out of shape, but it did not appear damaged.
She put it on, although it was too large for her head, and spoke one of the
commands in his language that she knew overrode the electronics room lock.
The door opened, and to her surprise she heard a growling, unintelligible
response in the earphones. For a moment it startled her, and she wondered if
there were others aboard in areas they had never seen, but then she realized
that it was the computer pilot.
She had spotted something in the electronics room long ago that was the first
priority, and that was a complete electronics and mechanical tool set. It was
almost too heavy for her, but she got it out and open, and the Chow sisters were
able to tell her which tool to use. Shortly the girls’ hands were free, although
the cuffs themselves remained as oversized bracelets. One of the waist chains
they wrapped through the spokes of the air lock wheel, then secured it with a
small hand-held welder to the base of the nearest chair.
They were all tired and aching but far too excited to sleep. Chu Li checked the
schematic of the ship’s passenger level on the monitor. If I read this
correctly, then the whole level is pressurized—has air, that is, that is fit for
us—except this area all the way in the rear. Those double lines front and back
are air locks, but if this color is air, then they are not active. Shall we go
see?
She opened the center door with a command in that strange language, and a bell
sounded distantly—but nothing else happened. She was almost relieved to hear the
response coming from the earpiece; it confirmed her belief that it was the
computer responding and not anyone else.
They went along a narrow corridor, then Chu Li stopped. This was my home for
those long times, she told them gravely, pointing to a lower storage closet.
After just one week in there, you would sell body, soul, and honor to anyone
who would keep you from going back.
As Sabatini had warned them, animal cages filled the huge storage area, all
designed for just about anything that could be imagined and some that were
beyond imagining. The cages were empty this trip and apparently newly cleaned
and reinforced. Beyond them were a large number of sealed containers, all
labeled in a language or code none of them could understand, fitted together
into vast clumps for useful storage. The path between was so narrow, they had to
go single file.
The compartment narrowed until they emerged at an air lock. As she had expected,
the light was green. When they opened it, the noise of great motors was almost
deafening, but Chu Li finally got the courage to enter and walked the short
distance to the far door. Peering through the window, she gasped, then continued
to stare, fascinated. Come! Look! she called. Nervously, the two sisters
joined her.
Before them was a second enormous cargo room. Larger than the first and filled
with containers, it was spinning around at a dizzying pace.
Why does the room spin? Chow Mai asked Chu Li.
She thought for a moment. I’m not sure. I seem to remember from very long
ago—her memories—something about this. Ah! I think I know, but there is only one
way to know for sure. Do you notice how light you feel?
Only then did they notice how little gravity they felt here.
I do not think the room spins at all, she told them. I believe that it is we
who are spinning. You must trust me on this, for it is far too complex to
explain, but spinning is how many spaceships make gravity in space.
We are not spinning! the sisters responded in unison. That room is!
There is only one way to find out, and if I am wrong it is a dangerous one. It
is to go in there. See that net stretched there? I think you jump and grab on to
that and then use the handholds to go on.
No. It is too dangerous, Chow Dai responded. What does it matter who is
spinning? There is nothing in there that we can use.
Chu Li was disappointed but had to agree. Without her, these two were lost in
the technology of this vessel, which to them was incomprehensible and magical.
Now was not the time to see what weightlessness was like.
Reluctantly, she turned and led them out through the container corridor, past
the cages and the closet, and back into the passenger cabin. She was somehow
relieved to find it just as they had left it.
She looked again in the electronics room and at the mindprint machine and its
numbered cartridges. That machine makes you learn things you do not know or be
things you are not, she told them. It is how the captain learned our language
so well. I fear that we will have to try them and see if one has the key to
speaking to the ship.
But would that not be in his true language? Chow Dai asked. Would he have
something to teach his own native tongue in there?
I doubt if the pilot computer speaks the captain’s language. All such computers
are produced by Master System in factories peopled only by machines. They speak
their own language, a language of numbers, on a level humans cannot possibly
comprehend. The way humans talk to them is by a shell, a pretend environment
where what the computer speaks is translated into a human tongue and where human
language is translated into machine.
These ships are built according to standards that existed long ago, in the times
of our ancient ancestors, and those outside of Earth continue to use those
ancient languages.
But it could have been changed to any, could it not? Chow Dai persisted.
It could, but I do not think it was. I have heard the captain curse many times,
and it is a truth that one tends to curse in one’s native tongue. His curses
were equally unintelligible, but they were in a softer, more melodic tongue than
the one used for opening the doors. It is a harsh, nonmelodic, almost
machinelike language, an ugly tongue. It is there. It must be there. Otherwise
we will arrive at Melchior anyway, just without the captain. I worry about what
might be on some of the others. There are close to forty cartridges here, and
only nine spaceports on all of Earth, so a captain would have need of only the
nine languages of the Administrative Centers for each spaceport. I know nothing
about the other worlds, but even if we give them nine or ten, it still leaves
half the cartridges unexplained.
But if we must, we will try them all and see, Chow Mai said pragmatically.
I fear we must, yet I do not like it. Anything may be programmed by a master
mindprint machine on those cartridges. Things that change your mind, your