The party continued on through a metal-walled underground corridor which brought them to the laboratories where preliminary examinations were normally made of items brought up from the ship below. The room that they found themselves in was a large one divided by half-height partitions into a maze of work bays, each a clutter of machinery, test instruments, electronics racks and
tool cabinets. Above it all, the roof was barely visible behind the tangles of piping, ducts, cables and conduits that spanned the room.
Craig Patterson, the lab supervisor for that section, ushered the group into one of the bays and gestured at a workbench on which lay a squat metal cylinder, about a foot high and three feet or more across, surrounded by an intricate arrangement of brackets, webs and flanges, all integral with the main body. The whole assembly looked heavy and solid and had evidently been removed from a mounting in some larger piece of equipment; there were several ports and connections that suggested inlet and outlet points, possibly electrical.
“Here’s something that’s had us baffled,” Patterson said. “We’ve brought a few of these up so far-all identical. There are hundreds more down there, all over the ship. They’re mounted under the floors at intervals everywhere you go. Any ideas?”
Rogdar Jassilane stepped forward and stooped to study the object briefly.
“It resembles a modified G-pack,” Shilohin commented from the doorway where she was standing next to Hunt. The Ganymeans were able to converse via ZORAC, still at Main, seven hundred miles away. Jassilane ran a finger along the casing of the object, examined some of the markings still visible in places, and then straightened up, apparently having seen all he needed.
“That’s what it is, all right,” he announced. “It seems to have a few extras to the ones I’m used to, but the basic design’s the same.”
“What’s a G-pack?” asked Art Stelmer, one of Patterson’s engineers.
“An element in a distributed node field,” Jassilane told him.
“Great,” Stelmer replied with a shrug, still mystified.
Shilohin went on to explain. “I’m afraid it’s to do with a branch of physics that hasn’t been discovered by your race yet. In your space vessels, such as Jupiter Five, you simulate gravity by arranging for most portions of the structure to rotate, don’t you?” Hunt suddenly remembered the inexplicable sensation of weight that he had felt on entering the Shapieron. The implication of what Shilobin had just said became clear.
“You don’t simulate it,” he guessed. “You manufacture it.”
“Quite,” she confirmed. “Devices like that were standard fittings in all Ganymean ships.”
The Earthmen present were not really surprised since they had suspected for some time that the Ganymean civilization had mastered technologies that were totally unknown to them. All the same they were intrigued.
“We’ve been wondering about that,” Patterson said, turning to face Shilohin. “What kind of principles is it all based on? I’ve never heard of anything like this before.” Shilohin did not answer at once but seemed to pause to collect her thoughts.
“I’m not really sure where to begin,” she replied at last. “It would take rather a long time to explain meaningfully. . . .”
“Hey, there’s a booster collar from a transfer tube,” one of the other Ganymeans broke in. He was staring over the partition into the adjoining bay and pointing to another, larger piece of Ganymean machinery that was lying there partially dismantled.
“Yes, I believe you’re right,” Jassilane agreed, following his companion’s gaze.
“What the hell’s a booster collar?” Stelmer pleaded.
“And a transfer tube?” Patterson added, forgetting his question of a few seconds before.
“There were tubes running all over the ship that were used for moving objects, and people, from place to place,” Jassilane answered. “You must know them because I’ve seen them on the plans of the ship that your engineers have drawn.”
“We kind of half-guessed what they were,” Hunt supplied. “But we were never really sure about how they worked. Is this another G-trick?”
“Right,” Jassilane said. “Local fields inside the tubes provided the motive force. That collar next door is simply a type of amplifier that was fitted around the tube to boost and smooth the field strength. There’d be one-oh-every thirty feet or so, depending on how wide the tube was.”