“Any sign of the control room? Or of engines?”
“No, but they might be at the back, towards the jets — if that’s how it’s driven.”
Now he was hovering over one of the stairways. From a distance, it looked like a fire escape, but at closer quarters, he saw that the metal was at least a yard thick. It was the same dull silver as the floor. Each step was about four feet high and deep. There were no handrails. He followed them upwards, to a gallery supported by pillars. A catwalk, also without rails, ran across a gulf at least half a mile wide.
Craigie said: “Can you see a light?” He pointed.
Carlsen said: “Switch off your lights.” They were in blackness that enclosed them like a grave. Then, as his eyes adjusted, Carlsen knew Craigie was right. Somewhere towards the centre of the ship, there was a greenish glow. He checked his Geiger counter. It showed a slightly higher reading than usual, but well below the danger level. He told Dabrowsky: “There seems to be some kind of fault luminosity. I’m going to investigate.”
It was a temptation to thrust powerfully against the stairs and propel himself forward at speed across the gulf. But ten years in space had made caution second nature. Using the catwalk as a guide, he floated slowly towards the glow. He kept one eye on the Geiger counter. Its activity increased noticeably as they drew closer, but it was still below the danger level, and he knew his insulated suit would protect him.
It was farther than it seemed. The four men floated past galleries that looked as if they had been designed by a mad Renaissance architect, and flights of stairs that looked as if they might stretch back to earth or outward to the stars. There were more immense columns, but this time they broke off in space, as if some roof they had once supported had now collapsed. When Carlsen brushed against one of these, he noticed that it seemed to be covered with a fine white powder, not unlike sulphur dust or lycopodium. He scraped some of this into a sample bag.
Half an hour later, the glow was brighter. Looking at his watch, he was surprised to see it was nearly one o’clock; it made him realise that he was hungry. They had switched off their searchlights, and the green glow was bright enough to see by. The light came from below them.
Dabrowsky’s voice said: “That was moonbase, Olof. He said your wife had just been on television with the children.”
At any other time, the news would have delighted him. Now it seemed strangely remote, as if it referred to a previous existence. Dabrowsky said: “Zelensky says there are four billion people all sitting in front of the televisions, waiting for news. Can I send an interim report?”
“Wait ten minutes. We’re getting close to this light. I’d like to find out what it is.”
Now at least he could see that it was pouring up from a chasm in the floor. The greeny-blue quality reminded him of moonlight on fields. He experienced a surge of exultancy that made him kick himself powerfully downwards. Ives said: “Hey, Skip, not too fast.” He felt like a swallow skimming and gliding towards the earth. The edge of the gulf lay a quarter of a mile below him, and he could see the full extent of the immense rectangular hole that was like a cloud-filled valley among mountains. The Geiger counter had now passed the danger point, but the insulation of the suit would protect him for some time yet.
The hole into which they were plunging was about a mile long and a quarter of a mile wide. The walls were covered with the same designs as the outer chamber. The light seemed to be coming from the floor and from an immense column in the centre of the space. He heard Murchison say: “What in hell’s that? A monument?” Then Craigie said: “It’s made of glass.” Carlsen stretched out his hands to cushion his impact against the floor, rolled over like a parachutist, then bounced for a hundred yards. When he succeeded in standing upright, he found himself at the base of a pedestal that supported the transparent column.
Like most things on this ship, it was bigger than it looked from a distance. Carlsen judged its diameter to be at least fifty yards. Inside, immense dim shapes were suspended. In the phosphorescent light, they looked like black octopuses. Carlsen propelled himself upwards until he was opposite one of them, and then shone his searchlight on it. In the dazzling beam, he could see that it was not black, but orange. At close quarters, it looked less like an octopus, more like a bundle of fungoid creepers joined together at one end.
Close beside him, Ives said: “What do you make of that?”
Carlsen knew what he was thinking. “I don’t think these things built this ship.”
Murchison pressed the glass of his space helmet against the column. “What do you suppose they are? Vegetable? Or some kind of squid?”
“Perhaps neither. They may be some completely alien life form.”
Murchison said: “My God!”
The fear in his voice made Carlsen’s heart pound. When he spoke, his own voice was choked. “What in God’s name is it?”
Something was moving behind the squidlike shapes. Craigie’s voice said: “It’s me.”
“What the hell are you playing at?” The shock had made Carlsen angry.
“I’m inside this tube. It’s hollow. And I can see something down below.”
Cautiously, Carlsen propelled himself upwards, braking himself by pressing his gloved hands against the glass of the column. He was sweating heavily, although the temperature of the spacesuit was controlled. He floated past the top of the column, made a twist in the air and managed to land. He could then see that, as Craigie had said, it was hollow. The walls containing the squidlike creatures were no more than ten feet thick. And when he looked into the space down the centre, he noticed that the blue glow was far stronger there. It was streaming up from below the floor. “Donald? Where are you?”
Craigie’s voice said: “I’m down below. I think this must be the living quarters.”
Carlsen reached out to grab Murchison, who had propelled himself too fast and was about to float past him. Without speaking, both launched themselves headfirst into the hollow core. Since space-walking had become second nature, they had lost their normal inhibitions about this position. They descended gently towards the blue-green light. A moment later they were floating through the hole into a sea of blue that reminded Carlsen of a grotto he had once seen on Capri. Looking up, he realised that the ceiling — the floor of the room they had just left — was semi-transparent, a kind of crystal. The glow they had seen from above was the light that filtered through this. Down the wall to the right, another great staircase descended. But the scale here was less vast than above. This was altogether closer to the scale on the Hermes. The light came from the walls and the floor. There were buildings in the centre of the room, square and also semi-transparent. And at the far end of the room, perhaps a quarter of a mile away, Carlsen could see stars burning in the blackness. Part of the wall had been ripped away. He could see the immense plates twisted inwards and torn, as if someone had attacked a cardboard box with a hammer. He pointed. “That’s probably what stopped the ship.”
The fascination of violent disaster drove them towards the gap. Dabrowsky was asking for further details. Carlsen stopped at the edge of the gulf, looking down at the floor, which was buckled and torn under his feet. “Something big tore a hole in the ship — a hole more than a hundred feet wide. It must have been hot: the metal looks fused as well as ripped. All the air must have escaped within minutes, unless they could seal off this part of the ship. Any living things must have died instantaneously.”
Dabrowsky asked: “What about these buildings?”
“We’ll investigate them now.”
Ives’s voice said: “Hey, Captain!” It was almost a shriek. Carlsen saw that he was standing near the buildings, his searchlight beam stabbing through transparent walls and emerging on the other side. “Captain, there’s people in there.”
He had to check the desire to hurl himself across the quarter of a mile that divided him from the buildings. His impetus would have carried him beyond them, and perhaps knocked him unconscious against the far wall. As he moved slowly, he asked: “What kind of people? Are they alive?”
“No, they’re dead. But they’re human, all right. At least, humanoid.”
He checked himself against the end building. The walls were glass, as clear as the observation port of the Hermes. These were undoubtedly living quarters. Inside were objects that he could identify as tables and chairs, alien in design but recognisably furniture. And two feet away, on the other side of the glass, lay a man. The head was bald, the cheeks sunken and yellow. The blue eyes stared glassily at the ceiling. He was held down to the bed by a canvas sheet, whose coarse texture was clearly visible. Under this sheet, which was stretched tight, they could see the outlines of bands or hoops, clearly designed to hold the body in place.