In the heart of the darkest interior, the lamp flickered and puffed out, its flame expiring in a desperate lunge. “Out of fuel?” Melody asked, chagrined.
“Out of air,” March said in the dark beside her.
“But we have air!”
“Gravity’s gotten too low. Fire needs circulation, to bring in new oxygen. The hot air expands and rises out of the way. But without gravity, there’s nowhere to rise, so it just stays there—and stifles the flame.”
“Yes, of course,” Melody said. Elementary physics! “We shall have trouble breathing, too.”
“Not if we keep moving. The force of our exhalations circulates the air; convection doesn’t have much to do with it. If we can rig a forced-draft for the lamp, it’ll burn.”
“Better just to use the battery-flash,” one of the others said. “We have three, and they’re good for several hours. By then we’ll be at the control room, and can turn on what lights we need.”
Melody took one flash and March another, and they continued. They had stepped forward several thousand years in basic technology, perhaps, but were no better off. The gravity was so slight it was difficult to get friction with the deck; now they had to use the handholds to hurl themselves forward.
When they were about halfway to the control room, the ship shuddered violently, as though suffering its final death agony. Gravity ceased altogether. The anchors had completed their grisly work.
Suddenly the passage was filled with floating junk, jostled loose by the terminal convulsion. Theoretically, everything in the ship was secured, but in practice the steady gravity had permitted considerable laxity. Tools, articles of clothing, books, fixtures—all were drifting in the wan beam of Melody’s flashlight.
“We’re in trouble,” March said.
“We can shove this stuff aside; it won’t hurt us.” Melody said, though the eerie drifting alarmed her.
“The solids, yes. The liquids, no.” And he pointed with his beam.
Now she saw it: a spreading python of liquid emerging from an open cabin. It was sanitary refuse that had not reached the recycling unit because of the power cutoff. Now it was diffusing into the air, closing off the passage. “I’m not unduly finicky,” Melody said, “but let’s see if we can find an alternate route.”
They took a side passage, but that, too, was clouding up. “Soon we’ll be breathing vaporized urine,” Melody muttered to Yael. “Unhealthy prospect”
“Ugh,” Yael agreed.
“I think we’d better get back into our suits and plow through,” March said.
Quickly they unboxed the suits and donned them. The magnetic shoes helped now, making the footing secure. Then they tramped through the sordid mists to the control room.
The ship was in a shambles. The loss of gravity had caused the fail-safe mechanisms to lock and the controls did not respond. The magnets were willing to help, but had to be given precise directives to enable them to override the fail-safes and establish workable partial systems.
Melody, Llume, and the men hardly knew what to do themselves. Poring over the instruction manuals, they gradually got portions of the ship functioning again, including the main computer. Then it became easier.
The laser cannon were partially operative, but the drive mechanism was beyond repair. The Ace of Swords might be able to fire, but it could neither pursue nor avoid an enemy ship. They had only confirmed what the Knyfh officers had known all along: the ship was a derelict.
18. Fleet of Ghosts
*report: segment qaval has fallen segment knyfh is in final stage*
:: then conquest is complete! ::
*not yet resistance continues in segment etamin*
:: oh, yes but that will fall when knyfh support is lost ::
*this is uncertain resistance seems to be native*
:: etamin! why so much trouble with that insignificant region? we did not anticipate trouble there! ::
*dash did*
:: dash was a supercautious coward! why did he fear etamin? ::
*because it was the segment of flint of outworld, who foiled us before*
:: flint of outworld is long dead! no such fluke can occur again all the rest of the milky way galaxy has fallen! ::
*the dash command of etamin has been recalled he feels otherwise*
:: the one who was discovered and nullified? who yielded his command to slash and finally to quadpoint, who is about to complete this conquest? the opinion of this creature is irrelevant he shall be assigned to degrading duty why does he feel otherwise? ::
*he says there is another like flint of outworld who coordinates the resistance*
:: another super-kirlian? then capture that aura and bring it here [pause] no, send it to sphere dash let them handle their nemesis and know it for illusion ::
*POWER*
:: CIVILIZATION ::
The ship was a derelict, but it lived. It had no spin, no gravity, refuse littered its passages, and it drifted without external drive—but deep inside it functioned.
“No one blasted us,” Melody said. “They think we’re dead; no sense wasting valuable energy on a finished hulk.”
She looked into the reactivated globe. The Knyfh cluster charge had brought the ship into the center of the battle area. It was a graveyard; ships and pieces of ships littered space much as the smaller refuse littered the halls.
It had evidently been an internecine struggle. More than half the ships of the original fleets seemed to be here, inert. Yet the battle continued: One group of fifteen ships was looping about for another pass, and on the opposite side another group of eight was maneuvering similarly. The hostages had lost thirty of their forty-five, the home forces twenty-three of their thirty-one. So the loyalists were gaining, yet losing too, for though the difference had closed to seven ships, the ratio had risen to about two to one again. Very soon Andromeda would win, and Segment Etamin would fall.
“We have to do something!” Melody exclaimed. “We’re not dead—and we never signaled disablement. We can still fight!”
“We can’t orient,” Llume pointed out. “The lasers may not be sufficiently charged, and the lenses may be too fogged.”
“I’ll go out there and change a lens myself if I have to,” Melody said. “We can shoot from ambush. The enemy will never know what hit it. We might get several—enough to change the balance.”
“We have to give fair warning,” March said.
Melody didn’t argue; she was not sure where the ethics were now. “All right, I’ll advertise on the net. They’ll know one of the derelicts has come to life, but maybe not which one. If our lasers don’t work, they’ll never know which one. And if the lasers do work…”
March smiled. “That seems fair enough.”
Melody activated the net, hoping it still worked, hoping Captain Mnuhl of Knyfh was still available. “Lan of Yap calling Mnuhl of Knyfh.”
To her surprise, he answered right away. “Mnuhl of Knyfh. Provide your location and we shall send a rescue shuttle.”
“Captain, we don’t want rescue. We were disabled, but have recovered enough to—”
“Desist,” the Knyfh said curtly.
“Captain, I’m trying to tell you—”
“Our relation is severed if you retain combat status. I am detaching my contingent from the fleet.”
Dismayed, Melody could only ask: “Why, Captain?”
Even through the mechanical translation the terrible regret was evident. “I am no longer free to wage war. Segment Knyfh has fallen to Andromeda.” The connection severed.