The room certainly was an interesting place, though we have no descriptive referents capable of explaining exactly how the alien saw it. It was full of control panels, switches, blinking lights, five ranked sets of starsuits.
The Beachball examined each in turn, bouncing over open shelves and packages of emergency foodstuffs and even the triple knob that Pinback had sweated over—the one which, if engaged, would blow open the outer emergency door, an event that would be disastrous to anyone on the lock side of an airtight portal.
Not that the Beachball knew or could comprehend any of this. In any case, it elected not to play with the triple knob. Instead, its attention was drawn to a partial hole in the wall, where a protective plate had come loose and now swung from a last, reluctant screw. An interesting hum issued from within the hole, and there was an ugly dark spot on the outside of the loose plate where it had been scorched recently.
There was also a pretty glowing thing inside.
The alien couldn’t read, either, so the characters etched into the swinging plate meant nothing to it beyond another smattering of red color. There was a lot of small print, and two big blotches of red, which spelled out:
CAUTION… LASER.
The Beachball took one bounce and stuck itself to the wall just outside the loose panel. It peered inward with whatever it used for eyes.
Two beams of intense red light flashed deeper into the dark interior, still steady, still in proper line. They issued from a complex instrument close by the portal.
If the Beachball had been at all familiar with starship construction, it would have noted instantly that the join between the light-emitting device and its base was no longer solid. Shifting its position on the wall, it reached in with both claws, touching, feeling, probing curiously for more tactile information about the thing that ended in the pretty lights.
The finely adjusted instrument moved slightly on its loosened mounting. There was a spark, a crackling flash. The Beachball honked in pain and jerked back out of the recess, bouncing at top speed out of the lock.
An occasional wisp of smoke came from the dark interior now, interspersed with odd electrical pops and crackles. It didn’t seem very important.
Like everything else on the Dark Star, the appearances were deceptive…
They had twenty yards to go now for a first down—twenty yards to go because that schmuck Anderson had blown the last play totally and run into his own tight end.
Jesus, how could you run into your own tight end—even on an end around? But it had happened, and now they were back on their own ten instead of the twenty or maybe better, with twenty to go for a first and a third down and Coach had sent in Davis—that pansy Davis, the flanker—with the play and they were supposed to quick kick, fer crissake.
Quick kick with the third quarter almost over and them trailing and goddamnit that was no way to win football games.
Boiler pleaded and begged with O’Brien, the new quarterback. Just let them run another play. An off-tackle… a lousy off-tackle, geez! Fake the damn kick and have O’Brien take the snap and hand it to him and he’d follow Harris off the left side.
And O’Brien had hemmed and hawed and said what the hell, why not? He didn’t like the coach and he didn’t like kicking on third down and his girl friend wasn’t putting out, so why the hell not?
The snap was made and Boiler yelled at Harris that if he didn’t clear that hole for him he’d kick his teeth out after the game and the big black son-of-a-bitch just turned and smiled back at him and said don’t worry, just follow me, man.
So they’d snapped and he’d seen it working right then… seen the stupid linebackers pull up close to try and block the kick and only two backs deep for the kick and O’Brien had stepped up and at the last second, perfect, took the ball instead of letting it go to Davis.
Tossed it to him like a volleyball, and he caught it and there was the whole left side of the line wiped out, just wiped out, man. And Harris out there running ahead of him. Old Mojack Harris, and the last linebacker recovering and trying to get over. Boiler laughed at the expression on his face as Harris wasted him. Put him on his can and then Boiler was running free, free, with the sounds of the crowd in his ears and the look on the coach’s face turning from fury to cheers as he passed the first down marker and kept going.
A little sidestep here—the deep back never saw him and then it was nothing but grass, grass, man, all the way to the end zone, to those beautiful high-stickin’ goal posts. And the cheering, oh man, the cheering as that crowd went absolutely nuts. Ninety yards off-tackle, man. Ninety goddamn yards and the crowd so loud you couldn’t hear yourself. Couldn’t hear a thing, man, and the lights blinding you. Couldn’t hear and couldn’t see; couldn’t hear and couldn’t see, couldn’t hear or see the alarm flashing on the screen behind him…
Talby blinked. He’d been star-dreaming again. It seemed somebody was talking to him.
“So you see,” Doolittle was telling him, glancing up now and then from his seat in the little corner on the other side of the open hatch, “so you see, sometimes you’d get a wave that would just kind of fold over on itself. You know, like somebody whipping batter. And you’d crouch down inside this tube of water, Talby, and it would sound like, oh, like an express train coming up right on your heels. Just like in a cartoon.”
He glanced upward out through the dome, but the blackness was beginning to get to him again. So he stared at his feet. The sight was surprisingly comforting.
“You’d just crouch down on your board then, inside that tube, and ride it and hope it never ended. If you were a second too fast, you’d lose it altogether… be out in front of it. A second too slow and the water would just catch you up, swing you up and over and spit you out somewhere high up on the beach. I tell you, Talby, there’s nothing like it. How does that sound to you, hey, Talby? Talby?”
Talby was engrossed in watching words and numbers form and realign on his tiny console screen.
… SYSTEMS STATUS POSSIBLE COMP 47308… MALFUNCTION POSSIBLE PRIMARY… SECONDARY PRIORITY DEMAND… 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-MAX… POTENTIAL CIRCUIT FAIL…
The last words vanished from the screen. It stayed clear. That meant the ship’s computer was working on whatever the problem was.
A part of him—dim, social portion, vestigial appendage—was listening to Doolittle say something about water and a tube. He nodded politely at what he thought might be an appropriate moment and was aware of pleasing the lieutenant. The rest of him remained fixed on the screen.
… RAD, REG 594…
Now words and symbols and numbers began to flash across the screen in rapid succession. They meant nothing and they meant everything, but it was one part of the computer talking to another. It was too fast for even Talby to follow.
He relaxed again in the seat. The computer hadn’t flashed any emergency buzzers, activated any warning lights. Whatever the difficulty was, the Dark Star’s brain appeared to have it under control.
He was aware that several emergency warning circuits had failed on and off for a number of years. This node of information was shunted conveniently aside. Right now he didn’t feel like double-checking on the “emergency,” if indeed there was one. Later, maybe…
A new star drifted slowly into view over the arm’s-length horizon of the ship. His gaze locked on to it as efficiently as any tracking telescope. Definitely a new luminary to add to his growing personal catalog.