Shelley noticed his look of surprise. "Apparently the power grid hooking into this area is still intact and there are some backup batteries."
The room was circular with a number of windows on one side that looked out over the docking bay. As Ian went up to the window, he could see the Discovery docked on the next level down, or at least in the direction that his feet were pointing.
"It looks as if they stayed alive in here for some time after whatever it was hit them." She pointed to a number of boxes and empty emergency food containers that floated in the room along with the four bodies.
"Poor bastards. Damn it, Shelley, there must have been close to forty thousand living here. I'd have thought that damage control could have brought this ship on line again."
"I've been thinking about that, Dr. Lacklin. Look at the damage. Primary ship functioning area totally de stroyed. Power reactor destroyed, main communications, data storage banks, and transport lines to the two wheels, damaged or destroyed. Eight major hull hits, all to vital areas. Two or three at the same time they could have bypassed and still managed to restore service. But not eight at once. Taking out those eight at the same time was fatal, and the occupants stayed trapped in each of their emergency chambers till the oxygen ran out. It's possible some might have lasted for weeks. What a horrible death…" Her voice trailed off.
"You think there's any chance of calling up ship's rec ords?"
"Just a moment, Doc."
Shelley floated to the far corner of the room and hovered next to a body. For several minutes she twisted the body back and forth and suddenly the hand snapped off the body. He could hear a faint cry of dismay and felt at least a little pleasure at the realization that even Shelley was affected by this charnel house.
"Dr. Lacklin, how good are you at deciphering Old Japanese?"
"Not too good. I can speak it, but that's about it."
"Damn, this body had a notebook clutched to it. It might be worth looking at."
"I have the dictionaries back aboard ship."
"Speaking of back aboard ship," Stasz interrupted again, "listen, Doc, I have no desire to board that graveyard in search of your bodies. You're down to seventeen percent of reserve so would you kindly get your butts back where they belong. Shelley, at least get your butt back, I like it better than our rotund professor's gludius maximus, or whatever it is that Croce calls it."
Shelley started for the door still holding the notebook with the clawlike hand clinging to one side. Ian turned away for a moment and looked back out the port. His view was framed by the two wheels, above and below him, spinning slowly against the backdrop of an endless sea of stars. All the key points of the vessel struck, prob ably simultaneously-dooming all aboard. He looked out across the stars and shivered.
"I figured I should share this with all of you. I must confess that it changes the complexion of this mission"- Ian hesitated for a moment-"perhaps to the point of abandonment."
He looked around the room at his companions. Coming from a desk-bound civilization where meetings were the form of business, and the form required desks and chairs, the concept of a meeting in zero G had a slightly ridiculous quality. There were no desks to define territory and no seating with the leader at the head. Rather they floated around a room and copies of paperwork were tossed back and forth after being attached to clipboards. Stasz wasn't helping matters any by floating upside down relative to the rest of them.
Ian tried to gauge their reactions. The meeting was more a ritual; they already knew the information to be discussed and a general feeling had already been arrived at. But he wanted to be sure.
"Look, Ian," Ellen said quietly, "this happened nearly three hundred years ago. Three hundred years ago our Democratic Bureaucracy was at war with the Chin. Today the Chin are our closest allies."
"Let me go over it one more time, Ellen. And anyhow, I think you as a collective psychologist should know the theories of Constant Social Lines in relationship to an isolated society."
"It's a theory and I'm out here to prove it or disprove it, that's why I think this is absurd."
"Let's hear him out, Ellen, then you can attack him."
Ellen glared at Richard, who returned her stare with a mock bow that sent him tumbling head over heels until Shelley helped to stabilize him.
"Here we go then," Ian stated as formally as he could, but his voice was pitched too high and the nervousness showed.
"I've worked five days straight on the translations. In the interim Stasz and Richard managed to explore part of one torus and I think we can confirm that absolutely no one is left alive in there." He gestured vaguely toward the window where silhouetted on either side were the twin wheels rotating on their endless journey.
"This unit departed Earth in the year 2083 and is re ferred to as Unit 181. I've provided you with all my notes concerning its history. We've retrieved some Holo core memories but I don't have the equipment to use them.
"Several more notebooks have been recovered and I plan to analyze them, but I think the first one is good enough to go on."
He looked down at the notepad strapped to his knee.
"Most of the notes in the book were poetry. Rather nice stuff, called haiku. Our long-dead friend Miko was a sensitive individual. A longer poem on page twenty- three of the notebook gives us an interesting clue. He describes the blue sun of his childhood, which he now misses. Stasz and I have checked it out and this vessel could have come out of Delta Sag. Which means these people made it to a star eighty-two light-years from Earth and, as near as I can estimate, spent only twenty-odd years in orbit about that star and then began the long journey back to Earth. There are in fact four references to this sun. The next to the last poem is not a haiku, but more in the tradition of the nineteenth-century Romantics. In that poem the writer speaks of the mission they have set.
To warn our forefathers in halls undreamed,
And seek again the light that was,
As we speak to the gods of the sleeping giant,
Revenge of their sons, long dreamed dead.
Ian looked around the room again. The rest were silent. He had a brief mental flash of the vacant staring faces that had populated his classroom. But these people were listening to him, and he felt a surge of satisfaction.
"The last statement is a diary-type entry that makes one thing very plain-they were attacked. I'll read the last entry."
He knew this was rather pedantic, but he couldn't help but play on the dramatic; after all, he was a historian.
" 'It is seventy-four hours since the Alpha/ Omega strike. I look out at our twin wheel, our home, our world. The lights are still on in the Ag section, batteries…' The next line is illegible and then picks up again. 'My eyes see, but they cannot make me believe. My entire world is dying, it is dying and they have murdered us. Murdered us. It is the end and there is nothing. Our crypt shall journey across the sea of eternity, a voyager of quiet death. And so I join the others as the lights of my world fade away forever.
Ian felt a strange turmoil within. The young poet had written this to him, far more sure of the immortality of his verse than any Earthly poet. For in space the script would last, like its poet, for eternity.
"I've backplotted the heading," Stasz interjected, breaking the melancholy silence. "If acceleration ceased at current speed they would have left Delta Sag three hundred and ninety-seven years ago."
"How far to Delta Sag, Stasz?" Ellen asked.
"Two months."
Ellen looked at Ian with a challenging smile.
Ian hesitated, trying to buy time. "We've got to be logical about this one. First there is a wealth of infor mation aboard this ship. This could keep an archaeological team busy for the next century. It's the first time anyone from our modern age has stepped aboard a vessel from the twenty-first century."