Jeff tried to ignore his tone. He could make Mac obey his orders, but he couldn’t make him like him.
“Has the computer made contact again?” he asked.
Joanne shook her head.
“Computer,” Jeff spoke loudly into the room.
Silence.
“Computer!” he repeated.
Nothing. Perhaps the ship’s computer knew they’d discovered the truth about their position, and now considered it pointless to continue lying to them. It might never contact them again. But what was it trying to achieve?
“We need to find out what’s going on here,” Jeff said. “I mean, what’s really going on.”
“And how?” Castle asked.
All eyes were on Jeff. Mac’s eyes were full of animosity, Castle’s full of doubt. Green’s face looked disapproving, Joanne’s curious, Owl’s fearful, and Finni’s confused. Only Shorty was poker-faced and didn’t show a trace of emotion.
“We will go to the center of the ship. There must be more to find than the computer is telling us.”
Green nodded.
Owl shook his head. “I’m not going deeper into the ship,” he said firmly.
“That’s three hundred miles,” Mac laughed scornfully. “I’m not traipsing three hundred miles to the core of this thing.”
“We have no idea if we’ll find anything useful down there,” Finni said.
“If we stay here, we won’t find anything at all,” Jeff said. With a start, he noticed his voice had taken on a whining tone again.
“What if there are more light aliens down there?” Owl asked.
“Well, they can obviously get us here, too,” Jeff said. “Besides, now they know where we are.”
“Did you hear what I said?” Finni asked. “Maybe there’s nothing down there.”
“That’s exactly what we’ll find out. If we sit around here, we can be one hundred percent sure of not finding a way out of our situation,” Jeff said.
“Then give me the explosives and we can get out through the airlock,” Owl demanded.
“I think it makes more sense…” Jeff began. He imagined he could see Irons sitting opposite him. The illusion shook its head gently and then dissolved into thin air.
Jeff swallowed. Discussing this wouldn’t get them anywhere.
“Can I have the explosives?” Owl asked.
Jeff took a deep breath. “No. We are all going together.”
“But I just said—” Finni began.
Jeff interrupted him, with some effort. It wasn’t right to interrupt others in the middle of a sentence, but he had to make it clear that he was in charge. “I heard what you said. But I’ve decided. We are going to the core of the ship—together.”
“You decided?” Mac asked sarcastically. Jeff could almost see that Mac had another insult on the tip of his tongue. He needed to make sure it remained unspoken. His heart was beating like crazy. He hated it, but he had to go through with it. “Private McGuinness, if you have something you want to tell me, then call me Sir or Captain Austin.”
Mac’s jaw dropped. Joanne grinned.
“Have I made myself clear?”
“Sure…” Mac said, before adding a stifled “Sir.”
If the mechanic saw an opportunity to sabotage Jeff’s authority, he would take it. That much was clear.
“When…” Green stammered. “When do you want to start?”
“We’ll set off shortly,” Jeff kept a level tone. “We’ll go to the gate and from there to the other side. Major Irons wanted to investigate the projection more closely and that’s what we’ll do first. We’ll take all our equipment with us and work our way, as far as possible, to the center of the ship.”
“Should we try and make contact with the computer first?” Joanne asked.
Jeff shook his head. He didn’t see the point. “If it contacts us now—fine. But we mustn’t believe anything it tells us anymore. It’s got its own agenda, that’s clear to me now. It won’t tell us anything we need to know.”
“What if it tries to stop us?”
“It’s done that already by feeding us lies.”
“Could be that the light aliens and the computer are working together,” Owl said.
Jeff leaned back in his chair. He hadn’t thought about that possibility. He had assumed the light aliens were degenerated or mutated descendants of the original crew. Or maybe intruders who had come onto the ship sometime over the preceding millions of years, though that seemed unlikely. Either way, the computer might be pursuing its own agenda, but if it wanted to kill them, it could have done so when they were in the airlock. Or it could have simply not let them on board. Ultimately, Jeff had to admit to himself that he didn’t have a clue what was going on on this ship.
“No, I don’t think so. But I can’t say for sure.”
“He’s not sure…” Mac mocked him in a soft voice.
Since nobody reacted to his comment, Jeff decided to ignore it.
“When are we leaving?” Finni asked.
Jeff would have liked to wait a day or two; have some more time to think things through, but he knew he wouldn’t change his mind. And since they obviously weren’t safe in their accommodation, perhaps it was best if they kept moving.
“Today,” Jeff said. “As soon as we’ve checked through the equipment.”
“And you want us to take everything with us?” Joanne asked.
“Yes, we’ll decamp. There’s no reason to come back here.”
Jeff got up from the table. There was no point discussing this further. The sooner they got going, the better.
16.
“Here it is,” Joanne said.
Jeff followed her into the projection room. A few pieces of furniture, which looked like some kind of exotic, curved metal chairs, stood in three rows along the back wall. At the other end of the room, a broad cylinder stuck out of the ground. Next to it was a table-like structure with controls, which must be the console for the projector.
Joanne slid her medical kit bag off her back and walked briskly over to the console. The buttons, levers, and knobs were not dissimilar to those in the cockpit of the Charon. She pressed a large square at the edge of the console and immediately a hologram appeared above the cylinder. It was a little fuzzy at first, but quickly came into focus.
Jeff could see stars rotating around a green symbol that presumably represented the ship. The whole crew —or what was left of it—gathered around the projection cylinder.
“That’s the map. I can zoom in and out,” said Joanne. As if to prove her point, new stars appeared on the edge of the hologram and moved inward.
Jeff already knew about this from the photos Joanne had shown him the night before. Now they needed to find out what else this projector was capable of. “Is it possible to switch to other operating modes?”
Joanne shrugged. “Irons didn’t want me to experiment with it too much. That’s why I stopped pressing other buttons.”
Jeff shook his head. The device appeared to be a projector, pure and simple. He couldn’t imagine they would trigger anything dangerous.
“Now I’m in charge. See if you can get any other information out of it.”
Joanne nodded and started jabbing around on the console.
Jeff turned and saw Finni pulling something out of the equipment sled. “No,” Jeff said, pushing past Shorty to reach the sled. “We have to ration the food.” Finni nodded and stowed the package of concentrate bars back in the equipment sled. They could survive for a while with the help of their suits’ micro recycling system, but unlike the mushy stuff produced by their suits, the concentrate bars at least tasted halfway decent. He needed their supplies to last as long as possible, there could be no snacking between meals.