It would not stop the Slaver Power. And if it is anything of high gravity the shell will crumble inwards."
It would have to be something of abnormally high gravity, I think. It would be prudent to move farther away, but not so far as to slow our responses appreciably."
"There is nothing," said Peter Robinson. "No living minds."
As the Wallaby moved away, the deep-radar's screen compensated and held its image at constant size. A great, irregular, metallic shape was seen within. It did not resemble any human, kzin or Puppeteer ship. It was not spherical, but asymmetrical and relatively compact. A large circle could be made out near a kind of double protuberance. What they called the control chamber was connected to it by a metallic stem. The #4 General Products hull, the biggest of the range, used almost entirely for colony expeditions, was a vast cargo-carrying sphere more than a thousand feet in diameter. This was far bigger, miles from one point to another. The Wallaby's instruments picked up another, still very faint energy discharge.
"A thrint battle-wagon!"
"I have seen nothing like it," said Gatley Ivor.
"I am awed," said Charrgh-Captain. "I have seen holos of the dreadnaughts of the great wars. This dwarfs them. But it is cold and a dead ship. It must have been laid up to conserve it against need…"
It is almost too big to be a dreadnaught," he said after a few moment's thought. "I do not understand."
No 'almost' about it," said Richard. "It is too big. Building a ship that size would be, as far as I can tell, an exercise beyond the point of diminishing returns. Thrintun were stupid but not, surely, that stupid. The same resources could have been used to build a score or more of respectable-sized battlewagons, big enough to do anything you liked, or any number of smaller warships still capable of carrying heavy warloads.
"Too many eggs in one basket… Once the stasis field was turned off-and it would have to be turned off before the thing could be used-a simple fusion missile could wreck it, let alone antimatter, which we know both sides used as a weapon… Besides, the deep-radar shows nothing that looks like weapons."
"Anything can be made into a weapon," said Charrgh-Captain grimly. "You humans taught us that."
Nonetheless, surely a purpose-built warship would have purpose-built weapons. Rail-guns, lasercannon… "
"Apart from war, you only need a truly vast ship like this if you cross space rarely," said Gay. "But with an FTL drive, you can cross it as often as you like. And they did have FTL. They wouldn't have needed a freighter, or even a colony-ship, that size."
"It's worth plenty, anyway," said Melody. "The Institute will be pleased. And the Foundation. We've shown the Puppeteers again that we are worthy of the hire."
"I'm not so sure," said Richard. "It might be an interesting historical artifact, but as a ship it's hardly likely to give us new knowledge apart from the archaeological. We have better drives than the ancients ever had, and their materials were inferior to General Products hulls. Perhaps if it had been a tnuctipun ship it would have taught us more. I'm not saying it's worthless, of course. There must be some discoveries on board. I'm sure an army of Ph. D. students will pick through it. I suppose the Institute may sell it to a wealthy collector."
"How do you propose to get it there?" asked Charrgh-Captain.
"Fly it, I suppose. It would make quite a sensation!"
"Fly it how? Can you see a drive on it?"
"Finagle's ghost!"
"I did wonder how long it would take you to notice that."
They peered into the deep-radar ghost of the thing. Melody said, "There are massive fusion toroids, and what look like fuel tanks, part full. You can see there are massive stores of both hydrogen and heavy elements. The center of the thing, at least, seems to be built more of less on a pattern of concentric spheres."
"A good shape for a warship. As little surface as possible to target," said Charrgh-Captain. "But the surface itself is not spherical. It is intuition only, but I feel-see a resemblance to the architecture of a computer whose cognitive cells are linked to give a cascading effect."
"Are you saying it is a computer, Charrgh-Captain?"
"No, I am saying it reminds me of one. What would such a computer do? No, sense tells me it is a spaceship whose design is too alien for us to understand."
"Drives must be there, if only we can find them," said Gay. "Let's look systematically."
The ancient Slaver style of hyperdrive could not function until light-speed had nearly been reached," said Richard some time later. He turned away from a search of the deep-radar images. The Whomping Wallaby's main computer screen was large, but he had almost covered it with boxes of data. "The ancient craft needed massive conventional subluminal engines to accelerate them initially. But Charrgh-Captain is right: There are no propulsive engines apparent here. Despite the fusion-toroids, I see no ramscoop collector-head. And even a ramscoop would need something to boost it initially. There is no surface for either the discharge of a laser drive or to receive the impact of a pushing laser, unless that bulging circle has something to do with it. There are no reaction-drive ports. They did not have the Jotoki-Kzinti gravity-drive. There are only relatively tiny attitude-jets, which can maneuver it around various axes but can do little else. So we have a spaceship without a drive."
"What about a sailing ship? Might it have had a lightsail?"
"It's too big. No buildable lightsail could move that mass. And why build a sailing ship when they had a hyperdrive? Besides, what good is a lightsail when you're being attacked by enemy warships? It's vulnerable and it's hard to maneuver at all. Thrintun had others do most of their thinking for them, so even if they weren't too bright they weren't too primitive, and they had had thousands of years to refine their ships, with Tnuctipun input."
"Could it be a naval base rather than a ship?" asked Peter Robinson. "That would account for the size. Why, hundreds of years ago humans blew up Confinement Asteroid into something bigger than this. Sol's old Gibraltar base is bigger. So are Tiamat and many others. That might account for the massive fuel tanks: fleet replenishment."
"I see no docking ports," said Charrgh-Captain. His pursuit of the answer to the puzzle seemed for the moment to have overcome even his loathing for the Wunderkzin, so that he answered him thoughtfully. "And would not a base have workshops, accommodation for crews, and defensive weapons? We see no evidence of any of those things. The sensor shows gold, which may be worth stripping. But this"-he stabbed at one of the boxes of light on the screen-"I do not like. These read like organic compounds."
Yes," said Gatley Ivor. "That is the composition of thrint tissue. I agree it is not reassuring. But it is apparently quite inert."
"Thrint corpses?" asked Melody.
"Great masses of inert organic tissue. That's all I can say so far."
"Thrint and tnuctipun were both carnivores. If this was a tnuctip artifact I would suggest a larder of enemy's meat."
"The thrintun sent out a command that every sapient mind must die," said Gatley Ivor. "The open question is, did they include themselves? The survival of the Grogs on Down suggests they didn't. We aren't sure, though. Perhaps they thought life without slaves would be no life at all, and they might as well all die together. Some think they had degenerated to the point that, left to their own devices, they could hardly have fed themselves, let alone maintained complex machinery and the luxurious conditions they had come to need. Students have been awarded doctorates for arguing for and against both propositions. Anyway, they died. The Grogs might be descendants of a late-emerging group." Gay struck her fist on the table with a shout of triumph. "An ark! It's an ark! That's the only explanation!"
"Arrk?" Charrgh-Captain pronounced the word easily, but his ears betrayed puzzlement. "A refuge, to preserve some remnant of their race so that they might begin again. That also accounts for the setup in the control chamber: They knew no one else was coming to get them out… The series of clocks to switch off the main stasis field is a series of fail-safes."