Chapter 8
"I don't believe it," said Holmes flatly.
Burke shrugged. He found that he was tense all over, so he took somepains to appear wholly calm.
"It isn't reasonable!" insisted Holmes. "It doesn't make sense!"
"The question," observed Burke, "isn't whether it makes sense, butwhether it's fact. According to the last word from Earth, they're stillinsisting that the ship's drive is against all reason. But we're here.And speaking of reason, would the average person look at this place andsay blandly, 'Ah, yes! A fortress in space. To be sure!' Would they? Isthis place reasonable?"
Holmes grinned.
"I'll go along with you there," he agreed. "It isn't. But you say itsgarrison was men. Look here! Have you seen a place before where menlived without writings in its public places? They tell me the ancientEgyptians wrote their names on the Sphinx and the Pyramids. Nowadaysthey're scrawled in phone booths and on benches. It's the instinct ofmen to autograph their surroundings. But there's not a line of writtenmatter in this place! That's not like men!"
"Again," said Burke, "the question isn't of normality, but of fact."
"Then I'll try it," said Holmes skeptically. "How does it work?"
"I don't know. But put a cube about a yard from your head, and dozeoff. I think you'll have an odd dream. I did. I think the informationyou'll get in your dream will check with what you find around you. Someof it you won't have known before, but you'll find it's true."
"This," said Holmes, "I will have to see. Which cube do I try it with,or do I use all of them?"
"There's apparently no way to tell what any of them contains," saidBurke. "I went back to the storeroom and brought a dozen of them.Take any one and put the others some distance away--maybe outside theship. I'm going to talk to Keller. He'll make a lot of use of thisdiscovery."
Holmes picked up a cube.
"I'll try it," he said cheerfully. "I go to sleep, perchance to dream.Right! See you later."
Burke moved toward the ship's air-lock.
"Pam and I have some housekeeping to do," Sandy said.
Burke nodded abstractedly. He left the ship and headed along themile-long corridor with the turn at the end, a second level and anotherturn, and then the flight of steps to the instrument-room. As hewalked, the sound of his footsteps echoed and re?choed.
Behind him, Holmes set a cube in a suitable position and curled up onone of the side-wall bunks in the upper compartment of the spaceship.
"We'll go downstairs," said Sandy.
Pam parted her lips to speak, and did not. They disappeared down thestair to the lower room. Then Sandy came back and picked up the extracubes.
"Joe said to move them," she explained.
She disappeared again. Holmes settled himself comfortably. He was oneof those fortunate people who are able to relax at will. Actually, inhis work he normally did his thinking while on his feet, moving abouthis yacht-building plant or else sailing one of his own boats. Hesimply was not a sit-down thinker. Sitting, he could doze at almost anytime he pleased, and for a yachtsman it was a useful ability. He couldgo for days on snatched catnaps when necessary. Conversely he couldcatnap practically at will.
He yawned once or twice and settled down confidently. In five minutesor less ...
* * * * *
_He wriggled down into an opening barely large enough to admit hisbody. The top clamped and sealed overhead. He fitted his feet intotheir proper stirrup-like holders and fixed his hands on the controls.There was violent acceleration and he shot away and ahead. Behind himthe jagged shape of the fortress loomed. He swung his tiny ship. Hedrove fiercely for the tiny rings of red glow which centered themselvesin the sighting-screen before him. He drove and drove, while thefortress dwindled to a dot and then vanished._
_On either side of his ship a ten-foot steel globe clung. He checkedthem over, tense with the realization that he must very soon be withinthe practical timing-range of the new Enemy solid missiles. He mademinute adjustments in the settings of the globes._
_He released them together. They went swinging madly away at theend of a hair-thin wire which would sustain the tons of stress thatcentrifugal force gave the spheres. They spiraled toward darkness withits background of innumerable stars. The Enemy would be puzzled, thistime! They'd developed missile-weapons with computing sights. In theirlast attack, five hundred years before, the Enemy had been defeated bythe self-driving globes that had an utterly incredible acceleration.It was reported from the Cathor sector that in this current attackthey had missile-weapons with a muzzle-velocity of hundreds ofmiles per second, which could actually anticipate a globe with ahundred-sixty-gravity drive. They could fire a solid shot to meet itand knock it down, because of some incredible computer-system which wasable to calculate a globe's trajectory and meet it in space. They weresmart, the Enemy!_
_The two globes went spinning toward the Enemy. Linked together, theyspun round and round and no conceivable computer could calculate thepath of either one so a projectile could hit. They did not travel ina straight line, as a trajectory in space should be. Whirling as theydid around a common center of gravity, with the plane of their circlingat a sharp angle to their line of flight, it was not possible to rangethem for gunfire. Their progress was in a series of curves, each ata different distance, which no mere calculator could solve withoutdirection. A radar could not pick up the data a computer would need.One or the other globe might be hit, but it was far from likely._
_The pilot of the one-man ship saw the blue-white flame of a hit. Heflung his ship about and sped back toward the fortress. The Enemy wouldbeat this trick, in time. Four thousand years before they'd almost won,when they invaded the Old Nation. They were getting bolder now. Therewas a time when a sound beating sent them back beyond the Coal-sack tolick their wounds for two thousand years or better. Lately they camemore often. There'd been a raid in force only five hundred years back,and only fifteen before that ..._
* * * * *
Holmes, obviously, had the odd dream Burke had prophesied. But Burkewas up in the instrument-room by then. Keller gazed absorbedly ata vision-plate. It showed a section of the exterior surface of theasteroid--harsh, naked rock, with pitiless sunlight showing the grainand structure of the rock-crystals. Where there was shadow, theblackness was absolute. As Burke entered, Keller turned a knob. Theimage changed to a picture of a compartment inside the fortress.It was a part of the maze of rooms and galleries that none of thenewcomers had visited. Panels and bus-bars and things which wereplainly switches covered its walls. It was a power-distribution center.Keller turned the knob back, and the view of the outside of theasteroid returned.
Keller turned and blinked at Burke, and then said happily, "Look!"
He went to another vision-screen with an image of another part ofthe outer surface. He turned that knob, and the image dissolved intoanother. This was a gigantic room, lighted like more familiar places.In its center there was an enormous, gigantic machine. There were domesof metal, with great rods of silvery stuff reaching across emptinessbetween them. There were stairs by which one could climb to this partand that. Judging by the steps and the size of the light-tubes, themachine was the size of a four-storey house. And on the floor therewere smaller machines, all motionless and all cryptic.
Keller said with conviction, "Power!"
Burke stared. Keller recovered the original view and went to stillother plates. In succession, as he turned the knobs, Burke sawcompartment after compartment. There was one quite as huge as the onecontaining the power-generating machine. It contained hemispheresbolted ten feet above the floor on many columns. There was a networkof bus-bars, it seemed, overlying everything, and there were smallerdevices on the floor below it.
"Gravity!" said Keller with conviction.
"Good enough," said Burke. "We've found something too, which may beuseful with those machines. If we can--"
Keller held up his hand and went to one s
pecial screen. When he changedthe image, the new one was totally unlike any of the others. This wasa close-up. It showed a clumsy, strictly improvised and definitelycobbled metal case against a wall. It had been made by inept hands. Itwas remarkable to see such indifferent workmanship here. But the reallyremarkable thing was that the face of the box contained an inscription,burned into the metal as if by a torch. The symbols had no meaning toBurke, of course. But this was an inscription in a written language.
Keller rubbed his hands, beaming.
"It could be a message for somebody who'd come later," said Burke."It's hard to think of it being anything else. But it wasn't placed forus to find. It should have been set up beside the ship-lock we wereexpected to come in by and did come in by."
"We'll see," said Keller zestfully. "Come on!"
Burke followed him. Keller seemed somehow to know the way. They wentall the way back to the ship-lock, passed it, and then Keller dived offto the right, down an unsuspected ramp. There were galleries runningin every direction here, crossing each other and opening upon anindefinite number of what must have been storerooms. Presently Kellerpointed.
There was the case against the wall. It faced a wide corridor. Itdid not belong here. It was totally unlike any other artifact theyhad seen, because it seemed to have been made totally without skill.Yet there was an inscription--and the making of written records hadappeared to be a skill the former occupants of the asteroid had notpossessed. Keller very zestfully essayed to open it. He failed.
Burke said, "We'll have to use tools to get it open."
"Somebody made it," said Keller, "just before the garrison went away.They made it here!"
"Quite likely," agreed Burke. "We'll get at it presently. Now listen,Keller! I came along because a message might be useful. I think Holmeshas found out something, though what it may be I can't guess. Comealong with me. There've been developments and I want to hold a councilof war. And I think I do mean war!"
He led the way back toward the ship. When they arrived, Holmes wasawake and growling because of Burke's absence.
"You win," he told Burke. "I had a dream, and it wasn't a dream. I knowsomething about those metal globes. They've got drives in them, andthey can accelerate to a hundred and sixty gees, and I don't think I'llride one."
Wryly, he told Burke what he'd experienced.
"I'm not too much surprised," said Burke. "I've managed twocube-experiences myself. I figure that these cubes trained men tooperate things, without training their brains in anything else. They'dmake illiterates into skilled men in a particular line, so anybodycould do the work a highly trained man would otherwise be needed for.In one of my two cube-dreams I was a gun-pointer on one of thosemachines up on the third level. In the second cube-dream I was arocket-pilot."
"No rockets in my cube," protested Holmes.
"Different period," said Burke. "Maybe, anyhow. In my dream we wereusing rockets to fight with, and the war was close. The enemy hadtaken some planets off Kandu--wherever that is!--and the situationwas bad. We went out of here in rockets and fought all over the sky.But then there were supplies coming from home, and fresh fighting menturning up." He stopped abruptly. "How'd they come? I don't know. ButI know they didn't come in spaceships. They just came, and they werenew men and we veterans patronized them. The devil! Holmes, you say theglobes have a hundred-sixty-gee drive! Nobody'd use rockets if driveslike that were known!"
"To stay in the party," Sandy said suddenly, with something likedefiance, "I tried a cube, too. And I was a sort of supply-officer. Ihad the experience of being responsible for supply and being short ofeverything and improvising this and that and the other to keep thingsup to fighting standard. It wasn't easy. The men grumbled, and welacked everything. There was no fighting in my time, and there hadn'tbeen for centuries. But we knew the Enemy hadn't given up and we hadto be ready, generation after generation, even when nothing happened.And we knew that any minute the Enemy might throw something unexpected,some new weapon, at us."
"History-cubes," said Keller interestedly. "Different periods. Right?"
"Dammit, yes!" said Burke. "We've got accounts of past times andfinished battles, but we need to know who's coming and what to do aboutit! Maybe the rocket-dream was earliest in time. But how could a racewith nothing better than rockets ever get here? And how could theysupply the building of a place like this?"
There was no answer. Facts ought to fit together. When they don't, theyare useless.
"We've got snatches of information," said Burke. "But we don't knowwho built this fort, or why, except that there was a war that lastedthousands of years, with pauses for centuries between battles." Hewaved a hand irritably. "The Enemy tries to think up new weapons.They do. They try them. So far, they've been countered. But we're notprepared to fight a new weapon. Maybe the fort is set to battle oldones, but we don't know how to use it even for that! We've got to--"
"I think--" began Keller.
"I'd give plenty for a service manual on the probably useless weaponswe do have," said Burke angrily. "Incidentally, Keller just found whatmay be an explanation of how and why this place was abandoned."
Keller said suddenly, "Where would service manuals be?"
He moved, almost running, toward the air-lock. Burke started to swear,and stopped.
"A service-and-repair manual," he snapped, "would be near the equipmentit described. How many little shelves with boxes on them have we seen?They're just the right size to hold cubes! And where are they? Next tothose fighting machines next to the door of the room where the ten-footglobes are! There's a shelf of them in the instrument-room! Let's findout how to fight with this misbegotten shell of a space-fort! There'llbe no help coming to us, but if the Enemy's held off for thousands ofyears while this civilization fell apart, we might as well try to holdit together for a few minutes or seconds longer! Let's go get some realinstruction-cubes!"
Keller was already gone. The others followed. Once they saw Keller inthe far, far distance, hastening toward the instrument-room. Behindhim, after almost running down the long corridor, Burke swung into theroom where hundreds of ten-foot metal globes waited for the fortress tobe remanned and to go into action again. Inside the door he found theremembered shelf, with two small boxes fastened to it. He pulled downone box and opened it. There was a black cube inside it. He thrust itupon Holmes.
"Here!" he said feverishly. "Find out how those globes work! Find outwhat's in them, how they drive!"
He ran. To the end of the corridor and up the ramp and past thesupposed bunk-rooms and mess-halls. Up to the level where the uglymetal machines stood, each in its separate cubicle. There were littleshelves inside each door. Each shelf contained a single box. Burke tookone, two, and then stopped short.
"They'll be practically alike," he muttered. "No need."
He put one back. And then he felt almost insanely angry. One would needat least to be able to doze, to make use of the detailed, vivid, andutterly convincing material contained in the black cubes. And how couldany man doze or sleep for the purpose of learning such desperatelyneeded data? He'd need almost not to want the information to be able tosleep to get it!
Sandy and Pam overtook him as he stood in harried frustration with ablack cube in his hands.
"Listen to me, Joe," said Sandy. "We've all taken chances, but if youget recurrent dreams from every cube you doze near--"
"When that happened to me," snapped Burke, "I was eleven years old andhad one moment only. And that dream wasn't affected by the others inthe cubes that came after it. And anyhow, no matter what happens toHolmes and me, we have to get these things ready for use! I don't knowwhat we'll use them against. I don't know whether they'll be any use atall. But I've got to try to use them, so I've got to try to find outhow!"
Sandy opened her mouth to speak again.
"I'm going off to fret myself to sleep," added Burke. "Holmes will betrying it too. And Keller."
"I don't think it's necessary," said Sandy.
"Why?"
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"You found a sort of library of cubes. How useful would they be if onehad to doze off to read them? How handy would a manual about repairinga weapon be, if somebody had to take a nap to get instructions? Itwouldn't make sense!"
"Go on!" said Burke impatiently.
"Why not look in the library?" asked Sandy. "As a quartermasterofficer, I _think_ I knew that there was a reading-device for thecubes, like a projector for microfilm. It might have been taken away,but also--"
"Come along!" snapped Burke. "If that's so, it's everything! And itought to be so!"
They hastened to the vast, low-ceilinged room which was filled withracks of black cubes. They were stacked in their places. At the farcorner they found a desk and a cabinet. In the cabinet they found twoobjects like metal skull-caps, with clamps atop them. A cube would fitbetween the clamps. Burke feverishly sat a cube in position and put theskull-cap on his head. His expression was strange. After an instant hetook it off and reversed the cube. He put it on. His face cleared. Helifted it off.
"I had it on backwards the first time," he said curtly. "This is betterthan dreaming the stuff. This lets you examine things in detail. Youknow you're receiving something. You don't think you're actuallyexperiencing. We'll get this other reading-machine to Keller, so he canunderstand the equipment in the instrument-room. Holmes will have towait."
Sandy said, "I can use him. Doesn't it occur to you, Joe, that we'veonly partly explored the top half of the fortress? We've only lookedat what's between us and the instrument-room. There are all thestores--there were stores! And the generators down below. I can leadthe way there now!"
"What do you know about the weapons?" demanded Burke.
"Nothing," said Sandy. "But I know something about the morale of thegarrison. When grumbling began, discipline tightened up. And thatworked for the men, but the women--"
"Women!" said Pam incredulously.
"They were an experiment," Sandy told her, "to see if they wouldcontent men on duty in an outpost. It'd been going on for only a fewhundred years. It didn't seem to work too well. They wanted suppliesthat weren't exactly military, and at the time the cube I used wasmade, there was trouble getting even military things!"
Burke said impatiently, "I'll get one of these things to Keller. That'sthe most important thing. Tell Holmes not to try to sleep. Take himdown to look over the supplies, if there are any. I'd guess that thegarrison took most of them along. I doubt there's much left that wecould use."
He made his way out of the cube-library and vanished.
Pam said uncomfortably, "Joe dreamed about a woman and is no good toyou, in consequence. If there were women in this garrison, using thecubes might make anybody--"
Sandy tensed her lips.
"I don't think Joe is thinking about his old dream. Something deadly'son the way here. His mind's on that. I suspect all three of the men areconcentrating on it. They're in no mood for romance."
"Don't you think I've noticed?" Pam said gloomily. "But I'm coming withyou when you show him the storerooms!"
The "him" was obviously Holmes, whose attention had been so muchtaken up by the problems the fortress presented that Pam felt pushedmuch farther on the side lines than she liked. It was one thing tobe present to watch and help and cheer on a man who planned to dosomething remarkable. But it was less satisfying when he became soabsorbed that he didn't notice being watched, and couldn't be helped,and didn't need to be cheered on. Pam was disgruntled.
Then, for a considerable number of hours, absurdly trivial activitiesseemed to occupy all the people in the asteroid. Burke and Keller satin the thirty by thirty-foot instrument-room, each wearing a smallmetal half-cap with a black cube held atop it between a pair of clamps.Their expressions were absorbed and intent, while they seemed attiredfor a children's halloween party. Now and again one of them exchangedone cube for another. About them there was a multiplicity of televisionscreens, each screen presenting a picture of infinitely perfectquality. Every square foot of the outside of the asteroid could be seenon one or another of the screens. Then, besides, there were banks ofscreens which showed every square degree of the sky, with every star ofevery magnitude represented so that one could use a magnifying glassupon the screen to discover finer detail.
Once, during the hours when Burke and Keller were sitting quitestill, Keller reached over and threw a switch. Nothing happened.Everything went on exactly as it had done before. He shook his head.And much later he went to one of the star-image screens. He moved aninconspicuous knob in a special fashion, and the star-image expandedand expanded until what had been a second of arc or less filled all thescreen's surface. The effect of an incredibly powerful telescope wasobtained by the movement of one control. Keller restored the knob toits original place and the image returned to its former scale. Thesewere the only actions which took place in the instrument-room.
In the lower part of the asteroid, not much more occurred. The entranceto the power and storage areas was not hidden. It simply had not beenentered. Sandy and Holmes and Pam went gingerly down a corridor withdoors on either side, and then down a ramp, and then into huge cavernsfilled with monstrous metal things. There was no sign of any motionanywhere, but gigantic power-leads led from the machines to massiveswitchboards, whose switches were thrown by relays operated fromsomewhere else.
Then there were other caverns which must have contained many varietiesof stores. There were great cases, broken open and emptied. There werebins with only dust at their bottoms. There were shelves containingthings which might have been textiles, but which crumbled at a touch.Some thousands of years in an absolute vacuum would have evaporated anysubstance giving any degree of flexibility. These objects were useless.There was a great room with a singular hundred-foot-high machine init, but there was no vibration or sound to indicate that it was inoperation. This, Sandy said decisively, was the artificial-gravitygenerator. She did not know how it worked. It would have beenindiscreet to experiment.
She led the way through relatively small corridors to areas inwhich there were very many small compartments. These had been forfoodstuffs. But they were empty. They had been emptied when theasteroid was abandoned.
Then they came to the crudely fashioned case with the cryptic symbolson its front.
"This is the thing Joe mentioned," said Sandy. "They had writing.They'd have to, to be civilized. But this is the only writing we'veseen. Why'd they write it?"
"To tell somebody something they'd miss, otherwise," Pam said.
"Who'd come down here? Why not put it at the ship-lock where peoplecould be expected to come?"
Holmes grunted. "Asking questions like that gets nowhere. It's likeasking how the garrison was supplied. There's no answer. Or how itleft."
Sandy said in a surprised voice, as if saying something she hadn'trealized she knew. "There were service ships. They serviced thetelevision eyes on the outside, and they drilled at launching missiles,and so on. They were modified fighting ships, made over after shipsdidn't fight any more."
She hesitated, then went on.
"It's odd that I didn't think of telling Joe this! Some of the foodsupply came from Earth at the time my cube was made. As a quartermasterofficer, I was authorized to allow hunting on Earth in case of need.So the serviceships went to Earth and came back with mammoths tied tothe outside of their hulls. They had to be re-hydrated, though. Frozenthough they were, they dried out in the long trip through vacuum fromEarth."
Then she shivered a little.
Pam looked at her strangely. Holmes raised his eyebrows. He'd had oneexperience of training-cubes. Sandy'd had quite another. Holmes feltthat instinctive slight resentment a man feels when he lacks a positionof authority in the presence of a woman.
"In my time--in the cube's time--there was even a hunting camp onEarth. Otherwise there simply wouldn't be enough to eat! Women wereclamoring to be sent to Earth to help with the food supply. To be sentto hunt for food was a reward for exemplary service."
"Which is interesting," ob
served Holmes, "but irrelevant. How was theasteroid normally supplied? How did the garrison leave? Where did itcome from? Where did it go? Maybe the answer's in this box. If it is,"he added, "it'll be in the same language as the inscription, and wecan't read it."
Archaeologists on Earth would have been enraptured by any part of thefortress, but anything which promised to explain as much as Holmes hadguessed the case could, would be a treasure past any price.
But the five people in the asteroid had much more immediate and muchmore urgent problems to think of. They went on a little farther andcame to a storeroom which had been filled with something, but now heldonly the remains of packing-cases. They looked ready to crumble iftouched.
"There used to be weapons stored here," Sandy said. "Hand-weapons. Notfor the defense of the fortress, but for the--discipline police. Forthe men who kept the others obedient to orders."
"I'd be glad to have one operating pea-shooter," said Holmes.
Pam wrinkled her nose suddenly. She'd noticed something.
"I think--" she began, "I think--"
Holmes kicked at a shape which once was probably a case of wood orsomething similar. It collapsed into impalpable dust. It had dried outto absolute desiccation. It was stripped of every molecule which couldbe extracted by a total vacuum in thousands of years. It was brittlepast imagining.
The collapse did not end with the object kicked. It spread. One casebulged as the support of another failed. The bulged case disintegrated.Its particles pressed on another. The dissolution spread fanwise untilnothing remained but a carpeting of infinitely fine brown stuff. In oneplace, however, solid objects remained under the covering.
Holmes waded through the powder to the solid things. He brought themup. A case of hand-weapons had collapsed, but the weapons themselveskept their shape. They had transparent plastic barrels with curiouslyformed metal parts inside them.
"These might be looked into," said Holmes.
He stuffed his pockets. The hand-weapons had barrels and handgrips andtriggers. They were made to shoot, somehow.
"I think--" began Pam again.
"Don't," growled Holmes. "Maybe Sandy remembers when this place wasdifferent, but I've had enough of it as it is. Let's go back to theship and some fresh air."
"But that's what--"
Holmes turned away. Like the rest, he'd accepted great age, mentally,as a part of the nature of the fortress. But the collapse of emptiedshipping-cases because they were touched was a shock. Where suchdecay existed, one could not hope to find anything useful for a modernemergency. He vanished.
Pam was indignant. She turned to Sandy.
"I wanted to say that I smelled fresh air," she protested. "And he actslike that!"
Sandy was not listening. She frowned.
"He could lose his way down here," she said shortly. "We'd better keephim in sight. I remember the way from my dream."
They followed Holmes, who did make his way back to the upper levelsand ultimately to the ship without guidance. But Pam was intenselyindignant.
"We could have gotten lost down there!" she said angrily when theywere back in familiar territory. "And he wouldn't have cared! And Idid smell fresh air! Not very fresh, but fresher than the aged anddried-out stuff we're breathing now!"
"You couldn't," said Sandy practically. "There simply couldn't be any,except in the ship where the hydroponic wall-gardens keep it fresh."
"But I did!" insisted Pam.
Sandy shrugged. They went into the ship, which Holmes had alreadyreached and where he sat gloomily beside a black cube. He wouldhave to sleep to get anything from it. There were only two of thefreakish-seeming metal caps which made the cubes intelligible to a manawake, and Burke and Keller were using them. Holmes felt offended.
Sandy looked at a clock and began to prepare a meal. Pam, brooding,helped her.
Burke and Keller came back to the ship together. Keller looked pale.Burke seemed utterly grim.
"There's some stuff to be coded and sent back to Earth," he told Sandy."Keller's got it written out. We know how to work the instruments upabove, now. My brain's reeling a little, but I think I'll stay sane.Keller takes it in stride. And we know the trick the Enemy has."
Sandy put out plates for five.
"What is it?"
"Gravity," said Burke, evenly. "Artificial gravity. We don't know howto make it, but the people who built this fortress did, and the Enemydoes. So they've made artificial-gravity fields to give their ships theseeming mass of suns, and they've set them in close orbits around eachother. They'll come spinning into this solar system. What will happenwhen objects with the mass of suns--artificial or otherwise--comeriding through between our sun and its planets? There'll be tidalstresses to crack the planets and let out their internal fires.There'll be no stability left in the sun. Maybe it'll be a low-gradenova when they've gone, surrounded by trash that once was worlds.Anyhow there'll be no humans left! And then the Enemy will go drivingon toward the other solar systems that the builders of this fortressown. They can't conquer anything with a weapon like that, but they cansurely destroy!"
Keller nodded distressedly. He gave Pam a number of sheets of paper,filled with his neat handwriting.
He said sorrowfully, "For Earth. In code."
Sandy served the meal she had prepared.
"It's a matter of days," said Burke curtly. "Not weeks. Just days."
He picked up a fork and began his meal.
"So," he said after a moment, with a sort of unnatural calm, "we've gotto get the thing licked fast. Up in the instrument-room there are sometheory-cubes--lectures on theories with which the operators of the roomwere probably required to be familiar. They were intended to figure outwhat the Enemy might come up with, so it could at least be reportedbefore the fortress was destroyed. The trick of sun-gravity fieldswas suggested as possible, but it seemed preposterously difficult.Apparently, it was. It took the Enemy some thousands of years to getit. But they've got it, all right!"
"How do you know?" demanded Holmes.
"The disk with the red sparks in it," said Burke, "is a detector ofgravity-fields. It sees by gravity, which is not radiation. Keller'ssending instructions back to Earth telling how to make such detectors."
He busied himself with his food once more. After a moment he spokeagain.
"We're going to try to get some help," he observed. "At least we'll tryto find out if there's any help to be had. I think there's a chance.There was a civilization which built this fortress. Something happenedto it. Perhaps it simply collapsed, like Rome and Greece and Egypt andBabylonia back on Earth. But on Earth when an old civilization dieda new, young one rose in its place. If the one that built this fortcollapsed, maybe a new one has risen in its stead. If so, it will needto defend itself against the Enemy just like the old culture did. Itmight prefer to do its fighting here, instead of in its own land. Ithink we may be able to contact it."
"How'll you look for them?"
Burke shrugged.
"I've some faint hope of a few directions in that sealed-up metal casewith the inscription on it. I'm going to take some tools and break intoit. It's a gamble, but there's nothing to lose."
He ate briskly, with a good appetite. Sandy was very silent.
Pam said abruptly, "We saw that case. And I smelled fresh air there.Not pure air like here in the ship, but not dead air like the aireverywhere else."
"Near a power generator, Pam, there'd be some ozone," Holmes saidpatiently. "It makes a lot of difference."
"It wasn't ozone," said Pam firmly. "It was fresh air. Not canned air.Fresh!"
Holmes looked at Burke.
"Did you or Keller find out how the air's refreshed here? Did anybodythrow a switch for air apparatus?"
Keller said mildly, "Apparatus, no. Air exchange, yes. I threw switchesalso for communication with base. Also emergency communication. Alsodire emergency. Nothing happened."
"You see, Pam?" said Holmes. "It was ozone that made the air smellfresh."
&nbs
p; Sandy was wholly silent until the meal was over. Then Holmes wentmoodily off with Keller, to use the cube-reading devices in theinstrument-room and try to find, against all apparent probability, someclue or some communication which would enable something useful to bedone. Holmes was trying hard to believe that things were not as bad asBurke announced, and not nearly so desperate that they had to try tofind the descendants of a long-vanished civilization for a chance tooffer resistance to the Enemy.
Keller said confidentially, just before they reached theinstrument-room, "Burke's an optimist."
And at that moment, back in the little plastic spaceship, Burke wassaying to Sandy, "You can come along if you like. There are a couple ofthings to be looked into. And if you want to come, Pam--"
But Pam touched the papers Keller had given her and said reservedly,"I'll code and send this stuff. Go ahead, Sandy."
Sandy rose. She followed Burke out of the ship. She was acutely awarethat this was the first time since they had entered the ship that sheand Burke could speak to each other when nobody could overhear. They'dspoken twice when the others were presumably asleep. But this was thefirst time they'd been alone.
When they'd passed through the door with the rounded corners, they werecompletely isolated. Overhead, brilliant light-tubes reached a fullmile down the gallery in one direction, and half as far in the other.The vast corridor contained nothing to make a sound but themselves.
"It's this way," said Burke.
Sandy knew the way as well as he did, or better, but she accepted hisdirection. Their footsteps echoed and re?choed, so that they wereaccompanied by countless reflections of heel-clicks along with thenormal rustling and whispering sounds of walking.
They went a full quarter-mile from the ship-lock door, and came to avery large arched opening which gave entrance to a corridor slantingdownward.
"Supplies came up this ramp," said Sandy.
It was a statement which should have been startling, but Burke nodded.
Sandy went on, carefully, "That cube about a supply-officer's dutieswas pretty explicit. Things were getting difficult."
Burke did not seem to hear. They went on and on. They came to the placewhere Keller had turned aside. Burke silently indicated the turning.They moved along this other gallery.
"Joe," said Sandy pleadingly. "Is it really so bad?"
"Strictly speaking, I don't see a chance. But that's just the way itlooks now. There must be something that can be done. The trick is tofind it. Meantime, why panic?"
"You--act queer," protested Sandy.
"I feel queer," he said. "I know various ways to approach problems.None of them apply to this one. You see, it isn't really our problem.We're innocent bystanders, without information about the situationthat apparently will kill us and everybody back on Earth. If we knewmore about the situation, we might find some part of it that couldbe tackled, changed. There may be something in this case--perhaps amessage left by the garrison for the people who sent them here. I can'tsee why it'd be placed here, though."
He slowed, looking down one cross-gallery after another.
"Here it is."
They'd come to the clumsily-made case with the inscription on it.It was placed against the wall of a corridor, facing the length ofanother gallery which came from the side at this point. A littledistance down the other passage, the line of doors was broken by anarchway which gave upon a hewed-out compartment. The opening was wideenough to show a fragment of a metal floor. There was no sign of anycontents. Other compartments nearby were empty. The placing of theinscribed box was inexplicable. But the inscription was sharply clear.
"Maybe," suggested Sandy forlornly, "it says something like'Explosives! Danger!'"
"Not likely," said Burke.
He'd examined the box before. He'd brought along a tool suited to thejob of opening it. He set to work, then stopped.
"Sandy," he said abruptly, "I think the gravity-generator's a coupleof corridors in that direction. Will you look and see if there are anytools there that might be better than this? Just look for a place wheretools might be stored. If you find something, call me."
She went obediently down the lighted, excavated corridor. She reachedthe vast cavern. Here there were myriad tube-lights glowing in theceiling--and the gravity machine. It was gigantic. It was six storeyshigh and completely mysterious.
She looked with careful intentness for a place where tools might havebeen kept by the machine's attendants.
She saw movement out of the corner of her eye, but when she turnedthere was nothing. There could be no movement in the fortress unlessby machinery or one of the five humans who'd come so recently. Theasteroid had been airless for ten thousand years. It was unthinkablethat anything alive, even a microbe, could have survived. So Sandy didnot think of a living thing as having made the movement. But movementthere had been.
She stared. There were totally motionless machines all about. Noneof them showed any sign of stirring. Sandy swallowed the ache in herthroat and it returned instantly. She moved, to look where the movementhad been. She glanced at each machine in turn. One might have made someautomatic adjustment. She'd tell Burke.
She passed a fifteen-foot-high assembly of insulators and bright metal,connected overhead to other cryptic things by heavy silvery bars. Shepassed a cylinder with dials in its sides.
She saw movement again. In a different place. She spun around to look.
Something half the height of a man, with bird-legs and feet andswollen plumage and a head with an oversized beak which was purecaricature--something alive and frightened fled from her. It waddled inridiculous, panicky haste. It flapped useless stumps of wings. It fledin terrified silence. It vanished.
The first thing that occurred to Sandy was that Burke wouldn't believeher if she told him.