Let the Fire Fall

Chapter Twenty-three

AFTER four days Blake still had found no way to use the disk he had received from Matt. There were no clues as to the origin of the aliens, their purpose, the propulsion system used in the ship, or their language. He lay on a bed, what he assumed was a bed, and thought about the ship again. He was tired; he had allowed himself only four hours’ sleep each night since boarding, and it was beginning to affect him. He fingered the disk and tried to imagine the purpose of it, where it could be made to fit.

The ship was too big for one man to explore thoroughly and at the same time be alert for the officials who kept trooping through her. Although there were not the great numbers of scientists now that there had been in the beginning, there were still fifteen or twenty almost every day popping up all over the ship. Hiding places hadn’t been hard to find, but it did limit the time that the main rooms could be examined. The public tours lasted from eight in the morning until nine at night, and then the scientists worked intermittently until two or three in the morning.

The aliens had used black trim for many of the rooms, and the trim was plastic, or metal, carved in scallops, curves, diminishing circles within circles. The disk would fit in anywhere without being obtrusive. Blake fingered the disk and made a mental floor plan for the ship. It simply wasn’t right. There were curious anomalies: Anti-gravity, but the scream of entry pointed to conventional propulsion methods. The rows of coffin-like boxes-beds for the cold sleep for the passengers, but pregnant women! Why? The design of the ship, while not streamlined and bullet-shaped, was such that it suggested a fast ascent through atmosphere and a fast descent, with heat deflectors to protect the occupants; and the great exhaust openings from what had to be engine rooms confirmed rocket power of some sort as the propulsion, ion rockets perhaps. There was no clue in the engine room. Blake waited until the ship was quiet and the last of the scientists gone again, then resumed his search. The room he was in was very large, a dorm, he guessed, with fifteen beds, slings, that were comfortable for sleeping. The walls were lined with storage bins, with bits of clothing in them. Bits and pieces, the way closets at camp might look. He looked over a tunic carefully, then put it back. Man-made fibers, lightweight, comfortable. The plastic walls of the room were. pale green made up of thin layers of plastic that added a shimmering depth that was pleasing. The floors were of the same substance. The black plastic trim along the wall at waist height outlined the door that led to the corridor outside. The door was opened by passing a hand over a design of circles in a cluster. The design looked as if it was simply painted, but obviously was more than that. Heat sensors behind it operated the catch, releasing it, allowing the door to swing open. Where did the power come from? Blake went into the corridor and looked first in one direction then in the other. The corridors were wide, floored with the green plastic that was springy underfoot. Scrolls and curves of black were inlaid. They outlined every opening, formed every release for the doors, boxed in controls that must have been for communications, alarms, something that was needed at every corridor juncture. The use for the control boxes had not been determined. Inside the boxes were disks, much like the one Blake had, but they were all attached to boxes and could be taken out only by destroying the boxes. The boxes apparently were not connected to each other, or to anything else within the ship. The boxes were fastened to the walls, and the disks to the boxes. Blake studied the one nearest him for the tenth time, then turned from it with a frown of annoyance. His disk would fit in one of the hollows inside the box, except that all the boxes were filled already.

But there were other places his disk would also fit, and that was what made his task more difficult. The disks were everywhere, or objects just like them. In the boxes, in the engine rooms, on desks, in the various labs….

He turned it over and over, then put it back In his pocket and picked up his search where he had left off. He had gone over the entire ship hurriedly, and was in the process of going through it again, more leisurely, more thoughtfully.

There were the elevator shafts that had no elevators. Why would they have removed the elevators? They had been found, stored together in a large, otherwise empty room, filled with some of the stocks that could be expected on a long voyage: foodstuffs, supplies of clothing, utensils that seemed designed for serving foods. Blake stood near the elevator shaft and stared up and down it; well lighted along its length it remained mysterious and bothersome.

He came to one of the rope guides for the tours and he stepped over it and entered the room that appeared to be a film room. There were blank walls here and seats, but no sign of a projector, simply the seats lined up facing the blank walls. And the boxes with disks. And the carved trim.

It seemed to Blake that his greatest chances of learning anything from the ship must lie in the engine rooms and the chart rooms, and they were clustered on the fourth level. There were ninety-four floors, with seven major levels broken up by wide view windows and observation decks that jutted from the main body of the ship giving it a pagoda-like appearance from the outside. He knew that he had to be careful in those areas because he was exposed to the sight of anyone who happened to be looking that way at the right time. The ship was wired and was kept lighted day and night for the benefit of the investigators.

He had gone over the engine rooms twice already, but he felt that he had to try once more before he gave up there. It was from one of those overhangs that Matt had seen the alien walk out on air on their arrival, the topmost one. Blake stood by the door and stared at the first engine room with gaps where equipment had been at one time. This was a more functional-appearing room than the others he had given most of his attention to. There was little of the decorative trim here, for one thing, and the pale green in here was grayed. On the wall behind Blake was the box of disks. There were four island control areas, desks with panels of buttons and dials, small screens, computers, probably. The walls were lined with equipment, more computers, consoles whose purpose had not been determined, There were high chairs at each of the control panels in the islands, and more chairs along the walls for other operators. Blake glanced over them, stopped, and took note of the number of people needed to fill the chairs, to man the controls. Sixteen. He turned to the box of disks and counted them. Sixteen. For the first time he thought he had found something.

For the next two hours he searched for a box with a disk missing. When he found such a box there were many disks missing, not only one. In disappointment he stared at the box with the shallow depressions, then turned to survey the room. It was the cold sleep room where so many bodies of already dead aliens had been found when finally the men had entered the ship. Blake counted the disks, twelve to a box here, with six boxes empty completely, and one with seven disks. He tried to fit his disk into one of the empty receptacles, and it slipped out again and he caught it. What then? Unless… he tried the disk in another place, then another, and on the fourth try in the partially filled box it held. It held so tightly that he couldn’t remove it again.

He stepped back then and laughed. He had brought back a missing piece and the ship was keeping it. He saw that he had put it in shiny side down, with the dull side facing him and he grimaced at it. Let the boys with their slide rules try to figure out why one of them was in wrong side out. It bothered him, though, and he touched it again, to try one more time to get it out. It was hot.

Blake didn’t laugh this time. He stared at it hard, then sat down on the nearest coffin rail and waited. Every fifteen minutes he touched the disk again. It got hotter, never hot enough to burn him, but enough to make him move his finger. Where was the power coming from? He heard the first of the tours starting, and the disk was still in the hollow, sitting there quietly hot, held fast. He found a hiding place and waited throughout the day. The tours came through the cold sleep room, and he heard the guide’s voice:

“Here they slept for many many years while their ship hurtled through space. Chemicals replaced blood, wires with electrodes recorded their temperatures and any chemical action that took place and prepared them for revival at the end of their journey. Unfortunately for two hundred and forty-seven persons that revival never came.”

“What’s that stuff over there?” A small boy’s voice.

“Those are computers, we think, and the chemical banks. We have analyzed…”

“What’s that stuff up there?” The same voice.

“We don’t know exactly what they are for. We think a signal device that probably was lighted from within when the person took his place in the cold sleep storage unit. They are markers of some sort.”

“You said two hundred and forty-seven. Why’re there two hundred and forty-eight of them?”

“There are two hundred and forty-seven, the exact number of aliens we found….”

“There’s two hundred and forty-eight. Twelve in a box, twenty filled up boxes and one box with eight things….”

“There are seven in the last….”

“Eight!”

“In the next room we will see the dining quarters, a large room, with rather conventional tables and stools….”

“Why not look if you don’t believe—”

“This way, please. Please don’t lean over the ropes…. Son, don’t crawl under… ”

“Harry, if you don’t behave, we’ll leave right now. I’m sick and tired of having to haul you out of corners and drag you….”

Blake darted from the small storage room where he had been hiding and tried the disk again. It was perceptibly cooler, but still wouldn’t budge. If the guide had paid any attention to the kid and came back, or reported the addition… he hurried back to his little room when the next tour came through.

Three tours later the disk was cool again and it slid out into his hand as if it never had resisted at all. Blake hurried back to the hideaway and examined it carefully, but as far as he could see there was nothing different about it. He rubbed it, feeling foolish, like Aladdin, tried to push it in, tried to turn the two halves from each other. It was still a black disk, shiny on one side, dull on the other, with no powers to do anything that he could detect.

Between the tours he left that area and made his way higher in the ship well away from the various tours that crawled through endlessly, like a procession of worms through an apple. He passed the wardroom where clothing was issued, apparently, and went on to the general stores room. There was little left in it. Most of the portable goods had been taken from the ship long ago, to be studied in laboratories around the world where they were cut apart, analyzed, X-rayed, subjected to electron microscopic examination, irradiated….

Mostly he wanted a place where no one would come for a while so he could think. The disk puzzled him more than anything else had so far. The woman had owned it; she had taken it with her when she left the ship; then when she realized that she was dying she had given it to Matt. His reasoning had been right, probably. She had meant it for her child. But why? For what reason. Where had the power come from that heated it, and why heat it? Blake turned it over and over and was as blank after he thought through it as he had been before. There was something missing still. He recalled Matt’s words: “…and when she took off the tunic the disc fell to the floor. I picked it up and she motioned for me to keep it.” Not in her hand then, but in the tunic. He went back to the wardroom and examined a tunic. There were no pockets, no place for the disk to have been. He narrowed his eyes recalling every detail of the dressed dummies that had been positioned in the first room of the guided tour. The aliens had worn hip-length tunics over pants that were loose and comfortable. The tunics were without pockets, but were belted and things hung from the belts. Instruments of various sorts, they differed from one figure to the next, according to occupation, so said the cards that described the outfits. But there was something in common. Each belt had a loop that dangled odds and ends. Curious odds and ends, and some of them with nothing. Just loops. Blake hunted until he had found a belt and he looked closely at the fittings on it. This one would hold six different objects, each one fitted into a slot and held securely. The belt was wide and heavy, plastic, or hide of some sort. It was held together by self-fastening studs that clung tightly, and couldn’t be pulled apart no matter how hard he pulled, but slid apart easily when he tried to raise one side and lower the other. He put the belt on, too big. He tried another, then another until he found one that fastened securely on his waist and was a comfortable fit. He fitted the disk into the loop, and he knew that it belonged there. That solved one problem, where they carried them, but not the other, why? He started to slide the two halves of the belt apart, and he shot upward. He straightened the belt hurriedly, and hovered with his head touching the ceiling. Very cautiously he touched the belt again, nothing. He tried to lean over enough to see it, but he couldn’t get a close enough look to see any details that way. He ran his fingers over the front of the belt, near the fasteners, and he could feel depressions in it then. He touched the bottom one very lightly and started to settle. When his feet were again on the floor he touched the center hollow, and he felt reasonably steady again. He remembered a high-ceilinged room that had no discernible purpose for being and he headed toward it. He needed practice.