Kate Wilhelm: Let the Fire Fall

He played the film over and over and in the end became resigned that Blake’s entrance was a mystery. But one that he would resolve in due time. In due time, he promised himself, there would be no more mysteries regarding Blake Daniels. He called special forces together and gave them their orders.

“Take Blake Daniels when he leaves the U.N. grounds. By any methods that are necessary, but take him. Alive would be best, but any way that you can, get him.”

Merton then went to bed, believing that within twenty-four hours this phase would be over. Blake would be under lock and key, or dead. And they could start phase 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.