Brian Aldiss - Non-Stop

‘According to your friend Marapper’s plan,’ Vyann said, ‘the Control Room should be at the top of these stairs. On the plan, the Control Room is shown large: yet at the top there is only a small room with featureless circular walls. Supposing those walls have been put up to keep people out of the Control Room?’

‘You mean — by Captain Gregory?’

‘Not necessarily. Probably by someone later,’ she said. ‘Come and aim your gun at the walls…’

They climbed the enclosed stairs and faced the circle of metal walls, with a hushed sensation of confronting a mystery. Vyann’s grip on his arm was painfully tight.

‘Try there!’ she whispered, pointing at random.

She switched her torch off as he switched the gun on.

In the dark, beyond the levelled nozzle, a ruddy glow was born, woke to brightness, moved under Complain’s control until it formed a radiant square. Rapidly, the sides of square sagged; the metal within it peeled back like a piece of skin, leaving them room to climb through. An acrid smell in their nostrils, the two waited impatiently for the heat to subside. Beyond it, in a great chamber dimly revealed, they could see a narrow outline of something, something indefinable because beyond their experience.

When the square was cool enough to climb through, they made by common consent for that beckoning line.

The great shutters which, when closed, covered the magnificent 270 degree sweep of the observation blister, were exactly as Captain Gregory Complain had left them long since, even down to a carelessly abandoned spanner whose positioning on a sill prevented one panel of shutter from closing properly. It was the gap between this panel and its neighbour which drew Complain and the girl, as surely as ponics seek the light.

Through the narrow chink, which continued almost from ground level to far above their heads, they could glimpse a ribbon of space. How many pointless years had passed since the last inhabitant of the ship had looked out at that mighty void? Heads together, Complain and the girl stared through the impervious hyaline tungsten of the window, trying to take in what they saw. Little, of course, could be seen, just a tiny wedge of universe with its due proportion of stars — not enough to dizzy them, only enough to fill them with courage and hope.

‘What does it matter if the ship is past Earth?’ Vyann breathed. ‘We have found the controls! When we have learnt how to use them, we can steer the ship down to the first planets we come to — Tregonnin told us most suns have planets. Oh, we can do it! I know we can! After this, the rest will be easy!’

In the faint, faint light, she saw a far-off gleam in Complain’s eye, a look of dumb-struck speculation. She put her arms round him, suddenly anxious to protect him as she had always protected Scoyt; for the independence so unremittingly fostered in Quarters had momentarily left Complain.

‘For the first time,’ he said, ‘I’ve realized — fully realized, right down inside me — that we are on a ship.’ His legs were like water.

It was as if she interpreted the words as a personal challenge.

‘Your ancestor brought the ship from New Earth,’ she said. ‘You shall land it on a Newer Earth!’

And she flicked on her torch and swung its beam eagerly round the great array of controls, which up till now had remained in darkness. The phalanx on phalanx of dials which had once made this chamber the nerve centre of the ship, the array of toggles, the soldier-like parade of indicators, levers, knobs and screens, which together provided the outward signs of the power still throbbing through the ship, had coagulated into a lava-like mess. On all sides, the boards of instruments resembled, and were as much use as, damp sherbet. Nothing had been left unmolested; though the torch beam flitted here and there with increasing pace, it picked out not a switch intact. The controls were utterly destroyed.

Only the occasional stale glow of a pilot light illuminated the coiled miles of corridor. At one end of the ship, the ponics were begining to collapse on to themselves in the death each dark sleep-wake inevitably brought; at the other end of the ship, Master Scoyt still drove his men in a torch-light search for the Giant. Scoyt’s party, working along the lower levels of the Drive Floors, had drained the twenties decks of Forwards almost clear of life.

As the dark came down, it caught Henry Marapper, the priest, going from Councillor Tregonnin’s room to his own without a torch. Marapper had been carefully ingratiating himself into the librarian’s favour, against the time when the Council of Five should be reconstituted as the Council of Six — Marapper, of course, visualizing himself as the sixth Councillor. He walked now through the dimness warily, half afraid a Giant might pop up in front of him.

Which was almost exactly what did happen.

A door ahead of him was flung open, a wash of illumination pouring into the corridor. Startled, Marapper shrank back. The light eerily flapped and churned, transforming shadows into frightened bats as the bearer of the torch hustled about his nocturnal business in the room. Next moment, two great figures emerged, bearing between them a smaller figure who slumped as if ill. Undoubtedly, these were Giants: they were over six feet high.

The light, of exceptional brilliance, was worn as a fitting on one Giant’s head; it sent the uneasy shadows scattering again as its wearer bent and half-carried the small figure. They went only half a dozen paces down the corridor before stopping in the middle of it, kneeling there with their faces away from Marapper. And now the light fell upon the face of the smaller man. It was Fermour!

With a word to the Giants, Fermour, leaning forward, put his knuckles to the deck in a curious gesture. His hand fingertips upward, was for a moment caught alone in the cone of torchlight; then a section of deck, responding to his pressure, rose and was seized by the Giants, seized and lifted to reveal a large manhole. The Giants helped Fermour down into it, climbed down themselves, and closed the hatch over their heads. The glow from a square pilot light on the wall was again the only illumination in a deserted corridor.

Then Marapper found his tongue.

‘Help!’ he bellowed. ‘Help! They’re after me!’

He pounded on the nearest doors, flinging them open when no reply came. These were workers’ apartments, mainly deserted by their owners, who were away following Scoyt and the Survival Team. In one room, Marapper discovered a mother suckling her babe by a dim light. She and the baby began to howl with fear.

The rumpus soon brought running feet and flashing torches. Marapper was surrounded by people and reduced to a state of coherence. These were mainly men who had been on the grand Giant-hunt, men with their blood roused by the unaccustomed excitement; they let out wilder cries than Marapper to hear that Giants had been here, right in their midst. The crowd swelled, the noise increased. Marapper found himself crushed against the wall, repeating his tale endlessly to a succession of officers, until an icy man called Pagwam, Co-Captain of the Survival Team, pushed his way through the group.

Pagwam rapidly cleared a space round Marapper.

‘Show me this hole you say the Giants disappeared down,’ he ordered. ‘Point to it.’

‘This would have terrified a less brave man than I,’ Marapper said, still shaking. He pointed: a rectangular line in the deck outlined the Giants’ exit. It was a hair-fine crack, hardly noticeable. Inside the rectangle at one end was a curious octagonal indentation, not half an inch across; apart from that, there was nothing to distinguish the trap-door from the rest of the deck.