Brian Aldiss - Non-Stop

‘He’ll be all right,’ Marapper said roughly. ‘Despite the insults, I’m going with him. My bladder tells me something very nasty is brewing.’

In the corridor, the square pilot lights greeted them. Their intermittent blue patches did little to make the darkness less creepy, and Complain watched Laur Vyann go off with some misgivings. Reluctantly, he turned to splash after Marapper and Zac Deight; the latter was already lowering himself down an open trap while the priest hovered unhappily over him.

‘Wait!’ Marapper said. ‘What about the rats down there?’

‘You and Complain have dazers,’ Zac Deight said mildly.

The remark did not seem entirely to remove Marapper’s uneasiness.

‘Alas, I fear that trap-door is too small for me to squeeze down!’ he exclaimed. ‘I am a large man, Roy.’

‘You’re a bigger liar,’ Complain said. ‘Go on, get down. We’ll have to keep our eyes open for the rats. With luck, they’ll be too busy to worry about us now.’

They bundled down into the inspection ways, crawling on hands and knees over to the double rail which carried the low trucks belonging to this level from one end of the ship to the other. No truck was there. They crawled along the tracks, through the narrow opening in the inter-deck metal which, even here, stood between one deck and another, and on into a third deck until they found a truck. Under Zac Deight’s direction, they climbed on to its platform and lay flat.

With a touch at the controls, they were off, gathering speed quickly. The deck intersections flicked by only a few inches above their heads. Marapper groaned as he attempted to draw in his stomach, but in a short time they slowed, arriving at Deck 10. The councillor stopped the truck and they got off again.

In this far end of the ship, evidence of rats abounded. Droppings and shreds of fabric littered the floor. Marapper kept his torch constantly swinging from side to side.

Having stopped the truck just inside the deck, they could stand up. Above and round them, four feet wide, the inspection ways here became a washer between two wheels of deck, its width crossed by a veritable entanglement of girders, braces, pipes and ducts, and by the immense tubes which carried the ship’s corridors. A steel ladder ran up into the darkness over their heads.

‘The personnel lock, of course, is on the upper level,’ Zac Deight said. Taking hold of the rungs of the ladder, he began to climb.

As he followed, Complain noted many signs of damage on either side of them, as if, in the rooms between which they now ascended, ancient detonations had occurred. Even as he thought the thought-picture ‘detonation’, a bellow of sound vibrated through the inspection ways, setting up resonances and groans in a variety of pipes until the place sang like an orchestra.

‘Your people are still wrecking the ship,’ Zac Deight said coldly.

‘Let’s hope they kill off a few squadrons of Giants at the same time,’ Marapper said.

‘Squadrons!’ Deight exclaimed. ‘Just how many “Giants”, as you call them, do you reckon are aboard ship?’

When the priest did not reply, Deight answered himself. ‘There are exactly twelve of them, poor devils,’ he said. ‘Thirteen including Curtis.’

For an instant, Complain nearly succeeded in viewing the situation through the eyes of a man he had never seen, through Curtis’s eyes. He saw that worried official boxed up somewhere in ruined rooms, in darkness, while everyone else in the ship hunted savagely for his place of concealment. It was not a grand picture.

No time was left for further thought. They reached the upper level, crawling horizontally once more to the nearest trap-door. Zac Deight inserted his octagonal ring in it and it opened above their heads. As they climbed out, a spray of tiny moths burst round their shoulders, hovered, then fluttered off down the dark corridor. Quickly Complain whipped up his dazer and fired at them; by the light of Marapper’s torch, he had the satisfaction of seeing most of them drop to the deck.

‘I just hope none got away,’ he said. ‘I’ll swear those things act as scouts for the rats.’

The damage in this region was as bad as any Complain and Marapper had seen so far. Hardly a wall stood straight in any direction. Glass and debris lay thickly everywhere, except where it had been brushed away to make a narrow path. Down this path they walked, every sense alert.

‘What was this place?’ Complain asked curiously. ‘I mean, when it was a place.’

Zac Deight continued to walk forward without replying, his face bleak and absorbed.

‘What was this place, Deight?’ Complain repeated.

‘Oh… Most of the deck was Medical Research,’ Deight said, in a pre-occupied fashion. ‘In the end, I believe, a neglected computor blew itself to bits. You can’t reach this part by the ordinary lifts and corridors of the ship; it’s completely sealed off. A tomb within a tomb.’

Complain felt a thrill inside him. Medical Research! This was where, twenty-three generations ago, June Besti, the discoverer of bestine, had worked. He tried to visualize her bent over a bench, but could only think of Laur.

So they came to the personnel air lock. It looked much like a smaller edition of the cargo lock, with similar-looking wheels and danger notices. Zac Deight crossed to one of the wheels, still with his abstracted look.

‘Wait!’ Marapper said urgently. ‘Roy, as guile’s my guide, I swear this wretch has something tricky up his stinking sleeves for us. He’s leading us into danger.’

‘If there’s anyone waiting in here, Deight,’ Complain said, ‘they and you make the Journey without delay. I’m warning you.’

Deight turned to face them. The look of unbearable strain clenched over his countenance might have won him pity in a quieter moment, from other company.

‘There’s nobody there,’ he said, clearing his throat. ‘You need not be afraid.’

‘The… radio thing is in here?’ Complain asked.

‘Yes.’

Marapper seized Complain’s arm, keeping his torch burning in Deight’s face.

‘You’re not really going to let him talk to this Little Dog place, are you, and tell them to come up here armed?’

‘You needn’t think me a fool, priest,’ Complain said, ‘just because I happened to be born in your parish. Deight will give the message we tell him to. Open up, Councillor!’

The door swung open, and there was the lock, about five paces square, with six metal space suits standing like suits of armour against one wall. Except for the suits, there was only one other object in the room: the radio, a small, portable job with carrying straps and telescopic aerial.

Like the cargo lock, this lock had a window. The four personnel and two cargo locks distributed down the length of the ship carried, apart from the now shuttered blister of the Control Room, the only ports in the ship. Having a different co-efficient of expansion from the rest of the great outer envelope, they naturally represented a weakness, and as such had been constructed only where it might be strictly necessary to see out. For Marapper, it was the first time he had had such a view.

He was as overwhelmed with awe as the others had been. Breathlessly, he gazed out at the mighty void, for once completely robbed of words.

The planet now showed a wider crescent than the last time Complain had seen it. Mixed with the blinding blue of it were whites and greens, glistening under its casing of atmosphere as no colours had ever glistened before. Some distance from this compelling crescent, tiny by comparison, the sun burned brighter than life itself.

Marapper pointed at it in fascination.

‘What’s that? A sun?’ he asked.