Brian Aldiss - Non-Stop

‘I suppose, then, that Giants are just big humans?’ he said, deflecting the subject of conversation.

‘They’re just normal-size humans,’ Fermour said. ‘Six-footers and up. They did not have to be picked for small stature, since they were never meant to be seen by you, unlike Outsiders; they were the maintenance crew who came aboard when the ship was in orbit and began, secretly, to make the place more suitable and comfortable for you to live in. They sealed off these controls, in case anybody finding them should start wondering about things; for although we always tried to foster in you the knowledge that you are in a ship — in case a day ever came when you might be able to leave it — the maintenance crews were always careful to destroy any direct evidence which might, by inducing you to investigate on your own account, make their job more dangerous.

‘Mainly, however, their work was constructive. They repaired water and air ducts — you’ll remember, Roy, how you caught Jack Randall and Jock Andrews repairing a flood in the swimming bath. They killed off a lot of rats — but the rats were cunning; they and several other species of creature have changed since leaving Procyon V. Now we’ve got most of them trapped on Deck 2, we may be able to exterminate them en masse .

‘The rings we and what you call the “Giants” wear are replicas of the same ring-key the original maintenance crews wore when the ship was a going concern. They, and the inspection ways to which they give egress, have made life aboard with you possible. It means we can have — and occasionally slip away to — a secret H.Q. on the ship, with food and baths laid on there. That’s where Curtis is probably dying by now, unless closing the deck doors saved him.

‘Curtis is not the kind to make a success of his job; he’s too nervy. Under him, faults have crept in and discipline lapsed. The poor fellow Gregg speared — who had the laser which has caused so much damage — was working in Deadways alone, instead of being accompanied, as the rules stipulate. That was one of Curtis’s mistakes. All the same, I hope he’s safe.’

‘So you were all just taking care of us! You didn’t any of you want to scare us, eh?’ Gregg asked.

‘Of course not,’ Fermour replied. ‘Our orders are strictly not to kill a dizzy; none of us ever carry a lethal weapon. The legend that Outsiders were spontaneously generated in the muck of the ponics was purely a dizzy superstition. We did nothing to alarm, everything to help.’

Gregg laughed curtly.

‘I see,’ he said. ‘Just a bunch of wet nurses for us poor dolts, eh? It never occurred to you, you big-hearted bastards, that while you cosseted and studied us we might be going through hell? Look at me! Look at my mate Hawl! Look at half the poor devils I had under me! And look at the ones so deformed we put ’em out of their misery when we came across them in Deadways! Let’s see, seven off twenty-three… Yes, you let sixteen generations live and die here, as near as this to Earth, suffering the tortures we suffered, and you think you deserve a medal for it! Give me that knife, Marapper — I want a peep at the colour of this little bloody hero’s giblets.’

‘You’ve got it wrong!’ Fermour shouted. ‘Complain, you tell him! I’ve explained about the speed-up of your lives. Your generations are so brief that twenty of them had passed before “Big Dog” was first boarded and dragged into orbit. They’re studying the main problem down in the laboratories of Little Dog all the while, that I swear to you. At any time now, they may find a chemical agent which can be injected into you to break down the alien peptic chains in your cells. Then you’d be free. Even now –’

He broke off suddenly, staring.

They followed his gaze. Even Gregg looked round. Something like smoke, filtering out into the blinding sunshine, rose from a gash in one of the wrecked panels.

‘Fire!’ Fermour said.

‘Rubbish!’ Complain said. He pushed himself towards the growing cloud. It was composed of moths, thousands of them. They flew high into the dome, circling towards the unexpected sun. Behind the first phalanx of small ones came larger ones, struggling to get out of the hole in the panel. Their endless squadrons, droning ahead of their rodent allies, had managed to reach the spaces behind the control board before the rats gained this deck. They poured forth in increasing numbers. Marapper pulled out his dazer and downed them as they emerged.

A bemused sensation furred over all their brains, half sentient ghost thoughts emanating from the mutated swarm. Dazedly, Marapper ceased firing, and the moths poured out again. High voltage crackled behind the panels, where other hordes of moths jammed naked connections, causing short circuits.

‘Can they do any real damage?’ Vyann asked Complain.

He shook his head uneasily, to show he did not know, fighting away the feeling of having a skull stuffed with muslin.

‘Here comes the ship!’ Fermour said relievedly, pointing into the gleaming dark. Tiny beside the bulk of the mother planet, a chip of light seemed hardly to move towards them.

Head swimming, Vyann stared out at the bulk of their own ship, ‘Big Dog’. Here, in this blister, they had a splendid view over its arching back. On impulse, she kicked herself up to the top of the dome where the outlook was still clearer; Complain swam up alongside, and they clung to one of the narrow tubes into which the shutters had rolled themselves. The moths, it suddenly occurred to her, must accidentally have activated the shutters in their struggle behind the controls. Now the moths whirred about them, uniformly radiating hope.

Vyann stared longingly out. The sight of the planet was like toothache; she had to look away.

‘To think they’ll come all the way up here from Earth and lock us back away from the sun…’ she said.

‘They won’t… they can’t,’ Complain said. ‘Fermour’s only a fool: he doesn’t know. When these others come, Laur, they’ll understand we’ve earned freedom, a right to try life on Earth. Obviously they’re not cruel or they’d never have taken so much trouble over us. They’ll see we’d rather die there than live here.’

A startling explosion came from below them. Shards of plastic panelling blew out into the room, mingling with dead moths and smoke. Vyann and Complain looked down to see Gregg and Fermour floating away to a far corner, away from danger; the priest followed them more slowly — his cloak had been blown over his head. Another explosion sounded, tossing out more dead moths, among which live ones fluttered. Before too long, the control room would be packed with moths. With this second explosion, a rumbling began far away in the middle bowels of the ship, audible even through all the intervening doors, a rumble which, growing, seemed to express all the agony of the years. It grew louder and louder until Complain felt his body tremble with it.

Wordlessly, Vyann pointed to the outside of the ship. Fissures were appearing like stripes all across its hull. After four and a half centuries, ‘Big Dog’ was breaking up; the rumbling was its death-cry, something at once mighty and pathetic.

‘It’s the Emergency Stop!’ Fermour shouted. His voice seemed far away. ‘The moths have activated the Ultimate Emergency Stop! The ship’s splitting into its component decks!’

They could see it all. The fissures on that noble arch of back were swelling into canyons. Then the canyons were gulfs of space. Then there was no longer a ship: only eighty-four great pennies, becoming smaller, spinning away from one another, falling forever along an invisible pathway. And each penny was a deck, and each deck was now a world of its own, and each deck, with its random burden of men, animals or ponics sailed away serenely round Earth, buoyant as a cork in a fathomless sea.