Энн Маккефри - The Ship Who Won

They traveled six hundred meters in nearly total darkness. Plenna's hand settled on Keff's shoulder and he squeezed it. Abruptly the way opened out, and they emerged into a huge hemispherical cavern lit by a dull blue luminescence and filled with a soft humming like the purr of a cat.

«You could fit Chaumel's mountain in here,» Carialle said, taking a sounding through Keff's implants.

The ceiling of this cavern had been scalloped smooth at some time in the distant past so that it bore only new, tiny stalactites like cilia at the edges of each sound-deadening bubble. Here and there a vast, textured, onyx pillar stretched from floor to roof, glowing with an internal light.

The globe-frogs began to bounce up and down in their cases, pointing excitedly. Keff felt like dancing, too. Ahead, minute in proportion, lay a platform situated on top of a complex array of machinery. It wasn't until he identified it that he realized they had been flying over an expanse of machinery that nearly covered the floor of the entire cavern.

«I have never seen anything like it in my life,» Chaumel whispered, the first to break the silence. His voice was captured and tossed about like a ball by the scalloped stone walls.

«Nor has anyone else living,» Keff said. «No one has been here in this cavern for at least five hundred years.»

«Stepped field generators,» Carialle said at once. «Will you look at that beautiful setup? They are huge! This could light a space station for a thousand years.»

«It is amazing,» Plennafrey breathed.

She and Chaumel leaned forward, urging speed from their chariots, each eager to be the first to land on the platform. Keff clenched his hands on the chair back under his hips until he thought his fingers would indent the wood, but he was laughing. The others were laughing and hooting, and in the frogs' cases, jumping up and down for pure delight.

«The manual says . . .» Keff said, piling off the chair, pushed by Plenna who wanted to dismount right away and see the wonders up close. «The manual says the system draws from the core below and the surface above to service power demands. It mentions lightning—Cari, this is too cracked to read. I must have lost a piece of it while we were flying.»

Carialle found the copy in her memory bank. «It looks like the generators are made to absorb energy from the surface as well to take advantage of natural electrical surges like lightning. Sensible, but I think it got out of hand when the power demands grew beyond its stated capacity. It started drawing from living matter.»

Plenna surrendered her belt buckle to the Frog Prince. He left his shell and joined Keff and Chaumel at the low-lying console at the edge of the platform. The brawn, on his knees, displayed the indicator fields to Carialle through the implants while signing with the amphibioids. Stopping frequently to compare notes with his companions, the Frog Prince read the fine scrawl on the face of each, then tried to tell the humans through sign language what they were.

«So that says internal temperature of the Core, eh, Tall?» Keff asked, marking the gauge in Standard with an indelible pen. «And by the way, its hot in here, did you notice?»

«Residual heat from years of overuse,» Carialle said. «I calculate that it would take over two years to heat that cavern to forty degrees centigrade.»

«Well, we knew the overuse didn't occur overnight,» Keff said. «Ah, he says that one is the power output? Thanks, Chaumel.» He made another note on a glass-fronted display as the magiman gesticulated with the amphibioid. «Pity your ancestor didn't have any documentation on the mechanism itself, Plenna.»

«Isn't that level rising?» Plennafrey asked, pointing over Keff's shoulder. Keff looked up from the circuit he was examining.

«You're right, it is,» he said. Subtly, under their feet, the hum of the engines changed, speeding up slightly. «What's happening? I didn't touch anything. None of us did.»

«I'm getting blips in the power grid outside your location,» Carialle replied. «I'd say that some of the mages have gotten tired of the truce and are raising their defenses again.»

Keff relayed the suggestion to Chaumel, who nodded sadly. «Distrust is too strong for any respite to hold for long,» he said. «I am surprised we had this much time to examine the Core while it was quiescent.»

Swiftly, more and more of the power cells kicked on, some of them groaning mightily as their turbines began once again to spin. The gauge crept upward until the indicator was pinned against the right edge, but the generators' roar increased in volume and pitch beyond that until it was painful to hear.

«It's redlining,» Keff shouted, tapping the glass with a fingernail. The indicator didn't budge. «Listen to those hesitations! These generators sound like they could go at any moment. We didn't get here any too soon.»

«The sound is still rising,» Plenna said, her voice constricted to a squeak. She put out her hands and concentrated, then recoiled horrified as the turbines increased their speed slightly in response. «My power comes from here,» she said, alarmed. «I'm just making it worse.»

The frogs became very excited, bumping their cases against the humans' knees.

«Shut it down,» Tall commanded, sweeping his big hands emphatically at Keff. «Shut it down!»

«I would if I could,» he said, then repeated it in sign language. «Where is the OFF switch?»

«Is it that?» Chaumel asked, pointing to a large, heavy switch close to the floor.

Keff followed the circuit back to where it joined the rest of the mechanism. «Its a breaker,» he said. «If I cut this, it'll stop everything at once. It might destroy the generators altogether. We have to slow it down gradually, not stop it. This is impossible without a technical manual!» he shouted, frustrated, pounding his fist on his knee. «We could be at ground zero for a planet-shattering explosion. And there's nothing we could do about it. Why isn't there a fail-safe? Engineers who were advanced enough to invent something like this must have built one in to keep it from running in the red.»

«Perhaps the Old Ones turned it off?» Chaumel suggested. «Or even our poor, deceived ancestors?»

«Off?» Plennafrey tapped him on the shoulder and shouted above the din. «Couldn't Carialle turn off every item of power?»

«Good idea, Plenna! Cari, implement!»

«Yes, sir!» the efficient voice crackled in his ear. «Now, watch the circuits as I lock them out one at a time. The magifolk won't notice—they'll think it's another power failure. You and the globe-frogs should be able to trace down where the transformer steps kick in. See if you can make a permanent lower level adjustment.»

The turbines began to slow down gradually as the power demands lessened. The Frog Prince and his assistants were already at the consoles. As the only one with his hands outside a plastic globe, the leader had to monitor the shut-downs and incorporate the readings his assistants took through the controls. His long fingers flicked switches one after another and poked recessed buttons in a sequence that seemed to have meaning to him. The whining of the turbos died down slowly. In a while, the amphibioid raised his big hand over his head with his fingers forming a circle and blinked at Keff in a self-satisfied manner.

«You're in control of it now,» Keff signed.

«I am now understanding the lessons handed down,» the alien replied, his small face showing pleasure as he signed. «'To the right, on; to the left, off,' it was said. 'The big down is for peril, the small downs like stairs, to your hands comes the power.' Now I control it like this.» He held up Plennafrey's belt buckle. His long fingers slid into the depressions. «This one is in much better condition than the single we have, which has done service for our whole population for all these many years.»