Дэймон Найт: Orbit 11

“What do you think that means?”

“Comes from a world where they’ve discovered radio.”

Wad broke the connection; Daw grinned but found he didn’t much blame him for it.

Daw wondered what Gladiator’s bionic correlation program would say about Gladiator herself. Perhaps liken her to the armor of a caddis-fly larva—an empty cylinder of odds and ends. Caddis-fly armor exploded. The interior of his helmet held the familiar smells of fine lubricating oil, sweat, and the goo he sometimes used on his hair; he kicked down and the soles of his boots clinked home on the hull of the bridge module.

Above him and around him Gladiator flung her shining threads, the stars a dust of ice seen through the interstices, the connecting tubes like spider web—half glittering, half drowned in inky shadow.

Still ten thousand miles off, the other ship was, under the immense lasers Gladiator directed toward it, another star; but one that winked and twinkled as its structure surged and twisted to the urgings of accelerations long departed.

A hatch at Daw’s feet opened and a metal-clad figure he knew to be Helen Youngmeadow rose, caught his hand, and stood beside him. Like his own, her faceplate was set for full transparency; her beautiful face, thus naked to the darkness of a billion suns, seemed to him to hold a hideous vulnerability. In his earphones her voice asked: “Do you know this is the first time I’ve been out? It’s lovely.”

“Yes,” Daw said.

“And all this is Gladiator; she doesn’t seem this big when she talks to me in our cabin. Could you show me which one it is? I’m lost.”

“Which module?” From his utility belt Daw took a silver rod, then locked the articulations of his suit arm so that he could aim it like a missile projector with the fine adjustment controls. In the clean emptiness no beam showed, but a module miles down the gossamer cylinder of the ship flashed with the light.

“Way down there,” the girl said. “It would be a lot more sociable if everyone were quartered together.”

“In a warship the men must be near their duty,” Daw explained awkwardly. “And everything has to be decentralized so that if we’re blown apart, all the parts can fight. The module you and your husband are in has more of the ship’s central processor than any of the others, but even that is scattered all over.”

“And their ship—the ship out there—is modular too.”

“Yes,” Daw said. He remembered his conversation with Wad. “Ours is a hollow cylinder, theirs a filled rectangle. Our modules are different sizes and shapes depending on function; theirs are uniform. You’re the empathist—the intercultural psychologist—what do those thing tell you?”

“I have been thinking about it,” Helen Youngmeadow said, “but I’d like to think some more before I talk, and I’m anxious to fly. Can’t we go now?”

“You’re sure—?”

“I’ve had all the training.” She relaxed her boots’ grip on the steel world beneath her, kicked out, for an instant floated above him, then was gone. Backpack rockets made a scarcely visible flame, and it was several seconds before he could pick out the spark of her progress. He followed, knowing that all around them, invisible and distant by hundreds of miles, the other boarding parties he had dispatched were making for the ship ahead as well.

“I’m an empathist, as you said,” the girl’s voice continued. “Gladiator is a warship, but my husband and I are here to take the side of the enemy.”

“That doesn’t bother me.”

“Because by taking their side we help you. We give you someone who thinks like them and reacts to their needs. In a way we’re traitors.”

“This is exploration; if we had come just to fight you wouldn’t even be on board.”

“Because the Navy’s afraid we might blow our own vessel up, or induce the crew to mutiny. We humans have such a high empathy coefficient—some of us.”

“When you and I reach that ship,” Daw said wryly, “we’ll be the underdogs. Perhaps then you’ll empathize with the Navy.”

“That’s the danger—if I do that I won’t be doing my job.”

He chuckled.

“Listen, Captain Daw. If I ask you something, will you tell me the truth? Straight?”

“If you’ll let me catch up to you, and assuming it’s not classified.”

“All right, I’ve cut my jets. I’m—”

“I see you, and I’ve been ranging you on suit radar. It’s just that with more mass to accelerate I can’t match you for speed when you’re flat out.” Ahead of them something had been transformed from a winking star to a tiny scrap of diamond lace. Three thousand miles yet, Daw estimated, and checked his radar for confirmation. Five thousand. That ship was big. He said aloud, “What’s the question?”

“Why did you let me come? I want to, and I’m terribly grateful, but while I was going up to the bridge I was sure you’d say no. I was thinking of ways to go without your permission—crazy things like that.”

For the second time Daw lied.

He held her in space, his hand on her arm, telling her it was a safety precaution. The scrap of lace grew to an immense net and at last acquired a third dimension, so that it was seen as thousands of cubes of void, tubes outlining the edges, spherical modules at the intersections. “Right angles,” Helen Youngmeadow said. “I never knew right angles could be so lovely.” Then, a moment later, “This is more beautiful than ours.”

Daw felt something he tried to choke down. “More regular, certainly,” he admitted. “Less individualized.”

“Do you still think it’s abandoned?”

“Until they show me otherwise. The question is, which one of these things should we enter?”

“If we can enter.”

“We can. Mrs. Youngmeadow, you empathize with these people, even though you’ve never seen anything of theirs except this ship. Where would you put the command module?”

It was a challenge, and she sensed it. “Where would you put it, Captain? As a sailor and a military man?”

“On a corner,” Daw said promptly.

“You’re right.” He saw her helmet swivel as she looked at him. “But how did you know? Are you trained in empathies too?”

“No. But you agree? I thought you were going to say in the center.”

“That’s what I thought you were going to say—but it has to be wrong. The entire ship is a structure of empty cubes, with the edges and corners having the only importance. An outer corner would be the corner of corners—did you feel that?”

“No, but I saw that observation from an interior module would be blocked in every direction, and even on an outside plane the rest of the ship would blot out a hundred and eighty degrees. A corner module has two hundred and seventy degrees of clear field.”

They explored the surface of the nearest corner module (Daw estimated its diameter at sixty thousand feet, which would give it a surface area of over three hundred and fifty square miles) until they found a hatch, with what appeared to be a turning bar on the side opposite the hinge. “How do you know it’s not locked?” the girl asked as Daw braced himself to heave at the bar.

“Nobody’s worried about burglars out here. But anyone’s going to worry about having a crew member outside who has to get in fast.” He pulled. The bar moved a fraction of an inch and the hatch a barely visible distance. “I’ll give you some more data to empathize on,” Daw, said. “Whoever built this thing is damn strong.”

The girl grasped the other end of the bar, and together they turned it until the hatch stood wide open. Light poured from it into the limitless night of space and Helen Youngmeadow said softly, “They left everything turned on,” and a moment afterward, “No airlock.”