Hal Colebatch - The Wunder War

“The first clock, I guess, was not in stasis. When it recorded that a certain time had passed, it sent a signal to open the first stasis-box. Then the clock inside that became operational. In addition, the other mechanisms in it presumably became active and did whatever they were meant to do. Again, after that clock had recorded a certain time had passed, the next stasis box would be opened. I am guessing that it opened the big field, and guessing from that assumption that it perhaps subsequently closed it again.

“The damage shows something interrupted the sequence, whether accidental meteor impact or deliberate attack.”

“There were no sapient life-forms after the war to attack it. Not for billions of years,” said Peter Robinson.

“There is a question about that point,” said Gatley Ivor. “Some of the artifacts we have found seem to date from well after Suicide Night. Perhaps survivors came out of stasis and made foredoomed attempts to start again.”

“Anyway, the sequence of the clocks stopped. Those”—Richard pointed to the row of perfect and undamaged spheres— “are stasis boxes still to be opened. My guess is that each contains a clock which it was planned would, after a certain time, open the next.”

“How long did each clock run?”

“It's hard to say. The radioactive elements are completely decayed. I don't know how they were calibrated. I don't even know if they were opened at regular intervals. But judging by the sheer bulk of these structures and the materials used—all of which would have had their cost in resources—the builders must have been thinking in long terms. Tens or hundreds of thousands of years, at least.”

“Couldn't the bulk have just been for military protection?” asked Gay.

“It doesn't have a military feel about it. If it is military, why are there no signs of any defensive weapons?”

“A moment,” said Peter Robinson. “I try to think as a thrint might have thought three billion years ago. You have said the great problem with stasis boxes is: How are they turned off? But that is how we see them from our point of view, for we find them when the control mechanisms have crumbled away. It was not a problem during the days of the Slaver Empire, when there were always other thrintun around to do it. That is something else that makes this different to the Slaver artifacts previously discovered: The builders of this stasis-box knew no one would be coming to turn it off! The control chamber is an attempt to defeat entropy outside a stasis field. To challenge not living enemies but Time itself.”

“Like the Pyramids,” said Gay. “This is, perhaps, like them, a gift from the ancients to the future world.”

To Richard and Gay, who had swum in the seas of Earth, the blow was—vastly intensified—as though they had been standing ankle-deep on a beach when a huge wave smashed over them from head to foot, trod them flat and marched over them to drag them under into neck-breaking darkness amid roiling, tearing sand and stones. To Melody Fay it was like the Jinxian nightmare of falling off a cliff in Jinxian gravity, to Charrgh-Captain it was worse than the worst probing in his training to resist telepathic interrogation. Then a choking feeling, tearing, unbelievable pain in body-cavities and eye. Blindness, a worse, more tearing blindness than looking on hyperspace, mouths and throats exploding. Cold. COLD. Then it was like dying.

And it was gone.

They were prostrate on the cabin floor. They got to their feet more or less slowly and shakily, and looked around.

“That was the Slaver Power,” breathed Gatley Ivor. “A Slaver has come out of stasis.”

“How?” Even as he asked the question, Richard realized something: But the Power is not there now. Not unless it is already controlling our minds so completely that we do not know it is controlling them. That is possible, but to think on it is useless and the stuff of madness.

“We were running the Joey 's gravity-motor on the surface of the sphere,” said Gatley Ivor at last. “Could that have turned off a stasis field?”

“I suppose it could, if the mechanism was sensitive.”

“Stupid!” screamed Charrgh-Captain, “Stupid! Stupid!” His jaws went into the killing gape, his claws extended, though he was sick and shaking. His jaws dripped. The kzin was about to go berserk.

“Charrgh-Captain, Dominant One!” cried Peter Robinson in the Heroes' Tongue, rolling belly-up before Charrgh-Captain and baring his throat in a posture of total submission, “with justice, we did not see it either. And nothing has happened. We are not in the Slavers' Power. It is not there. It has gone again completely.”

Charrgh-Captain stopped. “It came. It can come again,” he snarled. “Speak rapidly if you have anything to say.”

“Half an eight of them came out of stasis,” said Peter Robinson shakily. He rolled over slowly and got to his feet, still keeping a wary eye on Charrgh-Captain. It must have cost him a great deal to make that gesture, thought Richard. And he was taking a gamble that the inhibitor reflex would work. Now he will have to build his position again.

And he moved fast. Well, kzin are always faster than humans, but he moved faster than Charrgh-Captain and he seems much less groggy. There is more to this Wunderkzin than meets the eye.

“I counted their minds,” Peter Robinson went on. “They were, of course, momentarily confused and groping. They had no time to seize me. Now their minds have stopped again. I do not understand that… they must have gone back into stasis.”

“I understand it!” said Charrgh-Captain. He seemed fully recovered and his ears twitched now in the kzinti expression of glee. “They must have opened their suits. Perhaps after a million eons in stasis they were ready to enjoy a bit of breathing space. Breathing space! You see, I can make a joke in monkey language!”

“No, that doesn't quite add up,” said Richard. “Not if they went into stasis before the installation was damaged. For them no time would have passed at all, only a kind of blip in their consciousness and a feeling of disorientation and grogginess. They would have been more wary about opening their suits. Besides, there were many more than four thrint in stasis there. Why should four fields have been turned off and not others? And from what we know of thrintun spacesuits, the stasis fields protecting them were turned on and off by the push of a button. It's unlikely that relatively small gravity fluctuations could affect that so selectively.”

“I do not call my colleagues monkeys,” said Peter Robinson. “They have treated my kind well. You have a diplomatic passport, and I cannot call you out, but I make the point that you have insulted them. And not for the first time.”

“Well for you that you do not call me out, Freak and Renegade, and well for you that I am now a diplomat,” Charrgh-Captain replied. “In any event it is below my dignity to fight even an honest telepath of the Patriarchy… However, I will say to the real humans that I spoke in the mirth of contemplating Slavers suddenly in hard vacuum and trying to eat their own lungs and entrails as their large single eyes exploded out of their heads… No insult was intended. And surely it was worth feeling their pain for a moment to enjoy what happened to them!”

“I do not mind being called a monkey,” said Richard hastily. “We are all companions on a hazardous task. But what happened? What has happened to the Slavers? You are certain their minds are gone.”

“Certain,” said Peter Robinson. “For a few seconds after the great shout there was panic, pain, terror, and then it died away. But it was not directed at us. We should have been dead if it had been. There was death there, and that could not be mistaken.”