The Space Between (42 page)

"Well," Kim said, striding down the hall as
if her plan was finally coming together. Keeble stopped halfway to
open the door, but Kim didn't slow. She went all the way to the end
and through the opening. On the other side, she stopped so suddenly
Meledrin almost ran into her.

"The door won't open," Keeble was saying as
he caught up. "I think it's hydraulic. There's a panel near it but
Cuto climbed up to have a look through the window and said there
wasn't anything worth seeing."

"Cuto told you?" Meledrin asked.

But Keeble didn't answer. Kim decided he was
probably staring at the same thing she was. The room was the size
of a football field and filled with row upon row of spaceships. It
was a pretty amazing sight, even if Meledrin didn't think so. Most
of them were not much larger than the one they had already flown,
but some were the size of a house, and there was an arch that led
through to some even larger ships.

Keeble went to run his hand along the
nearest hull, but Kim headed for the other hangar. Meledrin
wandered along behind as if she didn't care either way. Tuki
followed because that was what he did, and Cuto said something but
followed before Meledrin had a chance to answer. The next room was
five times the size of the first, and it needed to be. The smallest
ship was a vaguely plane shaped thing about the size of a jumbo
jet. The largest was a sphere more than a hundred meters across. It
was massive. She couldn't believe something that size could ever
move, let alone get all the way into space. Maybe it was just
another plane. Maybe it was a building. Maybe it was a moon.

No vehicle could be that big.

Kim was still staring, with the others
gathered behind, when Keeble caught up again.

"Don't just stand there blocking the door,"
he said, pushing his way through. "Trust women to just stand around
looking." But he stopped to stare as well. He went for a closer
look a minute later. Kim watched as he went to rub his hand along a
hull nearby.

Cuto broke the silence, and Kim jumped.
Meledrin and the alien spoke and waved their arms for a few seconds
before the elf translated.

"Cuto is adamant that someone is on the
level below us. Cuto suggests we might want to either move on or
make our way into one of these ships."

"There'll probably be a radio in the ships,"
Kim said.

"In that case, which one shall we
enter?"

"How would I know? Ummm... a medium sized
one."

"For which reason?"

"Because..."
Yes, why?
"Well, a little
one might not carry us all properly, and a big one might be too
hard to fly." Kim looked around and saw a fifty-meter sphere
halfway across the huge hangar. It was probably larger than she
wanted, but steps led up through a network of scaffolding that
stood by its side. "That one there?" Examining it, she felt like
one of the Amish trying to fool a used car salesman into thinking
she knew what she was talking about.

Keeble had apparently heard the
conversation, or liked the look of the scaffolding, for he was
already making his way in that direction. He didn't climb the
stairs though. He wandered slowly around, looking up at the curve
of the hull and the huge funnels, like intake vents, that were all
over the ship. There were also thousands of other holes, a few
centimeters across, spread all over the ship.

Kim started to follow, but her shadow
stretching out before her caught her attention. She turned and
discovered that the hangar door was open. The door was huge,
obviously, and offered up a view of a strange world. Kim went
closer. There was a platform outside, then the land fell away into
an enormous, densely forested river valley. On the far side, ten
miles away or maybe twenty, sharp-edged mountains bit at a faintly
purple sky.

Kim stood in the doorway, staring. The air
seemed so much clearer than on Earth. The forest so much greener.
It was like some primordial world that was untouched by the
destructive hands of advanced creatures. Except there was a hangar
full of spaceships and... Kim looked at the ground.

She looked back into the hangar and saw all
her companions. Meledrin had hardly moved at all. Keeble and Cuto
were examining the ships, and Tuki was not far away from Kim, also
examining the valley. She took a step backwards.

The untouched valley. Except there was the
hangar and a strange set of footprints in the dust. Boot prints, to
be more precise. Actually, there were two sets. Who ever made the
first set was big, either that or had stolen boots off someone big.
Kim didn't want to try to steal shoes off somebody that big. She
licked her lips and looked around. The other prints might have
belonged to a child.

Heart racing, Kim followed the prints to the
end of the platform where they went down a flight of worn stairs
and disappeared into the forest.

"What is it, mo'shi?" Tuki asked. He was
still standing by the door, as if afraid to venture any
further.

Kim glanced back. She wiped her hands on her
jeans, chewed her bottom lip. "Nothing." But she saw something just
beyond the bottom of the stairs. It looked like a book. "Wait
there." She didn't think he was likely to follow anyway.

She glanced around then
hurried down. Then she hesitated before actually stepping down onto
the hard, dusty ground. A small puff of dust kicked up when her
foot touched.
Just like Neil
Armstrong,
she thought. She looked around
at the forest. It crowded in close, dense, and shadowed, except for
a narrow path that snaked away along the side of the hill. Another
sign of life, one that seemed a lot more real, a lot more permanent
than the boot prints or even the hangar. Kim felt as if she were
being watched. She snatched up the book and raced back up the
stairs. Tuki watched, wide-eyed, as Kim approached. He took a step
back.

"What is it, mo'shi?"

"A book."

"That is a book?"

As if it were some mystical talisman.
Perhaps it was. Kim nodded. The red leather cover was worn and
cracked, stamped with strange, indecipherable symbols. The pages
were brittle with age.

"What does it do, mo'shi?"

"Nothing." There were
pictures and lists and what might have been maps. It didn't matter
what it was if nobody could read it. "Come on. Let's go look at the
ship."
Keep moving. Don't lose
momentum.
She made her way quickly to the
scaffolding, trying not to notice that she was backtracking along
the trail of footprints. She almost ran up the steep stairs. They
ended above the ship's equator, but a platform reached out the side
to touch the ship.

The hull was rough and pitted. There was an
inset, round-cornered rectangle, about three meters to a side. "It
looks like a door." Kim looked for a hidden handle or a panel that
would reveal a handle, without really expecting to see anything.
She ran her hands around the outside edge of the door. Then around
the inside edge. She felt nothing unusual.

She laughed.
Nothing unusual? My hand is on the side of a
spaceship and I can't feel anything unusual?

She poked a finger into one of the holes on
the hull and leant out over the rail to look inside. She couldn't
see or feel anything.

She followed Keeble back down to the
ground.

"What do you reckon, Keeble?"

"That panel there, between those two
funnels," the dwarf pointed. "It's stone."

Kim examined the patch of hull. She could
see a slight difference in color, but she thought it was just a
trick of the light. "Are you sure?"

"Yes."

Kim narrowed her eyes as if concentrating
would help. Eventually she shook her head. "If you say so. So you
can sing us in then?"

29: Rugby

Keeble found a smaller scaffold and dragged
it over so he could climb up to look at the panel. First Kim, then
Tuki and the alien helped. When it was in place, they all climbed
the steep stairs.

Cuto said something but Meledrin didn't
bother to translate for everyone else. The alien spoke again, and
Keeble turned to see it glaring at Meledrin. The elf sighed. "Cuto
is not surprised that our civilizations failed if we are somehow
able to lose two whole rooms full of huge ships such as these."

Keeble gave a small grunt and smiled, but
quickly turned back to the ship. "I'm not sure if I can do it," he
said, reaching out with his good hand. The stone was like nothing
he'd ever felt. It was even stronger than the stone on the ship
they'd flown from America and would withstand as much, if not more,
than the metal sections of the hull. It was so dense and compact
that it was a wonder it didn't collapse under its own weight.

"What do you mean?" Kim asked. "Why
not?"

"The stone is amazing. It's so strong."

"Well, give it a go. Just don't hurt
yourself."

Cuto spoke and Meledrin translated. "Cuto
wishes to know how your singing works."

But Keeble was already building his Song. It
was even stronger now. He'd passed through another gate and could
add the knowledge he'd gained to his Song. He hummed the
foundations carefully, making sure everything was right, before
building up the Song with a wordless, dancing cadence, and sealing
the joints with a series of clicks. When it was all there, he kept
it going perfectly, all of the sounds combining like the stones of
the mountains, or the water of a stream. He could feel the power
washing through him.

After he'd been Singing the completed Song
for more than a minute, Keeble started to change it again,
condensing it, whittling away the edges, honing it until it was
focused tightly at one small section of the stone panel on the
hull.

He stepped forward. He reached out towards
the focus of his Song. And paused.

Whistler's Mother,
Meledrin is an elf.
He wondered how he
hadn't known. He wondered how he'd gone all this time with a woman
and an elf as a companion. He felt his Song falter but clung to the
rhythms tenaciously.

"Meledrin's an elf," he said, working the
words into his Song. "She's an elf. And Kim is a human." The Song
carried on, even with the revelations. He took a deep breath and
concentrated. "Chess is an amazing game. Exact. Proper. But rugby
is fun as well."

And even if Meledrin was an
elf, she was part of his work gang.
A work
gang is like family.
Keeble took a deep
breath.
She'd argued with that other elf
at Grovely to let me stay. If not for her, I would not be
here.

He looked at the elf, gave a small nod, and
changed the Song again, spreading the focus until he had created a
hole large enough to climb through. He put his head inside the
ship, pulling himself up to get all the way through the wall.

Inside, everything was dark.

"It's dark," he said when he was back out in
the open. "Like, can't-see-my-nose dark."

"Doesn't light get through the stone?"

"A bit, but the hull's about a meter
thick."

"Shit." Kim looked around as if a torch
might suddenly appear. It sort of did. "In my pack. There's a torch
in my pack. Quick, Tuki."

The moai removed the pack and looked at it
in confusion. "How do you open it?"

"It's a zipper," Kim said. As if that would
help.

Keeble shook his head. "You realize he has
no idea what a torch looks like, don't you?"

Kim grabbed the pack and rifled through it
until she found a small torch. Keeble took it, found the switch,
and stuck his head inside the ship again. After a moment he climbed
in completely, surveyed his surroundings, then spun around and
poked his head out to talk to Kim. The woman was waiting
impatiently, chewing her lip, shuffling her feet, and glancing
towards the door the Americans would enter by.

"It's just a box," he told her. "It's sixty
centimeters square and runs 2.3 meters directly into the ship. The
inner end's made of stone."

"What?"

"It's just a box."

"But that's crazy."

Keeble recognized the moment Kim came up
with the idea.

"It's an airlock."

"Why does it need an airlock?"

"Because there's no air in space."

"There isn't?"

"No. Look, I think you're in a maintenance
hatch. If you sing through that inner wall, you'll be in
passageways or something."

"How do you know?"

"Just trust me"

Keeble wasn't so sure. Apparently it showed
on his face.

"Just get in there and sing, and we'll
follow you."

"There's no way Tuki or Cuto will fit."

"Oh. Right. Damn it." Kim chewed her lip
some more. "Here's the plan, then. We'll go and wait by the door up
there, and you open it from the inside."

Keeble nodded, "Right," and went back into
the ship. "Go open the door," he muttered. "Sounds easy." He
stopped, stuck his head out and looked at Kim. "Somebody bring my
tools." It wouldn't surprise him if they couldn't even manage that
between them.

Back inside the ship, he adjusted his
mechanical hand to hold the torch and crawled along the passage. He
Sang his way through the next wall and entered an intersection. He
grunted and muttered as if Kim might hear him if he swore out
loud.

After a moment he picked a direction at
random, left, and crawled. Then a turn to the right. When he
reached the end of the passage, if his calculations were correct,
he was nine point seven meters from the outside of the ship. There
was no reason why his calculations wouldn't be correct.

A ladder led upwards.

Keeble rose to his feet and climbed. His
metal hand, still gripping the torch, clanked against the rungs,
his good hand was slippery with sweat. At the top, he climbed out
into another low passage.