The Space Between (44 page)

Kim smiled. "Huh. Well, there you go." But
there were heaps of the things. Were blackouts common occurrences
on starships? The light continued to grow until it was blindingly
bright.

"That's a bit bloody bright," Keeble said,
as if that was the reason he hadn't been using them.

"Who cares? It's better than what we had."
Kim shrugged, squinting against the glare. "How are you going, Mel?
Did you find anything interesting?"

"There is a library, but all the books seem
to be written in the same language as this one you found."

"So it came from the library, do you
think?"

Meledrin shook her head. "The one you found
is handwritten on rudimentary paper. The others are printed on high
quality paper such as I saw on your world."

"So can you read them?"

"There are many with pictures which I have
been attempting to cross reference. There are signs on the walls
outside many of the rooms, as well, that I have noted down." She
indicated a piece of paper on the table. She nodded. "I am making
progress."

"Well, keep going." Kim sat silently for a
moment, watching her stark, sharp-edged shadow on the wall. "Keeble
thinks two of the engine things might be clocks."

"Clocks?"

"Yep." She gave the clocks some thought.
"They're mechanical clocks. Why have those when a digital clock
would take up a lot less room and be a whole heap more
accurate?"

Meledrin shook her head. "I do not
know."

"Does it matter?" Keeble shrugged.

"It must. They're huge, so they must be
important. Vitally important. They'd hardly make huge clocks just
to wake people up in the morning. But if nothing else it narrows
down what do we need to fix in order to get this thing moving. We
can worry about the clocks later."

Keeble muttered something under his
breath.

"Pardon?"

"I can't fix the clocks." The dwarf scuffed
his boot on the floor. "Clocks are very specialized. If one little
thing is out, nothing works properly. And these ones look more
complicated than any I've ever seen."

"Well, let's worry about that when the time
comes."

Kim knew she had to get Keeble doing
something or he'd get grumpy. "Keeble, you go look at the engines
to see what you can learn. I'll think of something useful to
do."

Sneering, Keeble nodded, took a lamp, and
made his way out the door. Cuto watched the dwarf for a moment then
collected a lamp of its own and followed.

Kim pointed to the book. "So, what can you
read so far, Mel?" It could be the answer to their prayers or a
recipe book — which might not be so bad either. Kim had a feeling
it was important, though. It appeared to be out of place in this
world. With the ships and the printing and everything else, an old
leather book was not something that would be just lying around.

The elf shook her head. "Nothing, really."
She shook her head again. "It is as it was when we were learning
Tuki's language. I am understanding more than I should at this
juncture, but it is all very strange."

"So, what have you got?"

Mel took up one of the books from the ship
and started flicking through the pages. "Using these pictures I was
—"

"Don't bother telling me how you worked it
out. I trust you."

"Very well." Mel paused for a moment then
took up the book Kim had found. "This part here seems to say
something about the stars being a gift from the gods to man."

"Ummm, okay. It's some type of religious
text?"

"I do not believe so, though it does go on
to say that the power of the stars and the glare of the gods' gaze
overwhelmed any man who reached out to take the gift." Meledrin's
brow was wrinkled as she attempted to tease meanings out of the
strange symbols scrawled on the page. "So the gods bestowed another
gift, reshaping men into six different tribes that could form a
'great all mind' so they would not be overburdened by the gift of
the stars.

"That is if I have the translation right. I
am not sure that it means anything at all."

Kim wasn't so sure. In Area51 she'd
discovered that what might be considered fanciful, impossible
legends could have a basis in reality. This talk of six tribes and
reshaping people struck too close to home. Keeble, Mel, and Tuki
were all human, apparently, just slightly different from those
found on earth. Reshaped by the gods, perhaps?

Tuki shifted slightly in his chair, and Kim
knew enough to know that was significant. He had something he
wanted to say but was too nervous to say it.

"What is it, Tuki? Don't be afraid to speak
up."

"It is just that the moai say we came from
the stars and that one day five 'greater beings' will come and lead
us back there."

"Five and a moai make six, right? The six
tribes."

He nodded for a moment, stopped and
shrugged.

A moment later, Kim surged to her feet, and
grabbing a lantern, rushed to the stairs then to the flight deck
above. Once there, she stopped to stare. The chair near the door
and the one in the clear sphere were large by human standards. The
two on the other side of the room were smaller than the others,
though situated on a platform so the controls were all the same
height.

Kim heard a noise and spun to see Meledrin
and Tuki watching her.

"What is the matter, Kim?"

She went up to the captain's chair, as if
the different angle might change what she saw, change the
significance of what she was seeing. "We need to go get Keeble up
here."

"I will get him, mo'shi." Tuki disappeared
down the stairs, but the light of his lamp seemed to linger for a
long time.

"Mel, you might as well take a seat. Up
here."

The elf sniffed but made her way to the
second central seat. The others arrived a few minutes later.

"Will the two of you please sit down over
there," Kim said, pointing to the side of the ship with the larger
chairs.

While Cuto loitered by the door, Tuki did as
he was asked, selecting the seat in the sphere, perhaps because it
reminded him of the skyglass.

Keeble stayed near the alien. "Why should I?
What's going on?"

"I think I've worked something out." Though
it was crazy.

"So? What's it got to do with me?"

Kim sighed. "Everything, Keeble. Just sit
down."

He grumbled, but stumped across to the seat.
"Dwarves have known about chairs for centuries. I could have told
you about them and saved you the strain of thinking." He sat down
and looked at the seat. He wiggled a bit and swung his feet. They
were well off the floor. "It's a bit big."

"Yes. Isn't it?" Kim chewed on her thumbnail
for a moment. "Okay. Now, both of you swap to the chairs over the
other side, please."

"For Whistler's sake, woman, make up your
mind."

But Keeble and Tuki walked across to the
other side of the bridge and stepped up onto the platform.

The dwarf sat down and nodded. "That's much
better."

But Tuki couldn't even get his knees under
the console.

Keeble noticed straight away. "That's
interesting."

Kim nodded. "Isn't it?"

"But what does it mean?"

"It means this ship was made for us."

"How could they know we were coming?" Tuki
asked.

"No, not us in particular, but people like
us. We're from four of the six tribes. A long time ago humans were
genetically engineered, or changed by the gods or whatever, so we
could help fly this ship." She slumped back into the pilot's chair.
Was she supposed to be sitting there? She didn't know what the
controls in front of Meledrin's chair were for, exactly, but seeing
she wasn't about to let the elf drive she gave no thought to
switching.

"Does this assist us in any useful
manner?"

Kim looked about, as if knowing the secret
of the seats might have let the ship start on its own. Nothing
happened, so she went to stand near Keeble. She chewed on her lip
as she thought.

"It tells us that these controls are for
engineering." She hoped she was right, otherwise they were back to
square one and going nowhere. "When they're working, Keeble, you
can keep track of all of the systems on the ship. Do you
understand? In a car there is the oil gauge and the temperature
gauge and fuel gauge. This is where all those things will be for
this ship." Keeble was nodding his head and studying the layout, as
if it would mean anything without power.

"Tuki, your seat is one of those two back
over there."

Unlike the seats for Keeble and his missing
partner, the seats on the opposite side were obviously at two
different sets of controls. Kim looked from one to the other but
was unsure where Tuki should sit.

Tuki was in the sphere chair again, studying
the dozen or so controls on the armrests as if each would bring on
a different, equally hideous form of torture. Among all the buttons
there was what appeared to be a trackball on each side, and two
pedals. The other seat faced three monitors. There was a clear
space right in the middle, as if somebody had forgotten to install
a very large keyboard or, perhaps, forgotten to install another
trackball. There was a large depression in the console where such a
thing might have fitted. To either side of that were a few buttons
and a joystick.

Kim looked from one set of controls to the
next, looking for some clue as to what they were for. Finally, she
saw it.

With an excited laugh, she crossed to Tuki
and took hold of the skyglass. He was reluctant to let it go, but
Kim smiled. "It's okay, Tuki. You're in the wrong seat, though, and
I'll need this for just a moment."

He let the ball go and Kim took a deep
breath, gave a small prayer, and slotted the skyglass into the
depression on the console. It fitted perfectly and clicked
satisfyingly into place. Kim took another deep breath and smiled to
herself. Three quarters of the ball was visible above the
counter.

The console beeped. A single light
flashed.

Kim almost cheered. She gripped the console
so tight her fingers hurt.

Cuto said something and finally moved away
from the stairs to look.

"I hope this thing doesn't run on Windows,"
Kim said, voice quavering. The joke was lost on everyone else.

"What did you do?" Keeble raced across the
room.

"I think I found the
key."
It's a strange sort of key,
she thought,
but perhaps
there were other ways to get it started as well
.

All around, systems were coming to life.
Light flooded the room.

Kim smiled fully now, more relieved than she
thought completely necessary. She felt like doing a jig but didn't
think it was appropriate — she was in charge, after all.
Apparently. She tried to sound businesslike. "Alrighty then. Let's
see what we've got."

She looked up and discovered Keeble standing
by Tuki's seat, examining the skyglass and its new home. The image
shown in the 'glass was also hanging in the air above it in all its
3D glory.

"Why are you standing here, Keeble? I'm
pretty sure you'll have a computer over at your console that tells
you how everything works."

The dwarf glanced over to the other side of
the flight deck, then back at Kim. A broad smile split his face,
and he ran back to his seat. Kim followed at a more leisurely,
dignified pace, to see if she could help get him started.

When she got there, crouching down so she
didn't feel like a teacher looking down at a preschooler, Kim found
herself looking at a screen full of meaningless writing and what
looked like iconic buttons. None of it meant anything to her.

"So, how do we start the engines then,
woman?"

Kim chose to ignore Keeble's tone. "No idea.
It might not even be done from this console." Kim made her way back
up the stairs to the pilot's seat and examined the brightly lit
array of controls while Meledrin puzzled her way through menus on
Keeble's computer. She listened vaguely as she chose a button at
random and pressed it. She was fairly relieved when nothing
happened.

She chose another button, and when she
pressed it a buzzer sounded from various speakers. It sounded more
like a paging system than an alarm and came from speakers at all
the consoles and probably all around the ship. She spoke into what
might have been a microphone. "Hello." She wondered if she could be
heard from outside.

After that, she decided to quit while she
was ahead. She didn't want to start the engines then find out the
ship was in gear.

Over at the engineering console, Keeble was
making progress with Meledrin's assistance.

"Propulsion," Keeble said, and hit the
button himself.

Meledrin struggled with the
next list, spending a long time with her eyes closed and talking
silently to herself. "Clocks,
Gravitic
Field generators, Ohoga
Engines..."

"What does
Gravitic
mean?" Kim
wandered back over to look, as if it would make a
difference.

"I am unsure. But the tree on Sherindel
where the gate is located is called the Ohoga tree."

Kim wanted to say something enlightening,
but nothing came to her.

Meledrin shrugged.

"Maybe the guy who invented the engine found
the gates?" Kim suggested.

She shrugged again.

"Try 'Ohoga Engines,' then."

They did, and Keeble spent the next five
minutes examining what appeared to be a wiring diagram.

"Not very detailed," he complained.

Kim had to agree. If there were ten wires in
the 'Ohoga Engines,' then being able to point out the Big Dipper
would make her an astrophysicist. "This is probably a simplified
version. All the good stuff will be in the engineering bay. Or in
some other section."