The Space Between (46 page)

The alien picked up something and examined
it, turning it from side to side. Then another one. A wave of hand
signals.

"Cuto recognizes some of the tools,"
Meledrin translated, "but not all."

Keeble returned his attention to his Song,
which he'd continued during the search, and started to build the
higher layers. With the toolbox in hand, he stepped up to the wall
and through it into a small recessed area. Cuto followed.

Keeble reigned in his
thoughts.
Hope this is the best engine to
disconnect.
There may have been something
in the computer to tell him, but he didn't know how to find it. He
shrugged and got to work. He was starting to work like an elf, no
concrete plans. Almost making it up as he went along. If Milo could
see him now.

He used a wonderful, automatic, star-shaped
screwdriver to undo a set of four screws and carefully laid aside
the panel they'd been holding. With the panel removed, he could see
the part he thought he was after, two and a half meters beyond. He
crawled awkwardly into the hole, dragging the tools with him.

Cuto grunted and scratched out some
words.

Keeble started, hitting his head on
something hard and unforgiving. The alien was right behind him,
squeezed in amongst the machinery. It was motioning towards the
toolbox.

Keeble nodded and, free of his burden, moved
quickly into a more open space and sat up to look. Cuto did the
same.

"Let's see what we have here, then," he said
to himself. He identified what was called the coupling block and
set to work.

The instructions for disconnecting the
generator were inscribed on Keeble's mind, but he didn't blindly
follow. He found the first control panel that needed to be
modified. It was only a minor operation, but he wanted to do
everything right. He sorted through the wires, identified the
terminals.

"Give me some..." But Cuto didn't
understand, so he turned and pointed. The alien found the right
tools and offered a simple, one-handed signal as it handed them
over.

With each task he needed to complete, Keeble
checked to see the results of what he intended to do, following
pipes and electrical wires and circuits from here to there and back
again. Every time he disconnected something, he connected it again
to make sure it could be done.

Every time he needed a tool, Cuto found it,
held it out, and translated into sign language or gave the alien
version of a shrug. More than once the alien was there to lend a
hand, working with solid concentration and a steady grip. Its big
hands, with three fingers and a thumb and too many knuckles by far,
were as strong as clamps but also surprisingly dexterous.

In an hour the job was done, or at least
Keeble thought it was. He turned to look at Cuto. The alien
shrugged an alien shrug.

"I guess we'll find out." He packed away the
tools and followed Cuto back out into the engineering bay. And now
for the next job. He shook his head and asked Meledrin, who was
studying the computer, to ask Cuto about the radio.

32: Fly

Kim didn't go straight to the hold. For a
while she just wandered around the ship, shining her lantern in
through doors and into corners that hadn't seen light for about
fifty thousand years. There was a hangar with a couple of strange
looking craft parked untidily about. There was a cup sitting on a
desk in a small office near there. Kim stared at it for five
minutes, imagining the man or woman who had once sat in the chair,
drinking and talking. Working on some small problem that had come
up. Or playing solitaire on the computer while the boss wasn't
looking. Shivering, she hurried on.

In the hold she found a
crate with a partially opened door. Putting the lantern on the
floor, Kim gripped the handle and pulled. At first she thought
nothing at all was going to happen, then it creaked open further. A
sliver of light made it through the gap and revealed smaller boxes
full of shiny silvery bags and square black containers. There were
labels, but Kim couldn't decipher anything. In the end, she bit the
bullet and tore open one of the bags. It contained what might have
been food. The dry block crumbled to dust in her fingers. Then she
fiddled with one of the square containers for five minutes before
the lid came off. Inside was a gloopy mess that actually smelled
pretty good. Maybe it
was
food. Maybe it was still edible. She hadn't really
given any thought to what they'd all eat. She had the tins of baked
beans, or whatever it was they'd stolen from Area 51, but that
wasn't going to last very long at all.

She dipped her finger into the slop, raised
it to her mouth, then thought better of it. She would wait until
she was a bit hungrier yet.

The dull boom of another explosion echoed
slightly around the hold. It all seemed so far away, like someone
else's life, or a bad movie on TV in another room. Kim tried to
forget about it.

There were no other open containers that she
could see, so Kim grabbed a door handle at random and pulled.
Nothing happened. The handle was stuck. She tried another with the
same result and decided she'd need a tool. A big, heavy, bashing
tool.

She found a metal bar in a corner and used
it first to pound, then to lever. Eventually the handle gave up and
did as she wanted. And inside the container was machinery of some
kind. It was beyond her to even come up with a sensible guess as to
the purpose of anything. Can openers, which might be handy for
getting to the baked beans, or planet destroying weapons.

She made her way through half a dozen more
containers, wrestling with every door but one. Standing in the most
recent container, lantern throwing her shadow across more piles of
the unknown, Kim wiped sweat from her face and wondered if there
was anything to drink. Preferably alcoholic. Great rebel leader
she'd turned out to be. She'd stolen a spaceship that wasn't going
anywhere and a cargo load of nothing useful. At least, as far as
she knew. Meledrin would be handy to help with some translation but
was busy doing more important things.

"Shit." Fixing the engines wasn't a lot of
point if they couldn't talk to the aliens.

Kim jumped when another shadow joined hers.
She spun, metal bar ready, and saw Keeble poking his head in
through the door. Perfect timing.

"How desperately do we want to fly?" he
asked.

Kim didn't want to sit
around in the dark — lantern lit or not — for any longer than was
necessary. They needed to fly, to talk to the aliens, to end the
war. She thought of telling the dwarf that outright but thought he
might appreciate a bit more thought going in to the matter. It all
came down to the same answer in the end, though. She also mentioned
the radio and received the expected scowl in response.
Priorities, woman.

When the dwarf stumped away, grumbling to
himself but obviously pleased with the idea of fiddling with the
ship, Kim made her way back out into the hold. She looked around.
There were containers everywhere. Some were piled neatly while
others looked as if they'd been dumped, ready to organize later.
The point was, there were hundreds of them, plus a whole extra
level down below. She could search all day and still miss all the
good stuff.

"Well then, I guess I could go work out how
to fly this thing."

But she needed to eat first. They'd all gone
too long without food already.

Collecting her lantern she made her way to
the lift and up to the mess. She organized a meal of tinned
spaghetti in tomato sauce and not much else. She took some down to
the engineering department. Cuto sniffed at some then gave the hand
signal for 'no' and said something.

"Cuto does not need to eat yet. And even if
there was need, Cuto is unsure of what you are offering." Meledrin
poked at hers with her spoon and raised her eyebrows. Apparently
she wasn't sure either.

"If you don't want it," Kim said, "just let
me know. There'll just be more for the rest of us."

Keeble was already eating. Kim divided
Cuto's portion between the other bowls, skipping Meledrin's when
the elf gave a small shake of her head.

On the bridge Tuki was still playing with
the skyglass, hardly even noticing when she arrived. He only looked
up when Kim offered the food, accepting it with a slight smile.
When another explosion thundered in the hangar outside, he quickly
turned back to his study. It was as if he was using it as a
distraction. Kim didn't have any encouraging words for him. She
didn't think the ship was being damaged, Keeble would have said
something otherwise, but the constant battering wasn't doing much
for her state of mind either.

She climbed up to the pilot's chair and
examined the controls as she ate. They'd worked out which button
started the engines. Other than that, she decided, she could work
from what she knew of the controls in the ship they'd stolen from
the Americans. Except there was no steering wheel. It seemed to
have been replaced with a ball, which sat on a pedestal directly in
front of the seat. The pedestal wouldn't move, so it wasn't a
joystick, but the ball rotated in all directions. "Perhaps in a
life without gravity you needed steering wheels that could point up
and down, and all the points between, as easily as left or right."
Which would mean that the thing they stole from Area 51 had only
been a plane after all.

The ball was colored a pleasant, pastel
green and decorated with a pattern of concentric circles. On one
side, the circles were so close together that they were almost
indistinguishable from each other. In the center of the smallest
was a red spot. The further you went from that spot, the further
the lines were apart. The effect meant that, no matter which
direction the ball was facing, you could always tell exactly where
the red spot was. There was a blue spot directly opposite, in the
middle of a smooth, blank area.

There was what looked like an altitude knob
but it could also be moved like a regular joystick. And there were
three pedals instead of just the one that was in the plane they'd
stolen. Added to the mix was a lever, currently set in what
appeared to be the neutral position, halfway along its range.

They seemed to be the main controls, but
there were dozens of buttons and switches besides. There were
another two little levers side by side. Switches and knobs, gauges
and screens and dials.

So, the ball for steering. The knob for lift
and something else. The lever for something, and the pedals
for...

"Shit."

When Keeble, Meledrin, and Cuto stepped into
view an hour later she hadn't made any further progress.

"Do you know how to fly yet?" the dwarf
asked.

"No. But I wasn't game to try anything until
everyone was in here and strapped in."

"Well, I don't think Cuto sits down, but
Meledrin and I can." He made his way to his chair.

Kim's mouth dropped open.
"You mean we're ready to go?"
She
wasn't ready.

"Yes. Well, maybe." As usual, Keeble didn't
seem pleased with not knowing for sure.

"The Gravitic Field Generators are
separated?"

"Yes."

"Well, do you think we should go now? Or get
some sleep first?"

"The hull is still holding together, but who
knows for how long? Those American's don't quit, do they?"

"But..."

"Let's fly."

"Okay. I'll try."

Keeble gave a whoop of joy and hurried to
strap himself in. Meledrin followed suit, though she didn't look
quite as excited. Cuto crouched down behind the horseshoe of seats
and locked meaty hands around a backrest.

Kim looked at the controls in front of her
and then at her companions. She couldn't blame them for their
nervousness. "Should we name the ship first?" she asked, trying to
delay the moment as much as possible.

Keeble had a sour look on his face but was
nodding. "It's traditional, I suppose."

Her first idea was
Kittyhawk, but she was sure the Americans would already have taken
that one. "How about
The
Hakahei
?"

"What the hell is that?"

"It's what the Hurgon call our worlds."

Meledrin looked as if she didn't care.
Possibly she was staying silent in case she started jabbering like
a normal person. Tuki was still staring at the skyglass, fiddling
with the controls.

Keeble was over it as well. "Whatever."

"Right.
Hakahei
it is, then." It wasn't quite
the reaction Kim was after, though she didn't really know what
she'd been expecting. She took a deep breath and, out of excuses,
turned her attention to the controls once more. "So, what do I do
now?"

Keeble grunted. "Don't lose your nerve now,
woman."

"What?"

"Start the engine. You know the button."

Kim pressed the button. Her heart was racing
like a jazz drum solo.

On a small screen to her left, an iconic,
profile view of the ship appeared. The two legs shown on the bottom
of the craft flashed a few times then disappeared. Down in the
corner of the screen a small picture of the legs appeared colored
in red.

"Umm..."

"What is it?"

"I think we're flying."

"But we aren't moving."

"Well, no." The Americans certainly were,
scurrying like cockroaches caught in the light. From her vantage
point, Kim could see soldiers out in the hanger, all making for the
limited protection of the far wall, pulling out their weapons like
those cockroaches shaking their fists at a passing car. Or like
knights with cannons.

Only one thing seemed to have changed on the
panel. There were now three indicating lines near the altitude
knob. Two of them showed all red, but the final line had one bar of
green.