Anderson waved a calming hand. ‘Put it up, boy. I misled you somewhat about her. She certainly doesn’t want me dead.’
The hog Unger rode stood a man height taller than Bonehead, was ruddy-coloured and leaner. Anderson recognized a thoroughbred similar to those used in the races held in Bravence. As Unger drew it to a halt beside him and glared down, he winced.
‘Once again,’ she said, ‘you fail to say goodbye.’
‘You should know me by now, Unger.’
‘I think I do, but it has taken this last time to finally open my eyes. This, Anderson Endrik, is the last time I chase after you. Our love affair, to my mind, has been far too intermittent, and too often spoilt by my knowledge of how you like to put yourself in danger.’
‘The nature of my job,’ Anderson explained.
‘It doesn’t need to continue so.’
‘It’s all I know.’
“We talked about alternatives. I have a place in Bravence. Come there with me now.’
Anderson looked regretful. ‘Things to do—I can’t abandon them now.’
Unger glanced at Tergal, then turned again to Anderson. ‘Boys’ games. I give you three months to take up my offer, then I take up other offers made to me.’
Tapping her goad against one side of her hog’s carapace, she turned it back the way she had come. ‘Three months,’ she repeated, then whacked the goad down hard. As it hurtled away the big lean hog tore up vegetation.
‘Perhaps you’ll explain,’ said Tergal.
‘She wants a husband,’ Anderson admitted.
‘And this is the great danger you’ve been avoiding?’
Anderson shrugged.
Tergal went on, ‘If I hadn’t seen you kill that third-stager…’ He shook his head.
Later that day, Tergal came to feel that the knight should concentrate on avoiding dangers of greater lethality.
Personally, Fethan would rather have gone down to the surface of the planet than come across to this ship, but the order to do so had been emphatic, and so closely linked was he to the savage creation of Jerusalem inside him, that Fethan did not like to contemplate what might be the consequences of disobeying it. Gazing at the ship through his visor, he realized it must be ancient — centuries old at least. It was a colony ship: one of those sent out before the invention of the runcible, before the Quiet War, or AI takeover, and the Prador War — humanity’s first encounter with hostile aliens. Probably, on its very basic U-space drive, it had taken ages to reach this location, before the colonists could wake up and disembark.
‘Jack,’ he said suddenly, ‘the landers.’
‘Elaborate please,’ the AI replied.
‘Well, did they all parachute down?’
There was a beat — a positive infinity in AI terms.
‘There are three landers attached to the central body of the ship. Presumably they were used to ferry the colonists and their supplies to the surface, then they were recalled to the ship.’
‘You’re thinking in AI terms.’
‘Is this relevant to our purposes here?’ asked Jack. ‘I am an attack ship, not an archaeologist.’
‘It might have some bearing on the situation below. If no return journey were intended, the colonists would’ve been daft not to make use of those landers. They’d have stripped out the ship too.’
‘Please let me know when you find out what occurred.’ Jack managed to inject bored sarcasm into his tone.
As they drew closer to it, Fethan began to grasp the sheer scale of the ship.
‘There would have been thousands of colonists,’ Cento observed abruptly, ‘and hundreds of crew.’ Fethan did not disagree, but the Golem continued, ‘A ship like this was designed almost as a cargo carrier. The colonists would be in cold sleep, packed away just like the supplies the ship also carried. Even the crew would spend most of their time frozen, only being woken to perform essential maintenance tasks during the journey.’
‘Where’ll we look first?’ Fethan asked.
‘One of Jack’s telefactors has made an airlock in the sphere section operable.’
‘Okay.’
The telefactor was clinging to the hull like a great iron mosquito, its proboscis injecting the power to run the airlock that lay open beside it. Finally reaching the lock, they entered into the light cast by a malfunctioning fluorescent and by the plastic control buttons below a flickering screen. Once they were inside, the outer door hinged shut, then the inner one hinged open, gusting vapour into the lock. Fethan checked his suit reading and realized that the air mix would asphyxiate a human. Overriding his suit’s safety devices, he removed his helmet and sniffed.
‘Dusty cellar with a hint of scrap yard,’ he said.
Removing his own helmet, Cento said, ‘I smell oxidized metal and ketones.’
‘Like I said.’ Fethan led the way further into the ship.
The tubular shaft leading from the airlock had sets of four doors spaced evenly around its perimeter at regular intervals, and traversing handles all down its length. When they came to a radial intersection, with six branching shafts, Fethan halted and moved back.
‘Let’s take a look in one of these.’ He gestured to one of the four doors just before the intersection. ‘This all looks like it might get a bit repetitive.’
Luckily, the electrically operated door had an inset manual handle. Fethan took hold of this and attempted turning it in the direction indicated on the handle itself. Something clinked and it moved freely, detaching from the door with a slight tug.
‘Brittle,’ he observed, pushing himself along to the next door.
Cento went over to another door to try that. Between them, they managed to snap off every handle. Fethan unshouldered his APW and began winding the setting of the weapon down to try and find something manageable.
‘Perhaps not advisable in here,’ said Cento. ‘It would be like trying to use an electric saw to cut wet tissue paper and, anyway, I’ve been here before.’ Cento stabbed his hand through a laminate of thin metal shell over foamed insulation. Then, getting a grip, his feet braced under a traversing handle, he heaved sideways, causing mechanisms to snap and crunch in the wall. Soon he had pushed the door far enough into the wall cavity for them to enter the room beyond.
‘Impressive,’ said Fethan, again shouldering his weapon. ‘Ain’t sure I could do that.’
‘Then get an upgrade.’ Cento led the way in.
Fethan at once saw that they had entered one of probably hundreds of cryogenic storage chambers. The room was wedge shaped, and transparent upright tubes, large enough to contain a person in each one, crowded the area like pillars arranged with only narrow access between them.
‘Hypothermal storage,’ Cento said, reaching out and brushing his hand across one curved surface.
The Golem was right. This was an old method of cryogenic storage, stemming from research into animal hibernation. People were pumped full of various exotic drugs and genfactored enzymes, before having their temperatures reduced to just above freezing point by being drowned in saturated brine. They were unconscious when this happened and their bodies constantly monitored thereafter, but there were risks in this old-fashioned method.
‘One in forty,’ said Fethan. ‘The chances were one in forty that you’d never wake up.’
Cento, rather than reply, simply pointed.
The man floated, dead and pickled, in the liquid initially used to preserve him for another life. From canulas in his arms and chest, tubes snaked to sockets at the top and bottom of the cryotube. Monitoring must have been done via radio implants, because there were no wires attached to him.
‘He could probably be revived now,’ said Cento.
Fethan looked at the Golem in surprise.
‘In another body,’ Cento added.