It was a relief to walk briskly again, even run a few paces down the long passageway. How many days had it been since he had first entered the observation room? Memory fogged; he had kept no record. Maybe he should carry a deus like the others, but that was a bloody and painful way to mark the passing of a day. This rite seemed senseless to. him, like so much of the Watchers’ activities, but it was important to them. They seemed to actually enjoy this ritual infliction of pain. Once more he pushed open the massive doors and looked out at interstellar space, as boldly impressive as the first time he had seen it.
Matching the stars to the chart was difficult. For one thing the stars did not remain in relatively fixed positions as they did in the sky above the valley, but instead swept by in majestic parade. In a few minutes the cycle would go from summer to winter constellations and back again. As soon as he thought he had plotted a constellation it would vanish from sight and new stars would appear. When the Master Observer came in he was grateful for the interruption.
“I regret having to bother you…”
“No, not at all, I’m getting nowhere with this chart and it only makes my head ache more.”
“Then, might I ask you to aid us?”
“Of course. What is it?”
“You will see at once if you will accompany me.”
The Master Observer’s face was pulled into deeper lines of brooding seriousness: Chimal had not thought this was possible. When he tried to make conversation he received courteous but brief answers. Something was bothering the old man, and just what it was he would find out shortly.
They went downstairs to a level that Chimal had never visited and found a car waiting for them. It was a long ride, longer than he had ever taken before, and it was made in silence. Chimal looked at the walls moving steadily by and asked, “Are we going far?”
The Master Observer nodded. “Yes, to the stern, near the engine room.”
Though Chimal had studied diagrams of their world, he still thought of it in relation to his valley. What they called the bow was where the observation room was, well beyond the swamp. The stern, then, was south of the waterfall, at the end of the valley. He wondered what they would find there.
They stopped at another tunnel opening and the Master Observer led the way to one of a number of identical doorways, outside of which was waiting a red-garbed observer. Silently, he opened the door for them. Inside was a sleeping cell. A man in Watcher’s black was hanging from a rope that had been passed through the bar of the air vent in the ceiling. The loop of rope about his neck had choked him to death, slowly and painfully, rather than snapping his spine, but in the end it had done its job. He must have been hanging for days because his body had stretched so that his toes almost touched the floor, next to the overturned chair that he had jumped from. The observers turned away, but Chimal, no stranger to death, looked on calmly enough.
“What do you want me to do?” Chimal asked. For a moment he wondered if he had been brought as a burial party.
“He was the Air Tender and he worked alone because the Master Air Tender died recently and a new one has not been appointed as yet. His breviary is there on the desk. There seems to be something wrong and he was unable to correct it. He was a foolish man and instead of reporting it he took his own life.”
Chimal picked up the well-thumbed and grease-stained book and flipped through it. There were pages of diagrams, charts for entering readings, and simple lists of instructions to be followed. He wondered what had troubled the man. The Master Observer beckoned him into the next room where a buzzer sounded continuously and a red light flashed on and off.
“This is a warning that something is wrong. The Air Tender’s duty when the alarm sounds is to make the corrections at once, and then to make a written report to me. I received no such report.”
“And the alarm is still going. I have a strong suspicion that your man could not fix the trouble, panicked and killed himself.”
The Master Observer nodded in intensified gloom. “The same unharmonious thought is what came upon me when a report reached me that this had happened. I have been worried ever since the Master Air Tender was struck down in his youth, barely 110 years old, and this other one left in charge. The Master never thought well of him and we were preparing to train a new tender when this happened.”
Chimal suddenly realized what this meant “Then you have nobody who knows anything about repairing this equipment? And it is the air machinery you are talking about, that supplies the breathing air for us all?”
“Yes,” the Master Observer said and led the way through thick, double-locked doors to a vast and echoing chamber.
Tall tanks lined the walls with shining apparatus at their bases. Heavy ducts dived down and there was an all-pervading hum and the whine of motors.
“This supplies the air for everyone?” Chimal asked.
“No, nothing like that. You will read about it there, but most of the air has something to do with green plants. There are great chambers of them in constant growth. This apparatus does other important things with the air, just what I am not sure.”
“I can’t promise that I’ll be able to help, but I’ll do my best At the same time I suggest you get whoever else might be able to work with this.”
“There is no one, of course. No man would think of doing other than his assigned work. I alone am responsible and I have looked at this book before. Many of the things are beyond me. I am an old man,, too old to learn a new discipline. A young man is now being taught the air tender’s craft, but it will be years before he is able to work in here. That may be too late.”
With a new weight of responsibility Chimal opened the book. The first part was an outline of air purification theory which he skimmed over quickly. He would read that in detail after he had a more general knowledge of the function of the machinery. Under apparatus there were 12 different sections, each headed with a large red number. These numbers were repeated on large signs down the wall and he assumed, with some justification, that they related to the numbers in the book. When he glanced up at them he noticed that a red light under 5 was blinking on and off. He walked over to it and saw the word emergency printed under the bulb: he opened the book to section 5.
“Purification Tower, Trace Pollutants. Many things such as machinery, paint and the breath of living people give off gaseous and particulate matter. There are not many of these pollutants, but they do collect over the years and can become concentrated. This machine removes from our air those certain fractions that may be dangerous after many, many years. Air is forced through a chemical that absorbs them…”
Chimal read on, interested now, until he had finished section 5. This tower seemed to be designed to function for centuries without attention; nevertheless provision had still been made to have it watched and monitored. There was a bank of instruments at its base and he went to look at them. Another light was flashing over a large dial, blinking letters that spelled out REPLACE CHEMICAL. Yet on the dial itself the reading was right at the top of the activity scale, just where the book said it should be for correct operation.
“But who am I to argue with this machine,” Chimal told the Master Observer, who had been following him in silence. “The recharging seems simple enough. There is an automatic cycle that the machine does when this button is depressed. If it doesn’t work the valves can be worked by hand. Let’s see what happens.” He pushed the button.
Operation lights flashed on, flickering in response to the cycle, and hidden switches closed. A muffled, sighing sound issued from the column before them and, at the same time the needle on the activity scale moved into the red danger zone, dropping toward the bottom. The Master Observer squinted at it, spelling out the letters with his lips, then looked up, horrified.