That made no sense. One lit lights at night, doused them during the day. This was exactly the opposite.
Suddenly she thought of the matrix of black hexagons on the ship’s roof. They conducted heat from the sun somewhere, but only during the day, obviously. Could this have been where that energy was channeled?
She called Garios back. He came, holding the pair of lamps in front of him, two long shadows following behind.
"I can’t see the flashing anymore," Novato said. "Hold the lamps steady, please. I want to examine this wall."
Novato turned her back so that Garios couldn’t see what she was about to do, then she forced her claws from their sheaths. Keeping them out of Garios’s view, she felt along the wall, looking for anything out of the ordinary.
There.
A seam.
A juncture where two plates were joined.
No one had ever found a seam before. The whole ship appeared to have been made inside and out from one continuous piece of blue material.
Novato used her middle fingerclaw to trace the seam’s height. It came to a right-angle intersection and then continued along about a handspan below the top of the wall. By the time she was finished, Novato had outlined a rectangle going almost from floor to ceiling. Its width was about equal to Novato’s arm-span.
"No wonder we missed that," said Garios, his little eyes peering intently. "It’s difficult to see, even with two lamps."
Novato nodded. "Maybe this panel was originally painted differently from the rest of the wall," she said. They’d found colored dust in the ship that seemed to be dried pigment that had peeled off the walls; the blue material wasn’t porous, so paint probably didn’t stick to it well even under the best of circumstances.
"And where exactly did you see the flashing?" said Garios.
Novato’s sash was directly below the middle of the rectangle. She pointed to the panel’s center.
"May I?" said Garios.
Novato scuttled out of the way. Garios came in, a lamp in each hand, and peered at the wall. "Maybe," he said at first, and "Maybe" a little later. Then: "Yup, there it is. God, it’s hard to see! But there are little bits of glass inlaid into the wall here, absolutely flush with the wall material. A string of those geometric shapes the ark-makers used for writing. Seven, no, eight shapes. A word." Garios sighed. "I guess we’ll never know what it said."
"‘Emergency,’" said Novato. "Something like that."
Garios sounded surprised. "What makes you think that?"
"Have you ever been on a hunt that’s gone badly? Lots of injuries? When healers arrive, they prioritize whom to treat. Those who have the most critical need for attention are tended to first. Of all the things on this ship, the only one that we’ve seen any sign of still working at all is this panel, whatever it is. It’s obviously the priority now that a little power is somehow trickling into the ship. I’m no sailor, but I suspect Keenir would say that if he had to prioritize things aboard a ship, lifeboats, fire-fighting buckets, and other emergency equipment would be the most important."
Garios grunted, not convinced. He had brought plans of the ark with him. He set his lamps on the floor and proceeded to unfurl a chart, kneeling down to read it. "According to this, there’s just another one of those multi-bed rooms on the other side of this wall. Now, yes, the wall is thicker than normal here — it’s about a third of a pace thick. That’s not unusual, though. There are lots of places where the walls are even thicker. But surely there can’t be any lifeboats stored behind here. Whatever is back there can’t be very big."
Novato nodded. "Let’s see if we can get the panel off. It must open somehow."
"Maybe it’s a sliding door, like the others we’ve seen."
Novato’s tail swished in negation. "Those doors are recessed and apparently normally were moved by an arrangement of gears that must have required some power to operate. No, if I’m right — if this is a hold for emergency equipment — it’ll be designed to open without any power." She paused. "If you were one of those five-eyed creatures, how would you open something?"
Garios looked at the floor. "Well, I’d only have one useful limb — that long trunk — so the method would be something that you or I could do with one hand. And, let’s see, those creatures only came up to about here on me." He held a hand at the middle of his chest. "They’ve got a lot of reach with those trunks, but I imagine if they wanted any real leverage, they’d have to fold the trunk over."
Novato nodded. "So, if we’re looking for a handle, it would be in the middle of the panel, right about here." She pointed.
"But there isn’t anything there," said Garios.
Novato, ever the empiricist, pressed her palm against the center of the panel. Nothing. She tried again, leaning all her weight against it. As soon as she stopped, the panel popped forward as though it had been on springs. Garios surged in and grabbed one side of the heavy sheet. Novato took the other side, and they lowered it to the floor. From the back they could clearly see the little array of glass inlays that had caused the flashing.
A shallow closet had been revealed. Inside were three metal boxes. Each had embossed on its side the same word Garios had traced out on the wall panel. The boxes had handles sticking out of their sides. Novato pulled on one of the handles, and the box came out of its holder. A tail of flexible clear strands stuck out of its back connecting it to the rear of its holding compartment, but as Novato pulled a little harder, the strands came loose. At the end, they were bundled together in a little plug, as if they’d been designed to come out this way.
The box itself had clamps on its side, holding the lid securely on. Novato had seen clamps like this several times aboard the ark. They required an uncomfortable backward bending of the fingers to undo, but she’d gotten the hang of it over time. She opened the box.
Inside was orange dust.
Garios loomed in for a peek. "Rust," he said. "Whatever was in there decayed long ago." He backed away.
Novato put her hand in the box and wiggled her fingers, looking for any fragment that hadn’t completely decayed. The orange dust felt strange. Warm. A lot warmer than it had any right to be. And it wasn’t sharp like iron filings. Rather, it was soft, like talcum, and slightly heavier than it looked, as if the material was very dense. Novato didn’t bring it too close to her face; she was afraid of inhaling the powder.
Just dust, that’s all it was. Ancient dust.
She knelt down and upended the box onto Garios’s floor plan, hoping there would be something inside all the dust. But the orange grains just sifted out; it seemed to be a uniformly fine grade. The dust made a good-sized mountain in the center of the plan. Individual grains spilled toward the sheet’s edge.
Disappointed, Novato turned her attention to the two boxes still embedded in the wall. The second one had apparently been damaged in the ark’s crash and its contents had long since escaped through a crack in the container’s bottom. The third box was rusted or fused to its holder. They tried again and again for an extended period, but no amount of tugging by either her or Garios could dislodge it.
Novato sighed and turned around.
What the — ?
The mound of orange dust was no longer centered on the floor plan. In fact, the center of the plan was completely clear and the mound was now half on and half off the sheet of leather.
It must be flowing downhill, thought Novato.
And then she realized that wasn’t right at all.
The dust, the ancient orange dust, was flowing, all right, but it was flowing uphill, heading toward the corridor that led to the double-doored room.
"They weren’t just dumb animals, were they?" said Captain Keenir of the Dasheter, his tail swishing back and forth across the beach. "They were people."
Toroca pointed at the body of the Other, lying in a pool of blood. "That one was wearing copper jewelry," he said.