“I see what you’re driving at,” Peters admitted. “Little details.”
“Sure.” Todd was pacing up and down. “Must be hundreds of ways to do some things. You figure out a way that works, no point in changing unless it doesn’t work any more, right? So after that, everything you build has these little details in common. Somebody else finds a different way, that works too, so they don’t change either, and you look at one, and then the other, and you see the little differences.”
“Phillips head screws.”
Todd grinned. “Did you notice that their version only has three points?”
“Yeah.” Peters looked at the other sailor with respect. “So you reckon there’s two different groups here.”
“Three. No, four.” Todd furrowed his eyebrows. “The Grallt didn’t build the ship, and they didn’t build the dli. So there’s the Grallt, and whoever built the ship, and whoever built the dli, that’s three. Then there’s whoever built this.” He slapped himself on the chest again.
“Now wait a minute,” Peters objected. “The Grallt made the suits. We seen ‘em do it, well almost.”
“No.” Todd was emphatic. “The machine made the suits. All the Grallt did was run the machine. Same as they run the dli, same as they run the ship.”
“Which ain’t all that great, by all appearances.”
“No, it isn’t. But you don’t really need to know how something works, as long as it does work and you know how to run it, right? If these jerks can learn to work it all, what about us?”
“Sure. We been doin’ that already,” Peters pointed out. “What’s it gonna get us?”
“Look, there’s gonna be officers up here later, right? They’ll all have better educations than us, and they’re gonna be keeping their eyes peeled.” Todd was pacing again. “All I’m saying is, we’ve got just as good a chance of learning all this new stuff as they do. And I’ll be damned if I’m just going to stand around and let ‘em take it back to DC and sit on it, you hear? First thing you know they’ll be running all over in spaceships, for God’s sake, while your grandpa freezes to death in West fucking Virginia, and my cousins get ate up by fire ants on their way to the fucking outhouse, you know?”
“Yeah, I know. Calm down, boy.”
Todd sighed and deflated. “Yeah. But it frosts my ass… like you told Dreelig, those bastards have been pushing us away from the supper dish for fifty years or better. Now here’s a chance we could help folks eat regular, if nothing else, and damn if it doesn’t look like the fucking suits are going to hog it all again.”
“Well, I don’t know what the two of us are gonna be able to do about it,” Peters observed. “But you’re right, we gotta try.”
“All right, let’s start by looking harder for a ladder down,” said Todd. “I want to get into the engineering spaces.”
“You got a reason, besides curiosity?”
“Sure. We still don’t have any idea what makes this thing go, remember?”
Peters nodded. “All right, I’m sold. Let’s go look for your ladder.”
“Yeah, but down isn’t working. Let’s try up.”
They found an open catwalk in hangar bay six that crossed the hangar above the door. “Look yonder,” said Peters as they reached the halfway mark. “On the back wall.”
On the blank wall at the stern was another catwalk. Its walkway was level with the reflectors of the overhead lamps; that and the dimness of the general illumination had hidden it in the gloom as seen from the deck. “Gotcha,” said Todd. “We go aft on the upper shop level, and there’ll be a ladder well where that catwalk meets the balcony.”
“And since there’s gotta be access to below, and it ain’t anyplace else, I reckon that’s gotta be it,” Peters finished for him. “After you.”
They retraced their steps, then headed aft. “And there it is,” said Todd with satisfaction. At the aft end of the sixth-level balcony was a hatch, just where they would have expected a door to be from the rest of the pattern. The handle didn’t give as easily as the others had, but it moved smoothly enough when Peters put his back in it. The reason was quickly obvious. The gaskets were smooth and new-looking, and all the latch dogs were in place, glistening with fresh lubricant. Even when it was open the mechanism was a little stiff, and there wasn’t any slack in it that they could detect.
Beyond the hatch was the predicted ladder well. Bulkheads and overheads were painted a smooth even pale blue, and the space smelled faintly of the oil-based paint the Grallt used. “Clean,” Todd remarked. Not a bit of clutter was visible.
“Yeah. Who’da thunk it?” Peters said.
At the main deck level they stopped and looked around. No hatches, no people, not a sound except the faint flow of air.
“Y’know, come to think of it, the air smells better here,” Peters observed. “Like at home, when a rainstorm clears the air.”
“You’re right,” Todd said, sniffing. He looked at Peters. “Ozone.”
Peters nodded, and pointed at the ladder leading down. “Lead on.”
The ladder ended two decks below the ops bay, at a hatch leading inboard. “Well, this has to be it,” Todd said. He stood up straight, made as if to adjust the hat he wasn’t wearing, and grabbed the handle.
They stepped into a dimly lit space, silent but for the faintest possible low hum, more subliminally perceived than actually heard. Below the catwalk was an enormous volume with a few scattered objects in it, hard to see in the gloom. Farther forward the lights got brighter, and they headed that way, their mission and the ambiance of the place combining to make them skulk rather than swagger.
The lighted area was a pit surrounded by a railing, about half as big as the hangar above in each dimension and deep enough that the bottom had to be almost at the belly skin of the ship. There were a few people below, moving purposefully but not hurriedly, busy with something important but not worried about it.
The focus of their attention was an object in the middle of the deck, held in place on a heavy cradle by thick bands of something that gleamed dully in the light. It was about the size of a fighter plane, melon-shaped overall, with deep furrows or grooves half a meter wide and deep that ran lengthwise, giving it a corrugated look. It was polished so brightly it was hard to see; if not for the grooves it might have been nearly invisible.
The object had no visible controls, indicators, or flashing lights; nevertheless, one of the Grallt walked up to it from time to time, making notes on a clipboard at each visit. It was clear that the cradle it sat in wasn’t original equipment, because it was welded to the deck, and the welds passed over marks where something had been cut away, leaving burns and scars. The back end was smoothly rounded, but the front had a protrusion like the stem of a fruit, and a conduit of different material connected to the stem and disappeared into the deck.
“Now that,” Todd said in a quiet, satisfied voice, “goes with this.” And he slapped himself on the chest.
“Yes, I do believe it does,” said Peters, a little amused. “A bit big to carry over your shoulder, though.”
“Hunh,” said Todd when that penetrated, a couple of beats later. “Or to fit in a fighter plane. Never mind, they come in different sizes.”
All the engineering staff wore kathir suits patterned in blue and white, but the designs varied. Most were divided in fours, at the waist and vertically down front and back. One Grallt’s suit was divided again, at midchest and knee, giving eight sections. “Officer,” said Todd in a soft voice, pointing at this last.
“Or CPO,” Peters agreed. “Senior to the others, anyways. Reckon the Captain looks like a checkerboard?”