The diggers welcomed a respite and a chance to contemplate the marvel they were unearthing.
"If they flew in those things…"
"If, my dear Piemur. No doubt obtains. They did. The fire-lizards saw those vehicles land," Master Robinton said.
"I started to say that if they flew in those things, why didn't they fly them away from the Plateau after the explosion?"
"A very good point."
"Well?"
"Perhaps Fandarel can answer, for I certainly can't," Robinton said truthfully, regarding the door with some chagrin.
"Maybe they'd need to take off from a height, the way a lazy dragon does," Menolly said, casting a sly glance at Jaxom.
"How long does it take F'nor to go between?" the Harper asked with a wistful sigh, squinting up at the bright sky for any sign of returning dragons.
"Takes longer to take off and land."
The Benden Weyrleaders arrived first, Canth with F'nor and Fandarel only a few seconds behind them so that all three dragons landed together. The Smith was first off Canth, rushing to the new wonder to run reverent hands over the curious surface, murmuring under his breath. F'lar and Lessa came striding through the long grasses, picking their way past dragon-strewn dirt; neither took their eyes from the softly shining doorway.
"Aha!" the Smith cried in sudden triumph, startling everyone. He'd been examining the rim of the doorway minutely. "Perhaps this is meant to move!" He dropped to his knees to the exposed right-hand corner. "Yes, if one excavated the entire vessel, this would probably be man-height! I think I ought to press." He put action to words and a small panel slid open to one side of the main door. It displayed a depression occupied by several colored circles.
Everyone crowded about him as his big fingers wiggled preparatorily and then hovered first over the upper rank of green circles. The bottom ones were red.
"Red has always meant danger, a convention we undoubtedly learned from the ancients," he said. "Green we will therefore try first!" His thick forefinger hesitated a moment longer and then stabbed at the green button.
At first nothing happened. Jaxom felt a clenching, like a cold hand on his guts, the prelude to intense disappointment.
"No, look, it's opening!" Piemur's keen eyes caught the first barely perceptible widening of the crack.
"It's old," the Smith said reverently. "A very old mechanism," he added as they all heard the faint protest of movement.
Slowly the door moved inward and then, astonishingly, it moved sideways, into the hull of the ship. A whoosh of rank air sent them reeling and gasping backward. When they looked again, the door was fully retracted, sunlight streaming onto flooring, darker than the ship's hull but, when the Smith rapped it with his knuckles, apparently made of the same peculiar material.
"Wait!" Fandarel restrained the others from entering. "Give fresh air a chance to circulate. Did anyone think to bring glows?"
"There're some at the Cove," Jaxom said, reaching for his flying gear and jamming his helmet on his head as he raced to Ruth. He never did bother to belt up and the frigid moment of between was a shocking cooler after the exertions of digging. He got as many glow baskets as he could carry. On his return, he realized no one seemed to have moved in his brief absence. Awe of the unknown beyond that great entrance had restrained them. Awe and perhaps, Jaxom decided, a reluctance to repeat the disappointment of the Plateau.
"Well, we will never know anything standing out here like numbwits," Robinton said, taking a glow basket from Jaxom and unshielding it as he strode forward into the ship.
It was mete, Jaxom thought, as he passed out the other baskets, that the Master Harper should have the honor of entering first. Fandarel, F'lar, F'nor and Lessa walked abreast through the opening. Jaxom grinned at Piemur and Menolly as they fell in behind.
Another great door, with circular wheel for locking thick bars ceiling and floor, lay open and inviting. Master Fandarel was making inarticulate noises of praise and awe as he touched the walls and peered at what looked to be control levers and more colored circles. As they penetrated further, they came upon two more doors, an open one on the left and one closed on their right which would lead, Fandarel was certain, to the rear, tube-encircled end of the vehicle. How could tubes make a cumbersome, snub-winged thing like this fly? He simply had to bring Benelek here, if no one else was to see it.
They all turned to the left and entered a long narrow corridor, their boots making muffled noises on the nonmetallic floor.
"More of the substance they used for pit supports, I think," Fandarel said, kneeling and pressing his fingers against the floor. "Ha, what was in these?" he asked, fingering brackets which were empty now. "Fascinating. And no dust."
"No air or wind to carry it in here for who knows how long," F'lar remarked in a quiet tone. "As in those rooms we discovered in Benden Weyr."
They moved along a corridor of doors, some open, some closed. None locked, for Piemur and Jaxom were able to peer into the emptied cubicles. Holes in the flooring and on the inside walls proved that there had been fittings.
"All of you, come here!" came the excited voice of the Harper, who had prowled ahead.
"No, here!" F'nor called from further beyond the Harper. "Here's where they must have controlled the ship!"
"No, F'nor, this is important to us!"
And F'lar seconded the Harper's vibrant claim.
As everyone gathered about the two, their glow baskets adding to the illumination, it was clear what had arrested their attention. The walls were covered with maps. In great detail, the familiar contours of Northern Pern and the not-so-familiar Southern Continent, all of it in its immensity, had been drawn eradicably on the wall.
With a sound-half-moan, half-shout-Piemur touched the map, tracing with his forefinger the coast which he had so arduously tramped, but which was only a small portion of the total shoreline.
"Look, Master Idarolan can sail almost to the Eastern Barrier Range… and it's not the same range I saw in the west. And…"
"Now what would this map represent?" F'nor asked, interrupting Piemur's excited comments. He was standing to one side, his glow basket lighting another chart of Pern. The outlines were the same, but the bands of different colors covered the familiar contours in puzzling configurations. The seas were depicted with varying shades of blue.
"That would indicate the depth of the water," Menolly said, running her fingers along what she knew was the Nerat Deep, here colored a deep blue. "Look, here are arrows to indicate the Great South Current. And here's the Western Stream,"
"If that is so," the Harper said slowly, "then this ought to indicate the height of the land? No. For here where there should be mountains in Crom, Fort, Benden and Telgar, the color is the same as this part of the Telgar Plains. Most puzzling. Whatever could this have meant to the ancients?" He glanced from Northern to Southern spheres. "And none of that shade except this little bit here on the underside of the world. Perplexing. I shall have to study this!" He felt along the edges of the map, but it was evidently drawn on the wall itself.
"Here's one for Master Wansor's eyes," Fandarel said, apparently so engrossed in the section he was studying that he hadn't attended Robinton's words.
Piemur and Jaxom turned their glows toward the Smith.
"A star map!" the young Harper cried.
"Not quite," the Smith said.
"Is it a map of our stars?" Jaxom asked.
The Smith's big finger touched the largest circle, a brilliant orange with licking flames jagging out from its circumference.
"This is our sun. This must be the Red Star." His finger described the orbit about the sun which had been designated for the wanderer. He now touched the third, very small, round world. "This is our Pern!" He grinned at the others, for the humble size of their world.