Titus had asked H’lim about the absence of explosion before, recounting the story of his ancestors’ arrival, and H’lim had told him there were older ships than Kylyd still in service, not very well-built ones that did carry escape pods and vacuum suits because they had a lamentable tendency to explode. As far as Titus had been able to gather, newer ships, ships built within the last century or so, also carried more safety equipment, for some obscure reason.
H’lim ignored the engineer’s bait and corrected, “She.
“What?”
“The pilot. She.”
“Did you know her?”
“No.”
“Did you know you were about to crash?”
“No. Else why would I have been-dining.”
“But the ship’s approach was long and slow enough.”
H’lim repeated the answer he’d always given Cognitive. “I understood they intended to orbit-a star or a planet, I’m not sure-recalculate our position, and proceed to our scheduled destination. We were lost, not broken down. Nobody aboard expected the disaster.”
“That seems clear from the evidence,” said someone.
A little farther on, the engineer squatted before a wide but low opening that had been cut, Titus was sure, by Gold’s magnetic shears. The room beyond was several feet lower than the corridor floor but there were no steps. There were some lumpy casings strewn about inside.
“This is one of the things that’s puzzled us,” said the engineer. “Have you any idea what this room was for?”
He peered inside. “I think you know very well, young lady, what a power plant looks like.”
She flashed a grin from ear to ear. “Well, that’s what we thought, but we weren’t sure.” She stood up, aborting a dust-off gesture, as she added pleasantly, “It wasn’t the only power plant, though. It’s barely adequate to handle the environment and internal power requirements. And we’ve never found any fuel. What does fuel this ship, anyway?”
As always with that question, H’lim answered, “I don’t know. It’s not my field.”
“But everybody knows what fuels airplanes!”
“Of course. They call it jet fuel.” H’lim could be maddening when he wanted to be. But this time, he relented. “Actually, I don’t know what this particular ship used for fuel. Almost anything you can name is used by someone. If we were carrying anything dangerous, it was likely discarded in a stellar dump when the crash became inevitable. They don’t tell passengers about fuel dumps. Tends to upset us.”
Mollified, the engineer grunted, “I see,” then led them off down a slope toward the rear section of the ship.
“Oddly enough,” she lectured, “this is where we found the only intact lighting panel.” Titus remembered the room, but much more radical dissection had been done on everything in it, walls and floors included. “Possibly another power plant was in here, but the two plants couldn’t have driven this ship-certainly not anywhere near lightspeed.”
“I’ve never been in this area before,” said H’lim.
“Step carefully,” she warned, leading them through the grid pattern of the debris, “and I’ll show you something we found back here that’s got us really stumped.”
In a far wall, a hatch stood open. It was thick, like a bank vault’s door. They had cut the cowling out of the wall and jacked the whole thing aside. “We thought the ship might blow up when we did this. That door-and this wall-seem to be the most heavily insulated. But even here, the seams were sprung and there was no radiation leakage.”
She paused, faceplate swinging toward H’lim, who made no comment. Titus thought he was reading the labels on or around the door. Politely, the luren looked over the engineer’s shoulder and Titus edged around to see too.
It was a large, totally empty room, with a fantastical floor that might have come from a sultan’s palace. Precious metals and colored stones which had to be gems were patterned around a large, dark area in the middle of the floor. The dark area“ was gold-rimmed, and the rim was marked like the points of a compass.
“Now logic,” said the engineer, “dictates that this must be the interstellar drive. The walls and floor are thick, the floor is overlaid with heavy metals and stone like marble and granite and nobody knows what all else in tiny chips. Mass-wise, this room accounts for almost a third of the mass of the entire ship. You don’t carry something like that around unless it’s useful, and the only use that could justify it would be power-generation. But the room’s hardly damaged, and I don’t see any drive, just a ruddy dance floor! Or is it just a dance floor?”
“No,” answered H’lim.
“A temple?” asked Cognitive’s photographer.
“No. Were there any bodies found in here?”
“What would it mean if there were?”
“Not a whole lot. But I knew the people who worked in here. I’d like to know what happened to them.”
With shame in her voice, the engineer told him, “No, there weren’t any bodies. Would they normally work with the door locked?”
“Of course.”
“Then you know what they did in here?”
“Of course not. Astrogation is a very tight union, and besides the math is way too difficult for me. Only those who enter the pool ever learn it, and that naturally is a very private business.” He said this as if it made perfect sense.
“Astrogation?” The engineer latched onto the word. “This is a guidance center? Then where are the computers?”
“Oh, that kind of math is too hard for computers.”
Titus was holding his breath, afraid his respirator would drown out H’lim’s soft voice, reminding himself that H’lim, for the first time, felt stuck here and obliged to make long-term accommodations. He wouldn’t by lying, or even kidding. But he couldn’t be serious. Unaware of the effect his words had on the scientific minds around him, H’lim added in genuine relief, “But at least there were no bodies. They must have gotten out.” There was an odd tone in his voice.
“And left the door locked? From the inside?”
He examined the door mechanism, everyone crowding back out of his way. “Yes, it does appear to have been locked from the inside. Good.” He sounded serious.
Suddenly the engineer threw her head back and laughed. “Oh, you almost had me!” she gasped. “That’s good, Dr. Sa’ar, that’s very good!”
Others joined in as they realized that H’lim had to be joking. There was no way out of the bare room with the bank vault walls. And what sort of math could a living person do that would be too much for a computer?
At length, the chuckles died down, and the engineer said “Well, you did warn us that you wouldn’t answer all our questions. But now this room is going to get more attention than you’d ever believe. Dr. Shiddehara, if this is astrogation, not the interstellar drive room, it’s in your department. Would you care to ask some questions? Perhaps walk inside? The designs could be” a map of some sort. We’ve made records of them, of course, for study after we tear up the floor. But it’s not the same as the real thing.“ Over her shoulder, she said to a colleague, ”Martha, the computers have to be under that floor, and the central area must be the display tank. It just can’t be any other way.“
“Lack of imagination will prevent you from solving the puzzle,” warned H’lim. “It is another way. You won’t find any computers or other equipment inside that room. That’s the reason the walls are insulated-for silence.”
As H’lim gestured for the engineer to precede him into the room, Titus thought the luren was finally giving them something new, but the other engineer, Martha, said, “So! I win! It is insulation for the luren senses. But why, if it’s not a temple?”