An explosion of light came from inside. "Good heavens," Doc Chimp cried. "It's still got power, after all this awful time!" And so it did, not only for its weaponry but for a host of automatic machines, all activated by the opening of the port. A vast hooting clamor reverberated through the chamber. As the sound died, Babylon heard a beeping trouble signal from his Pmal.
"It's language," he cried. "The ship's talking to us!" He checked the machine translator and found what he had expected: its input circuits had diagnosed the presence of language, but it lacked any sort of translation match to deal with it.
"I think I know how to translate it," Doc Chimp muttered hoarsely. "It's telling us to get out!"
The Scorpian rattled: "Dr. Babylon! Are you recording all this?"
Before Babylon could speak, Doc Chimp interposed: "I'm doing it for him. Don't worry, sound, vision, even smells and vibrations—it's all in here!" He patted the bubble-recorder strapped under his arm.
"Then let us proceed," the robot declaimed. "This cavity is an airlock. The ship itself lies beyond that second valve."
Again the three terrestrials struggled to attach the gears and suction cups, and again the robot disdainfully ordered them away. The loud hooting continued, and the flood of light waned and waxed in varying hues and intensity. Babylon, leaping back to give the robot access to the crank, recognized the barest outlines of pattern in the sounds and lights, confirming the Pmal's diagnosis. But none of it resembled any language family in his experience, and he took time to check Doc Chimp's recorder to make sure it was all being preserved.
"What's the matter, Scorpian? Getting tired?" Doc Chimp called. The shriek of steam was perceptibly weaker, and the flashing pinwheel slower as the robot toiled at the crank.
"Acknowledge datum," the robot rapped. "Reaction mass significantly depleted. Project inability to repeat process more than one more time."
"We won't need more than this one," Ben Line Pertin cried as the disk fell away. "We're inside!"
And they pushed through the circular hole into silent gloom.
Whatever energies the ship had stored seemed all concentrated in the external defenses and the lock itself. The interior was dark and still. Ben Pertin produced a search lamp, and the Scorpian suddenly did something that caused the end of one of its tentacles to flare into light. In the uncertain illumination they stared around.
If this were really a ship, Babylon thought, its crew must have been beings far larger than men. The passageways were tall and wide, and every outrageously unfamiliar structure was immense. They slid across wide planes of massive metal lace—perhaps decks? perhaps perforated for lightness? or for ventilation? The decks were at a crazy angle, and only the easy motion possible on Cuckoo's surface allowed the party to move across them. They scuttled around immense rectangular structures, some pale green, others eye-straining deep metallic blue, and stared with awe at a thick column of blackness. Too light-absorbent to be anything material, it rose through one opening in the deck and vanished through another opening above.
Ben Pertin halted, flashing his light about in silence for a moment. "My God," he said at last.
The Scorpian robot, sailing across the empty space, brought up sharply near his head. "Reference not understood," it rapped severely. "Request clarification."
Pertin shook his head wearily. "I can't explain it to you. It's just that—ah, Jen, what did I bring you out here for? I thought all we had to do was get inside and then it would all be clear. And now that we're here, in this ship that's heaven knows how many million years old—I don't know what to do next!"
A furious drumroll came from the robot. "Clarification understood. Problem not significant. I will lead the expedition from this point."
"You!" Pertin said contemptuously. "How would you know? You weren't even supposed to come along!"
Another drumroll from the robot, and the Pmal translator rattled into Jen Babylon's ear: "Objection irrelevant. Follow!" And the silvery cube steamed away. The white- hot spark of light at the end of its tentacle shrank with distance, outlining vast regular shapes that glinted with metal or soaked up the light like carbon black.
"Ben Line," the chimpanzee quavered, "I don't like this place, and most of all I don't like following that tin can! If we primates don't know what to do, how would he?"
Pertin scowled and rubbed his chin. "For that matter, how did he know we were coming here?" he asked. "There're things going on I don't understand! But what choice do we have? Have either of you got a better idea?" He paused for a second, then nodded. "I thought not, so let's tag along. At least he's moving slower now—too much reaction mass gone, I guess!"
Babylon tagged after the other two, his thoughts as bleak as the choking darkness they moved through. Doc Chimp, taking Babylon's skill as now established, had left him to struggle with the delicate balance and aim of his thruster by himself; and in the black, with no reference points to guide him, his skills were barely up to it The distant spark of the robot was almost out of sight; the search beam Pertin carried was rapidly receding before Babylon could get squared away.
As his arms flailed, his wrist passed before his eyes and he caught a glimpse of his watch. He looked again, then swore in disbelief. Less than ten hours had passed since he had emerged from the tachyon transporter! Less than a week, really—never mind whatever time he spent as a stream of coded pulses between Earth and the orbiter—less than a week since he had been quietly taping Old Polynesian in the Southwest Pacific, with no worry greater than whether there would be fresh pineapple again at lunch. It was incredible. There had simply been no warning, no hint anywhere in the world he could see that he was about to be ' thrust into this mad adventure, played for stakes he did not understand, against opponents he did not know.
And meanwhile he sailed down immense black corridors on the trail of the winking flare of the Scorpian robot.
When he caught up with the party they were clustered around a narrow doorway that led into a vast black room. Pertin was expostulating with the Scorpian, to no avail. The robot rapped a contemptuous dismissal, and sailed into the blackness. The hot blue arc on its tentacle flooded the room with harsh light and the three terrestrials peered inside.
What they saw was a hollow globe, with a bridge across it. At the center of the sphere the bridge widened to form a disk rimmed with structures, faced with dials and knobs and buttons, patterned with strange symbols. Doc Chimp chattered nervously, "Are we going in there, Ben Line? It looks awfully strange to me!"
Pertin shrugged. "I think he's found the right place," he admitted grudgingly. "God knows how. That Scorpian knows more than he ought to! When we get back to the orbiter I'm going to have a lot of questions—questions about how this thing came to be and how it was destroyed. If it was an orbital fort, brought down by military action, was it maybe manned by mutineers against whatever rules Cuckoo? What sort of beings were involved? And what was their quarrel?"
"Mighty big questions." Doc Chimp jumped and clutched a metal bar three meters above the bridge. A railing, maybe, if giants had walked it. He clung there, squinting uneasily into the dark ahead. "Don't ask them too fast. I think the answers could kill us again."
Babylon pulled his shoulder pack forward and started his own set of omnirecording instruments. Doc Chimp's might be adequate, but he chose to take no chances. There was no knowing what this race had used for communication— sound, modulated light, radio, perhaps even gamma-ray signals; the recorder would sample everything.