The Black Fleet Crisis_ Tyrant's Test Part 45

Somersaulting slowly, Lando waved a hand absently toward the interior.

"In there. Left, left, right, right, center, right, center.

Something like that." The food pack expired with a sucking sound. "You can't miss him. He's the one with legs."

Luke and Dr. Eckels found Lobot curled up in a side tubule, floating, his eyes closed, his hands cupped against the side of his head.

The transparent leads of his split interface tethered him to the rounded ma.s.s at the far end of the tubule.

"Do you have any idea what we're looking at here, Doctor?"

Eckels peered into an adjacent tubule for an un.o.bstructed view.

"These are the size and geometry of the Qella remains we recovered from the ice," he said in hushed awe.

"These don't feel like remains to me," Luke said, entering the tubule where Lobot was floating. "Lobot--it's Luke. Wake up, fella--your relief's here."

"Are you saying that they're alive?" Eckels demanded. "I had discounted those reports as unreliable."

"Why?"

"Why, it's unprecedented--unthinkable--" "This whole s.h.i.+p feels alive to me, Doctor," Luke said "Though with a different quality than I'm used to."

"Different how?"

"Usually this much power is matched with much greater awareness.

It's almost like--sleeping. Just like Lobot here seems to be sleeping."

Frowning, Luke reached out and dug his fingernails into Lobot's elbow.

"Hey--talk to me."

"But these bodies have no limbs," Eckels protested.

"The creatures on the surface were quadrupeds."

"I'm not trying to tell you what they are, Doctor.

I'm just telling you that what Lobot reported is true--these things are alive, and this s.h.i.+p is alive I'll let you tell me the relations.h.i.+p between them."

Lobot was stirring by then. "Waiting," he murmured in a trancelike monotone.

"Waiting for what?" Luke asked. "What question is that an answer to?"

Behind him, Eckels was frowning. "Physically, the relations.h.i.+p mirrors one that exists inside the Qella, between the Eicroth bodies and- -" His eyes widened in surprise. "Luke, I must see the rest of this vessel at once.

I must see these exhibits Lando spoke of."

"Lobot, talk to me," Luke was saying. "What do you need from me?"

"We wait," Lobot said dreamily.

"What are' 'we'?" Luke asked.

"Answers," said Lobot.

"Yes, I need answers," Luke said. "What are you waiting for? What do you need?"

The words came haltingly. "We wait... for .. the thaw."

Luke looked questioningly back at Eckels.

"I must see the s.h.i.+p," he insisted. "I will not make wild guesses When there is evidence at hand."

Nodding agreement, Luke said, "I think we need to break up Lobot's new friends.h.i.+p, anyway--I can hardly find a boundary between his mind and everything else.

Know anything about neural interfaces, Doctor, or should I just pull the plug?"

Eckels grimaced. "Do what you think best. I'll wait outside."

It was nearly an hour before either Lando or Lobot was fit for their final duties as host and guide. For Eckels, it was an hour of maddening impatience. For Luke, it was an opportunity to bring the droids back online and begin repairs to Threepio's damaged arm.

"I'm very glad to see you, Master Luke," the droid said. "You won't believe the stories I have to tell you. I don't know why i was sent on this mission in the first place. Why, I was nearly vaporized by the vagabond, and then we were attacked by an entire fleet of wars.h.i.+ps.

Master Calrissian abandoned me to be captured by intruders--" Luke grinned. "It's good to see you, too, Threepio.

And I promise to let you tell me all the stories, later.

Twice, even, if you need to."

"That's very kind of you, sir."

When the droids had been moved to the skiff, Luke went off to explore with Lando, while Lobot led Eckels on a separate tour. But before long Lando decided the familiar comforts of a stars.h.i.+p, however humble, had greater appeal than Luke's company, and excused himself from sight-seeing.

By then Luke understood the geometry and instrumentality of the vagabond well enough to manage on his own. The "museum" rooms and the inters.p.a.ce gallery were equally astonis.h.i.+ng, but Luke found himself drawn back to the interior, to the maze of tubules and the cl.u.s.ters of what Luke had begun calling Eckels bodies.

They were the center of the vagabond's limited consciousness, the focus of the flow of energy through the s.h.i.+p. Four hours vanished in an eyeblink before Luke even thought of rejoining the others. Another hour and a half pa.s.sed before he actually did.

They were all there--Lando asleep in the bunk, Lobot stretched out on the floor of the systems compartment, Threepio strapped into the right-hand seat, and Artoo contentedly plugged into both the data port and the power port at the interface board.

Eckels was in the pilot's seat, bending forward over the s.h.i.+p's small data displays with a frown while keying the datapad on his lap fluidly by touch alone.

"I believe I have an answer for you now," Eckels said without looking away from his work. "Shall we wake the others?"

"No," said Luke. "They've done their part let them rest. Let's compare notes first. If we find we have questions for them, we can take care of that later."

"I was able to get the benefit of Lobot's thoughts while he showed me around," said Eckels. "He has an admirably disciplined mind."

"People have been underestimating him for as long as I've known him," Luke said. "So what do you have?"

Eckels sat back in his seat and pointed to the data display. "Lobot was right," he said. "The moons are the key."

"The moons they saw in the orrery."

"Yes," said Eckels. "With the a.s.sistance of Colonel Pakkpekatt, we've a.n.a.lyzed the recordings Artoo-Detoo made the first time the expedition reached the auditorium and viewed the diorama. The orbits depicted for the moons turn out to be unstable."

"Check me if I've missed something, Doctor, but Maltha Obex has no moons. "

Eckels nodded. "But Qella did. Unremarkable moonsmnothing to inspire a grand mythology. At least not until one of them fell from the sky."

"The ice age is the result of a moonstrike," Luke said, his expression gravely thoughtful.

"Yes, it would appear so," said Eckels. "The smaller moon was a capture moon, with an irregular orbit. Working backward from Artoo's recordings, we found that the gravity of the larger moon disturbed the capture moon into a decaying orbit--a hundred years, in round numbers, before the fall."

"And the Qella saw it happening. They knew what lay ahead for them," Luke said. "And they used the warning, and the time they had left, to build this vessel."

"The ultimate and supreme achievement of their species," said Eckels.

"Judging from what I saw, they did not have the means to destroy or repulse a moonm even the small moon of Maltha Obex dwarfed this vessel and its power. Nor did they have the means to evacuate a populous planet- -the culture depicted in these serographs numbered hundreds of millions, if not more."

"It would have taken thousands of vessels this size," Luke said.

"An impossible task in the time they had."

"But they could build one, and send it away before the end came,"

Eckels said. "When the expedition looked at the orrery, they saw this system as it was when the vagabond had last seen it--before the moonsrike, the destruction of the Qella, and the death of their planet under a blanket of ice."

Eckels gazed out the front of the c.o.c.kpit at the faces of the gallery.

"Your friend Lando was wrong," he went on. "What's here is very real.

This s.h.i.+p isn't a collection of objects--it's a collection of ideas.

We may never know why, but the Qella valued these ideas more than their lives. And that which we value is that which gives meaning to our lives. What a grand gift they have given us what a gloriously defiant futility."

"Futility?" Luke asked. "What about those things in the interior?

Lobot keeps wanting to call them Qella. You said that they looked like the Qella. And now the s.h.i.+p has brought them home."

Frowning, Eckels looked down at his datapad.

"But there are only a few thousand of them, on a vessel that could have held many more." Eckels shook his head. "No, it cannot be. This is not an ark, or even a lifeboat. Those bodies are the controllers and protectors of this vessel, not its treasure. The real treasure of this vessel is in ideas and memories--a thousand years of history, a thousand years of art, this splendid bio-mechanical science. No, this is no museum. This is a monument, Luke."

"No," Luke said stubbornly. "There's something more here." Turning away, he dropped gracefully through the open entry hatch. Catching a handhold on the hull, he catapulted himself forward, away from the skiff and into the silence and darkness of the inters.p.a.ce.

There, drifting slowly in front of the Qella gallery, Luke extended his senses to the planet below. He found only a great stillness. There was no halo of life energy, no reservoir of the Force. The ice-encased surface had the same profound quiescence as the ma.s.s of rock below it.

"What are you looking for?"

"A reason to wait for the thaw," Luke said.

"So it can finish its journey," Eckels said. "It meant nothing more than that."

"Shhh," Luke said. He had drifted close to the outer skin of the vagabond, and he reached out and drew himself to it. He listened to the complex rhythms of the s.h.i.+p and allowed them to resolve into the deep, fundamental pulse of its being. He listened only to that pulse until he had absorbed it. completely, knew it utterly.

Then he extended himself toward the planet once more, this time quieting his own urgency and desire, seeking that most profound state of egoless connection in which everything could be heard without distraction or distortion.

And suddenly there they were, like millions of grains of sand falling slowly to the surface--a collective heartbeat so faint and so languid that the slightest whisper of impatience would obscure it. With an exultant cry, Luke pushed himself away from the wall in a backward somersault.

"What? What is it?" Eckels exclaimed. He jetted across the open s.p.a.ce to intercept Luke, catching him just before he reached the gallery.

But Luke twisted away from Eckels's grasp, turning to trace the lines of a Qella face with both hands. "The bodies you found--the Qella Who roamed the iced those weren't the survivors," Luke said. "They were the dissenters."

"What do you mean?"

"Exactly what I said. We were all wrong. This s.h.i.+p isn't a museum, or a temple full of treasure, or a lifeboat--or a monument, either. It's a tool kit, Doctor--a tool kit for rebuilding a destroyed world."

Turning, Luke grabbed both of Eckels's hands in a fervent grip. Joy and wonder together animated his smile. "They had time to do more than prepare this s.h.i.+p, Doctor--they had time to prepare themselves.

That planet is not dead--there are millions of Qella buried in the ground, awaiting the thaw. And we can give them that."

As soon as Mud Sloth cleared the opening the vagabond had created for it, Luke gave the thrusters one hard kick, then turned the skiff around so that all could watch the Qella vessel fall away behind them.

"Are you sure you don't want to cloak us, like you did before?"

Eckels said worriedly to Luke. "I'd really rather not contribute personally to the warming of Mal-tha Obex."

"The vagabond will not harm us," Lobot said with quiet a.s.surance.

"Don't worry, Dr. Eckels," said Lando. "Lobot here spent so much time in the tubules that he got promoted to honorary egg."

Luke chuckled. "If you want something to worry about, Doctor, worry that your friends back at the Inst.i.tute reversed two digits and dropped a decimal."

"Our very best planetary climatologist personally supervised the modeling of the Qella glacial epoch," Eckels said with stiff professional pride. "If Lobot communicated his recommendations accurately--" "It understands," said Lobot. "The task required the building of a new strand of memory code, but it understands."

"I'm still surprised at how small an energy input it's supposed to take," Luke said. "I thought at first we'd have to bring. in half a dozen Star Destroyers and keep them here a month."

"Small inputs, and time," said Eckels. "This planet teetered on the edge- -it would probably have recovered on its own, as the Qella must have expected it would, but for the orbital wobble caused by the loss of the second moon."

"Look," said Lando. "It's starting."

The hull of the vagabond had begun to glow, crawling blue snakes of energy snapping along its length as the capacitance charge built up to a cascade. Then triple beams of energy stabbed downward from each end of the s.h.i.+p, creating ionized tunnels through the atmosphere in which precious chemicals began to be renewed. The beams converged at the surface of the half- frozen ocean below, creating ma.s.sive explosions of steam, with towering, scalding plumes rising amidst the ice floes.

"Pretty good light show," Lando said lightly.

"Kind of a shame there's only the six of us to see it."