Chapter 14: Widening Ripples

The Atalanta was even more enormous than it had appeared from the wreck. Hasmodai sent a probe into it with the scanner, but if the ancient vessel had a matter transference system, it was deactivated, broken, unrecognizable or undetectable for some other reason. There seemed to be a number of hatches, some sealed over with ice or other encrustments. Hasmodai finally was forced to warm one of the smaller airlock hatches enough that the ice released when he activated it. The task nearly depleted his considerable energy reserves, but he was able to enter the airlock and seal it after him, and the inner hatch opened smoothly to admit him to the ship.

It was easy to forget the difference in scale between the people of Earth and those of Greecia until it was brought to your attention by comparison. The ceilings were vaulted, impossibly high, and though he had stepped from the airlock into what was clearly just a corridor around the outer rim of the Atalanta, it was more than wide enough for a pair of airliners to take off from, wingtip to wingtip.

The ship must have been beautiful once. Even now, dark, silent as a tomb, and everything covered by a rime of sparkling frost, it was breathtaking in its enormous majesty.

Hasmodai scanned, found the air was breathable, and unsealed his spacesuit, pushing back the transparent cowl to take in the surrounding scene more clearly. He started walking down the corridor, his footsteps echoing hollowly through the silence.

The outer wall was made entirely of tall, paned windows, shaped like those in a church, and a faint blue light filtered in from the ocean beyond. The sun must have risen at last. Hasmodai could see nothing outside, because the windows were covered with whorls and fractal patterns in frost. The sight reminded him of childhoods spent in the North, cold winters, Christmas mornings, things he had not experienced in Teo's lifetime. An old, old Christmas song came to his lips, to echo eerily through the emptiness, and he pulled one hand from its gauntlet and pressed it against the frosty window as Andrew Chaseman had loved to do, so many lifetimes ago.

But the frost did not melt away under the warmth of his hand as it had for Andrew, it seized him in its grip and tried to hold fast, and when he snatched the hand back, the skin was seared white with the cold.

Hasmodai walked on. The songs Andrew had loved the most were forgotten now, even in his own country.

Andrew Chaseman's life had been the hardest one to leave behind. It was not because it was comfortable, even luxurious for its time period, but because his home had been so filled with love and joy and caring people. Hasmodai realized that outside the manor house, there must have been privation, poverty, oppression and suffering, but Andrew had not been old enough to recognize it yet when his life became Hasmodai's.

If Andrew had lived, perhaps he would have done something to help those people, to make their lives less desperate and short. Maybe he could have done some good, provided some remedy that would have sent a positive influence to spread into the future, and Earth would be a better world now for it. Instead, Hasmodai and his companions had left a trail of loss, sadness and bitter pain behind them. What shadows had the grief of their deserted families cast into Earth's future? What had become of the kind, affectionate Chaseman family after their beloved eldest son had utterly vanished?

Maybe, after all, Palza was the only one of them who had made the right choice, and that far too late.

He came to an arched portal that led away from the window, and checked his scanner. The Atalanta seemed to be laid out in concentric circles, and though the ship slept, at its center was a throbbing energy signature.

Hasmodai turned away from the sea and moved toward the heart of the ship.

Away from the windows, the Atalanta was in darkness. Lambent nodes on the spacesuit illuminated automatically as he left the light behind, shining feebly in the yawning, cavernous, empty gloom. The ship was a labyrinth, a minotaur's maze built for giants, silent but for the echoing rhythm of his own footsteps. He did his best to walk quietly, but even the slightest noise reverberated through the emptiness like an accusation. He was an intruder in a sacred place, a heedless archaeologist violating a crypt.

As he went deeper into the maze, Hasmodai felt a sense of despondency growing in him, a feeling of oppression, dread and anxiety.

He was so very, very alone.

Several times he stopped and listened, the rasping whispery echoes of his breath the only sound. I should go back, he thought. I should go back to the wreck and wait. I should return when the others are with me.

Then he walked on.

A faint vibration under his feet was the first indication that he was approaching the heart of the ship. As he continued on, it became an audible hum. And finally he saw a pale green glow radiating from a distant doorway.

When he reached it at last and turned to see what was within, Hasmodai cried out and sank slowly to his knees.

Beyond the portal lay a field of a hundred or more faintly glowing vertical columns. Each was a clear tube, filled with pale green gel. Each contained a body, frozen in sleep, gigantic in proportion. The sleepers had silver-white hair and wore clothing in the fashion of an age long, long past.

It wasn't the wonder and amazement of discovery that overwhelmed Hasmodai and left him trembling. It wasn't the flashback to the memories of their own preserved bodies aboard Georca's ship, or even the vivid, scintillating recollections of Greecia, his home planet, which the vision of these ghosts brought forth from the back of his mind with piercing clarity.

All his attention was riveted on the nearest column. Within, a young woman rested, suspended in her centuries-long hibernation. Dressed in a simple and elegant gown, she lay back against the wall of the column, lips slightly parted, hands clasped at her breast.

Hasmodai knew her.

Cooks glared out to sea as Pollux worked on the helicopter. How the kid had gotten permission to dismantle the thing, Cooks had no idea.

They had been lucky, though. When a reluctant Captain Walfang had been given orders to take the boy out to the landing pad and let him tinker with one of the aircraft, Walfang had insisted on a security guard accompanying Pollux at all times when outside the complex.

"Oh, all right," Pollux had said, pointing at Cooks. "That one will do." And Cooks had become Pollux's personal bodyguard.

The landing pad was sheltered from the wind, but that didn't keep it from being a frozen nightmare. Cooks huddled in his insulated parka and layers of high-tech cold-weather clothing. In spite of the gear, the cold soaked him down to the bone.

"I don't suppose you could do this inside?"

"The only room big enough is the hangar," Pollux said. "And that's where Castor's building his generator."

Cooks swore under his breath.

"Come help me lift this."

"I can't," Cooks said. "I'm your bodyguard. If Walfang sees me carrying your spare parts instead of guarding your body, he'll replace me with some other flunky."

Pollux threw his wrench down on the ice. "I…AM…FIVE…YEARS…OLD!" he practically screamed. "I CAN'T DO EVERYTHING MYSELF!"

"All right, all right," Cooks muttered. "Don't cry, it'll freeze to your face." He raised the engine part Pollux wanted lifted. "I'd think a five-year-old could lift the whole machine. This isn't a helicopter, it's an overweight mosquito."

The machine Walfang had allotted them was a tiny one-man reconnaissance copter. Cooks had no idea how they were going to fit in a man, two twins, and a wounded Ian Cole.

Pollux sniffled. "If we're going to get away, it has to be faster than the other copters, and it has to get to where we're going without refueling. I'm going to have to completely redesign and build the whole engine from the bottom, and there's no time to get custom parts made, even if anyone would do it."

"Maybe you could add a larger fuel tank, from off one of the bigger helicopters," suggested Cooks. "And a jet engine booster."

"Just do the heavy lifting and leave the thinking to me."

"Hmmph. You sure I don't have the twin with the attitude by mistake?"

Pollux returned to work, still sniffling, and Cooks went back to staring out to sea. He ought to have planned this better.

Tarlant tried to focus on the pod hull before him. If his concentration wavered, he was likely to create an irregularity in the clear hull, which would cause a focal distortion. It was not a huge inconvenience, maybe, if the passing landscape seemed to ripple a bit as you flew past it, but Tarlant preferred to return the shattered pod to as near perfect condition as he was able.

It was just a little more difficult to concentrate, of course, when Belle was hovering around behind him.

"Can I help?" she offered timidly.

"No." Tarlant didn't mean to be unkind, it was the simple truth. The girl didn't know a resonator from a particle convertor. Belle wandered away to sit by Tina. Tina, raised as a royal princess, at least had the good sense to keep out of the way and let people get on with their work. Tina could sit for hours gazing into space and doing nothing. It was kind of creepy.

The finality of Hasmodai's death had sapped Tarlant's hope for the survival of Agi, Mel, Seth and Dumas. But he kept working, because that was all he could do.

He finished and straightened up. Across the ice, he could see Soreto approaching with the two robots, towing the other pod behind them.

As disgusted as he was with Belle's actions, Tarlant felt sorry for her. There was nothing for her to do but sit and brood on the death of Hasmodai. While she had indeed been at least partly responsible, and certainly ought to feel remorse, torturing herself over it endlessly did nobody any good. If Agi were there, he'd have gotten it over with quickly, delivering a good, hard shouting-at, and a punch in the nose.

Well, maybe not to his sister.

But the point was, once Agi had ripped your heart out, you were free to go on with your life. Soreto seemed to be doing her best to avoid any contact with Belle. Tarlant wasn't sure if this was because Soreto couldn't stand to look at the girl, or didn't want to deal with the situation, or if this was some sort of complicated female punishment Tarlant was incapable of understanding. After so many years accustomed to Agi's leadership, it was unsettling to have a whole new set of rules to learn.

And if Soreto had just taken fifteen more minutes to return, Tarlant thought regretfully, he could have stolen a little break. She slid down off Squeak's back, and Tarlant eyed the second pod. The hull was shattered even worse than the first had been, and from Soreto's description, it must have suffered some engine damage as well.

"Have any trouble?" he asked.

"Bubble's cortical center burned out, but I replaced it," said Soreto. "It was fine."

Tarlant nodded. Before they had even set out for Antarctica, he had modified the robots to carry several spare cores each, and half a crate more had been salvaged from the wreck. On Greecia where they had been designed, the robots would have been no bigger to the inhabitants than a very large dog, and swapping out a core would be as simple as changing the battery in a child's toy. Here on Earth, the cores were heavy and the switch was awkward, particularly if there was no replacement near at hand.

The cold of Antarctica seemed to be affecting the cores as well. They burned out very quickly, and each switch seemed to give the robot…well, almost a personality change. One or two cores had caused such aberrant behavior that Tarlant had removed them at once. He had saved the bad cores, because they did not have an unlimited supply, and the time might come yet when a badly muddled robot was better than none at all.

"Good work," Soreto said. She was examining the repaired pod. "Do you need to take a break?"

Tarlant blinked. "Um…no, I don't, not really."

"Are you sure? We need your best work, Tarlant."

It was not something Agi would have offered, and it threw Tarlant off balance. Did he really need a break? With most of team out there missing or dead, and a pod to fix, and the world in jeopardy?

"No, I'm good to go," he said. Half the point of slacking off had always been the challenge of getting away with it.

Soreto nodded. "Don't push yourself too hard. Belle! Get in the pod. We're going out for a look around." Belle jumped to obey and hurried toward the repaired escape pod. As she passed, Soreto tossed her a rag and ordered, "Wipe Tarlant's fingerprints off the hull, first."

Tarlant had, of course, been wearing his makeshift mittens the entire time he worked. When Belle was diligently busy polishing the hull, Soreto turned back and said to him, "All right, Tarlant, what was that stare about?"

"Uh," said Tarlant. He hadn't realized it was noticeable. "You aren't planning to drop Belle into the ocean along the way, are you?"

Soreto sighed—a bit wistfully, Tarlant thought. "No. Like it or not, Belle is here, and we're stuck with her. She has to be integrated into the team somehow, otherwise sooner or later she's going to rebel or try to redeem herself, probably by doing something stupid that might get more of us killed. The best way to bring her on board is to find a way for her to make herself useful. And since we can't exactly send her out to gather firewood or ask her to build us an electron conversion generator, she'll have to come scouting with me. She wants to look for her brother, anyway, and another pair of eyes can't hurt."

Tarlant nodded. "Good luck with that."

Soreto walked away, her face grim. "I just keep reminding myself she's Agi's sister."

Tarlant watched as the two girls entered the pod. After the standard checks, Soreto tested the engine. The pod lifted off the ground.

He heard Belle shriek and saw her seize Soreto's arm.

"Is there a problem?" Soreto asked frostily.

"It FLIES!" Belle exclaimed.

Soreto closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. Then the hatch closed, and the pod set out over the ice in quest of survivors. Tarlant was heartily grateful not to be going along on this mission.

Then he knelt down on the ice to examine the engine of the second pod, with a sigh. If only Agi had been there…this would have been the perfect moment to sneak a nap.

Hasmodai continued to stare up at the frozen Greecian woman.

How could he know her? How could she seem so familiar to him? This woman had not been on Greecia in close to a thousand years, now.

And yet, the feeling was so powerful it nearly hurt. He knew her.

Were his many Earth lifetimes, his misuse of the transference devices and spirit portals, beginning to effect his sanity? Or were the barriers that prevented him from remembering previous lives eroding? Had he known this woman long ago, on Greecia, before he had ever been Hasmodai? Had they loved one another? Had his soul longed for hers, the way Mel's longed for Palza's, all these centuries, while her soul lay trapped in this sleeping body? Was that why he had always felt so alone and incomplete?

Was that why the story of the Atalanta had so haunted him as a child?

Was that what had sent his mind exploring the land of Death?

Was this creature, this lost soul, that which he had been seeking all along?

He tore his eyes at last from the capsule. Not far away, an ancient, ornate control console was fixed to the deck. At his touch, the antique lit up, diamond-shaped buttons glowing in the colors of the sea.

This girl, these people…none of them should be awakened. It was a miracle that their life suspension system still preserved them, after thousands—no, tens of thousands—of Earth years. When they were revived, there ought to be a Greecian medical team standing by, a squad of historians and interviewers, or at the very least, somebody large enough to render aid if the reawakening body suffered complications.

Hasmodai stared at the ancient controls. He should not even touch them.

He started pressing buttons.