Lewis & Glark | Time Traders | Book One | Chapter 13
Lewis slid down out of the chair to the floor and made himself as small as possible under the control panel. He waited tensely for those on the left to appear.
Though he had looked, there was nothing in sight even faintly resembling a weapon on this entire vessel. He was suddenly hit with a realization — if he didn’t do something, he would be trapped on this bridge with who knows who facing who knows what kinds of weapons.
In a move of pure desperation, he stood up and ran toward the lift.
He had seen some markings on the wall next to the lift when he had arrived on this level. As he reached toward the markings, he caught a glimpse of a human man wearing a fur parka and hood rising toward him. As he locked eyes with the man, Lewis pressed his hand against the markings, and what he had hoped would happen happened. A large metal door emerged from the floor, blocking the man ascending on the lift from the bridge.
Shouts were audible from behind the door, as well as a muffled laser shot and explosion. He might have delayed the final battle, but they had him cornered. He faced that fact bleakly. They need only sit below and let nature take its course. His session in the cradle with the jelly had restored his strength. But a man couldn’t live forever without food and water.
Lewis paced around the control cabin, still hunting for some kind of weapon. The symbols on the levers and buttons were meaningless to him. They made him feel frustrated because he imagined that among them were some that might help him out of this trap, if he could only guess their use.
Why couldn’t some magic drawer open now with the weapon he needed, like the drawer had opened with his new perfectly-fitted clothing?
Once more Lewis stood by the lift door thinking. This bridge was the point from which the ship was controlled. These control panels must have given the ship’s captain the means not only of propelling the vast bulk, but of unloading and loading cargo, lighting, heating, ventilation, and perhaps defense. Of course, every control might be dead or disabled now. But he remembered that in the lifeboat craft, the machines had worked successfully, expertly fulfilled the duty for which they had been constructed.
The only step remaining was to try his luck. He moved toward the central control panel on the bridge, figuring it might be the most important. He stood in front of it with a sense that once he touched the controls he might initiate a chain of events he could not stop. The crash of another laser shot on the other side of the lift door underlined the fact that he had no other choice.
Since the symbols meant nothing, Lewis concentrated on the shapes of the various devices and chose one that looked the most prominent and familiar. Since the switch was up, he pressed the button down, counting to twenty slowly as he waited for a reaction.
Below the switch was an oval button on the touch screen marked with two wiggles and a double dot. Lewis touched the symbol, and felt encouraged when it lit up. When two symbols below that appeared, Lewis touched both of them and they also illuminated.
This time he had results! A crackling of noise with a singsong rhythm, the volume of which, low at first, arose to a drone that filled the whole bridge. But Lewis needed action, not just noise…
He looked to the other side of the large touch screen, where there were five oval symbols, dim as the others had initially been, with various sub-markings — two wiggles, a dot, a double bar, a pair of entwined circles, and a crosshatch.
Why make a choice? Recklessness bubbled to the surface, and Lewis touched all the symbols in rapid succession. The results were encouraging. Out of the top of the control board rose a glass screen which displayed some columns of cryptic information surrounded by a rippling wave of color. Meanwhile the singsong rhythm became an angry squawking as if in protest.
At the very least, Lewis now knew that the ship was alive. However, he wanted more than a display of some nonsense data on a screen, and some annoying noises. It now almost sounded as if the ship was irritated and chewing him out in another language. He had to do something more.
Two new symbols appeared on the touch screen below the glass screen that was projecting the data and waves of color. One was lit up, the other was dim. Lewis tapped the dim one and it lit up.
On the glass screen now was a face.
Lewis swallowed at the sight of the very non-human face. The visage on the screen was sharply triangular with a small, sharply pointed chin and a jaw line running at a sharp angle from a broad upper face. The skin was dark, out of which hooked a curved and shining nose set between two large eyes that alternated between diagonal slits and full ovals. On top of that astonishing head, was a fleshy vertical crest of cartilage.
There was no mistaking the intelligence in those alien eyes, nor the being’s amazement at the sight of Lewis.
The creature moved its absurdly small mouth in time to what Lewis assumed was an alien language. He swallowed again and automatically replied in the only way he knew how.
“Hello,” Lewis said softly, his voice a weak whistle.
Lewis’ reply didn’t seem to register with the creature, as it continued what Lewis imagined were questions in its foreign tongue. Meanwhile, he tried to see something of the creature’s background. Though the objects were slightly out of focus, he was sure he recognized elements similar to those about him. Could he be in communication with a similar ship of the same type that wasn’t deserted?
The creature on the screen had turned his head away to talk rapidly over its shoulder, a shoulder which was crossed by a belt with an elaborate pattern. Then it got up from it’s seat and stood aside to make room for another who sat down in the chair.
If the creature on the glass screen had been a startling surprise, Lewis was now to have another.
The stranger who now faced him on the screen was totally different. His face was pale and far more human in shape, though it was hairless as was the smooth dome of his skull. The stranger had tattoos on his face, but unlike those Maarn had, they were more geometric and linear. He was also wearing a suit that matched the metallic one Lewis was wearing now, that the lifeboat ship had given him.
The stranger did not attempt to say anything. Instead, he stared at Lewis with a long and measured look, his eyes growing colder and less friendly with every second of that examination.
Lewis had resented the Major back at the base. But the Major couldn’t match this man for the sheer weight of unpleasant warning he could pack into a look. Lewis might have been startled by the alien, but now his stubborn streak arose to meet this implied challenge. He found himself glaring back with an intensity which he hoped would get across and prove to the stranger that Lewis wasn’t someone he wanted to mess with.
His preoccupation with the stranger on the screen betrayed Lewis into the hands of those from the lift. He heard their attack on the lift door too late. By the time he heard the explosion, the lift door was already open, and a laser gun was pointing at his head. His hands went up involuntarily as two more fur-clad beings moved from the lift into the control room.
Lewis recognized the leader as Glark’s double, the Bulkon he had followed across time. He blinked for just an instant as he faced Lewis and then shouted an order at his companion. The other spun Lewis around and held his hands tightly behind his back.
Once again Lewis faced the glass screen and saw the stranger watching the whole scene with an expression suggesting that he had been shocked out of his complacent superiority.
Lewis’ captors stared at the screen and the unearthly being there. One of the captors flung himself at the control panel. His hands tapped wildly at the touch screen, making the glass screen go blank and lower back into the control panel, and all the illuminated symbols on the touch screen go dark.
“What are you?” his captor demanded.
The man who might have been Glark spoke slowly in the Boreal tongue, drilling Lewis with his stare as if by the force of his will alone he could pull the truth out of his prisoner.
“What do you think I am?” Lewis countered.
He was wearing the metallic uniform of the stranger from the glass screen, and he had clearly established contact with the time owners of this ship. If his captors were indeed Ones, he hoped that they were not only worried, but that they thought his connection to the owners of the ship was more than it actually was, so that they would think twice before hurting him, or worse.
At a signal from the Bulkon, he was led to the lift. Keeping a laser gun on him, they hurried him down a few levels and down the hallway, trying to push the pace while Lewis delayed all he could. He realized due to his quick surrender to the laser gun back in the control room that he likely had betrayed his real origin. So he must continue to confuse the trail, to not offer any evidence of his affiliation with Operation Retrograde, in every possible way left to him. He was sure that this time they wouldn’t lead him outside and leave him in the first convenient crevice of ice and snow.
He knew he was right when they covered him with a fur parka at the entrance door of the ship, slapped handcuffs on his wrists and dropped a rope around his neck.
So, they were taking him back to their outpost here. At the outpost was the time transporter which could return him to the Boreal time period — and hopefully Glark and Maarn. It would be, it must be possible to get to the transporter. He did it once, by accident, so it must be possible if he actually put his mind to it.
He gave his captors no more trouble but trudged, outwardly dispirited, along the rutted way through the snow away from the sphere ship.
He did manage to catch a good look at the sphere. More than half of it, he judged, was below the surface of the ground. To be so buried it must either have lain there a long time, or crashed hard enough to dig itself that partial grave.
Yet Lewis had established contact with another ship like it. And neither of the creatures he had seen were fully human, at least not human in any way he knew.
Lewis pondered that as he walked. He imagined that his captors, Ones or not, were possibly looting the ship of its cargo. And by its size, it must be a lot of cargo. But cargo from where? Made by what hands? Enroute to what port? And how had the Ones located the ship in the first place?
There were plenty of questions and very few answers. Lewis clung to the hope that somehow he had endangered the One’s mission here by activating the communication system of the derelict and calling the attention of its probable owners to its fate. And that the owners of the ship might take steps to regain their property.
Now Lewis had only one chance — to keep the Ones guessing as long as he could, and hope for some turn of fate which would allow him to try and access the time transport.
How the transport platform operated he didn’t know. But he had been transferred here from the Boreal age, and if he could return to that time, escape might be possible. He had only to reach the river and follow it down to the sea where the whale was to make rendezvous at regular intervals.
The odds were overwhelmingly against him, and Lewis knew it. But there was no reason, he decided, to lie down and roll over dead to please the Ones.
As they approached the outpost, from this angle Lewis realized how much skill had gone into its construction. It looked as if they were merely coming up to the outer edge of a glacier shelf. Had it not been for the track in the snow, there would have been no reason to suspect that the ice covered anything but a thick core of its own substance.
Lewis was shoved through the round portal door, through the cylindrical tunnel to the underground building beyond. He was hurried through the chain of smooth-walled hallways and rooms to a door and thrust through, his hands still fastened. The room was dark and colder than it had been outside.
Lewis stood still, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the gloom. It was several moments after the door had slammed shut that he caught a faint thud, a dull and hollow sound.
“Who’s here?” he said, using the Boreal language, determined to keep to the rags of his cover, which probably was a cover no longer.
There was no reply, but after a pause that distant hollow beat began again.
Lewis moved slowly around the bare cell and discovered that the noise was coming from behind the left-side wall. He stood with his ear flat against it, listening. The sound didn’t have the regular rhythm of a machine in use. There were irregular pauses between some blows, while others came in quick succession. It sounded to Lewis like someone was digging.
Were the Ones engaged in enlarging their icebound headquarters? After listening for a considerable time, Lewis doubted that, for the sound lacked consistency. It almost seemed as if the longer pauses were used to check up on the result of the labor.
Lewis slipped down and sat against the wall, his shoulders still resting against it, and his head twisted so he could hear the hollow beat more closely.
Meanwhile, he flexed his wrists inside the metal handcuffs which confined them. Folding his hands as small as possible, he tried to slip them through the rings. The only result was that he chafed the skin on his wrists raw. They had not taken off his parka. And in spite of the intense chill in the room, he was too warm. Only that part of his body covered by the metallic suit the ship had given him was comfortable. He could almost believe that it possessed some built-in conditioning device.
With no hope of relief, Lewis rubbed his hands back and forth against the wall, scraping the hoops on his wrists. The distant pounding had ceased, and this time the pause lengthened into so long a period that Lewis fell asleep, his head resting back, his raw wrists still pushed against the cold surface of the wall behind him.
He was hungry when he awoke, and with that hunger his rebellion sparked into flame. He stumbled to his feet and lurched his body at the door through which he had been thrown, where he proceeded to kick at the barrier. The padded tread of his boots muffled most of the force of those blows. But some noise was heard outside, for the door unlatched and opened, and one of the guards stood in the doorway.
“Food! I want to eat!” Lewis demanded, putting all the resentment boiling in him into the Boreal tongue.
Ignoring him, the guard reached in a long arm, grabbed Lewis by his shoulder and dragged him out of the cell. He was marched down a hallway and into another room to face what appeared to be an awaiting tribunal. Two of the men there he knew — Glark’s double and the quiet man who had questioned him back in the other time station.
The third man, clearly one with authority over the other two, regarded Lewis bleakly. He appeared to be some kind of albino, and had a deep scar and bruise surrounding one eye.
“Who are you?” the quiet man asked.
“Lew, son of Lern,” Lewis replied. “And I would eat before I make talk with you. I have not done any wrong that you should treat me as a barbarian who has stolen salt from the trading post.”
“You are an agent,” the scarred man corrected him dispassionately. “For whom, you will tell us in due time. But first my young friend, you shall speak of the ship, of what you found there, and why you meddled with the controls.”
The scarred man raised his hand from his lap, and once again Lewis faced a laser gun.
“I see that you know what I hold,” the scarred man continued. “Odd knowledge for an innocent Boreal trader. Please have no doubts about my hesitation to use this. I shall not kill you, naturally. But there are certain wounds which supply a maximum of pain and little serious damage. Remove his parka.”
The Bulkon spun Lewis around and removed the handcuffs, then stripped him of the fur parka. The scarred man carefully studied the metallic suit he wore under it.
“Now you will tell us exactly what we wish to hear,” the scarred man demanded.
There was a confidence in that statement that chilled Lewis. There was no doubt that the scarred man meant exactly what he said. He had at his command methods which would wring from his captive the full sum of what he wanted, and there would be no consideration for that captive during the process.
The implied threat struck as cold as the glacial air, and Lewis tried to meet it with an outward show of resolve and determination. He decided to pick and choose from his experience and information, feeding them scraps of information, in an attempt to stave off the inevitable. Having been pushed into corners long before his work for the operation, Lewis had considerable training in verbal fencing with hostile authority.
He would volunteer nothing of real or useful substance, and even used his imagination to inject useless details that would make him seem like he was being useful and forthcoming — but would lead the Ones down a dead end road. He would spin this tale out as long as he could, with the hope that buying some time would be of some advantage.
“You are an agent ,” the scarred man said calmly when Lewis had stopped talking.
Lewis returned the scarred man’s icy stare, and accepted the statement as one he would neither confirm nor deny.
“You are here as a spy under the cover of a barbarian trader,” the scarred man declared, changing language in mid-sentence, from the Boreal tongue into English.
The plain statement Lewis knew to be true rattled him slightly on the inside. But his cool, unwavering stare betrayed none of that. His experience in meeting the dangerous with an expression of complete lack of comprehension was Lewis’ weapon now. He stared at the scarred man with that bewildered, boyish look he had so long cultivated to bemuse enemies in his past.
Whether he could have held out against the scarred man’s verbal skills, or the other more treacherous methods of extracting the truth from Lewis, he would never know.
There was a distant boom, hollow and thunderous.
Underneath and all around them — the floor, walls and ceiling — moved as if the entire arctic outpost had been stepped on by some malevolent, impatient giant.
© 2024 Zen Brazen — All rights reserved
Based on Andre Norton’s Time Traders (public domain)
