Part 11 (1/2)
Slowly they worked their way inward, and after a time gave up the tactile exploration. Kosta dove down to sift through the fine sand at the bottom of the cavern. Eveleen kept looking at the vast dark hole. Just how deep was this cave, anyway?
She was strongly tempted to go exploring but forced herself to join Kosta and work over the seafloor.
They'd kicked up quite a bit of sand when Kosta finally sat back, his hands clenched into fists.
Eveleen gestured toward the inner part of the cave. He shrugged: Why not? Why not? It took him only minutes to cross back to the opening of the cavern and return with the sled. It took him only minutes to cross back to the opening of the cavern and return with the sled.
So they pushed off, relieved to be doing something, at least. Eveleen could feel the coa.r.s.er hum of the sled's engine, now at its lowest speed.
The lancing blue and yellow sunbeams from the surface very swiftly vanished. They could still see the cave mouth behind them, but light did not penetrate far. Eveleen reached over and turned up the intensity on the sled's headlamp, then turned her own down a bit; her battery power was now reading just above half. She knew there was an emergency supply, but she didn't want to have to rely on that if they had to do another search by feel.
The cave bent suddenly and angled up. Strange. Was the rock smoother?
She turned to Kosta at the same moment he faced her, and pointed. There were no sea plants here, just smooth rock. It was a slab. Could it have been made by a great s.h.i.+fting of land, a quake?
They proceeded at a slow pace, Eveleen watching to her side and Kosta to his, with the sled illumining the way ahead to give maximum visibility.
On and on, and then another sharp turn. The sled banged against the rock as Kosta maneuvered it around.
And then they stopped, staring.
The cave widened; there, settled on the seafloor, rested one of the great globe s.h.i.+ps.
CHAPTER 15.
DOWN IN THE cave with the machinery, the two Kayu faced the Time Agents. One of them manipulated the computer, or whatever that egg thing was. Ross noted sourly that if his attempt to crash it had been successful, there was no sign of it.
One of the Fur Faces signed something to the other, adding a low comment in its clicking, trilling language, and then from the machine came a voice-in English.
”Our previous study indicates that you respond to this tongue.”
Neither man moved.
”We use it in preference to the style of Greek the traders bring here because the vocabulary is easier to adapt to what must be discussed. But first we must reveal to you the fact that we have been waiting for you to appear, that everything is in readiness; it remains for you to make the decision what must occur next.”
Who can resist an opening like that?
Ross knew that if he were alone, he'd ride with the wave and see what happened, but he deferred to Ashe, the more senior agent-and the one who made fewer mistakes.
Ashe looked up at Ross, his head canted in question.
If you're asking me, Ross thought, Ross thought, I say let's go for it. I say let's go for it.
Besides, trying to interrogate someone in a language he understood as superficially as he did Ancient Greek was no picnic.
Ashe said, in English, ”Proceed.”
The Kayu responded with a swift exchange in their own tongue. Though it's usually a mistake to ascribe human emotions to nonhumans, Ross suspected they were excited. And why not? It wasn't just a matter of guessing the right language. These furry guys now had a vector on not just where but when Ross and Ashe had really come from.
”There are devices in place at crucial locations in the volcanic caldera,” the machine-translation went on, in a perfectly enunciated, dispa.s.sionate tone.
”These devices are not ours but belong to the ”-” The machine failed to translate here, instead giving a name in a humming sort of language. ”That is their name for themselves; we call them the !!!.”
This time the machine provided some trills and whistles.
Ross, giving in to impulse, said, ”If you mean the guys in the blue suits, we call 'em Baldies.”
”Baldies.” The machine repeated the word in English and then in the clicking tongue, and the two Kayu looked at each other, one of them making asthmatic noises that might have been laughter.
The other touched a control and trilled something.
The machine said, ”It is a most appropriate term, for it differentiates between us, does it not?”
A little alien humor there? little alien humor there? Ross thought. Ross thought.
He said, feeling weirder by the second, ”You definitely aren't bald. And neither am I,” he added. ”So what's the story on these devices?”
If humor there had been, it was now gone. ”They are . . . even your language does not have the precise concepts, although your physicists could describe them mathematically. Call them . . . 'entropy adjusters,' and you will be close enough.”
”Entropy adjusters,” Ross repeated, resisting the impulse to wipe his sweaty palms down the sides of his fake-hide skirt.
”Yes,” the Kayu stated through the machine. ”In effect they transform the energy of the rising magma into a ma.s.sive gravitational knot rather than allowing it to build up as heat. The effect has been to cool the magma, thus preventing the explosion.”
Ross stared, his heart slamming behind his ribs. They were too late? Was the world, now set on a pastoral path of low tech, doomed to Baldy conquest up-time? Then he thought of the found earring ... of Eveleen down somewhere in the city . . . and felt momentary relief, until he realized that if the Baldies managed to change history, Eveleen would never even have existed, and he snapped, ”You mean the magma has already cooled off too much?”
”No, there is still time, but we are approaching a point of no return. To complete the process, the devices must discharge the energy harmlessly, in one burst of temporal distortion. That is what brought us here; it is detectable across many centuries.”
Something tickled at the back of Ross's mind, but before he could grasp it the other alien trilled something. The first one hesitated.
”My companion would note that this distortion, which affects suitably sensitive minds across a wide span of time, may account for the prevalence of prophecy on your world; I would merely add that this is but one way . . . you might say 'Nemesis . . . 'Nemesis . . . speaks to sentient beings.” speaks to sentient beings.”
Ross felt momentarily disoriented by the strangeness of the situation. Here he and Ashe were, standing on top of a volcano that was about to blow up with a force that would make a hydrogen bomb look like a mere special effect, and having a metaphysical discussion with aliens.
The alien continued. ”The adjusters are still building toward discharge, and if they are destroyed before they complete the discharge, the energy will be released all at once as heat, creating an explosion equivalent to what would have happened without interference.”
Ross whistled under his breath-or started to. Remembering the whistling language spoken by the others, he didn't want to inadvertently be saying something he'd get into trouble for.
So the brain boys at home had been right!
Ashe said, ”Why have you not acted to destroy these devices? Or don't you know where they are?”
”We know the location of each,” one of the Kayu replied. ”But we cannot act. It is not our mandate. We have been here, in place, observing, and waiting until you should appear. 'You' being, in this context, someone of your somewhat mysterious people, who appear and then vanish again after violent encounters.”
Well, that about sums us up, Ross thought. Ross thought.