Engineman - Eric Brown [133]
They turned left and climbed down another steep flight of stairs, this one corkscrewing through the rock until it gave onto a vast cathedral-like chamber. The far regions of the circular chamber were in darkness, but nearby was all light and activity. A generator droned, providing power for fluorescent lights and banks of computer terminals and screens. A dozen Enginemen and Enginewomen monitored the screens and pored over read-outs. Perhaps fifty Lho waited - with all the forlorn apprehension of the refugees they were - to one side, crouching or sitting cross-legged on the floor. With them, Ella made out half a dozen aliens on stretchers.
Kelly led Ella across to a rest area - a crude arrangement of old settees and foam-forms set out in a square. Enginemen slept or rested; others drank coffee or chatted among themselves. Kelly embraced a short, wiry Enginewoman in her fifties.
"This is it, Kelly," the woman said. "This is what we've been working towards..."
For the next hour, Ella stretched out and rested on a foam-form, unable to sleep for the noise of the generator, the tense conversation of the assembled Disciples and the sense of anticipation bursting within her.
From among the banks of computers and monitors, someone shouted. The Enginemen in the rest area stood and rushed out. Ella joined them. They stood around the edge of the chamber, staring into the darkness. Seconds later, a fierce gust of displaced air almost knocked Ella off her feet. Grit and dust stung her face as the gale raged around her, blasting her in the face as she watched the squat, silver smallship flicker into existence in the centre of the chamber like the image on a defective vid-screen. At last it established itself solidly in this reality, the sight of the 'ship made all the more poignant by the awed hush of the assembled Disciples.
Ella stared at the smallship through her tears. She was suddenly overcome with a terrible anxiety that had nothing to do with the safety of the imminent flight. The arrival of the 'ship made real the fact that soon she would be returning to Earth, and she experienced a complex mix of emotions - love and hate and everything in between - at the thought of meeting her father again for the first time in ten years.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Mirren stood in the engine-room of the Sublime and stared out through the viewscreen. At first he assumed that the 'ship had materialised during the planet's night, as all was darkness outside. Then, as his eyes adjusted, he realised that the 'ship had phased into a vast chamber. Tall, carved figures, attenuated and alien, demarcated the cavern's perimeter. Beneath them, dwarfed, were a group of humans - some in radiation silvers - standing around banks of computers and monitors in the dim light of a dozen jerry-rigged fluorescents. The men and women were clapping, cheering, hugging each other and exchanging handshakes. As they made their way across the floor of the chamber, they were joined by a group of tall, elongated aliens. They moved towards the 'ship with an unhurried circumspection that reminded Mirren of certain insects. They paused in the wash of light from the engine-room and stared up at Mirren and Dan. One of them lifted an arm in an oddly human gesture of greeting, incongruous coming from a figure so alien. Mirren returned the wave and asked Miguelino to open the hatch.
He left the engine-room and dropped to the lounge, where already Enginemen and -women were carrying aboard computers and