Non-Stop - Brian W. Aldiss [32]
Marapper was all for pressing on, but the others agreed with Wantage, and they made a meal in silence.
‘What happens if we come on a deck where all the doors are like that?’ Complain wanted to know.
‘That won’t happen,’ Marapper said firmly. ‘Otherwise we should never have heard of Forwards at all. There obviously is a route – probably more than one – left open to those parts. We just have to move to another level and try there.’
Finally they found their way into Deck 59 and then, with encouraging rapidity, into 58. By that time, it was growing late: a dark sleep-wake was almost upon them. Again they grew uneasy.
‘Have any of you noticed anything?’ Complain asked abruptly. He was now leading the procession again, and liberally splashed with sweat and miltex. ‘The ponics are changing type.’
It was true. The springy stems grew more fleshy and less resilient. The leafage seemed reduced, and there were more of the waxy green flowers in evidence. Under foot there was a change too. Generally, the grit was firm, intersected by a highly organized root system which drained every available drop of moisture. Now the walking was softer, the soil dark and moist.
The further they went, the more pronounced these tendencies became. Soon, they were splashing through mud. They passed a tomato plant, and another fruit-bearer they could not identify, and several other types of growth straggling among the evidently weakened ponics. This change, being unfamiliar, worried them. All the same, Marapper called a halt, since if they did not shortly find a place to rest they would be overtaken by darkness.
They pushed into a side room which someone had already broken into. It was piled high with rolls of heavy material, which seemed to be covered by an intricate pattern. The probing beam of Fermour’s torch dislodged a swarm of moths. With a thick, buttery sound, they rose from the fabric, leaving it patternless, but sagging with deep-chewed holes. About the room they whirled, or past the men into the corridor. It was like walking into a dust storm.
Complain dodged as a large moth bore towards his face. For the softest moment he had an odd sensation that he was to recall later: although the moth flew by his ear, he had an hallucinatory idea it had plunged straight on into his head; he seemed to feel it big in his very mind; then it was gone.
‘We shouldn’t get much sleep here,’ he said distastefully, and led on down the marshy corridor.
Through the next door that opened to them, they found an ideal place to pitch camp. This was a machine shop of some kind, a large chamber filled with benches and lathes and other gadgets in which they had no interest. A tap supplied them with an unsteady flow of water which, once turned on, they could not turn off; it trickled steadily down the sink, to the vast reclamation processes functioning somewhere below the deck on which they stood. Wearily, they washed and drank and ate some of their provisions. As they were finishing, the dark came on, the natural dark which arrived one sleep-wake in four.
No prayers were requested, and the priest volunteered none. He was tired and, too, he was occupied with a thought which dogged the others. They had travelled only three decks: a long spell of walking lay between them and Control. For the first time, Marapper was realizing that, whatever assistance his chart gave them, it did not show the true magnitude of the ship.
The precious watch was handed to Complain, who would wake Fermour when the large hand had made its full circuit. Enviously, the hunter watched the others sprawl under benches and drift to sleep. He remained doggedly standing for some while, but eventually fatigue forced him to sit. His mind ranged actively over a hundred questions and then it, too, grew weary. He sat propped with his back to a bench, staring at the closed door; through a circle of frosted glass inset in the door, a dim pilot light glowed in the corridor outside. This circle apparently grew larger and larger