Non-Stop - Brian W. Aldiss [92]
‘Get into inspectionways and take a trolley.’
‘All right, Curtis.’
‘And hurry, man. For heaven’s sake hurry.’
A long, fruity silence followed Zac Deight’s switching off.
‘Are you going to let me get to that radio?’ Deight asked.
Complain nodded.
‘I’m coming with you,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to get a ship to us.’ He turned to Vyann. She had brought the old councillor a beaker of water which he accepted gratefully.
‘Laur,’ Complain said, ‘will you please go back and tell Roger Scoyt, who should be revived by now, that the Giants’ hideout is somewhere on the upper level of Deck 20. Tell him to wipe them all out as soon as possible. Tell him to go carefully: there’s danger of some sort there. Tell him – tell him there’s one particular Giant called Curtis who ought to be launched very slowly on the Long Journey. Take care of yourself, Laur. I’ll be back as soon as I can.’
Vyann said: ‘Couldn’t Marapper go instead of –’
‘I’d like the message to arrive straight,’ Complain said bluntly.
‘Do be careful,’ she begged him.
‘He’ll be all right,’ Marapper said roughly. ‘Despite the insults, I’m going with him. My bladder tells me something very nasty is brewing.’
In the corridor, the square pilot lights greeted them. Their intermittent blue patches did little to make the darkness less creepy, and Complain watched Laur Vyann go off with some misgivings. Reluctantly, he turned to splash after Marapper and Zac Deight; the latter was already lowering himself down an open trap while the priest hovered unhappily over him.
‘Wait!’ Marapper said. ‘What about the rats down there?’
‘You and Complain have dazers,’ Zac Deight said mildly.
The remark did not seem entirely to remove Marapper’s uneasiness.
‘Alas, I fear that trap-door is too small for me to squeeze down!’ he exclaimed. ‘I am a large man, Roy.’
‘You’re a bigger liar,’ Complain said. ‘Go on, get down. We’ll have to keep our eyes open for the rats. With luck, they’ll be too busy to worry about us now.’
They bundled down into the inspection ways, crawling on hands and knees over to the double rail which carried the low trucks belonging to this level from one end of the ship to the other. No truck was there. They crawled along the tracks, through the narrow opening in the inter-deck metal which, even here, stood between one deck and another, and on into a third deck until they found a truck. Under Zac Deight’s direction, they climbed on to its platform and lay flat.
With a touch at the controls, they were off, gathering speed quickly. The deck intersections flicked by only a few inches above their heads. Marapper groaned as he attempted to draw in his stomach, but in a short time they slowed, arriving at Deck 10. The councillor stopped the truck and they got off again.
In this far end of the ship, evidence of rats abounded. Droppings and shreds of fabric littered the floor. Marapper kept his torch constantly swinging from side to side.
Having stopped the truck just inside the deck, they could stand up. Above and round them, four feet wide, the inspection ways here became a washer between two wheels of deck, its width crossed by a veritable entanglement of girders, braces, pipes and ducts, and by the immense tubes which carried the ship’s corridors. A steel ladder ran up into the darkness over their heads.
‘The personnel lock, of course, is on the upper level,’ Zac Deight said. Taking hold of the rungs of the ladder, he began to climb.
As he followed, Complain noted many signs of damage on either side of them, as if, in the rooms between which they now ascended, ancient detonations had occurred. Even as he thought the thought-picture ‘detonation’, a bellow of sound vibrated through the inspection ways, setting up resonances and groans in a variety of pipes until the place sang like an orchestra.
‘Your people are still wrecking the ship,’ Zac Deight said coldly.
‘Let’s hope they kill off a few squadrons of Giants at the same time,’ Marapper said.
‘Squadrons!’ Deight exclaimed. ‘Just how many “Giants”, as you call them, do you reckon are aboard ship?’
When the