Orphans - Kevin Killiany [7]
The numbers bordering the image changed as the purple points became a network of jagged lines. With surprising speed the image of the ship broke apart.
No one spoke for a moment.
“What makes that important right now is the interior,” Gomez said at last. “Based on what we could scan through the ends of the cylinder during our initial leapfrogging, the inner surface is designed to emulate a Class-M planet.”
“The whole thing can’t be full of air?” Faulwell asked.
“No,” Gomez assured him. “Angular acceleration keeps the atmosphere within a kilometer or so of the surface.”
“A kilometer or so,” he echoed. “Exactly how big is this thing?”
“Computer models indicate there are just under twenty-six hundred square kilometers of planetary surface in there.”
Faulwell’s mind boggled slightly at the figure.
“Inhabited?” Gold asked.
“We think so.” Gomez nodded to Lense.
“Analyzing the life readings, I’ve definitely identified half a dozen animals analogous to Terran mammals,” the chief medical officer said. “Their groupings and proximity would indicate some are domesticated animals and others are the domesticators, though that’s conjecture.”
“Conjecture you think is accurate,” Gold said.
Lense nodded, then glanced around the table at the others. “Extrapolating from what we saw through the bow, there are anywhere from thirty to sixty thousand colonists aboard that ship.”
CHAPTER
5
Three fours of days and two before the Quest
Terant, son of Terant, grandson of Terant, Baron of Atwaan, pretended he did not notice Rajho and Vissint enter the Hall of Memory. He knew they would indulge him this rudeness in his grief.
Through glassless windows above him the source light streamed in golden shafts to illuminate the brass marqued tombs set in the far wall. He could hear faintly the bells of mourning and the choir of Doctors chorusing a song of comfort. The sounds were of another world. Closer above him he heard the chirp and rustle of birds for whom the rafters of this hall were home. From them he gained greater solace.
This hall had been one of the first great works of his grandfather. The first Terant had conceived of it as both monument and audience chamber for conducting ceremonies of state. From the rafters hung banners, faded slightly now with dust, of the Houses and Holds that had sworn the new baron fealty.
Terant the eldest was known to have seen the future and to have been the first to realize access to the hollows meant power. When he, a mere border warden, had deposed the old baron, it had been widely accepted that the blessings of the Giants, and perhaps through them the Builders themselves, had rested upon him. He had gathered others to his banner with promises of wealth, and gained control of all the hollows between the Wilderness and the Great River.
Terant’s able government and shrewd business skills had brought prosperity to Atwaan. His armsmen—the best paid duskward of the Tetrarchy—provided protection from dangers within and without. In exchange for their comfort and security, his subjects rendered the baron and his son and now his grandson their complete obedience and their lives.
There was no dust on the trophies, Terant noticed idly, nor droppings from the birds above. For all its air of abandonment, someone kept the hall clean. He wondered who had ordered that.
Along this wall, in niches and on pedestals, were treasures of uncertain value, oddities no one could identify wrested from the hollows of the Builders. The barony’s wealth sprang from the trade in these curios; treasures of the Builders were highly prized as art and jewelry and even talismans. In the days of pomp, the crowds had kept to this side of the hall, avoiding the misproportioned sepulchres along the farther wall.
There were no court functions here these