The Dragonriders of Pern - Anne McCaffrey [466]
Slowly the door moved inward and then, astonishingly, it moved sideways, into the hull of the ship. A whoosh of rank air sent them reeling and gasping backward. When they looked again, the door was fully retracted, sunlight streaming onto flooring, darker than the ship’s hull but, when the Smith rapped it with his knuckles, apparently made of the same peculiar material.
“Wait!” Fandarel restrained the others from entering. “Give fresh air a chance to circulate. Did anyone think to bring glows?”
“There’re some at the Cove,” Jaxom said, reaching for his flying gear and jamming his helmet on his head as he raced to Ruth. He never did bother to belt up and the frigid moment of between was a shocking cooler after the exertions of digging. He got as many glow baskets as he could carry. On his return, he realized no one seemed to have moved in his brief absence. Awe of the unknown beyond that great entrance had restrained them. Awe and perhaps, Jaxom decided, a reluctance to repeat the disappointment of the Plateau.
“Well, we will never know anything standing out here like numbwits,” Robinton said, taking a glow basket from Jaxom and unshielding it as he strode forward into the ship.
It was mete, Jaxom thought, as he passed out the other baskets, that the Masterharper should have the honor of entering first. Fandarel, F’lar, F’nor and Lessa walked abreast through the opening. Jaxom grinned at Piemur and Menolly as they fell in behind.
Another great door, with a circular wheel for locking thick bars to ceiling and floor, lay open and inviting. Master Fandarel was making inarticulate noises of praise and awe as he touched the walls and peered at what looked to be control levers and more colored circles. As they penetrated farther, they came upon two more doors, an open one on the left and one closed on their right which would lead, Fandarel was certain, to the rear, tube-encircled end of the vehicle. How could tubes make a cumbersome, snub-winged thing like this fly? He simply had to bring Benelek here, if no one else was to see it.
They all turned to the left and entered a long narrow corridor, their boots making muffled noises on the non-metallic floor.
“More of the substance they used for pit supports, I think,” Fandarel said, kneeling and pressing his fingers against the floor. “Ha, what was in these?” he asked, fingering brackets which were empty now. “Fascinating. And no dust.”
“No air or wind to carry it in here for who knows how long,” F’lar remarked in a quiet tone. “As in those rooms we discovered in Benden Weyr.”
They moved along a corridor of doors, some open, some closed. None locked, for Piemur and Jaxom were able to peer into the emptied cubicles. Holes in the flooring and on the inside walls proved that there had been fittings.
“All of you, come here!” came the excited voice of the Harper, who had prowled ahead.
“No, here!” F’nor called from farther beyond the Harper. “Here’s where they must have controlled the ship!”
“No, F’nor, this is important to us!”
And F’lar seconded the Harper’s vibrant claim.
As everyone gathered about the two, their glow baskets adding to the illumination, it was clear what had arrested their attention. The walls were covered with maps. In great detail, the familiar contours of Northern Pern and the not-so-familiar Southern Continent, all of it in its immensity, had been drawn eradicably on the wall.
With a sound—half-moan, half-shout—Piemur touched the map, tracing with his forefinger the coast which he had so arduously tramped, but which was only a small portion of the total shoreline.
“Look, Master Idarolan can sail almost to the Eastern Barrier Range . . . and it’s not the same range I saw in the west. And . . .”
“Now what would this map represent?” F’nor asked, interrupting Piemur’s excited comments. He was standing to one side, his glow basket lighting another chart of Pern. The outlines were the same, but the bands of different colors covered the familiar contours in puzzling configurations. The seas were depicted with varying shades of blue.
“That