Shadows in Flight Page 3

  "It looks to me," said Ender, "as if the rats have taken over the ship."

  "Oh, that's too much," said Carlotta, standing up and facing Ender in a rage. "Sergeant risked his life while you sat here all cozy and --"

  "Carlotta, stand down," said the Giant's voice -- over the intercom this time, instead of coming through the computer. "Ender wasn't talking about our ship."

  Carlotta instantly understood. "So you think that creature Sergeant caught is just ... vermin?"

  "Maybe it had some other function before," said Ender, "or they wouldn't have had them on their ship. But they're vermin now."

  "Sergeant will be back in a minute," the Giant said, "and we have to take this creature apart and analyze it. And keep this in mind, please: Somebody or something on that ship parked it in geosynchronous orbit. Until we know who or what did that, we have no idea what kind of danger or opportunity we've run into here."

  CHAPTER 7

  While Ender analyzed the half-exploded corpse of the alien rat-crab, Carlotta and Cincinnatus made repeated trips to the alien vessel in the Puppy. They did not return to the airlock. Instead, with Sergeant to protect her in case the ship started trying to defend itself and repel their tiny invasion, Carlotta opened all the maintenance hatches and took measurements and charted wiring and did whatever other engineering tasks were within her reach to figure out how the ship worked and, if possible, get some idea of what awaited them inside.

  Both projects were getting fascinating results; Bean checked in on them every hour or so, and kept the audio channels on so that if they said anything, he could respond, just so they thought he was looking over their shoulders.

  He wasn't, though. He had a project of his own. He was using the Herodotus's instruments and drones to probe the planet they were orbiting.

  After two days of study, Ender had his report ready, and so did Carlotta and Sergeant. They gathered in the cargo hold for show and tell.

  Ender began it.

  "This is a Formic ship," he said. "The proteins in the rat-crab are the complete set of Formic-world proteins, with no extras.

  "But here's the odd thing. The DNA is almost identical to the Formics' own genome as gathered and recorded from the many corpses after the war. There are key differences, but they're localized. It's as if the Formics went for a kind of perverse neoteny -- these rat-crabs seem to be a deliberate throwback to an earlier stage in Formic evolution, with these savage claws spliced on, and a hard carapace, which is only vestigial in the adult Formics."

  Carlotta and Sergeant understood the implications at once. "So the Hive Queens can modify their own offspring," said Sergeant. "They decided that some of their babies would be those little monsters."

  "I doubt they thought of them as their children anymore, if they ever did," said Carlotta. "When you have babies by the thousand, I bet the Hive Queens had no qualms about regarding a few of them as animals."

  "There must be some limiting factor to their population," said Sergeant. "Or so the Hive Queen that created them intended. It might not have been the Hive Queen of this colony. They might have been developed long before this voyage and then reproduced naturally. The Formics might not even have remembered that these rat-crabs began as their kin."

  "Do you think they're edible?" asked Carlotta. "Not to us, but ..."

  "They're meaty," said Ender. "You're right, this might be dinner on the hoof."

  "What kills them?" asked Sergeant.

  "Anything. Their carapace doesn't protect them from anything stronger than the teeth of smaller animals. They could crush each other, and they could be mashed by a fist-sized rock. So you tell us what weapons we should use to keep them at bay."

  Sergeant nodded. "No bullets, not on a ship. I wondered if we could slow them down with a sedative spray."

  "I'd have to have a living specimen to see what worked on them," said Ender. "But there are sedatives that have been used on specimens of Formic-world fauna from several of the colony worlds. I could whip up a cocktail of seds that have no effect on humans."

  "I just don't want to go in killing them wholesale," said Sergeant. "Now that we know they're Formic-derived, it's not impossible that they're actually the ones piloting the ship."

  "Brain's too small," said Ender.

  "But they might have queens," said Sergeant. "Or some kind of collective mind that's smarter than any individual. I just don't think we should go in killing. I keep thinking of the old vids of the Formics during the Scouring of China, that vile fog that reduced living creatures to pools and piles of protoplasmic goo."

  "So let's have several sedatives ready that can be delivered as a fog," said Bean. "And a good solid backup plan. An acid spray, for instance. Even if they're sentient or semisentient, if they come at us to kill us, we hit them first and leave them dead."

  "Carlotta?" he said. "What do we know about their ship?"

  "It's definitely older tech. And it's Formic technology -- no writing, but some major color coding. Lots of little motors, which is why they need to have all these maintenance hatches. Of course they had to eliminate a lot of doorage in later ships when they got up to relativistic speeds. This design wouldn't do at all.

  "I think they build the ship in space by attaching everything to an asteroid they sculpted into the shape we're seeing. Probably most of the metal in the ship's frame and hull came from the iron and nickel and such in the rest of the asteroid. But it's not the impermeable alloy they used in the ships that invaded Earth back in the 2100s."

  "They didn't need it yet," said Sergeant. "At only ten percent lightspeed."

  This ark showed that Formics sent out their colony ships with no defenses against attack, only a primitive collision shielding at the front. The Formics had turned out to be devastatingly formidable in war, but war was almost certainly not their intention when they came to Earth.

  "Nice to know," said Bean. "Fortunately, the argument never mattered anyway. What else?"

  "The huge pillars are structural -- the whole strength of the ship is vertical rising out of the rock, like a skyscraper. But they're also hollow. Rocket engines, and they carry fuel. Not radioactive, lots of carbon traces. It must be a very efficient fuel because even if the rock contains huge fuel reservoirs, it's not as if they can ever take this thing down to a planetary surface to process whatever carbon-based fuel source they use."

  "They don't need much fuel," said Bean. "It's a generation ship, so they don't have to accelerate much. Very slow burn until they reach cruising speed, and then nothing until deceleration."

  "No way to guess how much fuel they have left. This planet might be their last hope, or just a casual visit to see if it might do. The machinery I looked at was aging but it works fine."

  "Aging like a thousand years?" asked Bean.

  "No. More like a hundred years. I think everything's been replaced again and again during the voyage. Plenty of indications that there's been a lot of servicing over the years. But none recently."

  "Good work, all of you," said Bean. "I know there's a lot more in your reports, and I've scanned your data as you collected it. I think we have all the useful information we're going to get from the outside, and from that lump of rab that Sergeant brought back."

  "Rab," said Sergeant, giggling a little. "Rat-crab."

  "Half a rabbit," said Carlotta.

  "'Rab' it is," said Ender. "Until they tell us what they call themselves."

  "Now, when you go inside," said Bean, "you have to remember that Formic-based life-forms probably all have some degree of mental communication. Even if it's just a sharing of impulses and desires and warnings, they can tell each other what they need to know. So if any of the rabs notices you, they all know you're there. They might be smart enough to set ambushes. You have to be alert. And if it gets dangerous, get out. You are not replaceable. Do you understand me?"

  Sergeant nodded, Carlotta gulped, and Ender looked bored.

  "Ender," said Bean, "it looks to me as if you think you're
not going in with the others."

  That woke him up. "Me?"

  "Three," said Bean. "I'd go myself, but you know my limitations."

  "But I'm the biology guy," said Ender.

  "Precisely why you need to go," said Bean. "Three for defense is the minimum anyway, but if you're there, you can learn things on the spot instead of waiting for them to bring things back for you to study."

  "But I'm -- I'm not trained for --"

  Sergeant looked at him with contempt. "You think you're above getting your hands dirty."

  "I was up to my elbows in rat-crab blood," said Ender.

  "He didn't mean literally 'dirty,'" said Carlotta. "You think we're expendable and you're the irreplaceable one."

  "Nobody's expendable," said Ender. "I just won't be much help."

  "You beat me," said Sergeant dryly. "Don't pretend you're helpless."

  "He's scared," said Bean. "That's all."

  "I'm not a coward," said Ender coldly.

  "We're all scared," said Carlotta.

  "Terrified," said Sergeant. "When those rab bastards came at me I pooped my pressure suit. Nobody in his right mind isn't scared going into unknown territory facing fast-moving enemies and more potential foes that you don't even know about."

  "So why are we doing it?" asked Ender. "The ship is dead, it's not going to follow our trail back to Earth. The human race isn't in danger. Let's just make our report and move on."

  The others didn't even bother to answer such a ridiculous suggestion.

  CHAPTER 8

  "I think we're ready, Father," said Cincinnatus.

  The Giant's voice came over the cabin speakers. "Attach yourself to a wall and strap in. I don't want to have to worry about you bouncing around in there while I'm maneuvering."

  "So you're planning to show off what a hotshot pilot you are?" asked Ender. Cincinnatus made sure that they were all leaning against the wall of the cabin as the walls extended grips to hold them firmly. The lander was designed to carry cargo -- there were no seats. The walls were designed to restrain whatever was placed up against them, whether people or cargo.

  "Eh," said the Giant. "It's been a while since I had a chance to fly a sweet machine like the Hound."

  After the experience of bumping around in the Puppy, Cincinnatus was duly impressed with the Giant's piloting skills. The Hound detached and puffed free of the Herodotus, and then suddenly it was moving forward. There were no lurches, no abrupt changes of direction. One smooth parabola, a marvel of efficiency, and they were positioned over the still-open airlock of the ark.

  From the belly of the Hound, a self-shaping tube extended and created a seal against the surface of the ark, completely surrounding the airlock door. The children watched on a holodisplay at the front of the cabin. They felt the sudden gust as air from the Hound puffed into the tube and the open airlock.

  "We're connected," said the Giant. "When you get the inner airlock door open, command passes to Cincinnatus."

  Carlotta dropped down the tube first and made sure the outer airlock could close behind them, in case some accident detached the tube from the ark's surface. She closed it and reopened it twice. Then she called, and Cincinnatus and Ender dropped down the tube into the airlock, carrying their shotguns, with the spray packs on their backs and the nozzles attached to their wrists.

  Cincinnatus switched on his helmet's display, and after a moment's recon, the helmet computer began to outline and label all the key features of the airlock. That was the easy part -- Carlotta had already programmed in all the information from Cincinnatus's first foray. As they went farther into the ark, Carlotta would orally label whatever she saw that needed labeling, so that the helmets could create maps on the fly, and they would all see the same names for everything.

  Cincinnatus located himself in front of the inner airlock door. He half expected a couple of dozen rabs to be positioned all around the door, waiting to pounce the moment it opened. That's what he would have done, if he'd been in charge of defending the ark.

  The door slid open.

  Nothing moved.

  Cincinnatus slipped into the corridor, orienting himself to stand upright in the narrow space. To Formics, he would seem to be sideways, standing on the wall. Not that it made any difference. He tested the feel of his magnetics and murmured, "Mags five."

  The others gave the same command, tuning their boots to stick even less tightly to the "floor."

  When Cincinnatus came here before, he had seen rabs almost immediately. Did it mean anything that they weren't showing up yet?

  The Giant's voice murmured in his ear. "I assumed that the ecotat would have days the same length as the Formic home world. If your previous entry was at Formic noon, you're now coming in at midnight."

  "If they're nocturnal then this is day, same benefit," said Ender softly.

  "If they're dusk feeders then this is dawn," said Cincinnatus. "And we're iced."

  "I don't see any yet," said Carlotta.

  They passed under two upward passages but Carlotta didn't tell them to go up. It wasn't until they came to a large opening to the left that she said, "This is one of the standpipes."

  "Aren't those rocket tubes inside?" asked Cincinnatus.

  "But all the controls run up between the standpipe and the hull," said Carlotta. "Let's at least take a look."

  The passage was sealed off from the perimeter corridor -- an airtight seal, so that a breach in the hull would not suck air from the passages that ran the length of the ship. It opened with a lever like the one at the airlock.

  Inside, there was a crescent-shaped space. The desiccated corpses of four Formic workers were discarded like broken dolls, some of their limbs broken off and randomly strewn. Cincinnatus couldn't help a momentary recoil.

  "I don't think they died here," said Ender almost at once. "They were probably thrust down here by the force of deceleration as the ark approached the planet. They were already completely dried up by then -- all this breakage came recently, and they've been dead for a century."

  "So they died when the Hive Queen died," said Cincinnatus.

  "Presumably," said Ender. "That's what Formics do."

  "The rabs didn't eat them," said Carlotta.

  "Guess they can't work the levers," said Cincinnatus.

  "Not smart enough to understand them," said Ender. "They're strong and dextrous enough."

  The whole length of this standpipe had apparently been sealed off from the rabs. They ran into no more corpses, and no hostiles, either. But when they came out of the standpipe passage into another perimeter corridor, it was a different story.

  The air was filled with debris, floating like dustmotes in a beam of light. It took a moment to determine that they were body parts. The helmet's heat sensor showed Cincinnatus that there might be living creatures beyond the curve of the corridor in both directions, but none within line of sight.

  Ender came through and began picking pieces out of the air to examine them.

  "Bits of rab bodies, but also bits of other life-forms. Wings like insects. Really big ones. Lots of little skeletal bits, skin I don't recognize."

  "En, stay close; Lot, can you tether him so you can tug him? Don't want any gaps opening."

  He knew that Carlotta would obey, hooking a three-meter cable from herbelt to Ender's. He had no time to check, anyway, because rabs now came hurtling through the debris, rebounding from wall to floor to ceiling, scattering a hailstorm of bones and shells and wings and skin bits as they came. It was like intertwining tornadoes coming up the corridor.

  Up the corridor. All at once Cincinnatus understood how useful Ender Wiggin's "enemy's gate is down" doctrine could be. Cincinnatus dropped onto his back and then braced his feet against the walls, the narrow way, and shot the spray down between his legs.

  The spray -- if it worked on rabs at all -- was supposed to be very quick. It shot out from the nozzle in a fine aerosol fog, but at such speed that it filled the corridor for at least ten met
ers ahead. The smell was very faint.

  Naturally, the sedative fog did nothing to slow the rabs' forward progress; Cincinnatus had his shotgun in firing position at once, aiming downward between his legs, as he waited to see what condition the rabs were in when they arrived.

  They were still bouncing off the walls, but now he could see it wasn't a controlled movement. Instead of always landing on legs, any part of their bodies might hit the wall, and they tumbled end over end instead of jaws first.

  "Spray's working," said Cincinnatus.

  He reoriented himself so he could walk in the corridor again. Drugged-up rabs from Ender's direction pelted him in the back as rabs hit him in the front. The suits absorbed much of the shock, but not all of it. Not enough of it. There'd be some bruising, and when they hit Cincinnatus's facemask, the impact rocked his head back. He moved forward briskly, firing off a short burst of spray every ten meters or so. Ender didn't fire at all -- they were moving into the residue of Cincinnatus's spray, leaving Ender's original burst of fog to guard the passage behind them.

  Cincinnatus passed a large airtight door on the right, leading toward the center of the ark. He made a quiet bet that Carlotta would choose this one, because it wasn't open and therefore might be rab-free. Sure enough, she levered it open and there was no debris inside, though a good amount of it began osmoting through, along with fog.

  He saw Ender move through the door and Carlotta closed it. The amount of debris that had come through was relatively slight, and Cincinnatus led the way along this corridor at a brisk walk.

  After a short way, the corridor opened out into a huge sandwichlike chamber. Cincinnatus forced his mind to reorient to the way Formics would have seen the room. The space between floor and ceiling was no more than a meter, but both surfaces undulated. And both surfaces were pocked with indentations. Deep ones.

  "Sleeping quarters," Carlotta guessed.

  She had to be right. Each indentation was deep enough for a Formic worker to crawl in to sleep. The soft, organic surface would protect them from the stress of acceleration. Cincinnatus reached a hand inside and pressed against it. It broke. Once it might have been resilient, but it had dried out. Probably the Formics moistened their own cells when they slept, to keep them supple. But now the walls crumbled into flakes when pressed. Some of the cells had Formic corpses in them. Most were empty.