Страница 33 из 86
3.
No starlight penetrated the murky haze.
Tens of thousands of huge, dusty molecular clouds speckled the galaxy’s spiral arms. Such places were often turbulent hothouses for newborn suns, but this one had been static and sterile for at least a million years-a barren tide pool with the color of a bottomless pit.
And yet, probing sensors from thePride of Rhodia had caught something lurking in its depths. A swarm of contacts showed up first on gravity meters and then deep radar. Later, searchlights set off glittering reflections, so near that some photons returned in mere seconds.
Hari had been unconscious during the discovery. Now he strove to catch up, peering into the surrounding gloom with eyes that felt especially acute after the dimness of recent years. As the starship slowly rotated, he saw that rows of individual pinpoints lay ahead, each one illuminated by a small laser beam from thePride of Rhodia.
Soon he realized.There are hundreds of objects…possibly thousands.
The sparkling reflections shimmered in neat rows. A few were even close enough to reveal details without magnification-strange oblong shapes with jutting projections that looked mechanical, and yet were unlike any starship he had ever seen.
Glancing at a nearby view screen, Hari saw one of the targets revealed as a jumble of stark bright surfaces and pitch-black shadows. At first he felt a shiver, wondering if the craft might bealien in origin, a thought that echoed the strange story Horis Antic had told about his ancestor. Hari’s worry grew more ominous upon reading the on-screen scale figures. The machine depicted was vast. Bigger than even the greatest imperial starliners.
Then some reassuring details came through. He saw the vessel’s array of hyperdrive units, spread across a spindly support structure, and recognized their pattern from illustrations he had seen inA Child’s Book of Knowledge, showing the crude starships of that bygone era.
With some amazement, Hari realized the truth.
This thing is huge…but primitive! Modern ships don’t need so many motivator sections, for instance. Our jump drives are more compact, after mille
He was looking at something archaic, then. Perhaps many centuries older than the Galactic Empire of Man.
“Yes, they are antiques,” commented Biron Maserd, when Hari shared this observation. “But have you noticed something else peculiar about them?”
“Well, the shape seems all wrong. There are hugeprojector devices of some sort, arrayed on long gantries, as if meant to deploy immense amounts of power. But what could they possibly have been for?”
“Hm.” Maserd rubbed his chin. “Our friend the Grey Man has a theory about that. But it is so bizarre that no one else aboard will admit to believing him. In fact, the consensus is that poor Horis has gone around his last corridor and hit bedrock, if you know what I mean.”
The Trantorian slang phrase was used when someone had become more than a bit crazy. Although the news wasn’t entirely unexpected, it saddened Hari, who liked the little bureaucrat.
“But tell me,” Maserd went on. “What else strikes you as odd about that ancient vessel out there?”
“You mean other than how old it must be, or the weird configuration? Well…now that you mention it, I can’t locate any-”
He paused.
“Any habitats?” Maserd finished the sentence for him. “Ever since we found these things, I have been trying to find out where the crews lived. Without success. For the life of me, I ca
Hari’s breath caught. He held it, in order not to give sound to his sudden understanding. Stifling the thought, he moved to change the subject
“Are these weapons? Warships? Do the Ktlinans hope to rouse an ancient arsenal and use it to defeat the empire? Those energy projectors-”
“May have been formidable, once,” Maserd said. “Horis thinks they were used against the surface of planets. But rest assured, Dr. Seldon. These machines won’t be turned against the Imperial Fleet. Most of them are broken past repair. Activating even a few would be the labor of years. Anyway, the drive systems are so primitive that our naval units could fly rings around them, blasting the frail structures to bits.”
Hari shook his head.
“Then I don’t understand. Sybyl thinks we’ve given her side an unbeatable advantage. One that will make their victory over the empire inevitable.”
Maserd nodded.
“She may be right about that, Professor. But it doesn’t have anything to do with those giant derelicts. The reason for her optimism should be rotating into view soon.”
Hari watched as thePride of Rhodia kept turning. There was a sharp boundary to the orderly ranks of huge, ancient machines. As the formation passed out of sight, Hari pondered what he had just seen.
Robot ships! Needing no habitats because they had no human crews. Positronic brains did the navigating, long ago. Perhaps only a few centuries after starflight was discovered.
He felt glad when the flotilla passed out of view. The murky gloom of the nebula resumed-a field of dusty, stygian blackness.
Then anew glimmer appeared. A more compact swarm of objects that sparkled madly under laser illumination from thePride of Rhodia. Where the first group seemed like a ghost squadron, this one gave Hari an impression of diamond chips, heaped in a dense globe of twinkling brilliance.
“There is the weapon that Sybyl and her friends are crowing about, Professor,” said Maserd. “They’ve already brought several samples aboard.”
“Samples?”
Hari looked around the bridge. Horis Antic could be seen hovering over his instruments, muttering to himself while he kept probing the armada outside. Mors Planch and one of his men were keeping watch, blasters ready in case any of the hostages tried anything. But Sybyl and Gornon Vlimt were nowhere in sight.
“In the conference salon,” Captain Maserd said. “They’ve got several of the devices set up and working. I suspect you won’t like what you’re about to see.”
Hari nodded. Whatever they had found, it could hardly shock him more than the fleet of robot ships.
“Lead on, Captain.” He gestured courteously to the nobleman. With Kers Kantun following close behind, they made their way down the main corridor to an open doorway.
Hari stopped, stared inside, and groaned.
“Oh, no,” he said. “Anything but that.”
They were archives. Extremely old ones. He could tell just by glancing at the objects that lay gleaming on the conference table.
The ancients had excellent data-storage systems, crystalline in nature, that could pack away huge amounts of information in durable containers. And yet, until Hari received from Daneel his own miniature copy ofA Child’s Book of Knowledge, he had never seen a prehistoric unit that was not damaged or completely destroyed.
Now, four of the things sat between Sybyl and Gornon, their shiny cylindrical surfaces perfectly intact, each one clearly large enough to holdA Child’s Book of Knowledge ten thousand times over.
“Maserd, come over here and see what we’ve accomplished while you were away!” Gornon Vlimt commented without looking up from a holo display as he tapped into one archive. It flickered with a blinding array of wonders.
The nobleman glanced at Seldon, clearly concerned about appearing too cozy with the enemy. But when Hari didn’t object, Maserd moved quickly to lean over Gornon’s shoulder, excited and impressed.
“You’ve improved the interface immensely. The images are crisp and the graphics legible.”
“It wasn’t hard,” Vlimt answered. “The designers made this archive so simple, even a dunce could figure it out, given enough time.”