What Price the Stars? Part 8

No guardrails protected the sprawling hole in the floor of the Hall of Receiving. It was the size of a lunar walled plain, and suffused with a golden glow that welled up from the depths. Rosencrantz leaned out over the yawning chasm as far as his courage allowed, which was very little. “I can’t see anything down there,” he complained.

“Of course you can’t,” Jørgen replied. “The rostrum of the foundry is several kilometers below us.”

“Is there an elevator?” Li asked.

“Yes. Before we descend, we must have a short discussion,” Jørgen said. Heads nodded, and someone–probably Rosencrantz–groaned. Jørgen continued. “Beyond this point, none may go save the wrights. We must bid out valiant escort farewell, and hope for no further unwelcome visitations.”

He saluted the captain of the silent company of Pervincos. The black-armored officer returned it. Moving as one, he and his company lifted into the air and jetted away into the gloom, leaving Jørgen and the contestants alone on the lip of the precipice.

“Was that wise?” asked Michael. The monster’s eerie face remained fresh in his mind.

“It was necessary,” replied Jørgen. “‘Bloody hand stains the paten’, or so the wrights say. They will not risk contaminating the rostrum. An exception has been made for us. This is what I would tell you. Within the Rostrum you must follow me closely, touch nothing, and avoid unnecessary talk.”

“Are there hazards?” Alexi asked.

“Terrible hazards, the like of which you would not believe. Leaving aside the most severe dangers, there are still a thousand ways to die in the foundry. But worst of all, there is a hazard to the place itself. One misstep, one wrong word, and the foundry might cease to function forever.”

“A wrong word? That’s preposterous!” Rosencrantz scoffed.

“It is what it is. Follow me,” Jørgen said, and stepped backwards off the cliff.

Alexi gasped and ran to the edge. Michael joined her, and was astounded to see Jørgen standing upright on nothing visible, sinking slowly toward a terrifyingly remote landscape. He gestured impatiently for them to follow.

“How much do you trust him?” Michael asked Alexi.

“Enough,” she replied, and leaped from the precipice. Michael grabbed for her, missed, and toppled in. He found himself floating slowly downward, half a meter above Alexi’s head.

She laughed happily. “This is better than the Gravity Well ride at the Lagrange Circus.”

Michael was less enamored. It felt as if was in the grip of a gigantic hand.

“This isn’t ordinary gravity inversion, is it?” Rosencrantz shouted down from above. He and Li were suspended in midair over Michael’s head. Looking up to see them gave him a nasty shock of vertigo.

“No. There are dual opposing gravity fields circling the entire perimeter of the rostrum,” Jørgen replied. “When you enter at the top, the field below is slightly stronger. When you enter at the bottom, the reverse is true. Before you ask, no one has been able to reproduce it, including me.”

“What is the capacity of the system?” asked Li.

“Quite small. It was intended to handle incidental foot traffic.”

“What happens if you overload it?” asked Alexi.

“It will speed up. If enough mass got into the system, the ride would be no different than a fall.”

“Oh,” she replied.

The descent was long and nerve-wracking. Michael distracted himself by studying the lay of the land. The rostrum was perfectly round. Like the lunar crater it resembled, it was dominated by a central peak. But this peak was a pyramid, mountain-high and wrought of gleaming gold. It was connected to an encircling ring of low buildings by gangs of shining silver pipelines. It reminded Michael of an archaic circuit board, but none of it looked manmade. The proportions were wrong, somehow. The only familiar objects in the scene was an orderly scrum of heavy-lift cargo vessels parked directly below. Michael knew them to be gargantuan, but they looked like a small school of minnows at the bottom of a very large pond.

Many uneasy minutes later, the party alighted one at a time on the floor of a cyclopean shipping facility. Rows of immense golden cylinders floated on antigravity conveyors, attended by workmen who wore green stoles and clerical collars on their black waldo suits. Huge machines were in motion everywhere, but the gigantic scene played out in magisterial silence.

“Welcome to the rostrum,” Jørgen said. “This is the working floor of the foundry. It is here that the engine vessels are prepared for filling, and the completed products are packaged for shipment.”

Michael pointed to one of the golden cylinders. “These are all Spooky engines?” he asked.

“Yes. You saw one aboard my ship.”

“What do you mean by ‘filled’?” asked the professor. “You make it sound as if they are containers instead of machines.”

“They are, after a fashion.”

“Whatever for?”

“Come. I will show you something,” Jørgen replied. He led them to a broad track painted on the floor. As soon as the party stood on it, they rose from the ground and began to move. They quickly piled on speed, until the rostrum barreled by in a golden blur. There was no wind, and Michael found that he could walk normally, as if he were on a solid floor. He sidled close to Alexi.

She grinned at him. “When I win, I’m going to have this people mover tech reverse-engineered. It will sell just as well as the engine.”

“You’re pretty sure of yourself, aren’t you?”

“I am. Aren’t you?”

Michael shook his head. “No. There’s something wrong here.”

Alexi rolled her eyes. “My babushka has bigger balls than you! If Jørgen bore us any ill will, don’t you think he’d have made his move by now?”

“It’s not Jørgen. This place isn’t for us. Man was never meant to discover it. We shouldn’t be here.”

“Don’t be a superstitious ninny, Mishka.”

“I have a question for you. Why are priests running the foundry? They’re a rotten choice of wrights. Historically, they’ve had no experience in product development and fabrication, and they habitually resist innovation. First-year engineering students could run rings around them.”

“Maybe they were the only workers Jørgen could find. What are you getting at?”

“This moon is an ancient alien machine that builds hyperdrives. The wrights aren’t making anything. They’re serving it.”

Alexi nodded slowly. “You’re right, and come to think of it, Jørgen said as much. But does it matter? I don’t care who or what makes my engines, so long as they work.”

“Alechka, think. Jørgen could use anyone to serve the machine. Of all the people at his disposal, why did he choose priests?” Michael hissed, trying to keep his voice down.

At that moment, they overtook a gleaming silver pipeline that ran parallel to the track. Mirror-bright and smooth as glass, it whizzed along scant centimeters from the edge. Rosencrantz extended a tentative hand toward it. His fingertips came within a hair’s breadth of the slick surface before Jørgen seized him bodily and dragged him away from it.

“Ow! What are you doing?” the professor screeched.

“Saving your ungrateful skin,” Jørgen snapped. “I might have let you touch it, and relieved myself of your aggravating presence, but you’ve committed no crime worthy of losing your soul.”

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8