The way Tom gets to this point is x-rated LOL but here is where Rowan’s ship brings Tom’s tiny craft on board to find out what they have discovered.
Rowan looked at the other man, raised an eyebrow and grinned. “Come on, man, where’s your sense of adventure? Do you want to live forever? We may have discovered something totally amazing here. Hell, we might all get medals.”
Jost laughed. “Yeah, you could be right. Okay, in she comes.”
It took a bit of careful maneuvering, but in less than a half-hour they had the peculiar craft inside the second, empty storage bay, the doors shut again, and on-board sensors checking for anything that might be hazardous. The reports came back clean with only a few curious facts. The craft had water on board, was made of iron, sheet tin with traces of some other metals and it held a single living creature whose vital signs indicated it to be human or of similar type.
Before they’d completed the project, three other crewmembers who were on duty had joined Rowan and Jost in the cabin. Once the sensors completed their scans, the five of them sat silent for several seconds, absorbing the amazing facts.
“We still don’t know what we’ve got, but I vote one of us goes and checks it out in person. There’s no hint of anything dangerous, no haz-chem, bio or radiation. Unless one of you is ready to fight me for the honor… ”
Rowan swept the other four with a fast glance. He could read eagerness on every face, but they all deferred to him. He felt a small sense of victory in the knowledge that Lieutenant Cantor had elected to stay out of the way for most of their voyage, making only a token appearance every day or two, but otherwise leaving command of the Guardian Wasp in Rowan’s capable hands. Cantor would not gainsay his decision, whatever it might be.
“Jost, you’ve got the ship. Muldoon, you come with me as backup, just in case anything goes wrong. You’ll stay in the airlock, while I go into the bay and check this thing out. I don’t expect any problems, but that’s when one’s likely to crop up. We all know about Murphy’s Law.”
Muldoon, a veteran NCO, was a man in whom Rowan felt confident. He would obey orders to the letter, but also had the brains and initiative to do whatever seemed necessary if it fell to him to act. In short, a good man to have at your back. They made their way to the lower bay.
Together they entered the airlock, but when the first door shut behind them, Muldoon waited while Rowan activated and went through the second. He approached the shiny cylinder with caution, alert for any sound, movement or overt response. The silvery wings on each side had fluttered to the plastisteel deck, crumpled but without obvious damage. They looked like fabric, perhaps fine, close-woven silk. A fragile network of deftly linked and hinged wooden rods seemed to control their motion. A few of the slender pieces were broken, but most seemed to have survived intact.
The craft itself still looked like a tin can, sheets of metal curved and riveted together to shape a cylinder about four meters long with a diameter of about a meter-and-a-half, Rowan guessed. What he took to be the nose had been shaped to a fine point. A few small round windows ranged along each side. Where was the door, or was there one?
He tried to peer through one window, but the glass seemed smudged or perhaps steamed up. He could barely see a glimmer of light through the window opposite the one he looked into. Then a faint sound snagged his attention. It sounded like a very human moan of distress from within the craft.
Damn it, I’ve got to figure how to get into this sucker!
* * * *
Every cell in Tom’s body hurt. He felt as if he’d been run over by a team of draft horses and the laden farm wagon they were pulling. Disoriented, he tried to untangle himself from a confused mass of lines and levers, and fetched up hard against a curving wall, cold to his touch.
Where in bloody hell am I and how did I get here? His mental processes seemed slow and clumsy, as if his brain were as battered as his body.
At first, a haze obscured his vision, but slowly that cleared, at least in part. He glimpsed a circular patch of light above him and then two more on either side of the first one. Windows? He raised one hand and drew it along the curving wall, finding nodes or knots, spaced along in a straight line, rounded beneath his questing fingertips that slid over them without effort.
With painful, ponderous slowness, a dim memory began to take shape. His machine. The fact it had actually started this time and gone–somewhere. He recalled peering out the window beside his improvised captain’s seat and seeing some odd terrain below. Then he’d grown cold, so cold and sleepy. After that, blackness had consumed him.
Was he still in his sky-ship? If he could manage to sit up and look out, would he find he was inside the largest room in the old gatehouse on the Fleet Estate or would the landscape be totally strange? Afraid to take that risk just yet, he stayed put. Besides, lying prone, even on the chill, hard deck beneath him, felt secure and non-threatening. He wasn’t quite ready to discover if he’d only imagined his machine had actually worked. Then he heard scratches and thumps outside the craft.
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