entire cavern.
«I have never seen anything like it in my life,» Chaumel whispered, the first to break the silence. His voice was captured and tossed about like a ball by the scalloped stone walls.
«Nor has anyone else living,» Keff said. «No one has been here in this cavern for at least five hundred years.»
«Stepped field generators,» Carialle said at once. «Will you look at that beautiful setup? They are huge! This could light a space station for a thousand years.»
«It is amazing,» Plennafrey breathed.
She and Chaumel leaned forward, urging speed from their chariots, each eager to be the first to land on the platform. Keff clenched his hands on the chair back under his hips until he thought his fingers would indent the wood, but he was laughing. The others were laughing and hooting, and in the frogs' cases, jumping up and down for pure delight.
«The manual says . . .» Keff said, piling off the chair, pushed by Plenna who wanted to dismount right away and see the wonders up close. «The manual says the system draws from the core below and the surface above to service power demands. It mentions lightning—Cari, this is too cracked to read. I must have lost a piece of it while we were flying.»
Carialle found the copy in her memory bank. «It looks like the generators are made to absorb energy from the surface as well to take advantage of natural electrical surges like lightning. Sensible, but I think it got out of hand when the power demands grew beyond its stated capacity. It started drawing from living matter.»
Plenna surrendered her belt buckle to the Frog Prince. He left his shell and joined Keff and Chaumel at the low-lying console at the edge of the platform. The brawn, on his knees, displayed the indicator fields to Carialle through the implants while signing with the amphibioids. Stopping frequently to compare notes with his companions, the Frog Prince read the fine scrawl on the face of each, then tried to tell the humans through sign language what they were.
«So that says internal temperature of the Core, eh, Tall?» Keff asked, marking the gauge in Standard with an indelible pen. «And by the way, its hot in here, did you notice?»
«Residual heat from years of overuse,» Carialle said. «I calculate that it would take over two years to heat that cavern to forty degrees centigrade.»
«Well, we knew the overuse didn't occur overnight,» Keff said. «Ah, he says that one is the power output? Thanks, Chaumel.» He made another note on a glass-fronted display as the magiman gesticulated with the amphibioid. «Pity your ancestor didn't have any documentation on the mechanism itself, Plenna.»
«Isn't that level rising?» Plennafrey asked, pointing over Keff's shoulder. Keff looked up from the circuit he was examining.
«You're right, it is,» he said. Subtly, under their feet, the hum of the engines changed, speeding up slightly. «What's happening? I didn't touch anything. None of us did.»
«I'm getting blips in the power grid outside your location,» Carialle replied. «I'd say that some of the mages have gotten tired of the truce and are raising their defenses again.»
Keff relayed the suggestion to Chaumel, who nodded sadly. «Distrust is too strong for any respite to hold for long,» he said. «I am surprised we had this much time to examine the Core while it was quiescent.»
Swiftly, more and more of the power cells kicked on, some of them groaning mightily as their turbines began once again to spin. The gauge crept upward until the indicator was pinned against the right edge, but the generators' roar increased in volume and pitch beyond that until it was painful to hear.
«It's redlining,» Keff shouted, tapping the glass with a fingernail. The indicator didn't budge. «Listen to those hesitations! These generators sound like they could go at any moment. We didn't get here any too soon.»
«The sound is still rising,» Plenna said, her voice constricted to a squeak. She put out her hands and concentrated, then recoiled horrified as the turbines increased their speed slightly in response. «My power comes from here,» she said, alarmed. «I'm just making it worse.»
The frogs became very excited, bumping their cases against the humans' knees.
«Shut it down,» Tall commanded, sweeping his big hands emphatically at Keff. «Shut it down!»
«I would if I could,» he said, then repeated it in sign language. «Where is the OFF switch?»
«Is it that?» Chaumel asked, pointing to a large, heavy switch close to the floor.
Keff followed the circuit back to where it joined the rest of the mechanism. «Its a breaker,» he said. «If I cut this, it'll stop everything at once. It might destroy the generators altogether. We have to slow it down gradually, not stop it. This is impossible without a technical manual!» he shouted, frustrated, pounding his fist on his knee. «We could be at ground zero for a planet-shattering explosion. And there's nothing we could do about it. Why isn't there a fail-safe? Engineers who were advanced enough to invent something like this must have built one in to keep it from running in the red.»
«Perhaps the Old Ones turned it off?» Chaumel suggested. «Or even our poor, deceived ancestors?»
«Off?» Plennafrey tapped him on the shoulder and shouted above the din. «Couldn't Carialle turn off every item of power?»
«Good idea, Plenna! Cari, implement!»
«Yes, sir!» the efficient voice crackled in his ear. «Now, watch the circuits as I lock them out one at a time. The magifolk won't notice—they'll think it's another power failure. You and the globe-frogs should be able to trace down where the transformer steps kick in. See if you can make a permanent lower level adjustment.»
The turbines began to slow down gradually as the power demands lessened. The Frog Prince and his assistants were already at the consoles. As the only one with his hands outside a plastic globe, the leader had to monitor the shut-downs and incorporate the readings his assistants took through the controls. His long fingers flicked switches one after another and poked recessed buttons in a sequence that seemed to have meaning to him. The whining of the turbos died down slowly. In a while, the amphibioid raised his big hand over his head with his fingers forming a circle and blinked at Keff in a self-satisfied manner.
«You're in control of it now,» Keff signed.
«I am now understanding the lessons handed down,» the alien replied, his small face showing pleasure as he signed. «'To the right, on; to the left, off,' it was said. 'The big down is for peril, the small downs like stairs, to your hands comes the power.' Now I control it like this.» He held up Plennafrey's belt buckle. His long fingers slid into the depressions. «This one is in much better condition than the single we have, which has done service for our whole population for all these many years.»
Tall glanced toward the controls. The switches pressed themselves, dials and levers moved without a hand touching them. The great engines stilled to a barely perceptible hum.
«At last,» he gestured, «after five hundred generations we have our property back. We can come forward once again.»
He seemed less enthusiastic once the extent of the damage began to emerge. Series of lights showed that several of the turbines were running at half efficiency or less. Some were not functioning at all. At one time, some unknown engineer had tied together a handful of the generators under a single control, but the generators in question were nowhere near one another on the cave floor.
«It'll take a lot of fixing,» Keff said, examining the mechanism with the frogs crowded in around him. The indicators in some of the dials hadn't moved in so long they had corroded to their pins. He snapped his fingernail at one of them, trying to jar it loose. «We'll have to figure out if any of the repair parts can be made out of components I have on hand. If they're too esoteric, you might need to send off for them, providing they're still making them on your home planet.»
«Home?» one of the globe-frogs signed back, with the fillip that meant an interrogative.
«If you have the coordinates, we have your transportation,» Keff offered happily, signing away to the oops, eeps, and ops of IT's shorthand dictation. «Our job is to make contact with other races, and we're very pleased to meet you. My government would be delighted to open communications with yours.»
«That is all well, Keff,» Chaumel asked, «but do not forget about us. What of the mages? They will be wondering what happened to their items of power. Blackouts normally last only a few moments. There will be pandemonium.»
«And what for the future?» Plenna asked.
«Your folk will have to realize that you now coexist with the globe-frogs,» Keff said thoughtfully «And, Tall, she's right. You are going to have to do something about the mages. They're dependent upon the system to a
