The Unorthodox Engineers

“Down?” he enquired, his torch failing to probe the darkness of the alien depths.

“Down,” confirmed Fritz. “Where’s your sense of adventure?”

“It remained firmly embedded in my childhood,” said Jacko, “along with the sense necessary not to get into situations like this.”

“Down!” said Fritz firmly, and led the way.

Together they climbed down perhaps one hundred metres. Since it was impossible both to climb and hold a flashlight, this was accomplished in total darkness, and the steady rhythm of the climb from bar to bar exercised its own almost hypnotic fascination. Both had to stand for many seconds at the bottom to re-orientate their senses.

The preservation of the passageways at that level was remarkable and probably complete, and the air was cooler and less aggressive than above. Remarkable also was the dryness of the connecting tunnels which had lain for so long at such a depth, indicating the complete lack of a water table above the level of the deep-welled seas of Tazoo. The walls here were of metal, curiously wrought in a manner which might have been functional or might have been symbolic; and the alien strangeness of a completely artificial Tazoon environment gripped at their hearts with a half fear which had nothing to do with selfpreservation.

For the first time they felt the full impact of standing in the presence of the unimaginable achievements of a culture which had no common roots with their own. They could vaguely comprehend but never predict the unfolding of the unearthly technology which surrounded them.

Machine or effigies, they had no means of knowing which, stood like dark, mute sentries in the uncertain, shifting shadows of the torch’s beam: the tortuous walls and fluted ceilings were channelled and moulded with a thousand metal mouths connected to unguessable throats for unfathomable reasons— only the floor approximated its Terran counterpart, having a common engineering function of providing an unimpeded pedestrian passageway.

They turned another corner and stopped abruptly when torchlight soared into empty darkness and encountered nothing. Their consternation was relieved by the realization that they were now looking along the length of a vastly greater tunnel. Vaguely they could trace the complex vaulted roof rising to its apex in a series of panels shaped more like sculpture than supporting structure. At their feet the floor continued unchanged as far as torchlight could reveal, while to their right the level dropped abruptly perhaps two metres to form a channel of about seven metres width. Beyond the channel the walls rose again, arching upwards.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” asked Fritz.

“Uh!” said Jacko. “No matter how you build it, a subway station is a subway station is a subway station, and this is one such.”

“I agree,” said Fritz. “Let’s have a look at the rails.”

“No lines,” said Jacko at last, his voice tinged with disappointment. “It could be that we’re wrong about this place. Perhaps a sewer…”

“I’m not wrong,” said Fritz. “I’d know a subway when I found one even if I was deaf, blind and locked in a box. It’s part of the chemistry of whatever genes conspire to make an engineer. Here, help me down, I want to explore.”

“Don’t you think we’d better go back and get some reinforcements?” said Jacko. Fritz had started along the channel to where it entered a somewhat smaller tunnel undeniably reminiscent of a Terran subway. “For Heaven’s sake, Fritz, you don’t know what you might find in there!”

“What’s eating you, Jacko? Not losing your nerve all of a sudden?”

“No, it’s just that walking down a tunnel that might contain an emergent subway train goes against my finer sensibilities—even if it is thousands of years behind schedule.”

Fritz took fifteen paces into the tunnel and let out a whoop which paralysed Jacko with fright.

“Jacko, get down here quick! I’ve found one.”

“Found one what?” asked Jacko when he had regained control of his vocal cords.

“A train, you idiot. I’ve found a bloody train! Bring your torch in here.”

Against his better judgment Jacko dropped into the channel and followed Fritz into the tunnel. Then with a churning stomach and racing brain he examined the artifact which barred their further entry.

“That,” he asked finally, “is a train?”

“It can’t be anything else,” said Fritz, not very happily. “It doesn’t appear to be a signal box and there’s not much point in having a wrought-iron summer house this far underground. It appears to be the right shape to fit the tunnel so it’s probably either a highly ornate tunnelling machine or else it’s a train.”

“Alien!” said Jacko in awe. “The connotations of that word get lost by common usage. It doesn’t begin to convey the mind-twisting sense that everything you know and believe has been scrunched up and re-sorted by a different kind of logic. These beings had different values and different basics, and it makes the mind squirm even trying to re-adjust.”

“They didn’t have different basics,” said Fritz, “they merely had a different emphasis on the relative values of the same old basics. We can’t yet try to comprehend the culture, but when it comes to unravelling their engineering I think we’ll find we have a great deal in common.”

“Like an iron-lace potting-shed without wheels or tracks which we presume to be a train simply because it doesn’t appear to be anything else?”

“Just so,” said Fritz. “We have to separate the mechanics from the culture. So far we’ve found very few Tazoon applications of principles of which we were completely ignorant. Of course, they were streets ahead of us in some fields and curiously lacking in others—they had no organic chemistry, for instance. But failing the practical application of black magic, that’s a train. And it’s only a matter of time before we find out what made it go.”

Cautiously they squeezed down between the curious vehicle and the tunnel wall, the better to examine the odd-looking thing.

“It’s a crazy, twisted birdcage,” said Jacko finally. “An appliance for containing crazy, twisted birds.”

Fritz looked up from the complex of curiously wrought mechanisms. “We’d better get some more lights down here, and muster some of the squad. I want this insane tin can taken to pieces, and put together again when I’ve had a chance to examine the bits.”

“Cannibalization I can understand,” said Jacko, “but why the resurrection?”

“Because,” said Fritz van Noon, “if it’s the last thing I do I’m going to put the subways of Tazoo back in operation. We obviously can’t build a transportation system on the surface, that’s a lost cause. But here we have a ready-made nucleus which already goes halfway to meet the problem.”

“I demand to be invalided out of the Service on the grounds of insanity,” said Jacko, “your insanity. I thought we’d had enough of railways on Cannis IV.”

“That was different,” said Fritz. “There, we were merely up against physical obstacles such as errant volcanoes. This is specifically an exercise in matching technologies. All we have to do is to determine which part of the railway system moves and which part is intended to stay still. That shouldn’t be too difficult, now should it?”

“Not when reduced to such basic terms,” Jacko agreed dourly. “But I know you. You never know when you’re beaten,”

“I’ve told you before,” said Fritz sternly, “there’s no such thing as a physical impossibility. A limitation is a state of mind, not a question of fact. Here we are faced with the work of a completely alien race who nevertheless had a technological and scientific level roughly comparable to our own. Providing we hold that one fact paramount we ought to be able to unscramble any device this planet has to offer— and make it function for our own service if we wish.”

“Providing one thing holds good,” said Jacko. “We have first to be able to recognize an artifact for what it actually is. It’s no good dismantling a Tazoon milk-strainer if we’re under the impression that it ought to be a microphone—or vice-versa, come to think of it.”

Five