And she flicked on her torch and swung its beam eagerly round the great array of controls, which up till now had remained in darkness. The phalanx on phalanx of dials which had once made this chamber the nerve centre of the ship, the array of toggles, the soldier-like parade of indicators, levers, knobs and screens, which together provided the outward signs of the power still throbbing through the ship, had coagulated into a lava-like mess. On all sides, the boards of instruments resembled, and were as much use as, damp sherbet. Nothing had been left unmolested; though the torch beam flitted here and there with increasing pace, it picked out not a switch intact. The controls were utterly destroyed.
PART IV
THE BIG SOMETHING
I
Only the occasional stale glow of a pilot light illuminated the coiled miles of corridor. At one end of the ship, the ponics were begining to collapse on to themselves in the death each dark sleep-wake inevitably brought; at the other end of the ship, Master Scoyt still drove his men in a torch-light search for the Giant. Scoyt’s party, working along the lower levels of the Drive Floors, had drained the twenties decks of Forwards almost clear of life.
As the dark came down, it caught Henry Marapper, the priest, going from Councillor Tregonnin’s room to his own without a torch. Marapper had been carefully ingratiating himself into the librarian’s favour, against the time when the Council of Five should be reconstituted as the Council of Six — Marapper, of course, visualizing himself as the sixth Councillor. He walked now through the dimness warily, half afraid a Giant might pop up in front of him.
Which was almost exactly what did happen.
A door ahead of him was flung open, a wash of illumination pouring into the corridor. Startled, Marapper shrank back. The light eerily flapped and churned, transforming shadows into frightened bats as the bearer of the torch hustled about his nocturnal business in the room. Next moment, two great figures emerged, bearing between them a smaller figure who slumped as if ill. Undoubtedly, these were Giants: they were over six feet high.
The light, of exceptional brilliance, was worn as a fitting on one Giant’s head; it sent the uneasy shadows scattering again as its wearer bent and half-carried the small figure. They went only half a dozen paces down the corridor before stopping in the middle of it, kneeling there with their faces away from Marapper. And now the light fell upon the face of the smaller man. It was Fermour!
With a word to the Giants, Fermour, leaning forward, put his knuckles to the deck in a curious gesture. His hand fingertips upward, was for a moment caught alone in the cone of torchlight; then a section of deck, responding to his pressure, rose and was seized by the Giants, seized and lifted to reveal a large manhole. The Giants helped Fermour down into it, climbed down themselves, and closed the hatch over their heads. The glow from a square pilot light on the wall was again the only illumination in a deserted corridor.
Then Marapper found his tongue.
‘Help!’ he bellowed. ‘Help! They’re after me!’
He pounded on the nearest doors, flinging them open when no reply came. These were workers’ apartments, mainly deserted by their owners, who were away following Scoyt and the Survival Team. In one room, Marapper discovered a mother suckling her babe by a dim light. She and the baby began to howl with fear.
The rumpus soon brought running feet and flashing torches. Marapper was surrounded by people and reduced to a state of coherence. These were mainly men who had been on the grand Giant-hunt, men with their blood roused by the unaccustomed excitement; they let out wilder cries than Marapper to hear that Giants had been here, right in their midst. The crowd swelled, the noise increased. Marapper found himself crushed against the wall, repeating his tale endlessly to a succession of officers, until an icy man called Pagwam, Co-Captain of the Survival Team, pushed his way through the group.
Pagwam rapidly cleared a space round Marapper.
‘Show me this hole you say the Giants disappeared down,’ he ordered. ‘Point to it.’
‘This would have terrified a less brave man than I,’ Marapper said, still shaking. He pointed: a rectangular line in the deck outlined the Giants’ exit. It was a hair-fine crack, hardly noticeable. Inside the rectangle at one end was a curious octagonal indentation, not half an inch across; apart from that, there was nothing to distinguish the trap-door from the rest of the deck.
At Pagwam’s orders, two men tried to lever open the trapdoor, but the crack was so fine they could do no more than poke their fingernails down it.
‘It won’t come up, sir,’ one of the men said.
‘Thank hem for that!’ Marapper exclaimed, visualizing a stream of Giants emerging upon them.
By this time, somebody had fetched Scoyt. The Master’s face was harder set than ever; his long fingers restlessly caressed the runners of his cheeks as he listened to Pagwam and Marapper. Though he looked tired, when he spoke he revealed that his brain was the widest awake of those present.
‘You see what this means,’ he said. ‘These traps are set in the floor about a hundred paces apart throughout the ship; we’ve never recognized them as such because we could never open them, but the Giants can open them easily enough. We no longer need doubt, whatever we once thought to the contrary, that the Giants still exist. For reasons of their own, they have laid low for a long while: now they’re coming back — and for what other purpose than to take over the ship again?’
‘But this trap –’ Marapper said.
‘This trap,’ Scoyt interrupted, ‘is the key to the whole matter. Do you remember when your friend Complain was captured by Giants he said he was spirited into a hole and travelled in a low, confined space that sounded like no part of the ship we knew? Obviously, it was a space between decks, and he was taken down a trap just like this one. All traps must inter-communicate — and if the Giants can open one, they can open the lot!’
An uneasy babble of comment rose from the crowd in the corridor. Their eyes were bright, their torches dim; they seemed to press more closely together, as if for comfort. Marapper cleared his throat, inserting the tip of his little finger helplessly into his ear, as if that were the only thing in the world he could get clear.
‘This means — jezers nose, this means our world is entirely surrounded by a sort of thin world where the Giants can get and we can’t,’ he said. ‘Is that so?’
Scoyt nodded curtly.
‘Not a nice thought, Priest, eh?’ he said.
When Pagwam touched his arm, Scoyt turned impatiently to find that three of the Council of Five, Billyoe, Dupont and Ruskin, had arrived behind him. They looked both unhappy and annoyed.
‘Please say no more, Master Scoyt,’ Billyoe said. ‘We’ve heard most of this, and it hardly sounds the sort of thing which should be discussed in public. You’d better bring this — er, this priest along with you to the council room; we’ll talk there.’
Scoyt hardly hesitated.
‘On the contrary, Councillor Billyoe,’ he said distinctly. ‘This matter affects every man jack on board. Everyone must know about it as quickly as possible. I’m afraid we are being swept to a time of crisis.’
Although he was contradicting the Council, Scoyt’s face bore such a heavy look of pain that Billyoe wisely avoided making an issue of the matter. Instead, he asked, ‘Why do you say a crisis?’
Scoyt spread his hands.
‘Look at it this way,’ he said. ‘A Giant suddenly appears on Deck 14 and ties up the first girl he finds in such a way that she escapes in no time. Why? So that an alarm could be given. Later he appears again down on the
