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"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 plat-
form. 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 hoot-
ing, 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 serv-
ice power demands. It mentions lightning-Can, this is too cracked to read. I
must have lost a piece of it while we were flying."
Carialle found me 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. T
calculate that it would take over two years to heat that cav-
ern to forty degrees centigrade."
"WeU, 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 documen-
tation on the mechanism itself, Plenna."
"Isn't that level rising?" Plennafrey asked, pointing over
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Keffs 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 loca-
tion," 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 indi-
cator 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 con-
stricted 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. T'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 lan-
guage. "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 gener-
ators 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 sug-
gested. "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 fail-
ure. 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
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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 sendee 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 touch-
ing 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 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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