Sphere (Page 25)

Beth said, "And where did they send it?"

"With time travel, you don’t send it to a where. You send it to a when."

"Okay. Then to when did they send it?"

Harry shrugged. "No information yet," he said.

That diffidence again, Norman thought. What was Harry really thinking?

"Well, this craft is half a mile long," Barnes said. "We have a lot more to see."

"I wonder if they had a flight recorder," Norman said.

"You mean like a commercial airliner?"

"Yes. Something to record the activity of the ship on its voyage."

"They must have," Harry said. "Trace the dummy cable back, you’re sure to find it. I’d like to see that recorder, too. In fact, I would say it is crucial."

Norman was looking at the console, lifting up a keyboard panel. "Look here," he said. "I found a date."

They clustered around. There was a stamp in the plastic beneath the keyboard. "Intel Inc. Made in U.S.A. Serial No: 98004077 8/5/43."

"August 5, 2043?"

"Looks like it."

"So we’re walking through a ship fifty-odd years before it’s going to be built. …"

"This is giving me a headache."

"Look here." Beth had moved forward from the console deck, into what looked like living quarters. There were twenty bunk beds.

"Crew of twenty? If it took three people to fly it, what were the other seventeen for?"

Nobody had an answer to that.

Next, they entered a large kitchen, a toilet, living quarters. Everything was new and sleekly designed, but recognizable for what it was.

"You know, Hal, this is a lot more comfortable than DH-8."

"Yes, maybe we should move in here."

"Absolutely not," Barnes said. "We’re studying this ship, not living in it. We’ve got a lot more work to do before we even begin to know what this is all about."

"It’d be more efficient to live here while we explore it."

"I don’t want to live here," Harry said. "It gives me the creeps."

"Me too," Beth said.

They had been aboard the ship for an hour now, and Norman’s feet hurt. That was another thing he hadn’t anticipated: while exploring a large spacecraft from the future, your feet could begin to hurt.

But Barnes continued on.

Leaving the crew quarters, they entered a vast area of narrow walkways set out between great sealed compartments that stretched ahead as far as they could see. The compartments turned out to be storage bays of immense size. They opened one bay and found it was filled with heavy plastic containers, which looked rather like the loading containers of contemporary airliners, except many times larger. They opened one container.

"No kidding," Barnes said, peering inside. "What is it?"

"Food."

The food was wrapped in layers of lead foil and plastic, like NASA rations. Ted picked one up. "Food from the future!" he said, and smacked his lips.

"You going to eat that?" Harry said.

"Absolutely," Ted said. "You know, I once had a bottle of Dom Perignon 1897, but this will be the first time I’ve ever had anything to eat from the future, from 2043."

"It’s also three hundred years old," Harry said.

"Maybe you’ll want to film this," Ted said to Edmunds. "Me eating."

Edmunds dutifully put the camera to her eye, flicked on the light.

"Let’s not do that now," Barnes said. "We have other things to accomplish."

"This is human interest," Ted said. "Not now," Barnes said firmly.

He opened a second storage container, and a third. They all contained food. They moved to the next storage bay and opened more containers.

"It’s all food. Nothing but food."

The ship had traveled with an enormous amount of food. Even allowing for a crew of twenty, it was enough food for a voyage of several years.

They were getting very tired; it was a relief when Beth found a button, said, "I wonder what this does – "

Barnes said, "Beth – "

And the walkway began to move, rubber tread rolling forward with a slight hum.

"Beth, I want you to stop pushing every damn button you see."

But nobody else objected. It was a relief to ride the walkway past dozens of identical storage bays. Finally they came to a new section, much farther forward. Norman guessed by now they were a quarter of a mile from the crew compartment in the back. That meant they were roughly in the middle of the huge ship.

And here they found a room with life-support equipment, and twenty hanging spacesuits.

"Bingo," Ted said. "It’s finally clear. This ship is intended to travel to the stars."

The others murmured, excited by the possibility. Suddenly it all made sense: the great size, the vastness of the ship, the complexity of the control consoles. …

"Oh, for Christ’s sake," Harry said. "It can’t have been made to travel to the stars. This is obviously a conventional spacecraft, although very large. And at conventional speeds, the nearest star is two hundred and fifty years away."

"Maybe they had new technology."

"Where is it? There’s no evidence of new technology."

"Well, maybe it’s – "

"Face the facts, Ted," Harry said. "Even with this huge size, the ship is only provisioned for a few years: fifteen or twenty years, at most. How far could it go in that time? Barely out of the solar system, right?"

Ted nodded glumly. "It’s true. It took the Voyager spacecraft five years to reach Jupiter, nine years to reach Uranus. In fifteen years … Maybe they were going to Pluto."