Each person has the makings of great heroics inside, and of dismal, abject cowardice. It is the complex play of opposites within the human psyche that activates one or the other.
—Devv Jeeling, notes from a speech to his security-force academy
With Yürgen’s ability to operate humbabies, he had been activated as a reservist, and told to join five other pilots, on a team assigned to fly outside the upper perimeter of Skyship and look for abnormalities. Though Devv Jeeling had taken precautions to seal the area he was drilling inside the great vessel, he wanted to make absolutely certain nothing unusual happened to the hull, because they were working so close to it. The ship was in geostationary orbit, high over AmEarth.
At mid-morning Yürgen Zayeddi took off with the others, and outside the great city-ship he began to circle the hull on the section that was his responsibility—the highest latitudes of the immense, blimp-shaped vessel. Due to the tremendous size of Skyship, and the meticulous scrutiny they were ordered to employ in the investigation, this meant that each pilot would need most of the day to complete his assignment.
Beginning at the lowest latitude of his assignment, he circled horizontally, gradually rising higher and higher on the huge, dark gray hull as he completed each trip around and spiraled upward. He was looking closely at the hull as he did this, and had instruments on the bottom of his aircraft scanning everything and transmitting images back to security headquarters. It was repetitive and tedious work, and he was tired today, so that he had to remind himself repeatedly to stay awake.
~~~
Inside the pinnacle chamber, Billy Jeeling had only been able to come up with one plan that had any likelihood of success, and it was not anything he really wanted to do. In addition to the certainty of his own death with that option, there were also other serious problems that might result, too many things that could go wrong with Skyship.
He had dedicated most of his life to this atmospheric machine, to making certain the marvel of geoengineering technology functioned properly in its mining and air-restoration duties—as much as he could, that is, with the limited knowledge in his possession. Now, with the revelation that information from Tobek would be doled out to him in periodic audiovisual recordings, he felt an obligation to find out what the old inventor had to say, what important information he’d intended to impart. But that assumed nothing more went wrong with the timing of the releases.
But if Billy destroyed the space devils in the way he had in mind, and he died, it would imperil the critical flow of recorded information from Tobek. Maybe the inventor had set up contingency arrangements to get around this problem, but Billy could not be certain of that.
If only he could come up with another way of rendering the creatures harmless, perhaps without killing them. He appreciated what they had done for him, defending and protecting him, and he didn’t want to be ungrateful.
Still, they were extremely dangerous.
~~~
At security headquarters, Devv Jeeling was coordinating the search for his father. Despite the revelation that he was himself a robot, he still loved Billy—not quite the same as before, but his feelings remained strong. He hoped desperately that nothing had happened to him.
Devv had decided to transmit images of the search in the secret tunnels to the populace of the airborne city, because they were all worried about Billy, wondering where he had gone and why.
Everyone wanted to help the Master of Skyship—the people and the eclectic assemblage of sentient robots. Images of the search appeared on screens all over the onboard city, showing what the searchers had learned so far about the secret maze of tunnels and chambers hidden inside the hull. The images were being projected without commentary, because Devv didn’t want it to be like a detached news report. This was personal for everyone on the vessel, each in their own way, as they sought information about the welfare of this most special of all men. Billy Jeeling was not only a great environmental leader; he was beloved by all who knew him—and especially by those who had gotten to know him well.
The maze in the outer skin of Skyship was like quicksand, constantly shifting to keep the searchers from figuring it out. In a separate computer system (not transmitted to the populace) Devv’s officers were trying to map the hidden system of passageways—but this was proving to be impossible. They were discussing a strategy of keeping the tunnels and chambers open in an effort to thwart the defensive system that opened and closed sections and changed them, but so far no could figure out how to do it.
Now Devv stared at a different set of screens, showing the results of constant air analyses that were being taken inside the tunnels—trace DNA evidence that was being scooped up and evaluated, showing that Billy Jeeling had passed through them, and recently. But bound for where? No one knew.
Skyship was the largest structure ever built, and the interior of the hull was proving to be a huge challenge to explore, in and of itself.
~~~
Just as darkness was setting in, Yürgen Zayeddi’s small humbaby flew over the uppermost surfaces of Skyship. In just a few more minutes, he would be finished. He had powerful lights on underneath the tiny vessel, so that he and the observers who were monitoring his transmissions could see the hull as clearly as possible.
Ahead, he saw a glint of silver coming from the pinnacle of the hull—or thought he did for just a blink of time, because when he looked again, there was nothing. He flew over that spot, illuminating it brightly, hovering above it, and magnified the images.
On a VR screen he saw what he thought were slight abnormalities at the very top of the great vessel. Very thin, barely perceptible lines were visible on the hull—four lines that were squared off, almost as if they outlined an opening to something beyond them, on the inside of Skyship.
After transmitting the images to headquarters, he told them about the silver flash he thought he saw, and how it seemed to have vanished.
~~~
Billy had almost forgotten to close his overhead window into space. With his own surveillance system, independent of the one Devv was using, he should have been paying closer attention.
At the very last possible moment, Billy had switched on images of the outside of Skyship, and saw the tiny humbaby approaching.
He’d taken quick action, but had the pilot seen anything?
~~~
In the headquarters control room, Devv Jeeling obtained advice from his engineers, and issued a new command: “Set up a second search area on the outside of the hull, at the top. We’ll need a custom airlock attached to the pinnacle, large enough for a team to get inside, with specialized tools. I want to see if anything interesting is inside that pinnacle—so we’re going to punch through and see what’s on the other side.”
Ten minutes later, Devv received a report from his engineers. They would begin fabrication of the airlock at a facility inside Skyship, a unit like the earlier one that had been built to prevent pressurization problems.
The engineers estimated that it would take at least forty-eight hours to get the equipment operational, saying this airlock would be more difficult to prepare and install than the earlier one, because it was on the outside of the hull.
“That’s too long,” Devv said. “I want it ready sooner. I wanted it ten minutes ago. Put everyone on this, and work in around-the-clock teams.”