The Rings of Salammis

The Rings - Part 3

     "How do you open the door?" asked Thomas ten minutes later.

     He was standing in the empty hanger deck, between the two empty cradles that would each soon be occupied by a scout ship of the same design as the Hummingbird. The large, rectangular bulk of the teleportation cubicle stood at one side of the chamber, its door closed in case anyone from Kronos wanted to come visit, and Thomas had the sudden nightmare image of a man stepping out into hard vacuum. He hurried over and opened the door. Like leaving an old style phone off the hook, this now prevented the cubicle from being used and he breathed a sigh of relief as he imagined the tragedy he might have just averted.

     "There's a locking clip on the winch handle, on the left," replied Tana Antallan. "Undo the clip, then turn the handle. The door will slowly open outwards."

     "Right," said Thomas, searching the bare metal wall until he found it. The handle was folded in half and neatly tucked away in a niche in the wall and he had to unfold it and fit a locking pin in the elbow joint to hold it rigid. Then he removed a clip he found in the handle's axle, allowing it to be turned. It was stiff at first, and he had to use all his strength to get it going, but once it was started it was easier and he soon began to hear the hiss of escaping air as the door began to open.

     A few moments later there was a hurricane in the hanger and Thomas had to cling hold of the handle to avoid being swept away. The worst of it was soon over, though, and a couple of minutes later he was able to carry on winching, lowering the door downwards until, if the ship were landed on a planet, it would form a ramp leading down to the ground. Thomas didn't need to lower it all the way, though, but left it sloping upwards at an angle of about twenty degrees. A large rectangle of sky was revealed to him as he stepped away from the winch, and the two-toned grey disc of the largest moon stared in at him as if wondering what he was doing.

     Saturn, meanwhile, had been moving the ship into the correct position to accept the ring, and as the ship slowly turned Thomas saw it come into sight. It was now motionless and lying on its side. A brilliant rectangle of reflected sunlight with two darker grey wings stretching away on either side, fading away into blackness. As it came directly in front of the door Thomas shouted the command for the ship to stop turning, stopping the disc dead in its tracks. "Okay," breathed Thomas in breathless excitement. "Now take us forward. Very, very slowly."

     Gradually, the edge of the ring began to grow in front of him. It took nearly a quarter of an hour for the ring to reach the door, not a bit too slow for the young wizard who remembered the mass of the large artifact, and it gave him plenty of time to order tiny adjustments to the ship's position as he saw that they were a little off course. Finally, though, the ring began to nose its way in through the door, to the heart stopping thrill of the young wizard, and the moment it did so it began to feel the hanger's spell-generated gravity. The forward edge of the ring began to dip even as its momentum continued to carry it forward until the middle of the ring touched the upward sloping edge of the door.

     Tana's voice came over the farspeaking link. "Saturn says to remind you not to touch it," the shae said. "It'll either be burning hot or freezing cold, we’re not sure which, and the Necklace may not protect you from it."

     "Understood," replied the wizard, backing away from it. "It's half in now and sliding down the door. The forward edge is touching down on the metal rails of the cradles. With any luck, there'll be little enough friction that it'll settle flat all by itself, If it gets stuck, though, we may not be able to close the door."

     "I do not anticipate any such problem," the shae replied. "Something as heavy as that would settle at the lowest possible level even without the rails."