Free Earthblood by Keith Laumer, Rosel George Brown

want you to get in trouble."
    "Don't worry about Gom Bulj. He's really a kind of a nice old cuss, after you get used to that tough talk. He's so used to these tough Geeks he thinks he has to talk that way to everybody—but he doesn't try it with me." Roan dried on a huge soft towel that smelled as sweet as the room and dressed in a clean tunic that Stellaraire took from a locker filled with bright clothes.
    "Come on," she said. "I'll show you around the ship. It's over five thousand years old . . . "
    For an hour Roan followed the girl along endless corridors filled with hurrying creatures, sounds, colors, odors, through vast, echoing halls which Stellaraire said had once been ballrooms and dining areas, up wide staircases and down narrow companionways, to a broad, curved room with a wall of ink-black glass set close with brilliant points of colored light.
    "You mean . . . that's the sky?" Roan said, and watched the fantastic array of slowly proceeding lights, realizing for the first time what it meant, to be in space. So much nothingness there. He looked around the rest of the room—a vast array of instruments and dials and a door with a red glare that said BATTLE CONTROL—AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
    "What's all that?" he asked. "And who does the controlling in that room?"
    "All that's not anybody's business. Nobody goes in that room and nobody knows what all that's for. It's separate from the guidance system. This was originally a Terran warship and all that's for fighting. Gom Bulj says it works automatically if we run into another warship. But that isn't likely. The thing to remember is not to touch any buttons or switches and not to go into that little room."
    Roan went over to look at the instrumentation closely. His people had built this ship and old heroes had flown them, fought in them.
    "I've got something a lot more interesting than that to show you," Stellaraire said. "Come on. I want to show you Iron Robert."
    "Who's Iron Robert?"
    Stellaraire laughed and shuddered at the same time. "Wait and see." They rode a lift, passed along a hall which vibrated with the thunder of the idling main drive, went through a high-domed room where several dozen ill-assorted beings sat in a group, puffing and thumping strange implements. Roan winced at the din of squealing flutes, blatting horns, clacking tambourines, whining strings.
    "What's all this noise for?" he called over the cacophony.
    "Oh, a band is traditional with a 'zoo. It goes back to Empire days. The Old Terrans always used to have noisemakers with social events. Some of our instruments even date from then."
    "It's terrible!" Roan watched a short, many-armed being in yellow silks puffing away at a great brass horn. "It's like some kind of battle."
    "Gom Bulj says the Terry noisemakers used some kind of charts, so they all made the same noises together, but our fellows don't know how to read the charts. They just make any old noise."
    "Let's get out of here!"
    Nine decks below, in an armor-plated hold where heavy cargo had once been stored, Stellaraire took Roan's arm, nodded toward a wide aisle which led back into gloom.
    "It's along here," she said. "He has the whole last bay."
    "Why are you whispering?" Roan was looking around at the battered bulkheads. "I didn't know anything could make dents in Terry metal. What happened?"
    "This is where Iron Robert exercises for his fights; and who's whispering?
    Come on . . . " She led the way along the unlit passage, stopped before an open bay which was a cave of deeper gloom.
    "He's in here," she whispered. She was still holding Roan's arm, tighter than before. He went closer, wrinkling his nose at a faint odor of sulphur, peering into the darkness. He could see dim walls, an object like an oversized anvil in the center of the floor, and near one wall an immense lumpy shape that loomed up like an incomplete statue in gray stone.
    "He's not here," Roan said. "There's nothing here but an old boulder."
    "Shhh—" Stellaraire