Free Blake’s 7: Warship by Peter Anghelides Page A

less encouraging the comparison became. And telling himself not to think about it wasn’t stopping him from thinking about it.
    He focused on the surface in front of him. That was even less reassuring. He was appalled at what he saw.
    The Liberator ‘s hull no longer shone with a burnished brilliance. It had become dull, as if some huge flame had scorched across it. A trace of lines criss-crossed haphazardly, like slug trails over its surface. And everywhere, he could see the alien devices.
    ‘Can you see all those limpet mines?’ asked Jenna.
    ‘There are dozens of them,’ he replied. There was one at the end of each slug trail, where the devices must have dragged along and come to rest. ‘And that’s just on this section.’ Vila pushed himself up with both hands, to look further over the horizon of the hull. ‘There could be hundreds. We’ll be here forever!’
    ‘Then we’d better get started.’ Jenna was already moving further along, towards the nearest of the devices.
    Vila hesitated. He was in no rush to follow her, and eyed the first of the alien mechanisms with suspicion. ‘What if they go off while we’re removing them?’
    ‘If they do,’ she told him, ‘you’ll be seeing a whole load of different stars.’ She beckoned to him urgently with one gloved hand. ‘Come on! Bring your equipment, and let’s get started.’

Chapter 12
Down and Unsafe
    Blake blinked in astonishment as the lights flickered on. He hardly heard what Cally was saying, because his attention was focused on what was being revealed before his eyes.
    After the darkness of the climb down from the hatch, his eyes had become accustomed to the low light of their torches. Even when he had taken his goggles off, he could barely see further than a hundred metres. But now this…
    The last of the illumination rippled into life across the room. If ‘room’ was the right word for it.
    ‘This place is…’ Blake could hardly find the words. ‘It’s huge! It must go back… what, half a kilometre?’
    ‘Maybe further.’ Cally had turned to look now. The stark lighting revealed to Blake very clearly that she was as dumbfounded as he was.
    It was a natural cavern below the surface, stretching further than he could see. A bowl-shaped floor was criss-crossed with metal gangways that connected islands of equipment. Closest to them, maybe a hundred metres from the platform, were control desks. Empty chairs were dotted around them in a random fashion, some lying on their sides as though knocked over in a rush.
    Next along were rows of rectangular boxes arranged in semicircles around another, solitary desk. In the further distance were huge devices that stretched up towards the high roof. Blake thought he could make out thick power lines, and possibly some antiquated but industrial-scale transformers and circuit breakers. At the far side was what looked like a cooling tower. At this distance, it was impossible to see where it vented.
    Above this, apparently inaccessible from the floor, were the lights than had sprung so reluctantly into life at his command. They were strung in serried ranks on looped metal cables that spanned the enormous width of the cave, casting a pitiless clarity on the massed equipment that sprawled in scattered sections across the floor space.
    ‘Can you hear that, Blake?’
    ‘What?’
    Cally paused. ‘I thought it was distant voices.’
    Blake listened for a moment. ‘The movement of air,’ he said. ‘This place can’t have been disturbed for years.’ He switched off his hood torch, and indicated for Cally to do the same. They stepped through the main archway entrance, and contemplated the extraordinary view.
    At first, the whole place gave the illusion of being covered in thin reddish-brown veils. And then Blake noticed the faint scattering of dust that floated down from the lighting rigs. It had been disturbed when the lights had rattled into life, and was slowly falling from way above. The veil across the