Free To Conquer Chaos by John Brunner

traditional stock of Station lore. Sometimes Nestamay wondered if it had been as a by-product of that well-founded pride that her father, whom she barely remembered, had been persuaded to undertake his foolhardy journey away from the Station and off into the vast unknown—the journey from which he had never returned.
    For a long moment she stood confused. Then a stir of memory came to her aid. Something acrid about a scent which she had detected drifting into the air of the office late last night, when the thing had been driven away …
    “The smell!” she said, suddenly positive she was correct. “When the heatbeams seared it, the smell it gave off didn’t resemble the smell of a water-seeking creature!”
    Grandfather looked surprised for an instant. “Very good,” he said. “Anybody else spot that?” His fierce, bloodshot eyes swept the members of the working party. “No? Aren’t you ashamed of yourselves? Here’s my granddaughter, only a few weeks past adulthood, knows it as well as I do, and you lot with all your combined years of experience have to be told! She’s perfectly right—the stink that comes off when a heatbeam hits a water-seeker is heavier, damper, a little sweetish at the back of the throat. The smell we got last night was acrid, dry, and eye-watering.”
    He paused. Nestamay, relying on the momentary favour she was enjoying, caught his attention and indicated the refreshments she was bringing; a curt nod gave her permission to distribute them, and she proceeded to do so while he resumed his diatribe.
    One or two of the men, dipping their hands in the bag of bread, looked dismayed as they felt its hard stale texture, and shot accusing glances at Nestamay as though to blame her for its condition. A little resentfully, she glared at them.
    “Any idea how much power we used last night? There wasn’t anything left for the ovens this morning!”
    That didn’t make them any more pleased, of course. Glancing skyward through the rents in the Station dome, they could see the cloudy sky which meant the recharging of the power storage cells would proceed extremely slowly today. Everything at the Station was so interlocked, Nestamay reflected; when a dangerous thing hatched, power had to be set aside for heatbeams or activating electrofences, which meant food became short, or had to be eaten cold rather than hot, clothing due for recycling had to wait no matter how dirty and torn it had become, and at night the people had to huddle together against the chill …
    She served the last of the working party with his cup of broth and hunk of bread, and prepared to move on. Once again Grandfather interrupted her.
    “Nestamay, don’t forget I’ll want to see you this morning. You’re due for a test on last week’s instruction!”
    Nestamay nodded. She’d hoped Grandfather might be too preoccupied with the emergency to remember, for she was very tired now. Nevertheless, it was no use railing against events. This was the course the world had taken, and she knew of no way to change things for the better.

    That was her last call on this side of the Station. From here to the other side, she would have to go circuitously. Only cautious, fully-instructed working parties dared venture into the central area under the monster dome, because it was there that the—the trouble, the problem, the danger, whatever one chose to call it—the central mystery, perhaps, was located.
    On her way past, Nestamay checked and stared at the enigmatic bulk of the inaccessible zone. It was changed, and yet unchanged. It had been part of her life since she was born, and still it retained its aura of alienness.
    Twisted now and sagging, the arch of the dome spanned a good three miles of ground. Huge gashes, five or six times a man’s height, gave limited access to its interior. In the north was the least inhospitable section—some thousands of square yards were safe even for children, and it was there that the machinery on which