The Coming Event

CHAPTER NINE

Ysanne said, "Millett, Earl, or Emney. Either will do but you'll have to decide now so I can set the new course. Even as it is we'll be pushing things to the limit."

She sat in the chart room, almanacs at her side, the chamber filled with the flash and winks from the instruments, the pungent odor of her perfume, which was in keeping with the barbaric dress she wore: leather decorated with painted symbols, the skirt fringed and falling to her knees. The belt hugging her waist was broad, beaded, the buckle massive.

She seemed a savage seated in the middle of modern technology, hair and skin illuminated by the glow of telltales and registers. It was easy to imagine her squatting before an open fire, tearing at half-cooked meat with her strong teeth, face and hands smeared with grease and stained with smoke. A child of nature, now over-tired and short on patience.

"Earl?"

A choice and a decision he had to make but one he didnt like. The choice was too limited, the decision too predictable.

"Millett is favorite by a hair," she said. "Good yards and facilities. We could raise a loan or charter the ship to cover the cost of fees and generator-parts. Emney is more isolated but could do the job and we'd have no trouble eating. The place is lousy with game."

"You know it."

"I've been there." She volunteered no further information. Instead, as if reading his mind, she said, "You aren't happy with either. Why? Afraid of Pendance?"

Pendance was the least of his worries; the man would be dead by now if Volodya had any sense. But she had provided a reason he could use.

"He could have friends who'd recognize the Moira and get curious. They might even decide to take over and we aren't strong enough to safeguard the ship. Are you sure there's no other choice?"

"There's always a choice. We could drift until we're forgotten and thought dead. We could try to reach the Puchon or Venner's Twin-good worlds if you can breathe chlorine. We could even try praying for a miracle-one which will give us fuel and a new generator and supplies."

"I'm serious."

"So am I." Her gesture embraced the instruments, the almanacs and navigational tables, the charts. "Facts, Earl. I have to deal in facts and they are against us. We aren't free agents. That damned generator makes us prisoners of the equations and we can only go so far. So which is it to be? Millett or Emney?"

The decision was reached through fatigue but absolved her of further strain. Now the burden was his and she could rest and close her eyes and remember the touch of cool winds on her face and hair as she ran over rolling plains to where the fires of the evening meeting already shone like ruby stars beneath their thin columns of smoke.

That moment of illusory comfort was lost as he said, harshly, "You're falling down on the job. You boasted you were the best navigator in space but this is a hell of a way to prove it. Maybe I should ask Craig to take over."

Her eyes opened, flaring with the anger he'd deliberately aroused; rage washed her brain clear of dulling fatigue even as it thinned her lips.

"Earl! You-"

"Think again," he snapped, giving her no time to protest. "And stop trying to play it safe. Drift, you said, well, why not? Maybe we could use a force-current or magnetic flow to help stretch the fuel. Damn it, woman, use your imagination!"

She said tightly, "Pendance was a bastard-don't try to be a bigger one."

"Or?" He saw the movement of her hand and caught her wrist as her fingers touched the bright metal of her buckle. "You'll kill me, is that it?" He gripped the metal and pulled and looked at the blade which shone in his hand. Short, with a double-edge and a wicked point. A stabbing blade with the buckle acting as a grip. "Have you ever used this?"

"You want a demonstration?"

Dumarest shook his head and slid the blade back into the belt. Rising, he stepped back and away from the woman, watchful, ready to act if her rage overpowered her. She sat where he had left her, seething, fighting for control. A wrong word and, like the innate savage she was, she would explode into a mindless, berserker fury.

At the door he said, "Get back to work. Use that skill you boasted of. Forget those worlds you mentioned and find alternatives. And do it soon!"

"Go to hell!"

"Do it!" She recoiled as he stepped toward her, his face a mask of barbaric cruelty as ugly as his voice. "Do it or, by God, you'll learn what a real bastard can be!"

Outside he strode down the corridor, fighting to control the anger which had started as pretense and edged into the real. Too much depended on the woman for him to be gentle. Strong herself she respected only a greater strength; a trait which could have drawn her to Pendance mistaking the slaver's viciousness for the attribute she admired.

Reaching the captain's cabin Dumarest entered and looked around, seeing the whips, the electronic scourges, the mementos of his career. The cabinet held ornate finery and a box of assorted rings and gems of price. Spoils he could use as he could the bottle of rare brandy and the vials of stimulating drugs. Opening the spirit, he added the contents of a vial, shook the mixture and went in search of the engineer.

Craig was lying asleep on the cot he kept in the engine room, lost in a nightmare in which he lay at the edge of a turbulent sea wreathed in hampering weed and with crabs tearing at his face. Cruel pincers ripped and stung and shed his blood to be lapped by slimed things which reared from the sand.

Looking down at him Dumarest saw the restless twitching of the eyeballs beneath their lids. Sweat dewed the scarred face and edged the spikes of hair. Lines had dug their way into the corners of the eyes and the expanse of the forehead, betraying marks of age as was the flaccid skin beneath the jaw, the mottled blotches marring the hands. The man was too old to hope for a better berth, content to ride with slavers, to be treated like a dog. He needed a carrot as Ysanne needed a whip.

He shuddered awake as Dumarest touched his shoulder.

"God! I thought-God!" Sleeping while on duty, taken unawares-what would Pendance have done? Then he saw the tall figure standing at his side with the bottle in his hand. "I dropped off," he said quickly. "Just to take a short nap. The instruments were beginning to blur."

Excuses Dumarest didn't need. He said, gently, "You needed a rest, Jed, and were wise enough to take it. A tired brain can make mistakes and you're the only engineer around. Like a drink?" He lifted the bottle. "Mind sharing the neck?"

Craig shook his head, rising to stand beside Dumarest as he tilted the bottle, neck to his mouth, throat working as he pretended to drink.

"Here!"

"Thanks!" Craig's own drink was real and he felt the warm comfort of the alcohol as it hit his stomach, the stimulation of the drugs it contained which banished his nagging fatigue. "We got a destination yet?"

"Ysanne's working on it."

"A smart girl. The kind I could have gone for if I were younger and had the kind of face a woman could bear to look at. It was never good but Pendance made it worse. Well, the bastard got what was coming."

Dumarest said, "Those scars can be fixed."

"Sure. With money."

"You'll get money. We'll all get it. A fortune." Dumarest held out the bottle. "Have another drink."

Craig nodded his thanks and swallowed and said, "You understand, Earl. You've known what it is to be short and stranded and glad to take anything as long as you can eat I'm a good engineer. I can strip and assemble a generator, tune it too, there's not many can do that without the right equipment."

"I believe you," said Dumarest. "I guess we're lucky to have you. Ysanne and I, that is. Our lives are in your hands. Think we can make it?"

"I wish I knew." Craig gestured to the console, the instruments it carried. "The synch-variation is getting wilder and I don't know how much longer it will stay within tolerance. It could strike a balance, but if it doesn't and the generator goes-" He broke off, shrugging. "I guess you know what'll happen then."

The Erhaft field would collapse to leave the Moira drifting in space at sub-light velocity. Long before it could reach a planet they could all be dead.

Dumarest said, "I expect you've thought of fixing a monitor to cut the field if the variation gets too far out of line?"

"I was about to do that."

"Good. One with a mutual override? How long will it take?"

"Not long. It's mostly a matter of registers and cut-outs. Say a couple of hours. I'll have to cut the drive to do it though. When do you want me to start?"

"As soon as you're ready. Can you manage on your own?"

"Sure, but you could leave me the bottle."

Dumarest lifted it, checking the contents. More and the engineer would have had too much. "Later," he said. "I'll save it until you've finished."

Back in the control room Dumarest took his place in the big chair, letting his head fall back against the padding, looking at the screens with their patterns of stars, the instruments, the glowing telltales. As normal the room was in gloom, the lights bright, hypnotic in their shifting flickers.

Captains rarely stood watch alone. Usually there was someone with them, the second in command, the chief engineer, the navigator, a junior officer. A human presence to ease the strain of concentration as well as to provide a second pair of eyes and a brain to monitor the messages the instruments delivered.

To be alone was to be enclosed in a surrogate womb, warm, comfortable, isolated, entranced by endless vistas of space.

"Earl!" Dumarest jerked as Craig's voice came from the intercom. He had been drifting on the edge of sleep, bemused by the lights, the repetitive pulse of a glaring ruby eye on a piece of unfamiliar apparatus. "Ready to cut drive now."

"A moment." Dumarest checked the systems and found no trace of ethereal danger. "Go ahead."

A moment later the stars flickered as the instruments flared. An alarm sounded, dying as he touched a control, lights shifting as the ship's systems adjusted to the new conditions. Now the Moira was helpless before the impact of interstellar forces; the shifts and eddies of spatial disturbances which eroded planetoids, disintegrated the detritus of broken worlds, turned hapless vessels into things of abstract sculpture.

Before him the ruby light blazed with a new, eye-searing intensity and looking at it Dumarest knew what it had to be.

A radio beacon.

Something in space was calling for help.

"It's a ship! Earl! It's a ship!" Ysanne leaned close, previous animosity long forgotten in the excitement of the chase, eyes glistening with reflected light as she stared at the shape swelling larger in the screens. "Slow down, Earl! Slower!"

The shape steadied as he obeyed, seeming to move as the Moira came to relative rest. A craft after the general pattern of their own, the hull blotched with markings.

"The Galya," said Craig as he joined them in the control room. "Small, maybe a private, adapted to carry extra cargo." He read the symbols and design with practiced ease. "Not drifting for long by the look of her. There'd be more attrition of the plates if she had. Any idea as to where she's from?"

"No." There had been no answer to their signals. Dumarest added, "We'd best try direct laser contact. That beacon's automatic and the normal radio could be broken. Ten minutes, Jed?"

It took fifteen before Dumarest, suited, saw the hatch open and the Galya framed in the aperture. He lifted the communication-laser in gloved hands, aimed, fired the beam and spoke into the connected microphone.

"Calling the Galya. Moira calling the Galya. We picked up your signal. Answer if you can."

He received vibrations carried as electronic pulses by the beam of the laser, impinging on the hull and being translated back into vibration. These harmonics repeated his voice within the ship's structure.

"Answer if you can. Flash a light. Show a signal. Respond. Respond!"

Again the wait, the silence.

"Dead," said Craig. "They must all be dead."

Lying stark and withered or too ill to move. Starved or dehydrated, listening to the voice of rescue but unable to make the one sign which would bring it in time. Not, perhaps, even recognizing his voice for what it was.

An emergency radio beacon was the last, desperate effort anyone stranded in space could make. The odds against it being picked up were astronomical. The chance that, even if it was received, a ship would break its journey to make a tedious search was almost as slim. Only the hope of a reward would encourage anyone to try.

"Salvage," muttered Craig. "The kind a man dreams about. All out there for the taking-and we've no way to get it to a market. What do we do, Earl?"

"Go and investigate," said Dumarest. "But I'll go alone."

He heard a keening as he crossed the gap between the ships; a thin, wailing echo which lifted to fade and die as if a crying child had been suddenly snatched far distant at high velocity. The sound seemed to originate within his brain, created by electronic impulses from surging particles of radiation, riding a spatial wind or circling and gaining momentum as they spun in the magnetic flux which could swell to become the heart of a vortex or the twisting complex of a warp.

A danger sign he ignored as the Galya grew large before him.

The hull slapped against his boots and he swayed before inching over the rounded plates to where the lock rested toward the rear. It was sealed but there was an emergency trip on which he rested his hand.

To Ysanne he said, "Anything?"

"Nothing, Earl. It's still as dead as before." Her tone carried a note of anxiety. "The instruments register a growing nexus of undisciplined energy. We're close to a decaying vortex and there could be a transference of energy potential. If so there could be a danger of a local storm."

"Remote or immediate?"

"You've got time," she said. "But don't waste any. Be careful-I want you back."

The trip moved beneath his hand and the lock gaped open. Releasing his safety line he jammed it against the hull, the gekko-pad holding it fast. Inside the lock he paused for a moment then thumbed the mechanism. Rotated inside he stepped from the lock into the hold of the vessel.

It was as he had expected, matching the holds of a hundred other vessels he had known. A compartment half-filled with bales, some sacs lying to one side, the caskets designed for the transportation of beasts lined up beneath a cold, blue-white glow. The normal appearance of any trader working on a slender margin. The handler probably doubled as steward, there would be only one engineer, one navigator, a captain and his second in command. Even if, as Craig had suggested, the Gayla was a private vessel, there would be no more.

Dumarest moved toward the engine room, opened the door and stared at a scene of devastation. The generator was ruined, nothing but a seared and fused mass of metal resting where it had been. To one side the burned body of a man lay in a pool of congealed blood, the fluid dried to a brown hardness. The blast which had caught him had seared his upper torso, turning his head into a knob of ash, his chest into a blackened crust through which showed the yellow of bare bone. His hands were gone, his arms past the elbows, and Dumarest guessed he had been leaning over the generator, touching it, when it had blown.

From the lower regions a corridor ran between cabins to the salon and control area. Light shone with a steady luminescence from plates set in the ceiling and dust reflected it in misty shimmers. A sure sign of air but Dumarest made no effort to open his helmet. The air could be breathable but contaminated.

A cabin door opened beneath the pressure of his hand and he saw an unmade bunk, some scattered clothing, a bottle lying on its side, a scatter of small, blue pills. The pillow carried long, dark hairs, and a woman's cosmetic kit rested on a shelf. Another held some toys, a heap of small garments, the portrait of a girl with wide eyes who clutched a furry pet.

In the third waited madness.

Dumarest saw the flicker of motion and threw himself backwards as steel whined through the air where he had stood. A long, curved blade shimmered like a mirror bathed in light, flashing as it sliced toward him, missing as he dodged, making a dull, flat sound as it bit deep into the edge of the door.

Bit and stuck as the man who wielded it screamed in maniacal fury.

He was tall, skeleton-thin, wearing soiled but ornate robes. His hair hung in a shoulder-length tangle from a peaked skull and his mouth, open, revealed filed teeth set with gems. The eyes were red, crusted, blotched with yellow.

His face belonged to a creature from delirium.

The flesh had left the contours of the bone and taken on a shape of its own, hanging in pendulous drippings and puffed protrusions as if the face had been made of wax and exposed to the softening influence of a fire. Or of a soft plastic bathed in the vapors of a corrosive acid.

"No!" he screamed. "You will not take me! The transformation is not yet complete. I will not yield to demons of torment. Die! Die!"

The sword came ripping from the door to lift and slash as Dumarest turned and ran down the corridor back to the hold. Hampered by his suit, restricted by the confines of the cabin and corridor, faced by a creature with insane strength and a sword which could slash through metal, he needed space in which to defend himself.

He reached in just in time, diving sideways as the blade whined through air, moving, searching for a weapon, seeing a pile of metal rods stacked beside a case together with the familiar bulk of an extinguisher.

Dumarest reached it as curved steel slashed a long opening in his suit, lifting it as the blade rose for another cut, ducked behind a case as it came down. A moment gained in which he slammed his head against the control and raised the extinguisher in time to block a slash which would have taken the head from his shoulders.

Foam spouted from the nozzle, caught the tormented face, the red, glaring eyes. Filled the mouth with its substance and coated arms and torso with clinging whiteness. The foam robbed the air of oxygen and sent the swordsman to his knees, blade falling, hands lifting as he fought to clear his mouth. The fight ended as the assailant slumped, sprawling, in the unmistakable posture of death.