Floating Worlds (18 page)

“I believe you.” He wheeled around her, stopping them both, and reached up over his head to a hatch. “You see this light?” He tapped a bulb in the oblong rim of the port. “When that flashes, this hatch has to be sealed, or the dark will come in faster than we can stop it.” His free hand was flexed in the soft wall by his head. He pulled the hatch down.

She rose into a long chamber. A small needle-nosed spaceship filled it from wall to wall, anchored by struts in a wheel around its waist. She went along its pale metal side. On the nose cone was a three-pointed star and four rows of Styth lettering. She put her hand on the cold hull. Saba was folding back the accordion door of a locker in the wall. The space within was hung with limp black headless bodies. She went up to him.

“Are you going alone?”

“Ketac is coming with me.” He took a suit out of the rack. She picked up the sleeve in her hand. The fabric was slightly greasy. Five yellow stripes decorated the forearm of the sleeve. The suit opened down the front. He doubled up to put his feet into the legs. The hatch banged open. Ketac came in, his hair streaming behind him.

“Put your suit on,” Saba told him. “We’re taking
Ybicsa
over to the dark side of this rock, and we might run into the Lunar Army on the way.”

“Yes, sir.” Ketac gave off a burst of hot copper. She watched him reach into the rack of suits. Saba was poking his arms into the sleeves of the suit.

“We’ll launch hard, run toward the Earth to pick up some speed, and swing back on the polar axial. All right?”

“Yes, sir.”

Paula turned toward the hatch. Her face was cold.

“Do you remember how to get back to my trap?” he asked her.

“Yes.”

“Stay there. If Tanuojin gives you an order, do it.”

“Why?”

“Because I told you to.” Foreshortened below her, he looked all head and shoulders. He thrust a pair of gloves under a strap on his sleeve. She went out the hatch. When she shut it, the bulb on the rim began to flash red. She turned the wheel as far as it would go. The corridor was warmer and darker than the chamber she had just left. She wandered along, kicking and flapping her arms around and crashing into the wall. Somewhere behind her a bodyless voice said, “Kobboz, to the bridge.” A round hatch popped open and a Styth in overalls dove out. He rolled over.

“Mendoz’.” It was Sril. He came up to her, smiling wide. In the Common Speech, he said, “Now you come to our world.”

“I speak Styth.” She looked into the room he had just left. “What’s this?”

“The galley. Are you hungry? I’ll show you.” He took her by the arm and pushed her into the narrow little room. The walls were covered with ring-pulls and levers. There was just enough room for the two of them, side by side. He flipped down a lever in front of her nose and the slot below it tongued out a clear packet with a big red tablet inside.

“Not like your food,” he said. “They say I should have gone to the Earth instead of Mars, the food was even better.” He pulled down another lever and a tube of water came out of the wall. She put the red tablet into her mouth. It tasted like raw starch. He ripped the top off the tube of water for her, solicitous. “Do you like
Ybix
?”

“I haven’t seen very much. Is there much to see?” The water tasted gluey. Tanuojin had said they were low on water. “Maybe I shouldn’t drink it all.”

“There’s no way to put it back. You speak good Styth. I thought you probably did, back on Mars, you always knew what I was talking about. I—”

A voice came out of the wall over their heads. “Sril, to the bridge.”

“Later.” He touched her arm and went out. She drank the rest of the water. He had been friendly, and she liked him; she began to feel better. The rings in the wall pulled out flat drawers of knives and tools. She went out to the corridor again. Two men passed her, giving her curious sideways looks. Each of the hatches she passed was marked with a symbol in red. The living space was fitted into the crevices between the giant crystal systems that ran the ship, and every few feet the corridor twisted like a rabbit hole.
Like a Mylar wormhole
. She was learning to move, but she still could not stop very well, and she ran into a man coming the other way along the tunnel.

He lunged at her. She did not know him; she dodged out of his way, but he got her by the sleeve and towed her into a branch corridor. She looked around for a way to escape. He spun a wheel over and stuffed her in through a hatch.

She tumbled into a huge hollow ball. The bridge. The curved wall was solid with the glass faces of instruments and decks strung with wires. Sril caught her by the arm. He was sitting on a strut sticking out from the wall. When he turned, his stool revolved with him.

“Akellar, here she is.”

Upside down over her head, Tanuojin sat in a cage footed against the wall. He dove out of it. “Come here.” His hand closed on her wrist.

Over a loudspeaker, General Gordon’s voice said, “
Ybix
, your time is running out.”

Tanuojin pulled her around to the cage. She turned over, her feet toward the wall. He thrust her at a screen in front of the cage. “There she is, General.”

Paula took hold of one rib of the cage. On the screen was General Gordon. She said, “Hello, General. Doing the lord’s work?” She could smell a strange bitter scent, maybe Tanuojin.

Gordon said, “Miss Mendoza, are you there of your own free will?”

“Are you?”

“Don’t duel with me, young woman. Tell them I want to talk to the Akellar Saba.”

Tanuojin pushed her out of the way. “He’s asleep.”

“Then wake him up.”

The wall beside her was covered with dials. All the needles were swinging, twitching, at random. Besides Sril, two other men sat on stools along the curved wall. The scarred man, Bakan, headphones over his ears, was directly above her.

Tanuojin said, “Why am I to wake up the third-ranking Akellar of the Styth Empire just because you tell me?” He spoke much slower in the Common Speech than in Styth.

“Akellar,” Bakan said, “
Ybicsa
is launching.”

On the far side of the cage from her was a holograph. She let go of the cage and scrambled through the air toward the green cube of light. Someone above her laughed at her. In the hologram, an image of
Ybix
sailed along through clear green space. Two smaller ships flanked her and a third flew after her, an inch from her long whip-tail. Paula recognized the T-shapes of the Lunar Army’s patrol craft. A small green image streaked out of
Ybix
’s side and flew off the map.

“I want to see your captain,” Gordon was saying.

“
Ybicsa
is launched, Akellar,” Bakan said.

Paula lifted her head. Gordon’s pinched face looked tired. Tanuojin leaned over the screen. “You don’t talk to Saba. You take your ships away, or I start to shoot.”

An arm moved over the screen before Gordon. He glanced down and up again. “
Ybix
, you have launched another ship. We have regulations—”

Tanuojin turned his head. “Where is Saba?”

“Halfway back to the Earth,” Bakan said, “and going like hell.”

Paula looked up. She was drifting. Now Sril was above her on the curved wall, and Bakan was off to her right. The hatch opened and two men came in.

“What’s going on?”

Gordon was saying, “I want to talk to your captain. If you don’t produce him in five minutes, I’ll assume he’s on the ship you just launched and proceed accordingly.”

Paula looked down at the holograph.
Ybix
, manta-flat, was the size of her hand, the Lunar hammerheads the size of her thumb. Other ships sailed along in orbits below and ahead of her. The patrol ship behind
Ybix
seemed to draw up on her. Tanuojin and Gordon were arguing. Suddenly an alarm shrieked in her ears.

She started all over, her skin cold. The warning horn whooped again. Tanuojin jumped out of the cage. “Sril!”

“I have him on one, Akellar.”

The hammerhead slid back, away from them, and the alarm rang silent. Paula was shivering. She glanced up at the men massed in the bridge above her. Sril had his hands on a lever in the wall beside his stool. He was watching Tanuojin.

He wheeled back to General Gordon. “God damn you, if you break my perimeter again, I’ll shoot.”

Gordon never blinked. “Even the devil knows the name of the lord. I’ll give you ten minutes to leave before I blow you to hadrons.” The screen went dark.

Paula rubbed her finger over her cheek. They were just playing with each other, and they both knew it. The hatch was directly above her. She rose toward it.

“Where are you going?” Tanuojin said. “You stay here.”

“You don’t need me here.”

“Akellar, that hammerhead is drifting up again,” Bakan said.

He flew down to the cage. “Bring her along thirty leagues.”

“Mendoz’,” Sril said. He leaned down, his hand stretched toward her. “Catch on.” She took hold of his hand. The ship was gaining speed. Paula was falling toward the wall. She held on to Sril with both hands. In the holograph,
Ybix
moved out ahead of the three hammerheads. Her arms ached. Slowly she grew lighter again.

“Making one hundred twenty-six leagues, Akellar.”

“The patrol ship is speeding up, Akellar,” Bakan said. In the hologram another vessel showed, ahead of
Ybix
: the next ship in orbit.

“Good. Brake her down thirty leagues.”

Sril said, in her ear, “Hold on.” She put her arm around his waist. The ship slowed. She was dragged in the other direction, stretched out like a flag in the wind.

“Meet her, Marus,” Tanuojin said. “You’re dropping her.”

The siren whooped. The hammerhead behind them was running up on them.

“Sril!”

“Ready to fire, Akellar.”

“Fire.”

“Fire one.”

The scream of the alarm made her ears hurt. Her weight lessened. She was floating again.
Ybix
flew backward through the green map into the following wedge of the hammerheads. A light flashed just behind the tailend ship, and the Styths groaned. A miss. The hammerhead bent its course, rising up over
Ybix
’s broad back. The siren stopped. Paula’s ears rang like brass.

“Take us back to station,” Tanuojin said. “Keep Gordon happy.”

The helmsman said, “Braking ten leagues.”

Paula slid gently against Sril’s side.
Ybix
drifted backward through the map cube. The hammerheads were scattered across the space, out of order.

“Akellar,
Luna
is signaling.”

“Didn’t I say the little man was bluffing? What’s our course?”

“We’re on station, Akellar.”

She let go of Sril and floated free in the air. The hatch was below her now, and Tanuojin inside the cage was above her again. The videone lit up: General Gordon.

“You can count yourselves lucky that maneuver failed. Your ten minutes is almost up. I’m warning you, I’m not a generous man.”

Tanuojin put one arm through the cage bars. Paula glanced at the holograph. The hammerheads were again flying on either of
Ybix
’s wings and just behind her. The Styths around her were utterly still.

“I’m not taking this ship anywhere until my commanding officer gives me an order,” Tanuojin said, “and he’s asleep.” He was waggling the hand outside the bars. Beside Paula, Sril bent over a deck of wires.

“Yes, Akellar.” He pushed the deck like a drawer back into the wall.

Tanuojin waved at him. His arm withdrew into the cage. He and Gordon debated waking up Saba. She looked up at the hatch. There was no reason to stay here. Sril was turning slowly away from her, his hand on the lever on the wall, and his eyes on Tanuojin.

“You don’t have to shake your superstitions in my face,” Tanuojin was saying to Gordon. He thrust his arm out of the cage and waved at Sril. “I’ve already noticed that you’re ignorant.”

General Gordon’s face thinned. Paula could not see his hands, only his shoulders and head. Was he signaling too? She drifted down toward the hologram. Bright green,
Ybix
sailed on her even course. The three smaller ships skirted her. The hammerhead on
Ybix
’s tail was flying higher than the Styth ship. She supposed they were creeping in to try to catch the transmission of the sensor wire. Tanuojin raised his hand.

“As long as you’re here, you’re subject to our law,” Gordon said.

“I don’t need your laws, I have my own.”

“If you—”

The alarm wailed up so hard in Paula’s ear she flinched. Tanuojin held up one finger. Sril pulled the lever down. “Shoot one.” He glanced at Tanuojin and reached for the next lever. “Shoot two.”

On either side of
Ybix
points of light sparkled, like firecrackers. The hammerhead off the left wing tumbled over like a wheel. Part of the hull broke off. The Styths roared a cheer that thundered off the curved bridge wall. The men around him reached out and clapped Sril on the shoulders.

Tanuojin shouted, “Quiet!” Paula grabbed hold of the strut of Sril’s perch. Now certainly Gordon would shoot back. Her sweating hands slipped on the plastic strut.

“Akellar, Saba is calling on the ship-to-ship!”

They thundered up another cheer. The bridge stank of their excitement.

“Break this contact with Luna. Where is Saba?”

Bakan read off a series of numbers. The videone went dark. Sril pulled the wire deck out of the wall and leaned over it. Paula looked up at the holograph. A hammerhead sailed along on Ybix’s off wingtip, another behind her tail. Suddenly they sheered away.

“Akellar, the surface has launched a missile.”

Paula turned; she bumped her head on the strut. Tanuojin said, “Clear the bridge. Secure to speed.” He charged out of the cage and went up to Bakan’s post. The men gathered to watch crowded toward the hatchways. They were leaving the bridge. Paula pushed herself after them. Tanuojin shot toward her.

“You stay here, where I can keep an eye on you.” His fingers closed on her arm. Her spine shivered at his touch. He thrust her at Sril. “Hold on to her.”