Kate Wilhelm in Orbit - Volume One (2 page)

Staeen knew they were not. Fear, if present, would beat against him like a storm tide on an ocean shore. No such waves emanated from them.

“If they had been threatened, they would have fought,” Malko said. “If they had to outrun something, why the life boats? Why not the ship itself? There was nothing wrong with it! Nothing! All that damage was done after they left, because they left.”

Conly returned to his contour seat, kicked it and then let himself drop to it. He stared at the control panel and said heavily, “Let’s give her one more going over, then we turn back.”

Malko grunted; his finger combed through his beard abstractly. Staeen could feel their disappointment and restlessness. Like children, he thought again. If they could not have the answer, they did not want the question. Unlike his own people who loved paradoxes and puzzles for their own sake, the Flonderans grew annoyed with unanswered questions. It was because of their short lives, he decided. They knew they could not afford the thousands of years it sometimes took to find the answer.

“How many small craft were aboard the mother ship?” he asked.

Conly shifted to stare at him. His voice was a snarl when he said, “We should have thought of that! They took every lifeboat, scout, landing craft, everything! There were eighteen to twenty lifeboats and half a dozen other miscellaneous craft aboard. They knew they couldn’t last more than four days in the landing craft…”

“Even the repair boats,” Malko said. “They’re gone. Six hours, eight at the most in space in one of those…”

Staeen looked at the hairy man and felt waves of dread coming from him. Six to eight hours in space, and then death from anoxia. He shuddered inside his mantle.

Brusquely Conly said, “Okay, let’s get back. This time we split up and go through private quarters. Try to find a note, a scrap of paper, a scrawl on the wall, anything that might give us a clue. Staeen—”

“I too can search,” Staeen said.

Alone inside the great ship, Staeen let himself go, let it come to him. Hanging in a corridor with the oval doors, he thought of nothing, not even the sensations he received. He looked like a black shadow unanchored to reality as he hung there, shiny black slowly changing to a duller shade as his mantel adapted to the radiation. From a distance he felt echoes of doubts and apprehensions: Malko’s waves.

From another direction came fainter wafts of determination mixed with the same doubts, perhaps even a touch of fear, formless and unnamed as yet. For a brief time he was one with the ship: unguided, unmanned, alone in space on a course that would take it beyond the galaxy to the nothingness that lay between the oases of life. He shuddered with the ship, feeling the vibration of the metal under the impacts from meteorites, sharp-edged bits of metallic ores set loose in space to roam forever until captured or destroyed.

He felt the weight of the galaxy weighing on himself as bits and pieces of space debris hit the ship and clung, giving it mass. He knew that one day there would be enough mass so that planetoids could be captured, under pressure the ship at the core would be crushed and finally molten. It would sweep the path of its trajectory and its gravitational field would reach out father and farther, insatiably then, and in a million years, or one thousand million, it would be caught by a hungry sun. Resisting for a while the end of its freedom in space, it would refuse a stable orbit, but in time would become a captive like all planets. Staeen wondered if it would give birth to creatures who would pose questions of cosmology, wondering at the earth below them, at its origin, its eventual death.

Staeen continued to hang in the corridor, and now sensations too faint to be identified drifted to him. The temptation to strain to receive them better was great, but he resisted; it would be like straining too hard to hear a whisper only barely within hearing range. One either heard it, or did not. He let feelings enter him without trying to sort them out.

Emotions had been expressed with every footstep, with every grasp of a door handle, every yank on a drawer, with every shout and curse uttered by the men preparing to abandon ship. The ship had vibrated a different tempo of emotions, and some of the vibrations still echoed along the molecules. Staeen intercepted them with his body and after a long time without movement, he stirred, his mantle rippling slightly as he shifted his position. A great sadness filled him because he knew the answer he found could not be accepted by the Flonderans. In the madness of fear the crew had left the ship.

What, or whom, had they feared to the point of insanity?

Staeen pondered that as he started to investigate the rooms assigned to him. He expected to find nothing, but his search was methodical. He had offered to help to the best of his ability and would do so.

He found nothing in any of the rooms he searched. Now and again a stronger wave of the same crawling, irrational fear bathed him when he opened a door that had been closed since the ship was abandoned, but there was nothing to indicate its source.

Malko and Conly were depressed and irritable when they returned to the scout. Staeen soaked in his mist of salt, ammonia and water blissfully while the Flonderans unsuited and decontaminated their suits. The three gathered in the cabin afterward.

“I’m going to call it a bust,” Conly said, running his hand over his shaved head. He looked tired and dejected.

Malko simply nodded. Scowl lines cut into his dark face and his deep eyes were shadowed. “Read about ocean ships found like that,” he said. “It looked like everyone just quit whatever he was doing and jumped over the side. No explanation ever given, far’s I know.”

“We’ll make our independent reports as usual then,” Conly said. He looked at Staeen “Will you add whatever impressions you got from her?”

Staeen agreed. He gazed from the port at the ship, an unsteady pad beneath the small scout. She would sail on, not worth salvaging, keeping her wobbling course toward the rim of the galaxy, and her mystery would go with her beyond recall.

Two days later the scout was streaking back toward her port when a blip appeared on the scanner screen. Malko, at the control, decelerated and he and Conly watched the blip.

“Shouldn’t be one of ours,” Conly said. “This is a hell of a long way off course for any place we’d want to go.” He kept his eyes on the growing blob of light on the screen. The object was almost close enough now for a visual sighting. “How about your people, Staeen? Any reason for them to man a ship and come out here?”

Staeen wriggled his tentacles with excitement. “It must be the regular visit of the Thosars,” he said, his voice cracking with emotion. “I was a boy during their last visit. They come bringing news of the galaxy every twelve thousands of you years…”

Malko and Conly stared at him. Neither had seen him so excited before. His mantle rippled uncontrollably and his tentacles were a blur of rosy motion.

“And are they friendly?” Conly asked. A grin broke out on his face even as he asked. Staeen’s pleasure was so undisguised that to imagine that the Thosars as other than friendly was ridiculous.

Throughout the next hours the ship drew nearer to them, changing on the screen from a blob of light to a pale blue, wheel-shaped ship that was bigger thing yet made by the Flonderans. Staeen radiated such joy and happiness at the approaching visit that the Flonderans echoed it and the small scout fairly hummed with the vibrations. Conly and Malko gaped at the size of the wheel; it had the diameter of seven miles. They demanded Staeen tell them everything he could about Thosars.

“Just like you, like Flonderans, only bigger, much bigger,” Staeen said happily, staring at the wheel rolling through space toward them. “When they come, they visit everyone simultaneously, they have so many ambassadors. Every city, every hamlet, all receive them together. There is a festival, a party that lasts till they depart once more. Their scientists and ours share future dreams; they share their discoveries concerning space, as we do with them. He couldn’t continue. Silence fell within the small craft.

The blue wheel drew closer, occulting star after star with its approach. Conly returned to his contour seat and watched the radar. “They are going to smash us,” he said nervously.

“It fills the sky,” Staeen said joyously. “A blue ring in the sky, and then the force fields like silver balls…”

“It’s stopped now,” Conly said, cutting in. He adjusted a dial. “Two miles away.”

An opening appeared in the nearest rim of the wheel and three silver globes glided away from it.

“When they get closer you can see inside them,” Staeen said. “They can’t board us, you know. Too big. They’ll pull abreast, invite us to enter their ship.” He wished the two men could share his happiness, could partake of the ecstasy that was rippling his mantle. To be a passenger in the legendary blue wheel of the Thosars! The globes drew closer, dancing through space, circling one another, bounding apart, leap-frogging. Soon they would be close enough for the Thosars within to be seen. Staeen did not breathe during the last seconds. Even his vibrations stopped. He saw them fist; they were signaling.

Conly’s voice jarred him. “They’re only seventy-five feet away!”

“It’s as I said,” Staeen cried. “They wish to take us aboard, let us return to Chlaesan with them. Conly, blink our lights—”

One of the Thosars, clearly visible now behind the screen of energy, reached out and touched the scout. It turned. Another of them swam slowly past the port. He was as long as the three man scout craft. His pale golden body glowed, the magnificent center eye studied them benignly, the mouth curved in a welcoming smile. He arched away and back again, as a great fish turns in water, lazily, without effort. His face pressed against the port, filling it, too large for it.

Staeen turned triumphantly towards Malko at his side. “See, just like you, only bi—”He stopped, wracked with pain. There was insane horror on Malko’s dark face; his eyes were bulging, his mouth partially open.

Staeen was hit by slamming, staggering waves of terror such as he had never felt before. He cried out under it, but his cry was not heard. Malko screamed hoarsely, and before he could get to his contour seat, before Staeen knew what was happening, the scout shot forward with brutal acceleration.

Malko crashed to the floor, Staeen fell also, and writhed in pain, his own and Malko’s. Malko had hit his head against the metal floor and was unconscious, but his brain was sending out urgent pain messages. The pain waves were on a level apart from the mounting, smothering, thundering waves of fear. The g’s increased and Conly lost consciousness. The paralyzing waves of fear diminished. Still the scout accelerated.

Staeen knew they would be killed by the continuing acceleration. Whimpering softly, he started to pull himself across the floor to the control panel. His body had flattened to a six-inch mound and moving was agony. As he passed Malko he saw blood trickling from his nose and mouth. Staeen was leaving a trail of blood behind him. There had been no time to prepare for the sudden acceleration; small ruptures had opened before he could adjust. He blanked out all thoughts then except the one guiding him to the control panel. He got to his own seat and was able to crawl up into it. Conly was stretched out, his face smashed-looking, bleeding. Slowly Staeen dragged himself up Conly’s legs until he could reach the controls. He decelerated. Moments later Conly awakened.

The fear came back, stronger than ever. Conley hissed something at him and tried to push him aside. Staeen flowed over the control panel, blocking Conly’s attempt to accelerate again.

“I’ll kill you!” Conly said hoarsely, sobbing the word. He was oblivious of the blood streaming freely from his nose, seemed unaware of the pain in his chest and stomach when he moved. Staeen felt it more strongly than he did. He lunged at Staeen, who flowed away from the clutching fingers. On the floor Malko stirred. Before he opened his eyes he started to scream.

Conly lurched across the scout and grabbed suits from the storage compartment. He let one of them drop on Malko and started to climb into the other one. Malko, sobbing violently, both with pain and fear, began pulling the suit over his legs. He was shaking so hard that his feet missed the openings several times.

Staeen did not know how either man could move after the ordeal their bodies had undergone. He dared not open the blanking inhibitions he had imposed on his own body. Conly was almost finished when his hand closed on the short-nosed laser gun all Flonderans wore when they went into space. He stared at it wildly, saw Staeen and fired, screaming obscenities at him. Staeen sealed off the injured part and dropped to the floor. He tried to speak to them, but could not. His voice box had been destroyed when he was flattened by the acceleration.

He was shuddering uncontrollably; he tried to blank out the fear waves and failed. He gathered his mantle about him and sealed himself within it, then waited. The Flonderans had both gone mad, beyond reach. All he could do is wait. He thought of the thousand eggs he still retained; carefully, not attracting the attention of the madmen, he deposited them on the underside of the contour seat.

Neither man spoke, but occasionally one or the other made an animal noise deep in his chest. The noises filled Staeen with dread.

Their actions were wholly automatic as they fumbled with the suits, driven by their glands, and not their brains now. Before Conly pulled on his helmet and face mask, his eyes swept the cabin: they were animal eyes, maddened by fear, all traces of the rational submerged. The crazed eyes saw Staeen and Conly’s hand groped for his gun. He dropped it. He snarled and started to cross the cabin toward Staeen. The fear waves crashed against Staeen. Malko was reaching for his laser. They would kill him, maybe destroy the eggs on the bottom of the seat.

Staeen moved toward the airlock. Malko’s hand dropped away from the gun. Both men yanked their helmets in place and stumbled to the airlock.

Malko opened the outer hatch; he held Staeen’s mantle with his hand and jumped, pulling Staeen after him. Staeen caught a brief glimpse of the other human tumbling alone in space, and then he was gone. The scout flashed away from them, like the great silver ship, streaking away toward the black that lay between galaxies. Staeen felt the radiation from space like a warm sun on his mantle, then it was gone as he made the necessary adjustment. Malko held him several minutes before he released his hold, and firing his belt rockets, left Staeen.