Nightflyers: Illustrated edition. David Palumbo

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      She took a squeeze of her beer and laughed her mellow, musical laugh at him. “I’ll solve you yet, captain,” she warned.

      “Meanwhile,” he said, “tell me some more lies about your life.”

      “Have you ever heard of Jupiter?” the xenotech demanded of the others. She was drunk, lolling in her sleepweb in the cargo hold.

      “Something to do with Earth,” said Lindran. “The same myth system originated both names, I believe.”

      “Jupiter,” the xenotech announced loudly, “is a gas giant in the same solar system as Old Earth. Didn’t know that, did you?”

      “I’ve got more important things to occupy my mind than such trivia, Alys,” Lindran said.

      Alys Northwind smiled down smugly. “Listen, I’m talking to you. They were on the verge of exploring this Jupiter when the stardrive was discovered, oh, way back. After that, course, no one bothered with gas giants. Just slip into drive and find the habitable worlds, settle them, ignore the comets and the rocks and the gas giants—there’s another star just a few light-years away, and it has more habitable planets. But there were people who thought those Jupiters might have life, you know. Do you see?”

      “I see that you’re blind drunk,” Lindran said.

      Christopheris looked annoyed. “If there is intelligent life on the gas giants, it shows no interest in leaving them,” he snapped. “All of the sentient species we have met up to now have originated on worlds similar to Earth, and most of them are oxygen breathers. Unless you’re suggesting that the volcryn are from a gas giant?”

      The xenotech pushed herself up to a sitting position and smiled conspiratorially. “Not the volcryn,” she said. “Royd Eris. Crack that forward bulkhead in the lounge, and watch the methane and ammonia come smoking out.” Her hand made a sensuous waving motion through the air, and she convulsed with giddy laughter.

      The system was up and running. Cyberneticist Lommie Thorne sat at the master console, a featureless black plastic plate upon which the phantom images of a hundred keyboard configurations came and went in holographic display, vanishing and shifting even as she used them. Around her rose crystalline data grids, ranks of viewscreens and readout panels upon which columns of figures marched and geometric shapes did stately whirling dances, dark columns of seamless metal that contained the mind and soul of her system. She sat in the semi-darkness happily, whistling as she ran the computer through several simple routines, her fingers moving across the flickering keys with blind speed and quickening tempo. “Ah,” she said once, smiling. Later, only, “Good.”

      Then it was time for the final run-through. Lommie Thorne slid back the metallic fabric of her left sleeve, pushed her wrist beneath the console, found the prongs, jacked herself in. Interface.

      Ecstasy.

      Inkblot shapes in a dozen glowing colors twisted and melded and broke apart on the readout screens.

      In an instant it was over.

      Lommie Thorne pulled free her wrist. The smile on her face was shy and satisfied, but across it lay another expression, the merest hint of puzzlement. She touched her thumb to the holes of her wrist jack, and found them warm to the touch, tingling. Lommie shivered.

      The system was running perfectly, hardware in good condition, all software systems functioning according to plan, interface meshing well. It had been a delight, as it always was. When she joined with the system, she was wise beyond her years, and powerful, and full of light and electricity and the stuff of life, cool and clean and exciting to touch, and never alone, never small or weak. That was what it was always like when she interfaced and let herself expand.

      But this time something had been different. Something cold had touched her, only for a moment. Something very cold and very frightening, and together she and the system had seen it clearly for a brief moment, and then it had been gone again.

      The cyberneticist shook her head, and drove the nonsense out. She went back to work. After a time, she began to whistle.

      During the sixth week, Alys Northwind cut herself badly while preparing a snack. She was standing in the kitchen, slicing a spiced meatstick with a long knife, when suddenly she screamed.

      Dannel and Lindran rushed to her, and found her staring down in horror at the chopping block in front of her. The knife had taken off the first joint of the index finger on her left hand, and the blood was spreading in ragged spurts. “The ship lurched,” Alys said numbly, staring up at Dannel. “Didn’t you feel it jerk? It pushed the knife to the side.”

      “Get something to stop the bleeding,” Lindran said. Dannel looked around in panic. “Oh, I’ll do it myself,” Lindran finally said, and she did.

      The psipsych, Agatha Marij-Black, gave Northwind a tranquilizer, then looked at the two linguists. “Did you see it happen?”

      “She did it herself, with the knife,” Dannel said.

      From somewhere down the corridor, there came the sound of wild, hysterical laughter.

      “I dampened him,” Marij-Black reported to Karoly d’Branin later the same day. “Psionine-4. It will blunt his receptivity for several days, and I have more if he needs it.”

      D’Branin wore a stricken look. “We talked several times and I could see that Thale was becoming ever more fearful, but he could never tell me the why of it. Did you have to shut him off?”

      The psipsych shrugged. “He was edging into the irrational. Given his level of talent, if he’d gone over the edge he might have taken us all with him. You should never have taken a class one telepath, d’Branin. Too unstable.”

      “We must communicate with an alien race. I remind you that is no easy task. The volcryn will be more alien than any sentients we have yet encountered. We needed class one skills if we were to have any hope of reaching them. And they have so much to teach us, my friend!”

      “Glib,” she said, “but you might have no working skills at all, given the condition of your class one. Half the time he’s curled up into the fetal position in his sleepweb, half the time he’s strutting and crowing and half mad with fear. He insists we’re all in real physical danger, but he doesn’t know why or from what. The worst of it is that I can’t tell if he’s really sensing something or simply having an acute attack of paranoia. He certainly displays some classic paranoid symptoms. Among other things, he insists that he’s being watched. Perhaps his condition is completely unrelated to us, the volcryn, and his talent. I can’t be sure.”

      “What of your own talent?” d’Branin said. “You are an empath, are you not?”

      “Don’t tell me my job,” she said sharply. “I sexed with him last week. You don’t get more proximity or better rapport for esping than that. Even under those conditions, I couldn’t be sure of anything. His mind is a chaos, and his fear is so rank it stank up the sheets. I don’t read anything from the others either, besides the ordinary tensions and frustrations. But I’m only a three, so that doesn’t mean much. My abilities are limited. You know I haven’t been feeling well, d’Branin. I can barely breathe on this ship. The air seems thick and heavy to me, my head throbs. I ought to stay in bed.”

      “Yes, СКАЧАТЬ