Cecelia Holland - Floating Worlds

Leno turned to his second officer. “You’re dismissed. Go get some sleep.”

“Yes, Akellar.”

Another man had come in behind the others. She could not see who it was. He gave something to Tanuojin. The tall man swung around, his face turning into the light. “You’d better do this a little faster than six hours. We’ll reach primary Jupiter in five.” He left.

Leno was rolling up the chart. Paula went down the room, into the warmth of the crystal lamp. Saba said, “I need a volunteer from my watch, to go in with us.”

Near the hatch, in the dark, the other man said, “I’ll go.” It was Kasuk.

“Good,” Saba said. “Get into your suit.”

Leno clipped down the ends of his chart and fit it into a tube. When Kasuk had gone, he said, “You know, Saba, I wouldn’t expect this even of you.”

“Expect what?”

“If Ybix were Yekka’s, he would have run behind me, when my engine failed, until I blew out my ship, or paid his ransom, or turned my ship over to him—whatever he wanted.”

“Tanuojin is one of the best officers in the fleet.”

“I didn’t deny that. One of my own friends wouldn’t jeopardize his ship for my sake.”

Saba said, “Are you coming to your point?”

In the pressure suit Leno looked two times Saba’s size. He said, “I think I’ve passed it.”

“Let’s go.” Saba turned toward Paula, above him in the dark. “Tell Tanuojin I’m taking Kasuk with me.”

“Hurry, will you? I’m freezing.”

“Don’t worry. If we don’t do this right, we’ll pretty soon be as hot you want.” He laughed.

Jupiter made the space around her seethe. The two ships slipped deeper into the turbulence. The seal between them cracked and broke, and they drifted apart. Saba, Leno, and Kasuk were stranded in Ebelos , floating away toward the giant Planet. Paula went to Ybix ’s bridge. It was mobbed with men. The radiation from Jupiter jammed the communicators. There was no way to reach the men in Ebelos .

Tanuojin, in the cage, sent Ybix chasing the other ship. When he tried to couple with her, Ebelos wobbled and rolled away. He pursued, and the bigger ship sheared toward Ybix , and he had to pull Ybix up so hard Paula ran her head into the wall.

“We can’t do it,” someone said, behind her: one of Ebelos’s crew. “The old dragon’s burned a couple more.”

Paula shook her head, dazed. Sril’s arm slipped around her waist. “Hold on, Mendoz’.”

The darkened bridge was faintly lit by the green cube of the holograph. The images of the two ships were bright yellow. The radiant Planet was interfering with the sensors and the images began to flutter. She put her hand on Sril’s arm. Ebelos broke into three separate pieces in the map and each piece shivered into a dozen outlines, out of register.

Tanuojin put his hand out of the cage. “Bakan. Throw a schema of the Jovian fields into the holograph.”

Sril muttered in his throat. In the holograph the images of the ships had dissolved into hazy blurs. Suddenly Ybix ’s kite shape was surrounded by a ring of identical images. If Ebelos hit her, she would break Ybix in half. But now Ebelos was sailing in her own crowd of ghosts. Paula rubbed her eyes. Junna had come in beside her.

Bakan said, “I have the field schema.” A three-color diagram appeared in the holograph, showing the curving blue and orange space of Jupiter. The multiplying images of the ships sailed through it. A blue curl brushed one of Ebelos ’s ghosts, without effect, and touched another in the ring. The ship rolled over, and the seven different pictures of her blurred and ran in confusion.

“Marus,” Tanuojin said. “Bring her up to zero-eight.”

Paula’s eyes hurt from trying to follow the chaos in the holograph. Ebelos seemed to be rolling over onto her back. Tanuojin gave Marus a stream of orders in a voice without inflection. The incoherent light that seemed to be Ybix settled toward one of the images of Ebelos . She wondered how he knew which was which.

“It’s no use,” a strange voice murmured, over her shoulder. “He can’t do this.”

Paula was leaning on Sril, her hand fisted in his sleeve. He gave her a slight hug. He heard them. The low voices whispered behind her.

“ Ybix can’t support this many men too much longer.”

“What’s her capacity—eighteen?”

“Look how he’s wasting energy.”

Junna flung his head back. He and Paula were within arm’s distance of each other. His eyes shone. With one hand he raked aside his thick floating hair. The blue and orange fields lapped and made a whorl of space that intersected the map cube. There were eight things that looked like Ebelos . Three of them fell through the whorl and went on with no change, but the fourth hit the shifting helix of the fields and rebounded. Sril let out a hoarse gasp.

“Marus!” Tanuojin cried. “Reverse—eight-zero. Now! Pick her up, damn it, if you drop her I’ll kill you.”

“He’ll kill us all,” the strange murmur said behind her. “We have to grab this ship.”

Paula got hold of Junna’s hand. He gave her another desperate look and turned his face back toward his father in the cage.

The schema of the fields, drawn by the computer inside the ship, was the only steady image in the map. Ebelos was a long blur that filled half the cube, and Ybix was in many parts, sparkling like a star. Tanuojin was staring at the cube. He gave Marus orders and faithfully Marus obeyed him. A piece of Ybix moved down through the orange toward Ebelos . The colors of the fields deepened as the Planet’s gravity compressed the space around it. Ebelos ’s blurred mass passed across the intersection between the orange and the blue. Her many images rolled head over tail. Paula’s eyes burned from trying to make sense out of the map. She rubbed them with her free hand. Junna’s fingers were clamped around hers so tightly she could feel the papery new growth of his claws. She thought of the tumbling men in Ebelos .

Ybix reached the intersection. There was a thump like something hitting the padded wall. Paula’s ears stopped up. She felt a sharp deep pain in her diaphragm.

“Marus,” Tanuojin said. “Now hold her. Hold her. Let the field bring her to us.”

The map was a streaming blur of colors. Sril muttered, “I can’t see a thing.” Paula’s nose was bleeding; she went cross-eyed at the fog of blood in the air before her.

“Bakan,” Tanuojin said. “Tell the docking crew to be ready with the new seal.”

Nobody spoke. She was holding her breath. Her temples throbbed.

“Now! Throw it on!”

Bakan shouted, “They’ve got the new seal.”

The crew thundered up a cheer. Tanuojin shouted, “Clear the bridge. Marus, put all the spare energy in the ship into the seal. Junna, take Paula to red-three.”

Junna flung his arms around Paula. “I knew he would do it.” He followed her toward the hatch. “I knew it all the time.” His voice was fresh with relief. She went back to her cabin and shut herself into the wetroom.

“Hot Jesus Christ,” Leno said. He was leaning across the seat in front of her, his cheek flattened against the window. Paula moved into the corner of the seat. If the air bus bounced, he would land in her lap. The other Styths were plastered to the windows on either side of the bus. She stretched her neck to look down the aisle. Saba was in the cockpit, talking to the pilot. She could not see Tanuojin.

She folded one leg up before her. Out the window, thick smoke shrouded the wing of the bus. The sky split. Miles beneath them, red and ocher in the sun, gouged with canyons, the mountains spread across their path. A brown river looped through the humps of the ridges.