Diane Duane - Storm at Eldala

Ow. That hurts. The pain was becoming unbearable. After this I'm not going to eat within six hours of a starrise, I don't care how hungry I am.

"I have no idea," Gabriel said, "but how could anything Delde Sota did to that woman's ship have possibly affected Helm's stardrive?"

"I don't know," Enda said. "I would prefer to wait until Delde Sota turns up and ask her myself." No one was there. Gabriel watched his in-field version of the main display flicker, waver, and then pale to nothing. Everything —ship's environmental energy levels, her fuel, all her stardrive readouts — faded and were gone.

Gabriel's stomach was churning. Without instrumentation, the ship not only couldn't fight, she could barely move. That burning was now like a coal, fierce and concentrated. That's not gas. Gas doesn't burn on the outside! What the—

Gabriel hurriedly unfastened his straps and jumped up. The pain slipped down his leg. Not the stomach. My pocket—

He started to reach into it, then hurriedly changed his mind and grabbed the fabric of the pocket so that he could dump the contents on the floor.

The luckstone fell out. It was fiery hot and blazing with light. It bounced to the floor, lay still, and began sizzling itself a little hole into the supposedly indestructible plastic decking. The smooth oval stone, normally dead black, now shone with a greenish-golden-white light. The fierce little glow slowly pulsed bright to pale to bright again.

Enda stole a glance downward, and her eyes widened as Gabriel hurriedly sat back into his chair and began refastening his straps.

"It has never done anything like that before, has it?" Enda asked.

"What, try to burn a hole in me and then succeed in doing the same to my deck?" Gabriel said. "Now that you mention it, no!" He threw the luckstone a very annoyed glance. "What if it keeps on doing this? It's going to burn straight down into the personal cargo hold!"

"It may if it pleases," Enda said, reaching into the display again. "I have other problems. Oh!"

The display lit up again with a sudden flash. Enda scowled as if she didn't trust it. Gabriel busied himself with getting back into the fighting field, which still seemed functional for the moment.

"Everything is back again," Enda said, "and the mass detectors are up and running once more. What a relief."

"I'd be a lot more relieved if we knew where Helm was." "Somewhere else, plainly."

Gabriel gave Enda a look. "Have I mentioned to you that the fraal sense of humor can be a little strange?" "Several times," Enda said. "Similar claims can be made about the human one. That joke about the wire brush, now—"

One of the warning lights, the one that said EMERGENCY, grew to an alarming size in the 3D display and began flashing on and off.

Gabriel looked frantically at all the other indicators, but nothing seemed to be wrong with Sunshine. "Enda?"

"It is not our emergency," she said, reaching out to the indicator. "Someone else's." "Helm?"

"No. He is not here, but someone else is."

The display filled with data — not just text, for once, but a schematic. "Small," he said as he studied the data. "A cargo ship?" "Possibly. We have not seen this one before?" "You mean, is this the other little ship that was at Rivendale? No." "That," Enda sighed, "is a relief."

The emergency message now began to play in several different sets of characters, several different sets of colors, and one sound. "This is free ship Lalique, out of Richards, en route from Mantebron to Aegis. We have suffered stardrive failure and are near the Mikoa-Aegis transit point. Transiting vessels, please render assistance, or if passing through on emergency transit, please convey emergency message to nearest drivesat relay. This is free ship Lalique— "

"It's recorded," Gabriel said. "Still, I'm surprised we're the first ones on the scene."

"Assuming we are," Enda said, "and that they have not merely forgotten to turn off the broadcast." She studied the display. "Well, let us go see what we can do for them. This is a bad place to have a stardrive failure."

Gabriel nodded. They might have to take the passengers aboard and leave the ship here, then go for help. Aegis would be the logical place to take them, so Gabriel and Enda's own plans would not suffer much, but he didn't much like the thought of having strangers aboard Sunshine. He looked down at the luckstone, which was still glowing in the little socket it had melted for itself in the floor, though it no longer seemed to be working its way any further in. "Have you got a fix on them?" he asked.

"Yes, no problem. They're no more than forty or fifty thousand kilometers away. They were probably using the same arbitrary starfall figures for the system that we were."

Gabriel nodded. Sunshine's system drive kicked in, and the two of them sat there looking outside for any sign of the ship and stealing glances at the floor between them.

"It seems to be quieting down," Enda said. "Are you all right, Gabriel?"

He touched the seam of the top of his shipsuit open and stared down inside, then frowned. "I got scorched. It burned right through the pocket material."

Enda blinked at that. "The material is supposed to be fireproof, I thought."

"Then that wasn't fire," Gabriel said. "I thought the decking was indestructible, too. Can we claim for repairs on the guarantee?"

"You would probably have to explain to them how you did it," Enda said, "and then they might ask you to reproduce the effect. First you will have to work out just why the stone behaved that way."

Gabriel shook his head. "Never mind. I'll just use some hull patching on the hole. It's just a shame. That's the first real scratch or damage that Sunshine has had. She was perfect until now."

"Ah. You mean, except for when the hold came apart and nearly fell off when you landed on Grith that time."

"Oh, that," Gabriel said with a smile.

Enda laughed softly. "Take a look in the field and tell me if that is the ship we're looking for."

Gabriel could see the gravity "dimple" of the vessel, drifting intact. At least the stardrive hadn't caused any structural damage to the vessel.

There was a long pause. "Sunshine?" said a woman's voice after a moment. "Oh, what a relief! Thank you so much! There are just two of us. No medical problems, thanks. Can you manage airlock-to-airlock?"

"We have a collapsible tube, yes," Enda said. "I will squirt the tube specs and coordinates to your computer when you're ready." "Ready now."

They closed in slowly and caught their first glimpse of the ship just a kilometer away. Lalique was obviously an old family-style ship. She was big, nearly twice Sunshine's length, and broad in the beam. Two pair of short wings, a little bigger than canards, just out from the cigar-shaped main hull. Four big cargo pods slung high, two and two, sat snug against the hull near the back. "Nice," Gabriel said as they closed in. "Plenty of room in there."

Enda maneuvered Sunshine in close to Lalique until the two vessels were drifting at the same speed and in the same direction. The computer confirmed the match. Enda then triggered the flexible airlock tube so that its counterpart program on the other ship could lock the ships together.

This took several minutes. Gabriel stayed in the fighting field, looking everywhere for Helm. "Where the frikes is he?" Gabriel muttered.

Enda sighed and said, "He has probably popped out further out in the system where the mass detector cannot see him. Let us wait and see what happens."

There came a soft chime from the display. "This is working, at least," Enda said. "Lalique, our computer is showing the mating as complete and secure. Are you showing the same?" "Yes, we are. Please come aboard," said the woman's voice.