T Southwell - Prophecy

Tallyn said, "You should have been trained for this. We should have realised this might happen. When you get back, I'll put you both on a course."

"Well, nothing like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted," she quipped, which earned her a stern glance.

Rawn hugged her, then Tallyn touched a crystal and they left the ship. The hatch closed with a hiss and clunk, sealing her in the tiny craft. She sank into a luxuriously padded acceleration couch as gravity increased, but it did not grow uncomfortable as the scout floated up on its antigravity, then switched to repellers. The scout had inertial compensators, but they were only powerful enough to reduce the effects of inertia. Since pilots were strapped into their couches and the ship had no other crew, larger ones were deemed unnecessary.

The ship lacked any luxuries apart from the two comfortable pilot couches, and made alarming noises. The simulator had not clunked and groaned, hummed and whined like this ship did. She lay back and forced herself to relax, closing her eyes to block out the plethora of winking lights around her, few of which she knew anything about. The ship was trusted to fly itself, and Tallyn had assured her that it was a new, advanced craft, unlikely to malfunction.

With its powerful repellers, the chances of her having an accident were slim – repellers were inclined to make ships as slippery as eels. However, she pondered as she drifted up through Atlan's atmosphere, there were a number of things that could go wrong. Any damage to the Net link could result in the ship's stores of energy being depleted, which would cause all its systems, including the repellers, to fail. In that event, the chances of its surviving for long were not good, even if her air did not run out before a piece of space junk punched a hole in the hull.

When she opened her eyes again, Atlan's milky orb was a pearl on the main screen and Net energy crawled over the hull. The screen winked off, and she inserted her hand into the sensor slot beside the seat. Instantly the grey no-place of the ship's neural net swallowed her senses, and the data bombardment began. Most of it was incomprehensible, a mass of scrolling black figures, but Tallyn had told her to ignore those and concentrate only on the other colours when they appeared. A statement in green flicked past, telling her the link was successful and the ship was in super light. A column of white figures counted her increasing speed, and a line of orange letters listed her co-ordinates.

A window filled with blue lines opened, displaying the stars and planets they passed. A flashing red dot whizzed past, warning her of a passing ship on a parallel course, heading for Atlan. A yellow diagram identified a nearby planetary system, and a mauve overlay plotted the commercial space lanes. The daunting stream of data was exhausting, and her mind seemed to grow hot as she strived to digest it all and make sense of it. Fortunately, nothing seemed to require her undivided attention, for there was so much to take in.

Rayne watched the data scroll, whiz, flash and flicker through her brain, numbed by it all. The energy conduits' soft hum was the only sound, and, if she opened her eyes, the consoles' flashing lights illuminated the bridge in a flickering glow that mixed horribly with the data in her brain. According to the neural net, they hurtled through space at fifteen times the speed of light, flashing past solar systems in the blink of an eye.

Lost in the data stream, she waited as the hours passed and she drew closer to her destination and whatever lay in store for her. The scout would travel the sixty point four light years through clouds of gas that were unborn suns, past quasars and asteroids, pulsars and glowing nebulas of fluorescent gas.

A flashing orange statement caught her attention in the midst of the chaotic data. The ship was decelerating, and she noticed a lot of the other figures changed as her speed decreased. The figures rolled back, hurrying towards zero, the programmed destination and her current co-ordinates growing closer and closer to matching. The dizzying dance of words and figures took on a final frenzy, then the numbers froze in their correct results and the neural net announced its termination of the Net link. Rayne pulled her hand out of the sensor slot and sat up with a gasp, almost falling off the couch as her brain emptied and the grey walls spun.

Gulping burning bile, she raised a trembling hand to wipe the cold sweat from her brow. Four hours linked to the neural net was more than she could stand easily. The gush of information had disorientated her, and she fought to push aside the ghostly after-images of scrolling numbers and whizzing data. No wonder ships' crews rotated so regularly. Four hours was a long shift, even for an experienced pilot. For her, it had been pure torture.

Rayne tottered to a refreshment dispenser and ordered a strong drink, which she gulped down. Braced, she went back to the couch and gazed at the main screen. The Cerebilus Moons were a strange collection of planetoids orbiting each other in a destructive, collapsing sunless system. They were called moons because of their size and orbits, which appeared to indicate that the planet they had once orbited had vanished, leaving the moons, like lost sheep, to endlessly wander through their diminishing circles until they crashed into each other. Of the eighteen original planetoids, only eleven remained amid a spreading debris field.

Closing her eyes, she wondered if she would be able to get some badly needed sleep. Her ordeal with the neural net had exhausted her, and her eyelids were leaden.

"Welcome, Golden Child."

Rayne sat bolt upright with a gasp, her eyes scanning the main screen. Thrusting her hand into the sensor slot, she closed her eyes as the data washed through her mind again. The ship was close, in fact, a red proximity warning flashed. Jerking her hand out again, she stared at the main screen.

"I… What do you want?"

"To show you something. You must prepare for your meeting with the one who comes."

"Who's that?"

"I will show you. I will take you to a world that has known one before."

She shook her head. "No, I can't. I don't know how to fly this ship."

"Then I shall."

"Wait!" She jumped up, then grabbed a bulkhead as the moons whirled on the screen. Her gravity remained steady, but the screen gave the sensation of spinning, and she looked away. "Wait! I can't leave here. This ship is programmed to return to Atlan from here."

"Then I will bring you back."

Rayne sank down on the couch, staring at the screen again as the vast energies of a transfer Net crawled over it. Instead of the ragged, branching lines of crackling power, the screen filled with solid golden light. When it faded, new stars appeared.

She gasped in astonishment. "You used the transfer Net!"

"Of course."

"No, I mean you went into the energy dimension!"

"Yes."

She shook her head. "I've got a lot of questions for you."

"Later. I want you to go down to the planet below. You must wear protective attire."

Rayne glanced at the screen, adjusting the camera until a dull grey orb came into view. "What planet is that?"

"It is called Elliadaren."

Rayne stared at it for a long time, her mind reeling.

The guide's voice broke into her reverie. "You are distressed."

She shook her head. "No, just tired. I'll go and find a space suit, if there is one."

"It is in the locker at the back of the cabin."

With a suspicious glance at the empty air whence the voice issued, she went to the locker. The bulky suit inside was too big for her, even when she adjusted it. She struggled into it, finding herself entombed and almost immobile. The final catches defeated her, and she sighed with frustration.