Timothy Zahn - Angelmass

"Go ahead," Ornina said. "But when you're finished, I'd appreciate it if you'd come back and give me a hand here. I want to get this put back together before Hanan wakes up."

Chandris clenched her teeth. "Sure," she said. "I'll be right back."

So much for more study time, she groused to herself as she swayed her way back down the jostling corridors. But still, that was more annoying than dangerous. After all, the Daviees had been doing this angel collecting thing for eleven years now. Surely they knew what they were doing.

No matter how bad Angelmass was, she could certainly handle a single trip out there. And a single trip was all she was going to need.

More from curiosity than any other reason, Chandris watched the control cabin chrono as she sat waiting; and at exactly 6:00:02 the Gazelle lifted.

It felt pretty much the way the shuttle launch to the Xirrus had felt, back when she'd first left Uhuru: a mostly smooth sense of movement along the thick concrete strip and up into the sky, with a steady roar of engines coming from behind.

But back then she'd been in a passenger cabin, without the monitors and displays and the running conversation between Hanan, Ornina, and the controllers... and it was quickly clear that a space ship launch was more interesting than it felt.

The sound of the engines wasn't just a single roar, for one thing. It was a mixture of several different roars, each coming from a different engine, with only the combination remaining steady. The sky was anything but empty, either: there must have been a hundred other vehicles flying around the area, all of them looking much too close for comfort.

"We're coming up on the launch dish, Chandris," Ornina announced from her seat. "Pelvic camera, if you want to watch."

Chandris shifted her eyes to the display showing the underside of the ship. There it was, or so she assumed, moving into view as the Gazelle flew over the landscape. It was almost fragile looking, shaped like a giant dinner plate... and looked like it was about to explode.

It really did. From a hundred places around the edge sparks were spitting, and she could see that the dish's surface was shimmering with a haze of light. Beneath the haze, the whole nurking thing seemed to be coming apart—

And then, without warning, it was gone. Along with the whole city.

Chandris blinked, eyes flicking between the displays... and gradually it dawned on her that the city was gone because the Gazelle was suddenly way off the ground.

Way off the ground.

"First launch dish lift?"

Chandris turned to find Ornina looking back at her. "Not really," she said, wondering uneasily whether it should be her first. There hadn't been a word about launch dishes in the material she'd read aboard the Xirrus, either. Was it something specific to hunterships? "First one where I've had a chance to watch what was happening, though," she added, hoping that would cover all the edges.

Apparently it did. "Pretty spectacular, isn't it?" Hanan commented. "Especially when the dish looks like it's about to come apart. I've never yet gotten a clear answer from a tech on what exactly causes that illusion."

"You want to double-check our vector, Chandris?" Ornina asked. "We should be on an orbital intercept for the catapult."

"Sure," Chandris nodded, swiveling the comp arm into position in front of her and getting her mind back on business. This part, at least, she'd studied like crazy. The Gazelle's course vector... there it was. To calculate the orbital intercept all she had to do was to call up the proper display and superimpose the lines... "Looks good," she reported. "Maybe just a little on the short side."

"Short side, right," Hanan said. The roar of the engines deepened for a moment, then slackened off again. "No surprise there—Lift Two's always tended to kick a little short," he commented. "Maybe someday they'll get around to fixing it."

"Not till Lift Four's on line, though," Ornina said. "What was ETA on the catapult, Chandris?"

Chandris glanced across her display, located the proper number. "About fifteen minutes," she said.

"Good." She cocked her head a little to the side. "We'll be all right here now if you'd like to go back to your room and catch up on your sleep. Even after we hit Central it'll be another couple of hours before we're close enough to start looking for angels."

Chandris hesitated. She was tired—that was for sure. But she was supposed to be an expert at this stuff; and wherever she went next it would undoubtedly help her puff-talk if she knew what a catapulting looked and felt like. Most people, after all, weren't so gullible as to believe every lame thing she said. "Thanks," she told Ornina. "But I'd rather stay."

The catapult didn't have nearly the same class of light show as the launch dish had had. All Chandris could see as they approached, in fact, were five widely spaced clusters of multicolored lights, all of them flickering crazily, that seemed to match with the catapult pole markings on the navigation display. Hanan maneuvered the Gazelle into the middle of the lights, signaled someone that they were ready, and listened as the radio gave him a short, five-number countdown. An almost-felt jerk; and in an instant the flashing lights on the display had changed to—

Chandris's whole body lurched in a sudden spasm of shock. "Nurk!" she gasped.

"What?" Ornina snapped.

For a horrible second Chandris couldn't even speak; her body stiff with horror, her eyes frozen on the thing centered on the display. It was a spider—a huge, monstrous, impossible spider. In the distance she could see the massive hourglass-shaped body glistening evilly in an eerie light. Its spindly rear legs were almost invisible as they trailed out behind it; but the front legs, stretched out to grab the Gazelle—

"Welcome to Angelmass Central," Hanan said, his voice sounding distant alongside the pounding in her ears. "Often called the ugliest space station ever built. I take it from your reaction that you agree?"

With a supreme effort Chandris tore her eyes away from the horror on the display. "What?" she managed.

His eyebrows raised, just a bit. "It's a space station," he said gently.

For another minute she just looked at him, the words slowly registering through the fear. Then, steeling herself, she looked back at the display.

The spider was gone. In its place was, indeed, a space station.

The two halves of the hourglass body were two squat cylinders with tapering ends, their central sections rotating slowly to create an artificial gravity. Connecting them was a slender section that looked like a double choker composed of large pearls, pearls painted the bright orange of emergency escape pods.

She took a deep breath, exhaled it through quivering lips. "Sorry," she muttered, her face hot with shame. "I thought I saw... something else."

"At a guess, I'd say a giant spider," Hanan said.

Chandris took another deep breath. It seemed to help a little. "That's it," she nodded, forcing her mind and voice back into the proper role. "I'm sorry. I've never been very fond of spiders."

"Join the club," Ornina said. "There are some days I still get a chill myself when I see the place."

The Gazelle had pulled away from the outstretched spider legs now, enough so that the slowly flashing lights on the ends of each could be seen. "Those are the poles for the net, then?" Chandris asked tentatively.

"Right," Ornina said. "The other end of the station is the catapult for getting us back to Seraph."

"And the spider-leg connectors are there to tether both of them to the operations center and power plant in the middle," Hanan added. "Can't leave them floating free like you can in a normal planetary orbit—the particle wind from Angelmass would have the whole thing disassembled before you knew it, and then we'd all have to go back to Seraph the long way. Twenty light-minutes may not be all that much in the galactic scheme of things, but it would make for a very long ride home."