Timothy Zahn - Angelmass

"Agreed." Kosta shook his head. "The more I think about it, the less I like the whole theory.

Angelmass just isn't massive enough to pull that much gravitational energy out of infalling paint chips or whatever."

Behind Chandris, the door slid open... and she turned just as Ronyon stumbled into the room, his fingers tracing agitated patterns in the air in front of him.

A look of absolute terror was on his face.

"What's wrong?" she demanded.

"He's frightened of something," Forsythe said, making quick finger gestures of his own. Ronyon replied—"I can't get any sense out of him," Forsythe said, starting to sound concerned. "He just keeps saying he's afraid."

"Is it the low gravity?" Ornina asked, starting to unstrap. A pair of gamma-ray cracks snapped through the room, making Chandris jump. "If he's never been in free-fall before—"

"He been in free-fall hundreds of times," Forsythe said shortly. He had a hand on Ronyon's shoulder now, his other hand still going through their complicated motions. "I don't understand this at all."

"Perhaps we should get him back to his cabin," Ornina suggested. She was at Ronyon's side now, holding his arm in a reassuring grip as she studied his face.

More hand motions, a violent shake of Ronyon's head—"He doesn't want to leave," Forsythe said.

"Says he's afraid to be alone."

Chandris looked at Hanan. "Are there any sedatives in the medpack's drug dispenser?"

"There should be," he said, his eyes on Ronyon. "You know how to get the dispenser open?"

She nodded, reaching for her restraints. "Back in a minute."

It took her a little longer than she'd expected to get to the medpack, take the cover off the dispenser, locate the proper ampule, put everything back together again, and return to the control room. The others had gotten Ronyon strapped into Kosta's chair by the time she returned, but otherwise not much had changed. The big man still looked pretty miserable. "Thank you, Chandris," Ornina said, taking the sedative from her and reaching for Ronyon's arm.

He pulled the arm away from her, his eyes turning frantically to Forsythe. "It's all right," the High Senator told him, gesturing the words as well as saying them. "It's just something to help you relax a little."

Reluctantly, Ronyon put his arm back on the armrest. Ornina touched it with the ampule and gave him an encouraging smile. "You'll feel better in just a few minutes," she said. "High Senator Forsythe and I will stay right here with you until you do."

Ronyon nodded, already seeming to sag a little in the low gravity. Leaving the two of them to look after Ronyon, Chandris made her way forward and climbed into Ornina's seat. In the time since she'd gone to get the sedative, the gamma-ray sparks had worked their way up to a gentle but insistent rain, and she keyed her board for a location check.

The result came up. She looked at it, a frown starting to crease her forehead.

"It's accurate," Hanan said quietly from beside her.

She looked at the tight expression on his face, a creepy sensation working its way up through her.

"You sure?" she asked, keeping her own voice low.

"I've run it three times in the past fifteen minutes," he told her. "No mistake."

Chandris turned back to her board, the creepy sensation getting stronger. If they were really still this far away from Angelmass... "The radiation's getting stronger," she murmured. She glanced back at Kosta, sitting in one of the jumpseats watching Forsythe and Ornina hovering around Ronyon. "Just like Kosta said."

"Yes," Hanan agreed. "I just hope the Gazelle's hull can take the extra—"

He broke off, the last echo of his words vanishing into the silence.

Into the complete silence...

"Kosta?" Chandris snapped, twisting around to look at him.

"I know," Kosta said grimly, already out of his jumpseat and heading for Chandris's usual seat and control board. "The gamma sparks have stopped."

Chandris turned back to her display, stomach tightening as she keyed for radiation sensor readings.

A memory flashed back: someone in the Barrio telling her a story about how a big wave had once swept in from the sea and wrecked a big part of Uhuru's main port city. And before the wave had come, the whole sea had pulled back from the shore, like it was getting itself ready to hit.

"Hanan, get on the radio," Kosta said. "Warn everyone there's a radiation surge coming."

"Right," Hanan said, reaching for the comm section of his board.

He never got there. Without warning, the eerie silence was shattered by a sudden violent burst of gamma-ray crackling.

The surge had hit... and the Gazelle was caught in the middle of it.

Hanan screamed, a long, agonized wail almost inaudible above the violent sleet-storm of gamma-ray crackling that filled the control cabin. "What's happening?" Forsythe shouted over the din.

"Radiation surge!" Chandris shouted back. Ornina was at Hanan's side, fumbling under his shirt for the exobrace cutoff switches. Chandris reached for her restraints—

"Chandris, get us some rotation," Kosta called from behind her. "If you don't, the hull's going to get cooked."

Ornina found the switch, and Hanan collapsed trembling in his seat. "He's right, Chandris," Ornina shouted to her. "Do it."

Cursing under her breath, Chandris turned back and keyed in the command. The displays were unreadable through the multicolored snow that had suddenly appeared on them, and for a moment she wasn't sure whether or not the command had made it through. "You got it?" Kosta shouted.

"Hang on," she shouted back, trying to see through the snow on the displays. The numbers were still impossible to read, but she could feel her weight starting to increase. "Okay," she said. "Rotation's speeding up."

She turned back to Hanan. Ornina and Forsythe had gotten him out of his seat now and were supporting his weight between them. And the look on Ornina's face... "Ornina?"

Ornina turned a pale face to Chandris. "He's very bad," she said, her voice nearly lost in the gammaray noise. "We've got to get him to the medpack right away."

"I'll help you," Chandris said, popping her restraints.

"No," Forsythe said sharply. "We can handle him. You and Kosta get us out of here."

"But—"

"Don't argue!" the High Senator snapped. "You want to end up like that other ship?"

Chandris swallowed, the image of the burned and battered Hova's Skyarcher flashing through her mind. "We'll try. Kosta, get up here."

"Right." Kosta scrambled past the others and dropped into Hanan's seat. "What's working?"

"I'm guessing the major control lines are okay," Chandris told him, toggling through the Gazelle's sensor packs. "They've got a lot of redundancy and extra shielding. But I can't get anything out of the sensors."

"Burned out," Kosta grunted. "That, or the data lines are down."

"Must be the lines," Chandris agreed. "I don't get any response from the feedback register circuits, either."

"You don't need registers to fly the ship," Kosta pointed out impatiently. "If the control lines still work, fire up the engines and get us out of here."

"Yeah, well, there's just one problem," Chandris snarled. Her throat was beginning to hurt from the need to keep shouting over the gamma-ray noise. "I don't know where Angelmass is anymore."

"Is that a problem? We were heading more or less toward it. Just turn around and go."

"We could; except that with the registers gone I won't be able to tell when we've done a one-eighty."

Or maybe it wasn't just the shouting that was hurting her throat. Maybe it was plain, simple fear.

"You said yourself that the Hova's Skyarcher must have gone in pretty deep."

For a long minute the only sound in the control room was the roar of the gamma-ray static. Chandris kept toggling through the sensor packs, searching for something—anything—that could still be read.