Jeffrey Carver - Eternity's End

Legroeder nodded uneasily. Was he wrong to have sent Ker’sell away? Had Ker’sell been the first to see a real danger? Palagren was beginning to steer the ship away from the spider thing. Wait, Palagren. I think we need to investigate this, Legroeder said, feeling afraid even as he said it.

If we could probe the thing’s wake, Deutsch muttered. He seemed charged with a dark kind of excitement. If we could reach down … As he spoke, he stretched a long arm down from the keel of the ship, trolling it in the wavelets far below.

The ship suddenly began to descend.

Alarmed, Legroeder said, That may not be a good idea. Pull your arm out.

I can’t!

Look, Palagren said. The spider thing had turned and begun to stretch out toward them, as though it were a living thing. The wake streaming out from it was becoming more energetic.

Do you hear that? Palagren asked.

Legroeder’s heart was pounding. What?

Voices. Below us.

Legroeder strained. At first, nothing; but as the glassy spider loomed toward them, he felt a sudden shiver. Something was happening to the spider; it was melting into a ghostly haze of light. Faces were forming in the haze, faces of light. Human, or nearly human, faces. Ghost faces…

That’s what I heard . Their voices, Palagren whispered.

Legroeder’s stomach knotted. The ghostly faces, drawn thin as though with desolation and anguish, were peering up at him, rising from the auroral glow to meet the ship. Were they images from his subconscious, or from Deutsch’s?

The voices grew louder. Cries, and groans of distress.

Jesu, Legroeder whispered. He felt from Deutsch a horror like his own. They were only images, weren’t they? But why here, why now?

Something strange is happening in the tessa’chron, Palagren whispered. It’s slipping away from me…

The ghosts veered away just before reaching the ship. Their passage sent shock waves through the net.

What the hell was going on? Legroeder tried to focus…

His implants spoke. // Freem’n is remembering… we glimpsed it in his matrix… faces of death. //

Faces of death? But from where?

More ghost-faces rose on shimmering waves. One flew so close its cry sent a poker through Legroeder’s heart. He thought he recognized the voice. But how could that—? Freem’n! Was it Deutsch’s memory of people he had watched die on starships, victims of piracy? Freem’n!

Legroeder, are you all right?

That was Palagren, nearly drowned out by the wail of the specters whirling around the ship.

Legroeder?

I’m not… sure, he whispered. Holy MOTHER OF—

HEL-L-L-P US-S-S! cried a spirit flashing past. For an instant Legroeder saw a young man’s rictus-face pressed against the net like a window pane. It was no one he knew; yet he was overwhelmed by a sense that he had met this man before.

HEL-L-L-P US-S-S… !

The ghost veered away, and as Legroeder and Deutsch flinched, the ship rocked dangerously. Fly the ship, Legroeder thought desperately; but he couldn’t control his fear. Palagren was trying to compensate. Ker’sell—come back into the net! We need you! the Narseil called into the com.

Another ghost hissed by. Palagren seemed utterly unaffected. As his fellow Narseil returned to the net, he reported, Legroeder and Freem’n are seeing something I’m not—some sort of third-ring entities. They’re losing control. You and I need to steer! He was working urgently to level the ship, oblivious to the ghosts about his head.

// We’ve identified the voice, // murmured an implant in Legroeder’s head. // It’s from your memories of the Impris encounter. You heard the crew calling out to you on the L.A.—and at least one of those voices is the same. //

Impris! Legroeder whispered aloud.

Yes? said Palagren. If these are real voices and not just your memories, we must follow them. They may be showing us the way.

Or, Legroeder thought desperately, it may be my subconscious taking us through some delirious hallucination.

Captain Glenswarg wants to know what the hell we’re doing, Ker’sell said as he helped Palagren fly. He appeared to have shaken off whatever was alarming him; like Palagren, he was calm as ice now. What shall we tell him?

That we’re onto something important and we need to see it through, Palagren said. With your permission, Legroeder—?

Legroeder struggled. Palagren was right; he had to overcome his fear. He finally grunted, Permission granted, and watched with dread as Palagren and Ker’sell steered them toward the waves of light from which the ghosts had emerged. The place that had once been a spider was now boiling and curling over with waves of light, ghosts whirling and diving through the curls. The ship wallowed like an overloaded airplane, dropping toward it. You aren’t intending to go through! Legroeder whispered. I’m supposed to be in control; I’m supposed to be in control…

This is amazing! said Palagren. I see glimpses forward and backward, as if time has flowered into beautiful petals. And Legroeder! I see the entities emerging. Some of them are from you and Freem’n—but some are not. Some are from down below, from the underflux! Legroeder, these voices came through that opening. We must go!

All right, Legroeder managed, praying he was not condemning them to Impris ’s fate. Take us down! And to his implants: (Map everything!)

Palagren banked the ship into a dive.

The waves grew, until the curling crests turned into coiling tunnels of darkness, lit by the glow of flying spirits. Legroeder held his breath, as the ship flew into one of the cresting wave tunnels, along with half a dozen of the faces.

Deutsch cried out in terror.

Legroeder, suppressing his own fear, felt a surge of unreasoning hope. It’s all right, he gasped, as the starship plunged through the spectral glow after the whirling ghosts.

The passage seemed to take a long time, and no time at all. The tunnel blossomed open to reveal bright, golden-orange clouds: the clouds of the underflux, he felt certain. He didn’t know why, but his fears had begun to melt away.

What is this? Palagren cried.

Legroeder blinked, then saw what Palagren meant—a great, clear orb floating toward them. The ghostly faces were gathering near the orb, their voices fading to a monotonous buzz. One after another, like bees, they plunged into the orb and vanished.

Legroeder’s heart was still thundering in his chest, but he forced himself to focus as the ship drifted toward the shimmering sphere. He realized now what it was.

It was a giant raindrop.

And through the raindrop, magnified and distorted as though through an ethereal telescope, he saw something that took his breath away.

A starship, long and silver.

Impris .

For a moment, no one stirred. They all saw it, through the raindrop: the spaceship, like an insect caught in amber. Legroeder’s pulse raced. He shifted his vantage point from one side of the net to the other, trying to get a clear view of the length of the starship. I guess the only way to reach it is to go through, he murmured, as much to himself as to the others.

The Narseil peered through the raindrop with expressions of wonderment. But at the keel position, Deutsch was quaking in terror. You can’t! It’s a graveyard ship! Let it rest in peace!