Jeffrey Carver - Eternity's End

Legroeder suppressed a shiver as his own memories surfaced. “Suppose,” he said, following a sudden hunch, “that you had to confront this thing—whatever it is. To get your ship out. Could you do that? Could you face it?”

Jamal shook his head. “I just want to get away from it, man.”

“But suppose it’s what’s keeping you here.” Legroeder’s voice became husky. “Suppose, to find your way past it, you had to make it real. In the net. Could you?”

Beads of sweat were forming on Jamal’s forehead.

Legroeder felt a sudden wave of dizziness, and leaned heavily on his elbows for support. (What’s happening?)

// We have contact with the ship. //

“Thank God!” he gasped.

“For what? ” said Poppy, who had been sitting tightlipped since giving a terse description of his dreams.

“Our ship is back,” Legroeder said. He held up a hand. (Put me through.)

// We have a voice channel—//

“ Phoenix ,” Legroeder snapped. “Can you hear me?”

“Legroeder?” called Cantha. “Are you there? For a few minutes, it looked like you flickered out. Not you —the whole ship.”

“Tell me about it. Look, Cantha—we have a crew here that’s ready to do whatever’s necessary to get out.” Right? he asked with his eyes, of the Impris riggers. Jamal scowled, while Poppy looked as if he had been drained of emotion. After a moment, Jamal nodded reluctantly; then Poppy. Good. “I think I should probably get back over to Phoenix to plan with you and Palagren,” Legroeder said to Cantha.

Jamal sneered at that. “What, you’re going to cut and run now? And leave us here?”

“I’m doing nothing of the kind,” Legroeder said, with annoyance. “But we’ve got a lot of planning to do.” He turned in his seat. “Freem’n, what do you think?”

Deutsch raised his chin. “Okay—but how about I stay and work with these guys. That okay with you?” He surveyed Friedman and the two Impris riggers, who looked frightened at the prospect. “Flying out of here is going be a real bitch, you know. Anyone else think formation flying, through instabilities and quantum fluctuations, might be hard?”

Poppy squinted hard at him. “You’ve got those—” He jerked his chin at Deutsch.

“Augments? Yes. I do.” Deutsch raised a hand to stop Poppy’s protest. “Look—if you guys want your ship to fly out with us, then we have to link the two nets together. I only know one way to do that. That’s for Legroeder and me to link ship-to-ship through our augments.” Ignoring their reluctance, he turned back to Legroeder. “Yes, I think that’s probably the way to do it.”

Legroeder nodded, lips tight. This was bound to be unnerving to the Impris riggers. It was unnerving to him, too. “If it’s okay with everyone, I’ll inform Captain Glenswarg and head back over.” He rose. “Could someone show me the way out?”

Stepping into the airlock, Legroeder peered uneasily through the outer hatch window. The connector to Phoenix was still there, still intact. But one of the Impris crewmen on watch was saying in a trembling voice, “A few minutes ago, that whole thing was gone. The ship and everything. I hope you know what you’re doing.”

Legroeder tried not to show the fear that was tying his stomach in knots. What if one of the ships winked out while he was in the connecting tube?

Before he could reconsider, he slapped the hatch control. The inner hatch hissed shut, and the outer hatch hissed open. He stepped out into the tube.

He’d forgotten about the weightlessness. His first step sent him tumbling into flight. With a gasp, he caught a handhold and brought himself up short. Behind him, the hatch slid shut with a thunk . He was alone in the tunnel between the two ships. Where were the Kyber escort crewmen who had brought him over? He tried not to look at the Flux swirling around him, just beyond the transparent wall of the tube.

He pulled himself along quickly, but it was impossible to ignore the Flux; it was a magnet, drawing his gaze outward, to its vapors of blood. He was breathing in short, quick gasps; he could smell his own acrid fear. Jesus. He had to get across before he went crazy, just get across…

*

…but there was a tapping sound that blurred his concentration, and a strange, ringing vibration in the air… it was becoming impossible to think…

*

The tapping was in the walls, all around him. He was in a shipboard compartment; he wasn’t sure for a moment which ship. What’s happening to me? Turning, he realized he was in an engineering section, and it didn’t look like the Kyber ship. He was surrounded by panels of controls, and the hulking shapes of enormous coils that hadn’t changed much in a hundred years, just enough to notice.

He was inside Impris ’s fluxfield reactor, in one of the interstitial spaces… and he wasn’t wearing a shielded suit…

His vision was blurring, knees buckling; he couldn’t last here for long…

In the briefing room, Deutsch felt a sudden dizziness; in the same instant, his inner monitors told him that the connection to Phoenix had been lost again. He wondered where Legroeder was; had he made it back to the Kyber ship?

A com unit was chirping somewhere in the room, a voice rasping something about the other ship having flickered out again, and the connector tube…

Deutsch leaned forward and shouted, “Was Rigger Legroeder in that connector when it went out?”

“Gone, they’re just gone…”

The Flux was pulling at him as he tumbled. He was back in the connecting tube. Legroeder lunged for a handhold and missed, then finally grabbed another. What the hell was happening? Thank God that reactor had been at low power, or he’d have been fried.

He fought his way toward the hatch—then stopped. Wrong way. Damn. Turn around . The Flux tore at his eyes, a living, devouring thing. Had the fluxfield lines caught him, pulled him into a quantum fluctuation? His heart was pounding; he could feel the sweat as he struggled, hand over hand, down the tube toward Phoenix . The coils of the Flux were wrapped around the tube like a cosmic boa constrictor, squeezing. He gave a last mighty shove from a handhold, and crashed into the Phoenix hatch.

It was closed. He grunted, terror crawling up his neck as he groped for the switch.

What if it didn’t open?

What if the ship blinked away again?

He choked back a scream—suddenly realizing he might trigger the unthinkable with his own emotions. He was a rigger… he was a rigger… damn it, think like a rigger …

He pounded on the hatch switch. Open, for God’s sake—open!

The hatch slid open, and he tumbled into the airlock. He slapped clumsily at the inner switch, and the hatch slammed shut. He clung, gasping, to a handhold, hanging by his arms. Finally, as the inner hatch opened, he sank to his knees. Gravity had never felt so good.

His heart was still hammering as he stumbled onto the bridge. Palagren and Cantha were hunched over one of the computers. “That was fast,” Palagren said, looking up—and then his eyes narrowed as he registered the strain on Legroeder’s face. “Are you all right?”

“You look like hell,” said Captain Glenswarg. “Where’s Deutsch?”

Legroeder struggled to catch his breath. “He stayed. He wants to work with the Impris riggers, and try to fly it out with them. With us.”