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  “If it’s a choice between dying.”

  “They might be able to find us, if they were looking for us, but I doubt we could find them.”

  “We could broadcast an SOS on regular electromagnetic frequencies.”

  “They would have to be close, real close, to pick it up in the reasonable future.”

  “I think we should try it,” Eric said.

  “I’d have to discuss it with Strem first.”

  “I think he’ll go for it when he starts to get hungry.” Eric turned his back to the nova and leaned against the window. “What went wrong, Sammy?”

  “First, Strem’s uncle did not replace the seal on the Preeze Cap like he said he did. Then the energy that allowed us to pierce the web distorted out hyper plot. We were lucky we didn’t come out of the jump inside the nova.”

  “I guess we should be thankful for small favours.”

  Sammy looked unhappy. “I told Strem to let you in on the scheme. He was afraid you wouldn’t come, that you would miss all the fun.” He glanced at the drive temperature indicator. “But the way things have turned out, I guess that wouldn’t have been such a bad thing.”

  Eric smiled and lied. “Knowing what I do now, I probably still would have come.”

  They enjoyed the nova a while longer and then Eric left to work on the filter. He was in for a surprise. Once he outlined the simple design to the others – the linings of the opant jackets were to be sewn together in groups of four and suspended by interlaced cords, hammock fashion, above one of the ships bathtubs – they no longer needed him. The girls could handle the stitching and Strem told Eric that since there was only one pail for hauling the dirty coolant to the bathroom, he would just get in his way. Eric could see it was important for the three of them to stay busy and didn’t protest. Besides, he was hungry.

  He left the haphazard operation, went to the gallery, and ate more than any marooned passenger had a right to. The heavy meal made him drowsy, and when Sammy refused to be relieved from the helm, he once again found himself in his own room, staring at the ceiling. He did not remember closing his eyes and dozing off.

  Someone was shaking him. He sat up and opened his eyes, taking a startled breath. Bare-chested, Sammy was sitting on his bed, the others standing at his back with the strangest looks on their faces. Where he was came back in an instant.

  “How long have I been out?”

  “Two hours,” Strem said.

  “You let me sleep two hours?” Everyone kept staring at him. “What is it?”

  “We have some bad news and some bizarre news,” Strem said.

  “We have filtered five gallons of the coolant,” Sammy said. “Something must be dissolved in it.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “It still stinks,” Sammy said. “But we haven’t given up on it.” He paused, cleared his throat. “We’re picking up transmissions on several electromagnetic frequencies, light-speed. Their source is nearby.”

  “So The Patrol is out here after all,” Eric muttered.

  Sammy shook his head. “These transmissions don’t belong to us, to any of us.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They’re not of human origin,” Sammy said.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  They were gathered on the bridge. Eric had not pinched himself but he had drunk a cup of coffee and knew he was not dreaming. Yet the enchanting light of the nova and its prismatic halos – further away for the last two hours of travel, but still overwhelming – had the control room aglow with such etheric hues that it was easy to believe his mind was still wandering in a fantasy universe created by his unconscious. Sammy was explaining, matter-of-factly, how he had made the greatest discovery in human history.

  “I was scanning for a flux of graviton drive, searching for a Patrol cruiser, when I came across a powerful stream of high-velocity ions. At first, I thought it was some type of natural phenomenon triggered by the nova, perhaps a comet’s reaction to the high radiation. Then I got this strange feeling. I’d seen this type of stream before.”

  “Didn’t primitive spacecraft used to be propelled by accelerated particles?” Eric asked.

  Sammy nodded. “It was one of the methods used before the discovery of the graviton drive. That’s why I recognized it. I’d seen it on history videos. But never on a scale such as this. I still didn’t think the phenomenon could be artificial until I focused Excalibur’s main dish on it. Then I started to pick this.”

  Sammy activated the holographic cube in the center of the bridge. The image was cracked with static but was nevertheless sufficiently clear to steal Eric’s breath away. It was a man and it wasn’t a man. His features were femininely soft, his skin smooth and golden, partially hidden beneath a bush of curly white hair. None of these qualities would have gotten him stopped on the street back on Earth. But his perfectly round white-less eyes, dark green centers set in light green sockets, would have made him a standout at one of Cleo’s punk parties.

  The man was slightly built, clothed in a loose blue tunic that fastened at the neck with a silver clasp. His incomprehensible words were soft and musical, especially in comparison to the flat tones of English, the only language spoken on Earth. Eric took an immediate liking to him.

  “Could the interference be causing a color distortion?” he asked.

  “This is his actual appearance,” Sammy said confidently.

  Cleo squealed with delight. “He’s a doll! What’s his name?”

  “She’ll want his phone number next,” Strem remarked. “He’s an alien, Cleo. How do you know he doesn’t drink blood for lunch?”

  Jeanie laughed. “I think Strem’s jealous.”

  “What are we watching?” Eric asked. He had swallowed piercing the web, getting fried by a nova, and even his possible death. But aliens were going to take some time, maybe the rest of his life. On the other hand, after all they’d gone through, the discovery seemed somehow appropriate.

  He decided he was in mild shock.

  “Television,” Sammy said. “I think it’s the news. They’re broadcasting over a hundred channels. I can switch––”

  “Wait!” Eric said.

  The man disappeared, being replaced by a brown crescent world, flecked with metallic dots, floating in space beside a huge sun. The planet rotated noticeably as they watched, the patterns of what must have been dust storms shifting constantly, and Eric realized they were seeing time-lapse photography, taken from a point in high orbit above the world. Then the sun began to swell and a hard lump tightened his throat. He told himself that it was ridiculous, that he didn’t even know these people, that they weren’t even really people, but it didn’t help. A raging geyser of fusion-fueled whips slapped the brown surface and set it aglow in red rivers of hell. The planet’s atmosphere elongated and stretched, as if it were at the mercy of a mad god’s fanning, before being blown into space.

  The view suddenly changed. They were now inside a dying city, probably underground, hoping from point to point along lengthy silver corridors, toppling into ruin, beside green courtyards blackening and smoking. And everywhere there were people, running without a chance of escape, and falling into kicking balls of fire…

  “Turn it off!” Jeanie cried.

  Sammy did so. The holograph went blank. Eric wished he could empty his mind as easily. His half-digested meal turned in his stomach. He looked at the nova and now saw the sharp edge of its beauty. It was a killer.

  Eric had read in history tapes about natural calamities that had taken hundreds of thousands of lives: the outbreaks of the plagues in Europe in the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries; the typhoons that had hit Bangladesh in the late twentieth century; the massive meteor that had vaporized the Titan community a hundred years ago. But the destruction of an entire civilization went beyond a tragedy. Eric was not given to religious references, but it seemed to him like some kind of galactic sin. And he couldn’t help feeling guilty about it, though he did not know why.

 
; “All those people are dead?” Cleo asked, stunned.

  “All those on the planet must have died a few days ago,” Strem said. “But from where are we receiving these transmissions?”

  “Some must have escaped,” Eric whispered.

  Sammy nodded. “Yes. The stream of ions is the exhaust of a huge fleet heading away from the nova. Look at this.”

  The cube was suddenly jammed with a black circular plate of space pinpointed with countless minute craft trailing fine purple flares. Scale was impossible to judge. The ships appeared dangerously close together. Sammy addressed his unspoken concerns.

  “Each of those ships is half a mile in diameter, separated from each other by a minimum of ten miles. What appears to be the flagship at the center – it is actually at the tip of a cone-shaped formation pointed at a neighboring star – is almost two miles in diameter. There are three hundred and eighty-two ships in the fleet.”

  “How far out are they?” Eric asked, his heartbeat in high gear.

  “Approximately twice our distance from the nova. About five billion miles into deep space.”

  Eric frowned. “That can’t be. They’re using a primitive drive... What’s their speed?”

  “You’re really asking how long they’ve been under way,” Sammy said. “Based on their present velocity and rate of acceleration, assuming the Earth-size planet was their home world, which was undoubtedly the case – five years.”

  “Boy, they must be bored by now,” Strem said, “cooped up for all that time.”

  Eric was impressed. Sammy’s earlier comment about the surface of the world being incapable of supporting life for the last century had not been contradicted. Apparently these people had gone underground, and into orbit, where they hadn’t simply cowered until the end. Probably using their world as a shield, staying in the planetary shadow, and ferrying materials into orbit from beneath the barren crust, they had constructed a flotilla larger than The Patrol’s. A pity that it had only a fraction of The Patrol’s speed. Yet that is what amazed Eric, that they should have the guts to challenge interstellar space at a snail’s pace.

  “How far away is the nearest star?” he asked.

  “For them,” Sammy said, “centuries.”

  “And you say you haven’t spotted any Patrol cruisers in the area?” he asked.

  “None,” Sammy replied.

  “And the cooler’s still contaminated?”

  “Yes.”

  Eric studied the ships. With all those blazing rockets, the aliens would have some coolant somewhere onboard. “This is a rear view. Are we behind the fleet?”

  “Roughly,” Sammy said.

  Eric glanced at Strem, who held his eyes a long time before big smiles filled both their faces. “Can we change direction and intercept them?” Eric asked Sammy.

  “We can alter our course toward them. For that, the drive would only have to be on for a moment. But to intercept them, we would have to kill almost our entire velocity. We’d heat up quick. We could explode.”

  “What are our chances of that happening?” Jeanie asked.

  “Excellent,” Sammy said.

  “We’ve got to try it,” Strem said. “We don’t have any other choice.”

  “You said we had plenty of options,” Jeanie said.

  “I’m the captain,” Strem replied. “I have to say things like that.” He rubbed his palms together hungrily. “I knew something would turn up.”

  “Granted that we don’t blow up decelerating,” Eric said, “can we realistically board one of their ships, find coolant, and get back out without being spotted? We look different, we talk different, and we probably smell different.”

  “I’ve got wigs in my case!” Cleo exclaimed. “I can dye them white and style them any way we want. And I’ve got my stage makeup. It would be a cinch to paint ourselves gold.”

  “What about our eyes?” Eric asked.

  “We could wear sunglasses,” Strem said.

  “We’re talking about sneaking aboard an alien vessel,” Eric said, “not going to the beach.”

  Cleo jumped to her feet. “Don’t you guys remember any of my band’s last show?” she cried impatiently. “We wore full-eye red contact lenses! They made us look like demons. I’ve got them with me. I can stain them green!”

  “In a crisis such as this,” Strem said, “it’s always nice to have an extraterrestrial makeup artist handy.”

  “As far as their language is concerned,” Sammy said, “we have a couple of points in our favor. Before I told you guys about the transmissions, I flipped through a few of their channels and I noticed several languages being spoken. The planet must have still been divided into countries when the nova started up. If we entered a ship, it might not be that unusual that we could not speak the local dialect. Also, I can set Excalibur’s computers to decipher the languages. Whoever goes aboard could have a micro-translator implanted in one ear. Whatever was said would be immediately changed into English. This implant could also double as a communicator tied back to Excalibur. I’m right, Strem, in assuming your uncle has translators aboard?”

  Strem nodded. “With all the different types of people in The Union with whom a trader has to do business, a trader can’t get by without them. So many worlds have developed their own slang.”

  Eric was beginning to feel a mildly intoxicating combination of unreality and excitement. They were going to try it – the graviton drive permitting; they couldn’t just glide forever into nothing. “There is an alternative we’re not considering,” he said slowly.

  “Yeah,” Jeanie said. “Why don’t we just ask them for some coolant?”

  Strem and Cleo laughed. Sammy looked worried. Eric was surprised that it was Sammy who initiated the argument against the idea.

  “We can’t do that,” he said seriously. “They would want to know who we were, where we came from, how we got here, and how Excalibur works. Their propulsion systems are clearly far behind our own. We don’t have that authority or the right to tamper with an alien culture.”

  “Damn right,” Strem said. “Sorry, Jeanie, but if they got hold of the graviton and hyper drives, they could make trouble for The Union.”

  “They could even shoot at us and damage us and take Excalibur,” Cleo put in.

  “Why are you all assuming they’re hostile?” Jeanie asked, irritated. “They’re such good-looking people.”

  “They’re also desperate people,” Strem snorted. “Imagine, trying to get to the stars in those clunkers.”

  Clearly Strem had a different appreciation of the aliens’ efforts, Eris thought. He held his tongue. He didn’t know these beings, other than their beautiful voices. He didn’t want to take the responsibility of handing over advance technology. Besides, if he pushed the issue, the others, except for Jeanie, would just vote him down. There was no reason to take up a losing cause. At least, not right now, anyway.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The hours of anticipation had passed. The plan was to approach across the charged wake created by the hundreds of ion drives. The turbulence would play havoc with their own failing power, but Sammy felt it offered the best cover from watchful eyes. They also hoped their speed, slow next to a Patrol cruiser but stupendous compared to the fleet, would catch the aliens unaware. It was their intention to sneak in beside a ship along the perimeter of the formation and look for an air lock that wasn’t locked.

  They’d been watching a lot of television. The Kaulikans – as they referred to themselves – were still an enigma, but Eric had not expected to absorb the soul of an alien culture in a few hours. More and more, he was afraid that if they did get aboard a ship, they’d be spotted by the first person they said hello to (which was, by the way, boo in the Kaulikans’ predominant language). Outside work situations the Kaulikans used a multitude of hand gestures to communicate, many quick and intricate; these were not something that could be mastered in a crash course. Thank heavens the aliens had a standard issue of five fingers.

 
Flipping through the channels, several other social characteristics had struck Eric. The Kaulikans were great lovers of romantic operas – they were all exquisite sopranos – specifically, a type where the people in the audience danced while the performers on stage sang. They also appeared a nonviolent race; he hadn’t found a program where one Kaulikan had hit another Kaulikan. Of course, Strem said, it was probably a social taboo to get mad, but they being Earth people and alien to this culture would still have to stay on their guard.

  The aliens smiled when they were happy, nodded when they meant yes and shook their heads when they meant no. Although the coincidence raised interesting philosophical implications on the nature of intelligent life everywhere in the universe, they didn’t dwell on them.

  Eric and Strem were to be the only ones to enter the ship. Cleo threw a fit at being counted out, but Eric suspected it was more of an act; Sammy was able to pacify her easily. Jeanie wanted no part of the adventure, and it was decided by vote that Sammy was too valuable, with his technical knowledge, to risk. Sammy took the decision quietly, though his disappointment was obvious. The main reason the exploration belonged to Eric and Strem, though, was because they were physically the strongest; they were hoping to come away with twenty gallons of coolant each, and the stuff was heavy. At least along the outer rims of the alien vessels.

  The Kaulikans generated their gravity the old-fashioned way – they rotated. On the route in, the two of them were going to carry inflatable containers under their jackets. The return trip, with the bulbous bottles on their backs, was planned to be quick and smooth, and without too many questions.

  On the other hand, the question of who was best qualified was meaningless. Eric and Strem were going because they wanted to go, and no one was going to stop them.

  The fleet was getting closer, visible out the forward window as a nebulous cloud, approximately twenty million miles distant. Eric studied the holographic image, magnified and adjusted for the Doppler effect, instead of relying upon his naked eye. The craft were all of essentially the same design: three massive silver wheels spaced equally along a gray central shaft that ended in the rear in a huddle of four black domes. On the surface, these domes appeared to generate the purple fountains of charged particles that drove the Kaulikans toward the stars. The flagship at the tip of the fleet was an exception; it had nine wheels and was entirely blue.