Floating Worlds

“Look at this,” Saba said. “Have you ever seen anything like this? This wire in here must be some kind of recorder.”

“We have to get it off the ship.”

“We have to get the ship away from here.”

Tanuojin wrapped the wire around his hands and tried to break it. “Do you think it’s talking to those hammerheads?” He yanked the wire so hard the plastic hummed.

“She said—” Saba looked up over his head at her. “You said there was a transmitter.”

She scrambled down toward him and took hold of the cube on the end of the wire. “This.”

He turned the cube over in his claws. His head rose, and his body drifted up past her, following. “What about our supplies?” he said to Tanuojin.

“The package is ready, it’s on the lighter, the lighter is on the far side of the Planet.”

“Shit.”

“We need the package. We’re red-lined on oxygen and water.” Tanuojin glanced at her. His mustaches curved back over his shoulders. “The lighter isn’t due in this sector for six hours.”

Saba rubbed his jaw. He was studying the little transmitter. “Call them and see it we can pick it up.”

“I did. They’ll put the package on a towsled, we can pick it up any time.”

“Good. I’ll take Ybicsa. You stay here and keep Gordon busy and those ships away from us.” Saba took the other man by the arm. They turned together in a circle, orbiting each other. “Convert him.”

Tanuojin produced a nasty thin fish-smile. “If you say so. What about her?”

Saba went to the hatch. “Leave her alone.” He cranked the wheel over. Paula struggled after him. She banged into the wall and rolled helplessly over. When she dragged herself out the hatch to the corridor, he was disappearing around the bend.

“Saba, wait.”

He turned back toward her, his arms spread out, sculling. She pushed herself along the wall to him.

“Where are you going?”

He towed her by the arm around the curve. “I’m taking the sidecraft to pick up our supplies. What’s the matter—are you afraid of him? Think you’re a little out of your range?” They went out to the corridor of the black and white arrows and down it a few yards to another tunnel. This was banded in blue stripes. He pushed her ahead of him down to a closed hatchway and banged on it with his fist, holding himself still against the wall with his free hand. “Ketac!”

Inside the hatch, a voice called, “Not here.”

“Go find him, send him to the docking chamber.” The Akellar shoved her ahead of him back to the arrow tunnel and they went down along the black arrow. She fisted her hand in his sleeve.

“I didn’t know about that—the sensors.”

“I believe you.” He wheeled around her, stopping them both, and reached up over his head to a hatch. “You see this light?” He tapped a bulb in the oblong rim of the port. “When that flashes, this hatch has to be sealed, or the dark will come in faster than we can stop it.” His free hand was flexed in the soft wall by his head. He pulled the hatch down.

She rose into a long chamber. A small needle-nosed spaceship filled it from wall to wall, anchored by struts in a wheel around its waist. She went along its pale metal side. On the nose cone was a three-pointed star and four rows of Styth lettering. She put her hand on the cold hull. Saba was folding back the accordion door of a locker in the wall. The space within was hung with limp black headless bodies. She went up to him.

“Are you going alone?”

“Ketac is coming with me.” He took a suit out of the rack. She picked up the sleeve in her hand. The fabric was slightly greasy. Five yellow stripes decorated the forearm of the sleeve. The suit opened down the front. He doubled up to put his feet into the legs. The hatch banged open. Ketac came in, his hair streaming behind him.

“Put your suit on,” Saba told him. “We’re taking Ybicsa over to the dark side of this rock, and we might run into the Lunar Army on the way.”

“Yes, sir.” Ketac gave off a burst of hot copper. She watched him reach into the rack of suits. Saba was poking his arms into the sleeves of the suit.

“We’ll launch hard, run toward the Earth to pick up some speed, and swing back on the polar axial. All right?”

“Yes, sir.”

Paula turned toward the hatch. Her face was cold.

“Do you remember how to get back to my trap?” he asked her.

“Yes.”

“Stay there. If Tanuojin gives you an order, do it.”

“Why?”

“Because I told you to.” Foreshortened below her, he looked all head and shoulders. He thrust a pair of gloves under a strap on his sleeve. She went out the hatch. When she shut it, the bulb on the rim began to flash red. She turned the wheel as far as it would go. The corridor was warmer and darker than the chamber she had just left. She wandered along, kicking and flapping her arms around and crashing into the wall. Somewhere behind her a bodyless voice said, “Kobboz, to the bridge.” A round hatch popped open and a Styth in overalls dove out. He rolled over.

“Mendoz’.” It was Sril. He came up to her, smiling wide. In the Common Speech, he said, “Now you come to our world.”

“I speak Styth.” She looked into the room he had just left. “What’s this?”

“The galley. Are you hungry? I’ll show you.” He took her by the arm and pushed her into the narrow little room. The walls were covered with ring-pulls and levers. There was just enough room for the two of them, side by side. He flipped down a lever in front of her nose and the slot below it tongued out a clear packet with a big red tablet inside.

“Not like your food,” he said. “They say I should have gone to the Earth instead of Mars, the food was even better.” He pulled down another lever and a tube of water came out of the wall. She put the red tablet into her mouth. It tasted like raw starch. He ripped the top off the tube of water for her, solicitous. “Do you like Ybix?”

“I haven’t seen very much. Is there much to see?” The water tasted gluey. Tanuojin had said they were low on water. “Maybe I shouldn’t drink it all.”

“There’s no way to put it back. You speak good Styth. I thought you probably did, back on Mars, you always knew what I was talking about. I—”

A voice came out of the wall over their heads. “Sril, to the bridge.”

“Later.” He touched her arm and went out. She drank the rest of the water. He had been friendly, and she liked him; she began to feel better. The rings in the wall pulled out flat drawers of knives and tools. She went out to the corridor again. Two men passed her, giving her curious sideways looks. Each of the hatches she passed was marked with a symbol in red. The living space was fitted into the crevices between the giant crystal systems that ran the ship, and every few feet the corridor twisted like a rabbit hole. Like a Mylar wormhole. She was learning to move, but she still could not stop very well, and she ran into a man coming the other way along the tunnel.

He lunged at her. She did not know him; she dodged out of his way, but he got her by the sleeve and towed her into a branch corridor. She looked around for a way to escape. He spun a wheel over and stuffed her in through a hatch.

She tumbled into a huge hollow ball. The bridge. The curved wall was solid with the glass faces of instruments and decks strung with wires. Sril caught her by the arm. He was sitting on a strut sticking out from the wall. When he turned, his stool revolved with him.

“Akellar, here she is.”

Upside down over her head, Tanuojin sat in a cage footed against the wall. He dove out of it. “Come here.” His hand closed on her wrist.

Over a loudspeaker, General Gordon’s voice said, “Ybix, your time is running out.”