Mother Lode

literature that had survived the exodus into space. «Angels,» Erin said. «They make angels on Delos. They wear long robes and they have beautiful, long hair and—» «And wings,» Dent said. «But before you start calling her Gabriel, tell me how, if she's an angel, she got here.» He spread his hands, taking in the small asteroid, the tumbling, crowded belt that arched off into the blackness, the glare of the core stars. «And angels don't die, Erin.» «No. I'm being silly.» «Look, let's leave her here. Let's get to Haven as fast as we can and let the heavy thinkers at X&A figure it out.» «She's so lonely,» Erin said. «Come on, Erin. She might have been lonely once. She's not now.» «We can't just leave her here like this.» Dent sighed. «All right, whatever it takes to get you aboard and moving toward Haven.» There was still considerable weight to be put into motion, to be guided into the air lock, which became very crowded with two live, suited human beings and one very dead whatever it was. Mop took one look at the thing that his buddies pushed carefully out of the air lock and retreated, barking with high-pitched intensity. «Hush,» Erin said. «Minds well,» Denton said, as Mop barked more excitedly than ever. They had decided that there was only one place to carry the skeleton. Her mass—that's the way both of them were thinking, her, not it—had to be secured and the only place with floor space large enough to lay the mummiform slab flat was in the gym. That meant moving her through the bridge where one slip could smash the force of a few hundred pounds of inertial motion into delicate instrument panels. They secured the skeleton's slab with lines so that if it got away from them—they had to cut off the ship's artificial gravity in order to move the weight—the lines would halt the motion before the slab damaged something vital. The job was accomplished with only minor abrasions to Dent's arm, which became caught between the slab and the door frame as they floated the skeleton into the gym. Dent welded eyes to the metal deck and lashed the slab securely. Mop watched the operation with clearly expressed doubt, and from a distance, sitting with his head extended, making his neck look longer. Erin wasted no time in programming the ship's generator to blink them toward the U.P. sector. In quick order, Mother leapt to and past the sac in which swam the Dead Worlds. The last blink was on an established blink route. Mother lay beside a blink beacon, her generator drawing charge from the nearest stars. Her crew were celebrating, having a special meal with wine. The activity of the generator produced a not unpleasant tingle in the air, a deeply buried perception of dynamic energy. Mop wasn't particularly fond of the charging period. It tended to make his hair stand up, and, being a rather hairy, silky little dog, when his hair tried to stand up he looked rather bedraggled. He sat at Erin's feet, politely accepting a taste of people food now and then, but not being demanding about it. Denton had selected soft music to form a warm, bland background. Neither he nor Erin felt especially talkative. Both seemed content to smile as eye contact was made, to touch hands now and then across the little table. Erin selected a nice tidbit and, not taking her eyes off Dent's, held it down for Mop. When her offering was not seized immediately, she turned her head. Mop was seated at the closed door to the gym, his hair standing up oddly, a low growl issuing from his throat. «Hey,» Erin said. «Want a nibble?» Mop ignored her. She had never heard him growl in just that manner. She felt a shiver of dread, for there was definite warning in Mops' stance, in his steady, low growling. She walked to the gym door and opened it. Dent saw her freeze. He sprang to his feet and went to look over her shoulder. The metal deck was littered with rock particles. The encasing shell of matrix material had shattered away from the skeleton, leaving each fossil bone free of encumbrance. The accretion inside the skull cavity had been expelled. The eye sockets were empty, black. And, most unnerving of all, the wing bones that had been folded under the body were spread out on either side in a graceful sweep. «I am not liking this,» Erin said. «What the hell?'Dent asked, moving forward to kneel beside the skeleton. Mop, refusing to enter the gym, sat outside the door, growling steadily. «Let's get out of here,» Erin said, tugging on Demon's arm. «You talked me into it,» he said. She locked the door, went to the console, and activated the communicator. Dent looked over her shoulder as she sent a blinkstat to the beacon beside which the ship rested. It was directed to Captain Julie Roberts of the U.P.S. Rimfire. Over Erin's name, the number of the originating blink beacon, and the route that Mother would be following to Haven it said: «Imperative you come immediately.» To that message Erin added one word, a word that would have meaning only for Julie Roberts and the female officers aboard Rimfire. During the long and boring circumnavigation of the galaxy there'd been lots of time for girl talk, and not even the captain was above such diversions. One dreamy-eyed little ensign had voiced a reverie about finding a race of perfect men on some undiscovered planet on the opposite side of the galaxy, men who would know how to treat a woman, men who were tender and romantic, polite and considerate, and very skilled in the erotic arts. The ensign's dream became a sort of «in» joke among the female officers. They knew, of course, that Rimfire's mission was to lay a blink route around the periphery of the galaxy, but they all agreed that it would be fine with them if Rimfire also found what one wag called F.R.A.N.K., the Faultlessly Romantic Alien Nooky Knocker. Before the end of the trip the acronym F.R. A.N.K. had come to mean any alien, not just a romantic male. And so Erin's message read: «Imperative you come immediately. F.R.A.N.K.» A blinkstat was next to nothing traveling through nothingness instantaneously. The small generators in the blink beacons relayed the message along the way without pause and before Mother's generator was charged the stat had gone to X&A Headquarters on Xanthos to be relayed outward along Rimfire's known route into an unexplored area of the galaxy. «Will she come?» Denton asked, eyebrows raised in amazement. «She'll come,» Erin said. «Secret code?» She laughed. She didn't feel like laughing, for she could remember with more detail than she liked the way the skeleton had shed the matrix rock, the way the wings had been repositioned. She told him the meaning of F.R.A.N.K. «I guess she'll come, then,» he said. «You told her you'd found an alien. The question is, when?» «I doubt seriously if she'll be able to meet us before we get to Haven.» «What would you say,» he asked, «if I suggested that we drop back to DW I and deposit our friend in there on the surface in a safe place?» «Ah,» she said, «she makes you a little uneasy, too.» «A little? Hah.» He grinned. «Of course, we can say that it was an effect of blinking, or the charge in the air that caused all the rock to peel off of her.» «We can say that, I guess.» «I know that she's been dead for only God know how long,» Denton said. «My reason tells me that she's not even organic material anymore, that she's nothing but stone, but I seem to have a low threshold for terror.» «I think Mop would agree with you,» she said. Mop was sitting in front of the gym door, making that eerie, warning sound deep in his throat. «Maybe we'd better go see what she's doing in there now,» Denton said. «You go,» Erin said, only half-joking. Denton went to the door. «What's old Miss Bones doing in there, Mop?» he asked, as he opened the door. Mop yelped and went scrambling backward to hide under the console. Erin felt a thrill of pure fear. Before her eyes, Denton Gale ceased to exist. A red spray lashed at her face stingingly as Dent exploded. She opened her mouth to scream. A red mist clouded the viewport, beaded the glass of instruments, colored every surface on the bridge. Erin's scream did not make it past the original thought impulse before she, too, was annihilated, erupting into molecule-sized particles that dispersed themselves on the metal walls, deck, and ceiling of the bridge and further coated instruments and surfaces. Under the console, protected from the damp spray, a little dog cowered in abject fright. CHAPTER TEN Captain Julie Roberts never wore Rimfire's favorite duty uniform, shorts, overblouse, and hose. She was a private person. No one aboard her ship knew that under her service slacks she had a pair of legs that would stand comparison with those of any young woman in the crew. Her tailored tunic did not, however, completely conceal the fact that she was a well endowed woman. She wore her dark hair at optimum Service length so that it clung to her head in natural, kinky curls. She did not always wear a hat, but no member of the crew had ever seen her when her face was not perfectly done with skillfully applied, understated makeup. The captain did not always keep regular hours, did not pull a definitely timed watch. She just came and went, and the very unpredictability of her schedule kept the crew always on the alert. As it happened, Captain Roberts was asleep and Lieutenant Ursulina Wade was on bridge watch when Erin Kenner's blinkstat caught up with Rimfire. The big ship was motionless in space, waiting for her generator to charge. She had covered the assigned area of search, laid new blink beacons to an area of the galaxy where there were no life zone planets, but where she had charted a few gas giants, a hot planet with an atmosphere of toxic chemicals, and one barren near-sun globe of rock that might offer mining possibilities after the proper exploration. Ursulina, known to her fellow officers as Ursy, had matured since she had dreamed openly of finding the perfect man on an alien planet in the first months of Rimfire's circumnavigation. She had not given up her dream, even if two periods of experimentation with a handsome married officer named Jack Burnish and a young man fresh out of the Academy had proven to be a bit disappointing, but she had learned to keep her fantasies to herself. When she took Erin Kenner's blinkstat off the machine and read it, she flushed, thinking that someone was bringing up an old joke that had lost its humor. But the stat had come through a host of beacons on its way to Rimfire. Ursy remembered Erin Kenner well. She had tried to pattern herself after Erin, for Erin had been an excellent officer. Apparently, since she'd enjoyed two promotions since Erin quit the service, she had succeeded. Now Ursy faced a decision. The «Captain's Status» board indicated that Julie Roberts was sleeping. The captain did not like to be awakened without very good cause. Ursy read the message again. «Imperative» was a pretty strong word, but the «F.R.A.N.K.» was even stronger. She pulled herself up, punched the captain's communicator, and waited. «Speak,» the captain's voice said. «Captain, there is a blinkstat that, in