The Wizard of Karres

the business with a explosive bolt of raw energy that simply vaporized the now empty upper stories of the tower. That would do as a parting present for the safety of ancient Nartheby, if not Arvin's reputation—since he'd be the one blamed for the destruction in the historical records.

Now take us all back to our ship, and then take the ship where I tell you. Pausert had already decided that if he caught the vatch, he'd have it take them to within a few hours of the Imperial Capital. To Great Patham's Seventh Hell with all this mucking about in Egger Space!

The grayness whirled and surged. Even by the vatch standards of non-distance this place was far off. And dark . . . and then tumbling. Finally, they were back in the Venture.

But not the Venture in the stillness of the void: the Venture on the expanding wild edge of matter. The Venture was being violently flung and rolled as a great tumbling tidal wave of energy and existence picked her up. The ship was on the verge of breaking up, torn between two states and sometimes existing in both. Her engines roared at full throttle, and then cut out and then roared again. Gravity surged in waves that almost made the captain black out as he reached for the drive controls. The engines cut again . . . then free lightnings danced through the ship. Sparks zipped and sizzled. The Venture vibrated like some giant jaw's-harp.

Nothing could survive the front-wave of singularity for long. Even the vatch was being battered and torn, and so were the cables of pure force and the klatha hooks.

Suddenly, they were out of there.

The control panels were alive with flashing lights and the air in the control room was thick with smoke and the sound of damage alarms.

Pausert fought with the controls, realizing as he did so that his grip on the vatch was literally being torn away. The vatch was so desperate to leave that it was willing to part with large pieces of itself in order to do so.

One of the control panels was actually on fire. Pausert just let the vatch go, and focused all his attention on the damaged Venture. Vezzarn had managed to get out of his acceleration couch and grab a fire extinguisher and spray the burning control panel. But the power systems were running on emergency auxiliary now. The lights dimmed and flickered. The Venture's main drive engines stuttered and hiccupped . . . and were still. Unfortunately, one auxiliary lateral rocket still fired—even though the automatic controls had it shut down—and it spun the Venture in a clumsy spiral. The lights cut completely as the captain managed to shut the lateral down with one of the manual override switches.

There was an eerie silence. A spaceship is never completely silent. There is always some machinery running. There is always some vibration, even at the subliminal level. Spacers became inured to the roar of the main drive to the point where they just didn't notice it. But when everything is still, the ship is dying or dead.

The Venture drifted like a derelict hulk. Inertia kept her on the slow spiral that the misfiring lateral had caused. Then the standby batteries cut in, lighting only the emergency glows and the instrument readouts. The air was thick with smoke, burning the captain's eyes—though not as much as the readouts from the instrument panel did.

Pausert knew sadness and despair. His ship was in no state to go anywhere. The old Venture would be lucky if it ever made another planetfall.

But he didn't let any of that show in his voice. 'Vezzarn, better check the engine room. Give me a damage assessment as soon as possible. Goth, check the air recycler. Hantis, you and the Leewit start collecting suits, and get yourselves suited up. Then report back here.' The captain was already examining the control panels. 'A navigation readout would be good, too, if we've got anything still operating that will pick up beacons.'

The captain himself had already taken the small atomic powered lamp from the worktable, and started undogging the access hatches to the control panel's electronics boards. The circuitry there was mostly solid-state, but there were various plug-in spares he could try.

'Ow.' He burned his hand and sucked his fingers while trying to work out what was going on. The smoke didn't help. He waved it away and continued to examine the boards. He moved one and was rewarded with a shower of sparks. At least there was still power, even if Patham himself didn't know what was shorting out what.

He took a deep breath, coughed, and let klatha guide his hands. He pulled out one of the units. Part of it was melted and Pausert dropped it hastily with a word he hoped the Leewit wasn't near enough to hear. He plugged the replacement unit from the spares compartment into the panel. Luckily it was a J-83 and that was one of the modules the Venture carried in case of emergencies. He was rewarded by a buzzing sound and a red-flickering in the darkened control room. Hastily pulling his head out of the control panel, the captain was relieved to see that the flickering was caused by a bank of telltales, flashing red. The buzzing was stilled by flicking a switch or two, and the telltales at least told him where to start looking. There was life in the boards, and that in itself was reassuring. What wasn't, was the sheer number of faults being registered.

There was a sudden comforting hum, a vibration of machinery somewhere in the deepspace-silence of the Venture. The intercom crackled to life. 'Captain, I've got the number two auxiliary running on manual. We can draw power for the air recycler off that, and some lights.'

'Well done, Vezzarn. What's the status of the rest of the engine room?'

'Not good, Captain.' There was a pause. 'We had a burnback. We've lost part of the aft tubes. The main drive . . . I don't know yet, Captain.'

It was not what Pausert needed to hear. He studied the telltales, deciding what to do next.

Goth came in. 'Got power to the air recycler again. They're working just fine, Captain. We'll at least have this smoke dealt with pretty soon.' She went straight to the communicator and dialed the space beacon frequencies.

'Doesn't seem to be any life in the communicator system,' she said.

'Hang on. You should have power now.' Pausert pushed the module onto its pins and crossed his fingers. There were stars out there. The familiar river of light that was the Milky Way said that they were at least back in the right galaxy—but exactly where and when they were was another matter.

'The dials have lit up,' announced Goth. 'Still not getting anything, though.'

'Try the general and Imperial ship-to-ship channels.' The captain wrestled with a hot board that seemed to have soldered itself in place.

There was a vague crackly noise from the communicator. 'Might almost have been someone saying something,' said Goth.

The captain, more familiar with communicator problems, felt some relief. He'd definitely picked up a word there, in Universum. They were back in a familiar part of the galaxy, in human-occupied space. 'I think we might also have lost our external aerials. It's a quick job to replace them.'

'Uh-huh,' said Goth. 'Well, seeing as the Leewit's brought me a suit, I'll suit-up and see to it. You're busy and it's just plug-in, plug-out stuff.' Since Goth had moved herself into the Venture, she'd taken on responsibility as naturally as a miffel grew winter fur to deal with the cold. The girl was a fair way to becoming a competent ship-handler, and her skill with navigation sometimes left the captain feeling embarrassed about his own ability.

'Anything else we can do, Captain?' asked the Leewit.

'A general check. Keep out of the engine room, but do a damage assessment of the rest.'

* * *

The captain went back to his work. Some of the boards could be bypassed. Some could be replaced. It was a painstaking process that required him sticking his head under the console, and then getting out again, to check the readouts and displays.

' . . . proach on standard incoming lane three,' squawked the communicator.

Goth must have replaced the aerials. And they had communications and they couldn't be too far from a planet or refuel space-station, with space traffic. That was a weight off his mind.

'Well, we've broken some furniture, and the electric butler's not working,' said the Leewit. 'Can't see any big damage so far though, Captain. And it's not so smoky any more.'

Trust the Leewit to check out the electric butler first! That was the least of the captain's worries right now. The electric butler had always been a bit cranky and inclined to deliver ice cream when you asked for steak, and