containment system. But we're not going to be able to drive this ship without knowing exactly what we're doing. And I can't understand these controls.'
'But we've got the navs down, right? It looks like we can set it to exactly where we want to go.'
'Maybe—but without activating the drive, we're not going anywhere. And as you said about the power controls, we can't even find the ON switch.'
I pondered the controls. It was an incredible mess, a wide panel of glowing lights, a rainbow of lights, with plenty of movable tabs. Brilliant airy holo structures of multicolored lights hung in the air over the controls, ever changing, incredibly complex geometrical structures flashing on and off, never the same twice. Tara was right—the last time had been pure luck. But playing dice with Deadman was not recommended—especially on a star run.
'You said the promat is stable, right?' I asked.
'That's right—the unitium-based containment system for the D-neg appears to have stabilized.'
'So—as far as we know, this stardrive could be in working order now.'
'I don't know, Wester. We got here somehow. I guess it means one of the drives was working before— maybe the antimat. Something sure was. And whatever the problem was that we had in the power control room, it appears to have stabilized. Working order? Who knows—it could be.'
Another great green O flickered and shimmered briefly on the bridge, then vanished abruptly. I was getting used to it.
'Too bad he can't help us.'
'I've even tried that. Gildron has already tried to communicate with it. No luck.'
'Well, how about the local drive? Assuming we can identify it.'
'That won't do us any good, if the O's show up in this sector. They'll be on us in a flash. The actual propulsive power for the ship appears to be an antimat drive. The D-neg is used to generate and hold open the wormhole.'
'Yeah—right.' I lapsed into silence. Tara was absolutely right. It was the stardrive or nothing. We were on the wrong side of the galaxy, and we understood nothing about the stardrive.
'Have you ever heard of the C.S. New Worlds?' Tara asked.
'Yes—it's one of those ghost ships, isn't it?'
'That it is, trooper—that it is. It was one of the early explorers, in the first generation of stardrives. A fully- equipped scientific research vessel, with the mission of mapping the galaxy and discovering new worlds. They thought they had the antimat drive perfected. But they were wrong.'
'Is that the one that keeps sending off signals?'
'That's the one. They blundered into another universe—an extension of our own. The signal probes pop back into our universe every few years. But the starship doesn't. They have no idea whether or not their probes are getting through. It's just a fluke, that the probes can make it back but the ship can't. They're all still alive, cruising unholy stars in an alternate universe. We have a very full record of their activities—an invaluable look into that particular universe. And the info in the probes keeps getting stranger and stranger. Several generations have grown up by now in the C.S. New Worlds, people who've never been off the ship. And they'll never return. They can't return, and we can't help. There've been a few reports of a spectral ship glowing like a star, struggling to break free from the hole, then vanishing. I don't believe that, of course. But that's what they say.'
I was quiet. Tara wet her lips with her tongue, then continued. 'There are other ships that disappeared into the hole, plenty of them. Ghost ships—that never came back. We're populating other universes, Wester. Who knows, maybe that's where we all came from. A lost ship marooned in time, circling a virgin world in an alien universe. Gods from the stars, to start a new race.'
'Shut down,' I said. 'Just shut the hell down!' I did not want to hear it. We were in enough trouble already, without worrying about things that hadn't happened yet.
'Gildron won't let us play with the E!' Willard shrieked suddenly.
'You can't play with the E, honey,' Tara said patiently. 'It's dangerous. Why don't you play with the toolpak?'
'We don't WANT to play with the toolpak!'
'It's fun—there's a lot of stuff in there.'
'We SHOULD play with the E! It's OURS!'
'Can't you shut him down?' I asked.
'Shut him down yourself!' Tara snapped. Wonderful—now she was upset with me, just because I'd yelled at her. Perfect! Marooned in the Omega Spiral with a stunningly beautiful girl who suddenly decides she can't stand the sight of me. Good move, Thinker.
'It should play with us.' Willard stood before me, gazing at me gravely.
'Play with Gildron, all right?'
'Gidron is BORING! It won't let us play with the E!'
'I won't let you play with the E either.'
'It SHOULD!'
'Why don't you do something useful?' I asked. 'You don't even know your ABC's, do you?'
'We do.'
'Gildron says you don't. Gildron knows his ABC's.'
'Gidron is STUPID!'
'Widdard doopid,' Gildron growled ominously.
'We are NOT! We know our ABC's! ABCDEFG—SIJK…'
I let it fade, glaring at the controls. We were finished, unless we could fire up this pile of junk and get out of the neighborhood, fast. But there was no way we could understand these controls. It was just lights—a rainbow of lights—every color in the spectrum. I looked over at the adjoining control panels, and the displays on the ceiling, over the plex. The same—every color in the spectrum.
'Tara…'
'Shut down! I'm busy!'
'Say, Tara—have you noticed the colors?'
'I've been staring at them for hours, trooper. What about the colors?'
'Well, they use the same colors—in every control panel.'
'There's only so many colors, Beta Three. If you were a little more alert, you'd have noted that they use all the colors of visible light, and go into the ultra violet and infrared spectrum. I checked. So they're using color- coding. So what? Unless we know what it means, we can't do a thing. And you've got to start by understanding those damned holos.'
'Maybe it's the same for every procedure.'
'What do you mean?'
'Maybe the colors are the procedure. Maybe you start at one end of the spectrum and just go from one color to the next, until the procedure is completed. Maybe it's the same, whether you're ordering breakfast or going into stardrive. Just find the right control panel and touch the right series of colors—which is always the same. Like the alphabet—A,B,C—the same every time. Or 1, 2, 3. Look at the patterns—the colors. There's an arrangement. A gradual deepening of color, from top to bottom.'
'I noticed. I thought it was like a keyboard. Something to control the holos.'
'What if it's an alphabet? Only you always start at 'A' and it never changes? Maybe we can forget the holos. They're always changing. Maybe it's because they're purely decorative.'
Tara stared at the control panel, silent.
'Tara?'
'I said shut down. I'm thinking.'
###
'Will you please stop doing that?' Tara asked. I was looking out the viewport, lost in dark dreams, honing the edge of my cold knife against the cenite sharpener on the scabbard. I stopped. The edge was razor sharp—I could probably split an atom with it. The cold knife was Legion issue, a single slab of black cenite, brutal and functional, completely devoid of soul. This one had been with me since Planet Hell.
'I was just sharpening it,' I said softly. Tara did not respond. She was busy with the tacmod and the controls. She was numbering some of the colored control tabs with a lightpen. I had lost interest in the task. I knew
