The Naked God — Faith

passed.

Dariat was frowning, watching the trio. What are they doing?he asked the personality.

They’re going to install the generator back in the Hainan Thunder.

Why?

I’d thought that was obvious. Thirty of them are going to fly it the hell away from here.

Which thirty?he asked angrily.

Does it matter?

To the others it will. And me.

Survival of the fittest. You shouldn’t complain, you’ve had a damn good run.

What’s the point? The starships are damn near wrecks. And even if they do get a drive tube running, where are they going to go?

As far as they can. The Hainan Thunder ’s hull is still intact, it’s only the protective foam which is peeling off.

So far. Entropy will eat through it. The whole ship will rot away around them. You know that.

We also know it has functional patterning nodes. Maybe the pattern can be formatted to get a signal out to the Confederation. Some kind of energy burst that can punch through.

Holy Anstid, is that what we’re reduced to?

Yes. Happy now?

“They need the generator over in the armoury,” Dariat said. “Their power supply packed in.” He couldn’t look the street poet in the eyes.

Tolton grunted indifferently, and pulled the sleeping bag round his shoulders. When he breathed out, he could see his breath as a white mist. “Damn, you were right about the cold.”

Can Tolton go with them?dariat asked.

We’re sorry.

Come on, you are me. Part of you, anyway. You owe me that much out of sentiment. And he was the one who got our relatives out of zero-tau.

Do you imagine he will want to go? There are thousands of children cowering in the caverns. Would he walk past them to the airlock without offering to exchange places?

Oh shit!

If there is to be a token civilian on board, it won’t be him.

All right, all right. You win. Happy now?

Lady Chi-Ri wouldn’t approve of bitterness.

Dariat scowled, but didn’t answer. He went into the neural strata’s administrative thought routines to examine the ships which were still docked at the spaceport. Most of the spaceport’s net had failed, leaving only seven visual sensors operational. He used them to scan round, locating four starships and seven inter-orbit vessels. Of all of them, Hainan Thunder was the most flightworthy.

Wait now,the personality said.

The sheer surprise in the thought was so unusual that all the affinity-capable stopped what they were doing to find out what had happened. They shared the image collected by the few external sensitive cells that were still alive.

Valisk had reached the end of the nebula and was slowly sliding out. Its boundary was as clearly defined as an atmospheric cloud bank. A plane of slow-shifting grainy swirls stretching away in every direction as far as the sensitive cells could discern. Slivers of pale light trickled among the dull gibbous braids, an infestation of torpid static.

There was a gap of perfectly clear space extending for about a hundred kilometres from the end of the nebula.

What is that?a badly subdued personality asked.

Another flat plane surface ended the gap, running parallel to the nebula, and extending just as far. This one was hoary-grey and looked very solid.

Visual interpretation subroutines concentrated on the sight. The entire surface appeared to be moving, seething with tiny persistent undulations.

The melange,dariat said. dread made his counterfeit body tremble as memory fragments from the creature in the lift shaft surfaced to torment him. This is where everything finishes in this realm.