He discovered the interiors of the ship lit in eerie maroon and powered by some unknown source. On a control deck of fantastic construction, a throbbing mind or some mental force examined him with cold disfavour. Perhaps it was the combined might of all of them staring at him. Somewhere he could feel the cold, analytic press of those alien thoughts, probing his own, drowning out his individuality, tempering his impulses, searching for signs of weakness.
While the alien invaders studied his ship, Miko struggled for scraps of sanity. He bit back his fear; he cursed, kicked back, struck and fought. But those assaults were no match for the Zikri guard. The vessel he had once treasured sat in the cargo bay, now surrounded by alien machinery and mounted by drills and probes, vulnerable, like some virgin waiting to be deflowered. The creatures buzzed about, grasping something of the notion of the co-pilot harness and began to tinker with it, their tentacles milling. The blood drained from Miko’s face. He felt their hunger, their opportunism. The truth of his intuition was bared, and he did not relish the way they chattered on in their abysmal language, or the way the fibril-stalks on their bodies quivered in all kinds of offensive patterns.
Things were headed in a very bad direction for Miko.
No doubt that the creatures wanted to incorporate the VR technologies into their own spacecraft. This made sense, and Miko, under a flood of despair, crumpled in defeat, for he realized he was no more than a puppet in this affair. The hijacking had gone all too smoothly. Right from paralyzing his ship to the quick assault and invasion, it was well rehearsed. He was a dead man. The final explosion and murder of the crewmen provided the necessary enticement to bring other ships racing to investigate. Thus more victims. It was perfect. The wave signature of the debris was a lure, targeting specific, intelligent, advanced species.
After careful analysis, the chief alien, or whatever central-warden it was, dismissed Miko with a gulp of mouth-polyp and a jerk of wattled neck. Miko was shuttled below.
A team frogmarched him across the luminous foredeck. A scattersplay projector not dissimilar to his own, ranged on a curved wall, depicting an alien landscape complete with a city of gargantuan blocks of crystal, translucent stone, revolving bricks, rotating polyhedrons, rising and falling pylons. All moved in a fantastic synchrony of locomotion. The creatures within the scene were of unknown origin: large, sponge-like anemone, similar to the ungainly creatures that crouched before him. The beings kept the city guarded—for it looked like a city—as they flew through the air on machines that were shaped like large gnats, gliding between the floating pillars, the towers, and the fantastic gridwork of unguessable construction.
Miko shivered. Who was to understand their ways? These creatures were as alien to him as he was to them. What he saw were no more comprehensible than the eyeless monsters of the deep trenches of Mariana on Earth.
Miko only grunted with revulsion at this strange glimpse of a new world. Yet somewhere in it all he waited ominously for definite hints as to their plans for him.
A half dozen Zikri guards prodded him toward a detention port on the far bay. Perhaps it was to the hold, or some remedial buffer?
Miko, in his delirium, could not say. Before being terminated, likely he was to be tortured—or possibly examined? What could be worse? The military trained pilot in him worked to banish such sick thoughts, but he could feel only terror. The air was dry and sharp-tinged, yet breathable, surprisingly. It seemed that the Zikri wished, for the moment, to keep him alive. Why? Obviously these creatures had mastered artificial gravity, for he did not fly up to the ceiling or float down about the ship’s walls like some free object in space.
* * *
The guards dumped their prisoner in a glass chamber behind some peculiar luminous bars. Panic welled in Miko. Taking stock of his surroundings, he saw a block ten feet square.
His run.
No benches or objects were in sight. Whatever they had in store for him, he was free to roam his cage. Whenever he made efforts to touch the lumo-bars he felt a sinister tingle in his nerves, something which instantly projected him backwards on his rump. Miko felt like retching. He left the bars alone.
* * *
The ship’s atmosphere thickened; his head felt thick and dizzy. Peering between the bars at the grid-like walls beyond the hallway, he saw edges and angles blending together, like some crazy holograph, not quite sitting right in perspective. Contours were bent in four dimensions. The fourth dimension seemed to be his own perception, which was skewed as one who gazes through a fishbowl lens. The same phenomenon he had experienced while undergoing spaceflight simulation on Mission Training Base on Pegasus V near Aldebaran. And not far either, from being victim of a psychedelic trip. Yet he was growing lucid enough to make the proper observations, and feeling a glimmer of hope regarding escape.
* * *
Such was not to occur.
Miko awoke hours (or days?) later, unable to identify the scope of his delirium, so much in withdrawal was he from separation from his VR cocoon on Sitty that he could barely stand. His belly growled with hunger. He only detected an oscillating reverberation thrumming about the hull and disturbing the ranks of the Zikri. The prisoner was dragged from his cage to the forward cargo bay where Sitty II stood berthed, forlorn and dismantled, beached like a fragile gull.
The Zikri problem became clear to him: the creatures did not know how to navigate the NAVO craft. All their knowledge and expertise had turned up zilch in its deconstruction. He grinned, granted some small satisfaction. Gathering knowledge was the Zikri’s passion, and to decipher the
