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CHAPTER 7

"Sort of an emptiness. A panic."

"Matter craves matter."

Clark tried to groan. He wanted to tell them he could hear them, but the effort of opening his mouth made his ears ring. Points of white light flashed in the black, random signals from an overweary brain. Points of light like stars. Like fish, he thought. Like gleaming fish. But the thought of stars persisted, and a fresh burst of fear-related chamicals in his blood washed against the sedative Luz had administered. He struggled with the darkness and sank. Drown, drown, he thought. What a wonderful fate, to be surrounded by water. Accompanied to death. He dreamed of fish, and then, as the dose-feedback machine began to withdraw the drugs from his body, of stars.

He saw the ship in the emptiness, something colliding with nothing, and the silent impact woke him.

Holy Huey, the ship's captain, ambled into the bunkroom. Though an Outlander, the fat man had the rolling Eyimalian gait. With each step he paused a fraction of a second to roll very slightly backward, as though full of water sloshing to and fro. Dark brown hair beginning well back on his forehead dropped in dirty tresses to his shoulders. A thin mustache failed to divert attention from his irregular teeth. He exuded contented little chuckles and a smoky odor.

"May survive the trip, hm?" he asked gently. "Wondering how in Sunny's name you got mixed up in this. Mm? How we evolved into a space-going species?"

Clark tried to laugh. "Why we came out of the sea."

"Resolved never to travel again? Yes, I had a touch of vac-tremors once," Huey said.

"You? How did you go out again?"

Huey sat down on the hammock opposite Clark's, let his paunch settle on his thighs, and tilted back his head. "It was only a touch. And the circumstances were...oh, shall we say odd?" He sighed, eyes still upon the ceiling. "Ah, yes. Many years ago. My first and only stab at legal commerce. An excursion run. The Children of Astra or some such--star worshippers. I rigged up a big viewscreen in one of the storage bins so they could watch their gods drift by." He let his hand drift in the air. "A religious group outing. What could be simpler, hm? Oh, ye prideful ships' captains! Thank Fiya I had the good sense to hire a few nephews of mine as crew. Usually I travel alone."

"By yourself?" Clark felt the shakes returning.

"But this time I had the two young fellows to lend Uncle Huey a hand. My half-sister's boys. I daresay they had the trip of their lives. The incessant shrieking and caterwauling--in shifts--were one distinctive feature of that excursion. My charges also developed a nasty habit of fainting and getting themselves stepped on during their communal fits, or services if you like. Broken bones and so forth. The boys were afraid to go below. We used to chew napit in the control room and chant: they are crazy; I am sane. They are crazy; I am sane." Huey shook his head. "They wouldn't have any light except the viewscreen. Forty-five deranged men, women and children running around in pitch darkness. At times I was amused."

"They gave you vac-tremors?" Clark prompted.

"They began to jettison themselves. Bad business. Crawled into the rubbledusters. Four of them...disembarked...rather abruptly, before we juried a double-lock system on the trash doors. Disagreeable folk."

"Where did they go?"

"Go? They went home to the big E. I aborted their vacation."

"No, when they jettisoned," Clark explained.

"Oh. They neglected to suit up. They went to smithereens."

"Ahh--" Clark felt the clash of terror with sedatives again and yielded to the blackness. Some time later the doorpanel slid open and shut. He listened. Big feet came softly toward him. Luz. Smaller ones followed. Paula.

"What?" Luz asked.

"Let him sleep," Paula whispered.

"What?"

"Let him sleep until we're past Guapo."

"But we have to ask him--"

"If you ask him now, of course he'll want to land," Paula whispered. "Look, he'll have to make the trip back, either from Guapo or Paffir Haretz. You can't send people by rematerializing transport, you know."

"Shouldn't we ask him?"

Paula hesitated an instant. Clark fought to open his eyes. She must be weighing the alternatives, he thought. If she wakes me up, I may leave. If she doesn't, I may never forgive her.

"No," she said.

Clark opened one eye. He and Paula looked at one another. She turned away.

Luz stopped the drugs. When he came fully awake, Clark opened his other eye. Paula was sitting opposite him with her knees drawn up to her chin. "Nothing can keep back the rivers of it," she murmured.

"Rivers of what?"

"Guilt." She raised her head to look at him. "I thought you were asleep. Well, do you want to get off at Guapo?"

He looked at the ceiling. "I don't know what to say."

"You think I staged that conversation with Luz--of course I know you think that. My father says: If I accuse you of something you haven't accused yourself of, I'm wrong. No, Luz wouldn't have gone along with me. We thought you were asleep. So, do you want to get off on Guapo?"

"No." He shut his eyes again. Remembering how Luz had stopped Fuego's tirade against Efirr Nije by telling him not to worry about personalities, he opened his mouth to tell Paula the same thing, but then he

decided against it. When he woke again, she was gone.

There was darkness, then stirring and muttering, then a light and behind it, Fuego. The light made Clark wince. Fuego set it in a niche at the head of the bed.

"Here, drink this." He held out a glass of water. The rim reflected the light. Clark moved up on the bed until he was sitting against the wall and drank.

Fuego walked out of the lamp's range and turned on the room lights. He came back and sat on the hammock across from Clark's. Clark had the queasy sensation that both of them were drifting. His hand went to the cable that tethered his bed to the wall. He looked down. The sight of Fuego's boots against the floor reassured him. The space between the furniture and the floor had seemed enormous, but now he saw that it was small and easily crossed by human legs. He looked past Fuego at the wall, then past his feet to where two more beds floated on a-grav frames, and beyond them another. Five. Himself, Paula, Tiyar, Luz and Fuego. Who slept where? He couldn't remember.

There was a niche by each bed, at eye level to Clark or shoulder-high to Fuego. Over one bed, it held a row of reading tapes. That would be Fuego. Beyond, it was covered over by pictures of dead heroes. Tiyar. Across from Fuego's bed, the recess was cluttered with small bottles and vials, as though the contents of a medical kit had been flung there from a distance, and a mirror. That was Luz's bed. Finally, opposite himself, Clark saw a collection of keys and identification cards. The rest of her belongings--clothes, hair brushes and toiletries--Paula had tossed under her bed.

"Brockhurst," Fuego said. He stroked his chin, meditating, and named Clark's home planet.

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CONTINUE.....................

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