Nightflyers & Other Stories Read online

  Lommie Thorne lay awake, thinking.

  Finally she rose and dropped to the floor, nude, quiet, light and careful as a cat. She pulled on a tight pair of pants, slipped a wide-sleeved shirt of black metallic cloth over her head, belted it with a silver chain, shook out her short hair. She did not don her boots. Barefoot was quieter. Her feet were small and soft, with no trace of callous.

  She moved to the middle sleepweb and shook Alys Northwind by her shoulder. The snoring stopped abruptly. “Huh?” the xenotech said. She grunted in annoyance.

  “Come,” whispered Lommie Thorne. She beckoned.

  Northwind got heavily to her feet, blinking, and followed the cyberneticist through the door, out into the corridor. She’d been sleeping in her jumpsuit, its seam open nearly to her crotch. She frowned and sealed it. “What the hell,” she muttered. She was disarrayed and unhappy.

  “There’s a way to find out if Royd’s story was true,” Lommie Thorne said carefully. “Melantha won’t like it, though. Are you game to try?”

  “What?” Northwind asked. Her face betrayed her interest.

  “Come,” the cyberneticist said.

  They moved silently through the ship, to the computer room. The system was up, but dormant. They entered quietly; all empty. Currents of light ran silkily down crystalline channels in the data grids, meeting, joining, splitting apart again; rivers of wan multi-hued radiance crisscrossing a black landscape. The chamber was dim, the only noise a buzz at the edge of human hearing, until Lommie Thorne moved through it, touching keys, tripping switches, directing the silent luminescent currents. Bit by bit the machine woke.

  “What are you doing?” Alys Northwind said.

  “Karoly told me to tie in our system with the ship,” Lommie Thorne replied as she worked. “I was told Royd wanted to study the volcryn data. Fine, I did it. Do you understand what that means?” Her shirt whispered in soft metallic tones when she moved.

  Eagerness broke across the flat features of xenotech Alys Northwind. “The two systems are tied together!”

  “Exactly. So Royd can find out about the volcryn, and we can find out about Royd.” She frowned. “I wish I knew more about the Nightflyer’s hardware, but I think I can feel my way through. This is a pretty sophisticated system d’Branin requisitioned.”

  “Can you take over from Eris?”

  “Take over?” Lommie sounded puzzled. “You been drinking again, Alys?”

  “No, I’m serious. Use your system to break into the ship’s control, overwhelm Eris, countermand his orders, make the Nightflyer respond to us, down here. Wouldn’t you feel safer if we were in control?”

  “Maybe,” the cyberneticist said doubtfully. “I could try, but why do that?”

  “Just in case. We don’t have to use the capacity. Just so we have it, if an emergency arises.”

  Lommie Thorne shrugged. “Emergencies and gas giants. I only want to put my mind at rest about Royd, whether he had anything to do with killing Lasamer.” She moved over to a readout panel, where a half-dozen meter-square viewscreens curved around a console, and brought one of them to life. Long fingers ghosted through holographic keys that appeared and disappeared as she used them, the keyboard changing shape again and yet again. The cyberneticist’s pretty face grew thoughtful and serious. “We’re in,” she said. Characters began to flow across a viewscreen, red flickerings in glassy black depths. On a second screen, a schematic of the Nightflyer appeared, revolved, halved; its spheres shifted size and perspective at the whim of Lommie’s fingers, and a line of numerals below gave the specifications. The cyberneticist watched, and finally froze both screens.

  “Here,” she said, “here’s my answer about the hardware. You can dismiss your takeover idea, unless those gas giant people of yours are going to help. The Nightflyer’s bigger and smarter than our little system here. Makes sense, when you stop to think about it. Ship’s all automated, except for Royd.”

  Her hands moved again, and two more display screens stirred. Lommie Thorne whistled and coaxed her search program with soft words of encouragement. “It looks as though there is a Royd, though. Configurations are all wrong for a robot ship. Damn, I would have bet anything.” The characters began to flow again, Lommie watching the figures as they drifted by. “Here’s life support specs, might tell us something.” A finger jabbed, and one screen froze yet again.

  “Nothing unusual,” Alys Northwind said in disappointment.

  “Standard waste disposal. Water recycling. Food processor, with protein and vitamin supplements in stores.” She began to whistle. “Tanks of Renny’s moss and neograss to eat up the CO2. Oxygen cycle, then. No methane or ammonia. Sorry about that.”

  “Go sex with a computer!”

  The cyberneticist smiled. “Ever tried it?” Her fingers moved again. “What else should I look for? You’re the tech, what would be a giveaway? Give me some ideas.”

  “Check the specs for nurturant tanks, cloning equipment, that sort of thing,” the xenotech said. “That would tell us whether he was lying.”

  “I don’t know,” Lommie Thorne said. “Long time ago. He might have junked that stuff. No use for it.”

  “Find Royd’s life history,” Northwind said. “His mother’s. Get a readout on the business they’ve done, all this alleged trading. They must have records. Account books, profit-and-loss, cargo invoices, that kind of thing.” Her voice grew excited, and she gripped the cyberneticist from behind by her shoulders. “A log, a ship’s log! There’s got to be a log. Find it!”

  “All right.” Lommie Thorne whistled, happy, at ease with her system, riding the data winds, curious, in control. Then the screen in front of her turned a bright red and began to blink. She smiled, touched a ghost key, and the keyboard melted away and reformed under her. She tried another tack. Three more screens turned red and began to blink. Her smile faded.

  “What is it?”

  “Security,” said Lommie Thorne. “I’ll get through it in a second. Hold on.” She changed the keyboard yet again, entered another search program, attached on a rider in case it was blocked. Another screen flashed red. She had her machine chew the data she’d gathered, sent out another feeler. More red. Flashing. Blinking. Bright enough to hurt the eyes. All the screens were red now. “A good security program,” she said with admiration. “The log is well protected.”

  Alys Northwind grunted. “Are we blocked?”

  “Response time is too slow,” Lommie Thorne said, chewing on her lower lip as she thought. “There’s a way to fix that.” She smiled, and rolled back the soft black metal of her sleeve.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Watch,” she said. She slid her arm under the console, found the prongs, jacked in.

  “Ah,” she said, low in her throat. The flashing red blocks vanished from her readout screens, one after the other, as she sent her mind coursing into the Nightflyer’s system, easing through all the blocks. “Nothing like slipping past another system’s security. Like slipping onto a man.” Log entries were flickering past them in a whirling, blurring rush, too fast for Alys Northwind to read. But Lommie read them.

  Then she stiffened. “Oh,” she said. It was almost a whimper. “Cold,” she said. She shook her head and it was gone, but there was a sound in her ears, a terrible whooping sound. “Damn,” she said, “that’ll wake everyone.” She glanced up when she felt Alys’s fingers dig painfully into her shoulder, squeezing, hurting.

  A grey steel panel slid almost silently across the access to the corridor, cutting off the whooping cry of the alarm. “What?” Lommie Thorne said.

  “That’s an emergency airseal,” said Alys Northwind in a dead voice. She knew starships. “It closes where they’re about to load or unload cargo in vacuum.”

  Their eyes went to the huge curving outer airlock above their heads. The inner lock was almost completely open, and as they watched it clicked into place, and the seal on the outer door cracked, and now it was open half a meter, sliding, and beyond wa
s twisted nothingness so burning-bright it seared the eyes.

  “Oh,” said Lommie Thorne, as the cold coursed up her arm. She had stopped whistling.

  * * *

  Alarms were hooting everywhere. The passengers began to stir. Melantha Jhirl tumbled from her sleepweb and darted into the corridor, nude, frantic, alert. Karoly d’Branin sat up drowsily. The psipsych muttered fitfully in drug-induced sleep. Rojan Christopheris cried out in alarm.

  Far away metal crunched and tore, and a violent shudder ran through the ship, throwing the linguists out of their sleepwebs, knocking Melantha from her feet.

  In the command quarters out of the Nightflyer was a spherical room with featureless white walls, a lesser sphere—a suspended control console—floating in its center. The walls were always blank when the ship was in drive; the warped and glaring underside of spacetime was painful to behold.

  But now darkness woke in the room, a holoscope coming to life, cold black and stars everywhere, points of icy unwinking brilliance, no up and no down and no direction, the floating control sphere the only feature in the simulated sea of night.

  The Nightflyer had shifted out of drive.

  * * *

  Melantha Jhirl found her feet again and thumbed on a communicator. The alarms were still hooting, and it was hard to hear. “Captain,” she shouted, “what’s happening?”

  “I don’t know,” Royd’s voice replied. “I’m trying to find out. Wait.”

  Melantha waited. Karoly d’Branin came staggering out into the corridor, blinking and rubbing his eyes. Rojan Christopheris was not long behind him. “What is it? What’s wrong?” he demanded, but Melantha just shook her head. Lindran and Dannel soon appeared as well. There was no sign of Marij-Black, Alys Northwind, or Lommie Thorne. The academicians looked uneasily at the seal that blocked cargo hold three. Finally Melantha told Christopheris to go look. He returned a few minutes later. “Agatha is still unconscious,” he said, talking at the top of his voice to be heard over the alarms. “The drugs still have her. She’s moving around, though. Crying out.”

  “Alys and Lommie?”

  Christopheris shrugged. “I can’t find them. Ask your friend Royd.”

  The communicator came back to life as the alarms died. “We have returned to normal space,” Royd’s voice said, “but the ship is damaged. Hold three, your computer room, was breached while we were under drive. It was ripped apart by the flux. The computer dropped us out of drive automatically, fortunately for us, or the drive forces might have torn my entire ship apart.”

  “Royd,” said Melantha, “Northwind and Thorne are missing.”

  “It appears your computer was in use when the hold was breached,” Royd said carefully. “I would presume them dead, although I cannot say that with certainty. At Melantha’s request I have deactivated most of my monitors, retaining only the lounge input. I do not know what transpired. But this is a small ship, and if they are not with you, we must assume the worst.” He paused briefly. “If it is any consolation, they died swiftly and painlessly.”

  “You killed them,” Christopheris said, his face red and angry. He started to say more, but Melantha slipped her hand firmly over his mouth. The two linguists exchanged a long, meaningful look. “Do we know how it happened, captain?” Melantha asked.

  “Yes,” he said, reluctantly.

  The xenobiologist had taken the hint, and Melantha took away her hand to let him breathe. “Royd?” she prompted.

  “It sounds insane, Melantha,” his voice replied, “but it appears your colleagues opened the hold’s loading lock. I doubt they did so deliberately, of course. They were using the system interface to gain entry to the Nightflyer’s data storage and controls, and they shunted aside all the safeties.”

  “I see,” Melantha said. “A terrible tragedy.”

  “Yes. Perhaps more terrible than you think. I have yet to discover the extent of damage to my ship.”

  “We should not keep you if you have duties to perform,” Melantha said. “All of us are shocked, and it is difficult to talk now. Investigate the condition of your ship, and we’ll continue our discussion at a more opportune time. Agreed?”

  “Yes,” said Royd.

  Melantha turned off the communicator. Now, in theory, the device was dead; Royd could neither see nor hear them.

  “Do you believe him?” Christopheris snapped.

  “I don’t know,” Melantha Jhirl said, “but I do know that the other cargo holds can all be flushed just as hold three was. I’m moving my sleepweb into a cabin. I suggest that those of you who are living in hold two do the same.”

  “Clever,” Lindran said, with a sharp nod of her head. “We can crowd in. It won’t be comfortable, but I doubt that I’d sleep the sleep of angels in the holds after this.”

  “We should also get our suits out of storage in four,” Dannel suggested. “Keep them close at hand. Just in case.”

  “If you wish,” Melantha said. “It’s possible that all the locks might pop open simultaneously. Royd can’t fault us for taking precautions.” She flashed a grim smile. “After today we’ve earned the right to act irrationally.”

  “This is no time for your damned jokes, Melantha,” Christopheris said. He was still red-faced, and his tone was full of fear and anger. “Three people are dead, Agatha is perhaps deranged or catatonic, the rest of us are endangered—”

  “Yes. And we still have no idea what is happening,” Melantha pointed out.

  “Royd Eris is killing us!” Christopheris shrieked. “I don’t know who or what he is and I don’t know if that story he gave us is true and I don’t care. Maybe he’s a Hrangan Mind or the avenging angel of the volcryn or the second coming of Jesus Christ. What the hell difference does it make? He’s killing us!” He looked at each of them in turn. “Any one of us could be next,” he added. “Any one of us. Unless … we’ve got to make plans, do something, put a stop to this once and for all.”

  “You realize,” Melantha said gently, “that we cannot actually know whether the good captain has turned off his sensory inputs down here. He could be watching and listening to us right now. He isn’t, of course. He said he wouldn’t and I believe him. But we have only his word on that. Now, Rojan, you don’t appear to trust Royd. If that’s so, you can hardly put any faith in his promises. It follows therefore that from your own point of view it might not be wise to say the things that you’re saying.” She smiled slyly. “Do you understand the implications of what I’m saying?”

  Christopheris opened his mouth and closed it again, looking very like a tall, ugly fish. He said nothing, but his eyes moved furtively, and his flush deepened.

  Lindran smiled thinly. “I think he’s got it,” she said.

  “The computer is gone, then,” Karoly d’Branin said suddenly in a low voice.

  Melantha looked at him. “I’m afraid so, Karoly.”

  D’Branin ran his fingers through his hair, as if half aware of how untidy he looked. “The volcryn,” he muttered. “How will we work without the computer?” He nodded to himself. “I have a small unit in my cabin, a wrist model, perhaps it will suffice. It must suffice, it must. I will get the figures from Royd, learn where we have dropped out. Excuse me, my friends. Pardon, I must go.” He wandered away in a distracted haze, talking to himself.

  “He hasn’t heard a word we’ve said,” Dannel said, incredulous.

  “Think how distraught he’d be if all of us were dead,” added Lindran. “Then he’d have no one to help him look for volcryn.”

  “Let him go,” Melantha said. “He is as hurt as any of us, maybe more so. He wears it differently. His obsessions are his defense.”

  “Ah. And what is our defense?”

  “Patience, maybe,” said Melantha Jhirl. “All of the dead were trying to breach Royd’s secret when they died. We haven’t tried. Here we are discussing their deaths.”

  “You don’t find that suspicious?” asked Lindran.

  “Very,” Melantha said. “I even
have a method of testing my suspicions. One of us can make yet another attempt to find out whether our captain told us the truth. If he or she dies, we’ll know.” She shrugged. “Forgive me, however, if I’m not the one who tries. But don’t let me stop you if you have the urge. I’ll note the results with interest. Until then, I’m going to move out of the cargo hold and get some sleep.” She turned and strode off, leaving the others to stare at each other.

  “Arrogant bitch,” Dannel observed almost conversationally after Melantha had left.

  “Do you really think he can hear us?” Christopheris whispered to the two linguists.

  “Every pithy word,” Lindran said. She smiled at his discomfiture. “Come, Dannel, let’s get to a safe area and back to bed.”

  He nodded.

  “But,” said Christopheris, “we have to do something. Make plans. Defenses.”

  Lindran gave him a final withering look, and pulled Dannel off behind her down the corridor.

  * * *

  “Melantha? Karoly?”

  She woke quickly, alert at the mere whisper of her name, fully awake almost at once, and sat up in the narrow single bed. Squeezed in beside her, Karoly d’Branin groaned and rolled over, yawning.

  “Royd?” she asked. “Is it morning?”

  “We are drifting in interstellar space three light years from the nearest star, Melantha,” replied the soft voice from the walls. “In such a context, the term morning has no meaning. But, yes, it is morning.”

  Melantha laughed. “Drifting, you said? How bad is the damage?”

  “Serious, but not dangerous. Hold three is a complete ruin, hanging from my ship like half of a broken egg, but the damage was confined. The drives themselves are intact, and the Nightflyer’s computers did not seem to suffer from your system’s destruction. I feared they might. I have heard of phenomena like electronic death traumas.”

  D’Branin said, “Eh? Royd?”

  Melantha stroked him affectionately. “I’ll tell you later, Karoly,” he said. “Go back to sleep. Royd, you sound serious. Is there more?”

  “I am worried about our return flight, Melantha,” Royd said. “When I take the Nightflyer back into drive, the flux will be playing directly on portions of the ship that were never engineered to withstand it. Our configurations are askew now; I can show you the mathematics of it, but the question of the flux forces is the vital one. The airseal across the access to hold three is a particular concern. I’ve run some simulations, and I don’t know if it can take the stress. If it bursts, my whole ship will split apart in the middle. My engines will go shunting off by themselves, and the rest—Even if the life support sphere remains intact, we will all soon be dead.”