–“Captain–”
–Plaintively, as if she had not heard the beeps and already begun to reach.
There was perhaps some mercy in being human and drugged out of one’s mind. . . .
“Got it,” Pyanfar coughed, though her throat had gone to stone in the long slow
leak of time past the instruments, in the inside out of jumpspace. “Location?”
One went lethargic, grew fatally tranquil in that dizzy flow where one could do
nothing, nothing but watch and take a subjective day moving a finger. There was
an itch at the tip of her nose just as important as their collective lives. . .
.
But the intellect knew what the will forgot. The mind was primed with a sequence
of things she had waited two months to do. The right hand reached the control
she had meant two months ago to reach and brought the field up while they still
had power, long before they had gotten buoy signal. The eyes sought instruments,
diverging lines that had to meet–
The fields of Mahn, yellow in the sun, the woods, the dappled shade. . . .
The vine outside the wall of Chanur, that branched like a river, from one great
gnarled trunk; and generations of Chanur had climbed it, branch to branch to
branch–
“We’re on.” That was Geran’s mumble confirming destination. “We’re in the jump
range.”
Location: need the vector.
“We’re alive,” Hilfy murmured. “We’re going to make it, going to make it–”
–as if she were utterly surprised.
There it was, that red line trued right on.
“Huh.” Pyanfar coughed her throat clear and blinked away the haze.
“Of course we did,” Geran said. “Have any doubt, kid?”
There were safety procedures for a ship to follow when coming in from
dust-ringed Urtur and they were not following them. They were coming into a
system with C-charged dust in their company. Some of it would slip the smaller
field of their dump and go through Kshshti system like a hard-radiation storm.
“One more dump,” she murmured, pleaded with the ship. “Stand by” — thinking of
a ship she had seen die — of a ship which had had a vane shot to flinders, and
jumped without a chance in a mahen hell of slowing down.
Nothing to do then but capsule the crew and hope–
She shoved the dump in and felt her eyes roll as the field cycled up. . . .come
on, come on, ship, hold it–
More failure lights blinked and held steady. Branches on the wall. . . .”Got to
be that Y unit,” she muttered to Haral, to no one in particular, and had visions
of that dying ship again.
None of that crew was alive now. Those the mahendo’sat had hauled down in their
capsule and saved — they had died at Gaohn, standing off the kif.
She moved an arm and did a third dump, watching in blear-eyed fascination as the
lines on the scopes crept together and merged like silken threads, red and blue,
as The Pride dragged at the interface and let the bubble go.
Down again, and the wail of alarms calling her back to life.
“Still over mark,” Haral muttered. “That’s twenty.”
“I know. We’ve got it, we’ve got it left with the mains.” She shoved the jump
drive off and sent The Pride into an axis roll, canceled G and threw the mains
on to finish the job the drive had failed. There was margin left. “Kif. Are
there kif? Look alive back there.”
“Scan’s clear,” Chur’s voice returned. “Kshshti positive; got the beacon. Stand
by course input.”
Monitors changed priorities. The course change flashed in, very little off their
present heading. She put the bow down and trued up.
“That’s luck,” Haral said of the course they had been handed.
“Huh,” she said. “That’s priority for you.” Rotational G picked up again as the
vector change took effect. “Find out what we lost.”
“Stand by,” Tirun said.
There was long silence, while comp ran diagnostics under Tirun’s hands.
“It didn’t hold?” Khym’s voice, sounding plaintive and a bit shaken. “Did we
lose that vane again?”
“Didn’t hold,” Geran said. “But we’re all right.”
“Not leaving here real quick, are we?”