If you were drifting in mid-air-no friction and no gravity-)
(“You can’t.”)
(“Say that you could.”)
(Angles and lines on a schoolroom screen-)
There was a long time that the crew and the doomed ships talked, business only.
“That’s it,” Thorn heard one say. “We’re going to hit the well-looks like three days on. It could be worse. Like four.”
“We hear you,” Weig said. There was sorrow in his voice. Thorn listened and stared at the points of light. His arm and his leg were numb. No one moved to take off the suits. Debris on intersect. He remembered that. The other two ships talked awhile. There was no better news.
(This is more dreadful than the planes. This silence. This inevitability of ships that meet that fast, with distances that take days. For Betan it was quick. These men and women will have time to talk and eat and sleep and wake three times before they hit the ground. Before they skim through the well and get caught and dragged in.)
“… we think,” Nonnent said, “we think we may have the angle to transit. We don’t know yet.”
“We’ll miss your company then,” Ganngein said.
A long pause. “Yes, we hear that.” Quickly, from Nonnent.
“Don’t be embarrassed about it. This isn’t a trip we want to share.”
Hatani. Or tanun guild.
There was long silence. Eventually there began to be a hole in space, small at first, that grew and ate the stars. “Something’s out there, Duun. Isn’t it?”
“Dust,” Duun said. “Particles. We won’t use the lights. We’re conserving all the power we’ve got and we can’t dodge it anyway.”
(How long can it take us? What if a mostly whole ship were in our path?)
(Fool’s question, Thorn.)
Wait and wait and wait. All the stars were gone. The ships talked now and again. They talked about the cloud.
Static began. Transmission broke up. A noise penetrated the helmet, a distant hammer blow. Another. The sounds accelerated to a battering. It stopped.
“We’re still in it.” Weig said. “This is going- uhh!”
The shock rang through the structure and up through the deck. Thorn clenched his gloved hands on the armrests and forgot the pain. Silence a time.
“Clipped the left wing,” Mogannen said. “We’ve got a little spin now. Don’t-”
Another shock. Shock after shock. Silence then. An occasional strike, none large.
(Pieces of the ghotanin. Or of one of our own. We’re flying through dead ships. Dead. Bodies. Or bits of them. Blood out there would freeze like snow.)
The stars came back. “Hey!” Weig shouted. We’re through!”
(For me. For me and Duun, the dead back on earth. Ganngein and Nonnent. Ghota and hatani ships.)
“There’s a ship out there,” Spart said, and Thorn’s heart stopped. “It’s Deva. It’s going to serve as pickup. It’s about nine hours down.”
“Thank the gods,” Mogannen said.
“We go out to it,” Duun explained. “They can’t stop our spin to pick us up. We’re easier to manage in suits.”
Deva shone a light for them. The shuttle turned slowly, wedge-shaped shadow against the sun. Debris trailed from one wing edge, and from the tail. A touch came at his leg and Duun snagged him, maneuvered and got him by the hand. Near them three became a chain. One of them was still loose but in no danger. Deva’s beacon brightened among the stars, a white and blinding sun.
Deva was not so fine inside as the shuttle- was all bare metal and plastics; but it had shonunin in it. It had welcome.
“Duun-hatani,” the captain said.
“You’re a good sight, Ivogi-tanun,” said Duun.
Thorn held his helmet in his hands. He saw the others’ looks, the crew who stood gazing at him. As they might look at some strange fish they had hauled up in their nets.
“This is Haras,” Duun said. “Hatani guild.”
“We heard,” Ivogi-tanun said.
* * *
* * *
XV
There was silence from Ganngein now. For four days. Static obscured Nonnent’s voice. Earth spoke in code, and Deva had no facilities. Gatog spoke back, constantly; and that was coded too, even when it was Deva’s code. Machines read it out. There was seldom a voice, until the last, when Gatog began to shine in Deva’s viewport like a scatter of jewels.