Plasma bottles dangled over my head. A million miles went by,
The fourth day I slept.
And Alexander dreamed. I heard about it the next morning. They had a sign placed in front of my body. JESSIE, CONTACT US. WE MUST TALK. SOMETHING HAS COME UP.
I trickled out of the shielding, through the wires, back into my own head. They put the ship on automatic, taking a risk they never should have—machines being so unreliable—and revived me.
“Dreams,” Malherbe said.
“So?”
“We’ve all had them. Ever since we left earth. Last night, Alexander woke up, and his dream continued. It was standing in his room!”
I looked at Alexander. “What dream?”
“It was horrible,” he said. Although I figured he had probably been delirious at the time, I could see the way he quivered when he thought of it.
“That tells me nothing.”
“A—thing, actually. It was gray, large, and spoke with a strange, feminine voice.”
“It spoke?”
“Yes.”
“What did it say?”
He squirmed. “Not to the sun, my boy. Not to the sun.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“That’s what it said.”
“Have you checked the ship?” I asked.
“The first thing,” Malherbe said. “There’s nothing on her that isn’t meant to be.”
“The jitters,” I said. “Simply a case of the jitters. Why did you call me out of cybernet?”
“We wanted to see if you had been dreaming too,” Malherbe said.
I looked around and saw the slightest traces of fear on their faces. Fear of the Unknown. You could not fear a star whose heart you were going to approach; it was too vast a thing to fear, so you made up something more human—but not quite—to center your animals passions on. It was that and nothing more. “I have to get back,” I snapped. “We have a long way to go, dreams or no dreams.”
In the cyberbase, out of my body again, I thought about it. There was something to it. Of couse it had to be psydiological—all of them having the same dream—something basic, something buried in every soul, a racial fear. Interesting.
On the eighth day, I slept, the world having been created some time earlier.
The following morning, the eye of the sun was nearly sky-filling, a monster streaking to gobble us up along with Venus and Mercury which lay ahead.
Venus passed by dreamlike. Gases and clouds and somehow erotic.
On the eleventh day, I slept, thinking of the sun. Visions of fire balloons danced in my head.
The next morning, they had a sign in front of my body. Red felt letters on a black background: JESSIE. CONFERENCE. MOST URGENT.
It was the same as before.
“Dreams?” I asked.
“They went too far this time,” Malherbe said nervously, and I noticed that he had personified the dreams. “They attacked Alexander. They cornered me, but my screams drove them away.”
“Them?” I asked.
“Well—IT,” Gingos said. His arm was bandaged, and Amishi confirmed the statement that there were eleven stitches required to close the wound.
“Let’s hear it,” I said. My body felt weak even though Amishi had been exercising it every day.
“I woke up, and it was crooning to me. ‘Not to the sun, my boy. Not to the sun, the sun.’ I told it to get the hell out. It kept coming closer. Big as a robomech, ponderous. It kept chanting too. Then I saw its face—as much as the shadows would permit me to see. Thank God for shadows. There were two gaping craters instead of eyes—no other facial features that I could see. I screamed, and it trundled out before anyone could come—but not before it grabbed me and whispered the chant to my face,” He held up his bandaged arm as if that were legal evidence.
I looked to Malherbe who was nodding his head in agreement.
“And your story?” I asked.
“I woke up to Gingos’ screams. As I was getting to the doorway, the thing came upon me from the corridor. In the semidarkness, I could make out its shape only as a hulk. It moved toward me, but I started screaming, and it was gone down the companionway. We didn’t see it again all night.”