Another series of alarms sounded, and the screens showed at least a dozen fighters now launching from the cruiser, which kept a steady station just barely inside the Exchange border. Clearly, though, the fighters had no such restrictions, not here, in this desolate area of space.
Chin reached up and threw the manual contacts that sent the ship into combat mode. Although he had no intention to fight, this had the effect of putting the entire system on ready alert and at one and the same time dividing the frigate into separate sealed compartments. No matter what happened back there, nobody could get to him now unless he allowed it, or was unable to prevent it.
“Brace yourself,” he said through the intercom. “I’m going in!”
The ship did not respond, and the instruments registered a series of shots hitting very near him. For a moment he was confused, trying to figure out what was wrong, when it hit him. He was too excited, too tense. Think in Mycohl, he told himself. Calm down and think in Mycohl!
The ship surged forward and he felt the slight vertigo and shimmering of the vessel as it went into subspace.
By the gods I’m right in the middle of the stuff! He felt the tingling and slight dizziness and had a sudden feeling of nausea, but he ignored all those and pressed full speed in toward the Mycohl. He couldn’t help imagining what this was putting them all through back there and he just wanted to get them out.
Speed, course, heading, all were correct, but the seconds ticked on. How much of this stuff could there be here? It just couldn’t be this thick!
And, almost immediately, he realized that what he was thinking was correct. They weren’t in that wall any more; one of the damnable things had latched on to the ship!
“Think, Chin! Think!” he said aloud, angry at himself for not foreseeing this despite the small amount of time he’d had to prepare. What was something that would get it off? His eyes scanned the instrumentation, some of which was unfamiliar to him and little of which had any coherent legends in any language. One, however, caught his eye because he understood from the measuring unit what it had to be. Air pressure! But the others wouldn’t be sealed in their suits. Particularly not now. How long had it been? By the gods of his ancestors! Minutes, at least!
The devils with it! If he didn’t get that thing off the ship quickly, it wouldn’t make any difference anyway! “Depressurize at maximum safety curve!” he ordered. “Vent through all pans to ship exterior.”
Even as the ship filled with a hissing sound he pushed the command helmet up and grabbed a breather mask from inside his own suit.
In a way, it was a totally illogical, very risky move. Those poor souls in the rear would find it increasingly difficult to breathe; all of them required oxygen in higher quantities than this for normal use. At least it would really slow them down, probably knock them out, although he wasn’t that sure about Tobrush. Still, the very notion that the thing could move through their energy shell and interact with them with no problems yet might not be able to stand normal air outside seemed ridiculous.
Sudden waves of nausea gripped him, and he tried not to throw up, but they stopped as suddenly as they’d begun. He tried to get hold of himself and keep his stomach calm and take a look at the screens. They showed a vast black amorphous shape rapidly receding in the distance until it was gone from view. For a moment, he was amazed that it had worked. Then he quickly moved to halt the still ongoing operation and set about trying to figure out the commands and controls for rebuilding pressure and proper mixture once again in a slow and steady rate to minimize any ill effects on those in the rear. Thinking carefully in Mycohl, he ordered, “Estimate safe time for full ship repressurization, all compartments.”
The answer flashed. Emergency, about five minutes. To be absolutely safe, twenty minutes. This was coupled with a warning that he had vented close to half the reserve, and that no extended trip should be undertaken without full recharging.
He noted an odd flashing code. “Meaning of code on ship’s support systems?”
“Safety systems override, Compartment Three,” responded the ship’s computer. “Triggered from within compartment.”
Three . . . Let’s see, that was the upper bubble. Tobrush.
“Effect of triggering in this manner?”
“Potential mutiny, insubordination, or enemy agent activity,” the ship’s computer replied. “Effect is to introduce non-toxic nerve agent into closed air system. Will paralyze or render unconscious all but five known carbon-based life forms.”
He relaxed. He had to hand it to Tobrush. He’d knocked himself cold!
“What about the other compartments? Were they knocked out, too?”
“Code can be triggered only by ship commander or in manual at bridge or navigation station,” the computer responded. “Only Three was triggered.”
He sighed. So the other five had been forced to go through it. That would have put Jimmy next to Grysta, Josef with Modra, and poor Krisha alone as usual. Well, maybe that last had been for the best.
He had the computer play back the sequence from going in to expelling the black thing. A little over nine minutes. A lot could happen in nine minutes.
“Reset security code in Compartment Three,” he ordered. “Introduce”—what in blazes was the Mycohl word for antidote”!—”agent into air system to revive occupant. Code triggered in error.”
“Counter-code required,” the computer responded.
Gun Roh Chin had never been a cusser in his whole life but he wished he had a few choice words to use right now. The only way to revive Tobrush short of docking at a Mycohl military installation, which wasn’t something he relished, would be Josef—if Josef was in any condition to give it.
“Condition of other personnel?”
“Satisfactory. However, all occupants are unconscious due to oxygen deprivation. Some damage may result in full if repressurization is not ordered within the next three minutes.”
Blazes! He’d forgotten to actually give the order.’
“Do it now. Slowly, but sufficient to induce no physical or mental damage.”
“Complying. Monitoring life forms directly.”
He suddenly had a thought. If this culture was paranoid enough to have nerve gas for use on its own crew . . . “Is there a way to see into the compartments?”
“Yes. Do you wish it?”
“Please. Give me Two first.”
The main screen that monitored the aft view in space shifted and he got a skewed but somewhat panoramic view of the compartment. What he saw shocked him.
It looked as if Modra’s e-suit had been almost ripped off her. Untearable, of course, by normal agents, but fasteners, packs, instruments, were smashed or shattered, and she looked bloody and bruised, as if almost yanked from it before it had been fully deactivated. She lay naked on the floor, face up, arms away from her sides, like a limp doll. Josef, whose own suit appeared to have been removed and then thrown against the bulkhead, was on top of her, his own hands near hers. It wasn’t very difficult to get the scenario, as much as the captain didn’t want to know. By the gods, he was still inside her!
He searched for Krisha, suddenly panicked, and it took a little doing to find her. She, too, had removed her suit, but not, apparently, in a forcible manner. She was back there behind the second set of seats, pressed into a corner, naked, wrapped into a ball, almost a fetal position.
She’d probably gone through mental hell, but at least she looked physically all right, and untouched by another.
Josef groaned, gasped and started taking in deep breaths, He rolled over, off of Modra, who was starting the same procedure herself.
In the aft compartment, it was Grysta on top of Jimmy, but there was an odd note. The little man had bled as well, and in his right hand he clutched the utility knife from his suit, and Grysta’s own hand was still against his wrist. That scenario was much more difficult to determine.
“Is the nerve agent still in Three?” he asked the computer.
“Negative. It was vented with the reserve.”
“What’s the pressure now, in altitude?”
“Twenty-eight hundred meters.”
“Secure from combat mode. Equalize and open all compartments.”
In a moment, the door slid back and all screens returned to normal.
“Maintain alert status, automatic defense mode. Maintain current course and speed, avoid any subspace returns,” he ordered, then removed the command headset and got up and walked back into the next compartment.
Josef was sitting up, taking deep breaths, and shaking his head as if to clear it. Still, he was aware enough to look up as the captain entered.
“It’ll be all right in a couple of more minutes,” the captain told him. “It’s taking more time because it has to refilter a lot of the existing air. I had to use one of the two reserve tanks to blow that thing off us.”
Josef coughed, then managed, “Oh, is that what it is? I feel weak as a baby and my head is pounding.”
“Do you remember any of it?”
Another series of coughs., “Yes. It was very strange. Once we joined, I—it was very weird. There wasn’t any telepathic link, but the moment I took control of her we had this other link, like I could feel everything she felt and she could feel everything I felt.”
“You hypnoed her? Then what are all these signs of violence?”
“Captain, there wasn’t any thinking. It was all just raw power, raw lust. She was a natural empath under my influence. She felt what I felt and so she was the same way. It was like two wild animals in heat.”
“You okay now?”
Josef nodded. “I’m getting enough air. You might help me up, though.” He frowned. “Tobrush? He’s calling me, and he sounds pretty strange himself.”
“He triggered the mutiny signal in his compartment. I’m sure he wants you to get him out of it. I don’t know how.”
“Yeah. I thought about doing that for us but then I remembered that you wouldn’t know how to countermand it. Okay, I’ll set the codes, then come back and help you.”
Modra still lay there on the floor, breathing hard, her eyes open, but staring up at the ceiling.
“Modra? Are you all right?”
For a second or two she didn’t reply, then she said, in a hoarse whisper, “I’m not sure. I feel like somebody’s punching bag, and my head feels like it’s going to explode.”
“You know what happened?”
She nodded idly. “I—I was him. And I enjoyed it! Now . . . Now I feel unclean, like some of that black stuff is still lodged inside me. He disgusts me. He is in my mind and I’m in his and he still disgusts me.”
“It was that thing. You must know that.”
“What happened isn’t the point. He’s still enjoying having done it!”
The captain sighed and moved back to Krisha, who had uncurled and now sat, looking puzzled. “Are you all right?” he asked gently.
“It was the same nightmare,” she told him. “Only this time it seemed so real, and it went on and on and on. It’s still there, too. Not fading, like before, to a bad memory or an irrational fear. Like—like this is just a shell, and the vision’s going to shatter it and become real.”
“It’s only a nightmare triggered by that thing from your own mind,” he assured her in as gentle a tone as he could manage. “If you want to find out what real is, go help Modra. She needs somebody.”
He patted her hand, helped her to her feet, then had to steady her as her headache and nausea attacked full tilt. As soon as he felt she was recovering, though, he made his way through the hatch to the aft compartment. Both Jimmy and Grysta were up and seemed all right except for some cuts and bruises, perhaps, but Grysta seemed angry and Jimmy uncharacteristically reserved.
“Jeez, Jimmy! You’re damned lucky it only got to me a little! I still had my brains about me and could stop you!”
“Shut up, Grysta!” Jimmy snapped. “Just shut up, will you?”
She turned to the captain in disgust. “Shit! You’d think I should’a let him cut his balls off!”
Gun Roh Chin felt his jaw drop. “What?”
“Yeah, that’s what he was gonna do. I mean, it all started and all, and like last time I just get all homy, and I undo the straps and go to Jimmy, who’s gettin’ outta his suit, so I do the same, right? And then instead of doin’ what I figured, next thing I know he’s got this knife in one hand and he’s holdin’ his nuts in the other and I grabbed his knife arm and pushed him over and had to fight like hell just to hold him down. And for that he’s mad at me now! Can you believe it?”