When she was through the last one, the sensor on the arm of her suit said the atmosphere was breathable. She opened her visor and sniffed cautiously.The air was musty but tolerable.
Faint sounds came from around a corner ahead, which was glowing with bright artificial light. She held the normaliser ready and crept forward.
It was Dan's voice. He was sobbing and shouting, 'It's not true! Take me back! I want my proper mother!'
Tough kid, Sam thought. He could have been totally traumatised by now.
Perhaps he's already seen worse on the vids.
She peered round the corner.The chamber beyond was a dead end. There were crates and boxes scattered about the walls, giving the impression of an abandoned storeroom. Dan was standing in its centre, almost enveloped in the folds of his junior spacesuit, with his helmet open. Two ghosts were also in the room, but neither for the moment was threatening him. One was smaller and almost human in outline, the other larger and flickering unstably, flashing with bursts of angry colour. It was to this one that Dan was speaking.
'You're not real, you're not real!' he screamed.
Hold that thought, Dan, Sam said under her breath. Just give me a second and they'll be as unreal as I can make them.
But even as she raised the normaliser, the smaller ghost moved forward and touched the larger. It began to shrink. The flickering ceased, and gradually it seemed to solidify into a new form.
Sam gaped in utter astonishment at what it was.
Chapter 28
In The Ruins
Lanchard stared at the strange container that was being loaded into the belly hatch of the Doria , then at the Doctor.
'The probe Vega destroyed was also a blue rectangular box,' she said.'We never saw it clearly, but it must have been about this size.'
'Really?' said the Doctor innocently.
'Yes.What did you say it was again?'
'A sort of mobile laboratory and holdall. Full of useful odds and ends. More distinctive than the usual set of matching plaid cases, don't you think?'
How can he joke at a time like this? she wondered, grateful nevertheless.
Rexton appeared carrying an extra pack in addition to his life-support unit and Wynter's camera. Lanchard wondered just how far he would go to get his precious information. He'd been in private communication with Emindar for much of the last hour. He gave the Doctor's box a curious glance, then appeared to dismiss it from his attention.
The team comprised the minimum complement necessary to allow as much room for the return of survivors, assuming there were any. Apart from Rexton and the Doctor there were just Bendix as pilot and a couple of Dessel's security staff. All were armed and each had one of the Doctor's normalisers. Nel Manders's technicians had managed to produce six of the devices within the deadline.
They were just about to board when a voice said,'I'm coming, too.'
It was Don Delray, already suited up. His face was impassive, his voice level, his manner determined but also curiously detached.
'I thought you were injured, Mr Delray,' Lanchard said.
'There's nothing wrong with me,' Delray assured her.
'This will be more dangerous than last time,' Lanchard pointed out.
'I know,' Delray said. 'I've had first-hand experience of what we're facing, remember. Let's say I've learnt from it.'
The Doctor was looking at him very closely. 'I think if Mr Delray wants to come he should be allowed to, Captain. We need people we can trust to keep their heads. You won't let us down, will you, Mr Delray?'
'No, Doctor,' Delray replied. 'Not this time.' There was something compelling about the man's eyes, Lanchard realised.
'Draw arms from the locker, Mr Delray,' she said. 'You leave in two minutes.'
***
There was only a small crowd on the promenade deck, as most passengers were still keeping to their cabins or the inner public compartments. Lester Plecht, however, was among those at the rails. It was only correct and only proper to show moral support, he had told Rhonda with uncharacteristic assurance.
He was looking hopefully about for Ingrid Schollander. Instead he found himself standing next to Evan Arcovian. The other man was looking devastated and dabbing his eyes unashamedly. He had the manner of one who has to confide in somebody, even a total stranger.
'Don's going after her,' he said. 'I tried to talk him out of it but he was determined. Never seen him like this before.' He faltered.'Trouble is, I have this feeling in my gut that I'll never see him again.'
Lester was not really paying attention. Ingrid wasn't here and he was getting a headache. There was a persistent buzzing in his ear he could not seem to get rid of. Maybe the stress of the last few days had been too much for him. Perhaps he should see the ship's doctor as soon as the shuttle had departed.
'There they go,' said Arcovian, his voice breaking as he pointed. 'Take care, Don.'
***
Bendix kept glancing at Rexton out of the corner of his eye as he steered the Doria to their agreed rendezvous with the Nimosians.The councillor sat beside him in the co-pilot's seat, staring ahead with intense concentration.
The last time they had taken this journey, Bendix had unquestioningly considered Rexton to be the most important man on the mission. But now he found his attention divided between him and the Doctor. In many ways they could not be more unlike, yet both possessed the same intriguing aura of power that was hard not to admire.
There was also something different about Delray this time, but he was not sure what it was.The last few hours seemed to have changed the man.
There was a chill about him, and a couple of times Bendix had seen him absently reach down by his feet and run his hand over empty air.
There was a blip on the forward scanner display. It rapidly resolved into the image of a slightly larger craft than their own.
'It's the Nimosian shuttle,' Bendix said, opening a channel. To his surprise Commander Vega's face appeared on the screen.
'This is the shuttle Dauntless ', Vega said briskly. 'We are ready to make entry. I suggest maintaining a minimum separation of one hundred metres during the passage through the hyperspatial corridor.'
'Agreed,' said Bendix.
'I see you have decided to take personal charge of the mission, Commander,' Rexton said.
'I never ask my men to do anything I will not do myself; Vega replied.
'Besides, I wanted the opportunity of meeting you face to face, General.'
'I hope you won't be disappointed, Commander.'
'I'm sure I won't be.'
The Doctor leaned forward into view of the comms-link camera.
'Commander, the passage through the tunnel may be rough, both physically and mentally. I suggest you set your autopilot so that your ship will slave on to ours if you lose manual control.'
'And what makes you think your craft will maintain independent control any better than ours?'Vega asked.
'Because, if Councillor Rexton will oblige by changing seats with me, I'll be ready to take over if Mr Bendix is incapacitated,' the Doctor responded simply.
Curiously, nobody protested. Rexton vacated his seat without a word.
Bendix turned them on to a direct course for the alien ship. In a minute the interference effect had drowned the link to the Cirrandaria .The dark mouth of the tunnel swelled, seeming to gape wider as they neared it, obscuring the rest of the ship as it grew. He could see a feint red glow in its depths at the centre of a halo of twinkling darts of light.
They passed within the great arcing rim of the shaft, the familiar stars of normal space becoming a shrinking circle behind them. But there was no corresponding circle ahead where the other end of the shaft should have been. It seemed to stretch away to infinity. Bendix felt his heart skip a beat.
The void within the shaft suddenly contorted. A sudden sickening wave of nausea overtook him as some invisible force reached into his body and twisted. His vision blurred and his thoughts fragmented. Dimly, he realis
ed that the shuttle was tumbling and he knew they were at the mercy of powers far beyond those of its feeble engines to oppose. All he could do was keep them steady. But his hands had become useless things lost somewhere light years away from him. He could not operate the controls.
They were going to smash into the side of the tunnel.
Then the Doria steadied.
The Doctor was bent over the controls, holding them on course. Bendix had an impression of clenched teeth, pale skin beaded with sweat and blue eyes colder than any glaciers and sparkling with more determination than he had ever seen before.
Somehow he held them steady through the endless agony of dislocation.
Then a dark circle was rushing towards them and they were clear of the tunnel. Rock walls glittering in the ship's lights. Off to one side was the Nimosian shuttle, its motion mirroring theirs.A broad planed ledge of rock appeared out of the darkness and the Doctor set them down upon it as gently as a thistledown.
For a long moment there was only silence as they collected their wits.Then Rexton said gruffly,'Thank you, Doctor.'
Vega's pale image spoke over the comm screen. 'I also thank you, Doctor.
But where are we?'
They peered out into the huge cavern illuminated by the darting circles of their spotlights. Bendix saw the Doctor straining his eyes, hoping to see some sign of those they had lost. But there was nothing. Rexton had eyes only for the bulk of the alien ship, hanging like some huge grub in its rocky cocoon.
'I don't know,' the Doctor admitted, after a minute's intense study of their surroundings, in answer to Vega's question. 'I have some equipment on board which might tell us, but it will only function properly outside the interference field of the alien ship. I can't see any signs of survivors from the raid in here.'
He adjusted one of the spotlights to play over the wall opposite the mouth of the ship. It picked out the dark circles of several cave mouths. 'But there are plenty of places they could have been taken,' he said.'If there is any chance of finding them, and your missing crew, then it will be down there.
They look wide enough to take both shuttles through in this low gravity.'
'Agreed, Doctor,'Vega said.
Rexton took one last look at the alien ship, then returned to his seat. His face was creased in thought.
Bendix lifted them on low-power underjets and minimal thrusters and steered them towards the nearest of the caves, feeling the Doria pitch gently as it moved away from the sharp gravity gradient surrounding the hulk behind them.The Dauntless followed and they passed into a long smooth-sided tunnel some fifteen metres across.
'Looks like an excavated asteroid,' Bendix commented. 'It might be honeycombed with tunnels. How do we know they took our people down this one?'
'We don't,' said the Doctor. 'But we must begin somewhere. When we're clear of the interference we may know more.' 'Something up ahead,'
Rexton said.
The shuttles slowed, gliding up to a blackened metal ring that encircled the tunnel. The huge plate of an armoured door lay beside it, blown completely clear of its mountings. Close by it, partly buried in the thin scree of dust and rock fragments, were half a dozen twisted shapes. They were bodies.
Skulls grinned up through shattered helmets. Blackened skeletal hands seemed to be reaching out in supplication through torn and melted fabric.
Beside them were the remains of machinery. One larger item might once have been a self-propelled energy cannon, though it was now reduced to a twisted pile of wreckage. It was impossible to tell who had been attacking or defending the asteroid base.
'This did not happen recently,'Vega said.'But many years ago there was certainly a battle here. Our instruments are picking up radiation traces.
Possibly weapon residue.'
'We can't afford the time to examine them properly,' the Doctor said.'Let's keep going.'
The tunnel ran on before them as they glided cautiously forward. Side passages opened off it but all seemed quite empty. Occasional blast marks scarred the walls, but there were no signs of ghosts or their captives.
Bendix calculated they had travelled about four kilometres when they came to a pair of doors.The outer had been twisted and buckled while the inner was intact but standing open. Bendix took them carefully through. A rock ledge under them faded away into the darkness on either side.The Doctor stared through the forward port intently.
'There's something here,'he said.'Turn off the external lights and let your eyes adjust.'
They did so. Slowly, like a moonlit landscape growing into being, their surroundings became visible. It was another cavern slightly smaller than the one that housed the alien ship. But unlike the rough walls of the former, these were sculpted into sweeping glassed terraces, picked out here and there by the feeble glimmer of emergency lights. Between them were projecting docking booms and transfer tubes and the dark mouths of hangars and launchways. It was unmistakably a commercial starport.
Or what had once been a starport.
The glass on the terraces was shattered, docking booms were bent and twisted, wreckage littered the lowest levels. It had not been spared by the conflict that had apparently swept through the rest of the base. But what filled Bendix's mind, as he took in details of the ruins, was a growing sense of shocking familiarity.
'We're home,' he choked out.
'What are you talking about?' Rexton snapped.
'Don't you see? The derelict must be in the navy base. We've passed through to the commercial section. This is Starport on Em Minor.
Cirrandaria's home port!'
'He's quite correct,' Delray said simply with infinite sadness, causing the Doctor to look at him curiously.
But Bendix hardly heard him. 'What's gone wrong... What's happened...?'
He took the controls and sent the Doria skimming across the port to where a pale disc of light appeared to hang in the roof. The Dauntless followed in their wake.
'That's the main access shaft,' Bendix said breathlessly. "There's only one like it...'
The Doria soared up the shaft that cut through half a kilometre of rock and burst into open space.The crater-pocked surface of a small asteroid moon shrank beneath them. Overhead hung Emindar in gibbous phase, filling half the sky, the outlines of its continents unmistakable.
But it was no longer the blue and white globe he had left twenty days before. The oceans were grey; where green forests had been there were only brown stains. Ugly phosphorescent glows played about the horizon of its nightside hemisphere.They were the scars of total planetary war.
Emindar was a dead world.
Rexton gaped openly in disbelief, his iron control broken by the image of the one thing he held dear above all others in ruins. Even from the Dauntless came gasps of dismay.
'A corridor through space... and time,' said the Doctor, filling the awful silence. 'I said you couldn't manipulate one without affecting the other. I think this is your future.'
Chapter 29
Standoff
Lanchard could tell that Captain Sargro of theHermes of Cyrene was not a happy man. But orders were orders. His ship chanced to be the only one in the sector within range, and with the necessary capacity to evacuate their two hundred or so Federation passengers.
Now theHermes was docked with the Cirrandaria and Sargro was contemplating his new charges gloomily. He was more used to cargo that didn't expect four-star accommodation and cuisine.The Hermes was a freighter with limited passenger space and personal facilities. It would be a long trip to the nearest Federation port for both evacuees and crew.
Evan Arcovian had also returned to his vigil on the bridge, looking more distraught than ever. However, at least he was keeping his opinions to himself. Lanchard would have liked to spare him a little time for consolation, but she had other worries of her own.
Several Emindian citizens wanted to join those leaving on theHermes and had to be told bluntly that there simply wasn't room for non-Federation passengers. To complicate
matters further a few Federation passengers, who had lost friends or relatives in the ghost attack, wanted to stay behind in the hope that the rescue party might yet bring them back. The Engerses were of course among them. Eventually, on advice from head office, Lanchard had them all sign waivers confirming they were staying of their own free will and absolving the company of any subsequent liability.
In the circumstances the abilities of the Cirrandaria's crew were stretched to their limits to calm upset, anxious or plain belligerent passengers. But until the main engines were repaired or their own forces arrived, those who were left would simply have to be patient. How the company was handling the matter of those Federation citizens killed or taken by the ghosts was a job for lawyers and politicians, Lanchard could only put a copy of her orders in the safe ready for the inevitable board of inquiry. For the moment she was concerned only with ensuring there were no further losses.
That depended on maintaining a very fragile status quo.
She assumed the Indomitable would not instigate any overt action against them after having gone to the trouble of saving them only hours before -
even though she felt Fayle.Vega's second in command, was a less than sympathetic character. But what if the Nimosian reinforcements arrived before their own?
An hour after theHermes docked with them, that was just what happened.
The detectors gave little warning before dark-grey predatory forms slid out of the darkness like sharks. They could identify the bristling bulk of a carrier, accompanied by two heavy cruisers and two destroyers: an entire battle group.
The carrier took up station beside the Indomitable , disgorging fighter wings which began circling like bees round a hive.The other craft took up sentry stations where they could watch space for the inevitable arrival of the Emindian forces. It was not long before a priority call came through for Lanchard.
'This is Admiral Mokai, commanding the carrierStarfire ', said the severe, beribboned figure on the screen. 'You are in Nimosian-controlled space.You will relinquish any claim on the alien vessel and leave this sector immediately.'
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