Shadow World

by A. C. Crispin

  His huge eyes, riveted on Eerin, seemed lit with green fire, life in all its raw energy blazing up in them.

  But even as she watched, his body suddenly trembled violently, shaking for several seconds, then went limp and still. The Wopind's fiercely exultant stare, still directed at the spot where Eerin had just lifted into a spiraling turn, grew fixed and glassy. Heen's eyes still shone, but now only with the reflection from the emergency lights overhead.

  Cara swallowed painfully. "There, he's dead now, you can see that," she said. "Eerin will stop dancing now."

  The fury on the man's face made him look barely human. He flexed powerful hands. "My wife is dead," he snarled. "And my little girl." His gaze moved to Eerin, who had just landed after the dance's final leap, and was gazing at them in surprise and consternation. "So every one of those bloody murderers needs to be dead, too. Not dancing!"

  He spat out the last word, hunching his shoulders, tensing like a big cat.

  Cara saw the flicker of madness in his eyes.

  "Run, Eerin! Run!" she screamed, flinging out her arms in a futile effort to stop him.

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  With an inarticulate roar, the grief-crazed man slapped her out of his way as he would have a bothersome insect. The blow to the side of her head made Cara grunt with pain. Lights danced crazily behind her eyes; her ears rang.

  The lounge blurred around her as she fell, spinning in an orange-and-white whirl.

  Struggling to remain conscious, she screamed again as she saw Eerin go down beneath the man's huge bulk. The Elpind cried out in fear, then was silent.

  "Rob," Mahree Burroughs said quietly, "I have news, and I'm afraid it's not good."

  It was morning at StarBridge Academy. Rob had showered and changed into a business suit; this morning he faced a trip up to StarBridge Station to meet with an eminent Drnian government official whose son Rob had

  encouraged to withdraw from the Academy ... he just plainly wasn't interrelator material. The father was the one who was taking it hard; the youngster had confided that he'd really rather be a physicist.

  Now he stared at Mahree, trying to brace himself. Dear God, what's happened? Aloud he said steadily, "Okay, tell me."

  "All contact has been lost with the Asimov, and the ship seems to have vanished."

  "How?" Rob said, baffled. "Weren't they orbiting Elseemar?"

  "They were, but they're not anymore. Reports are confused and incomplete. I spoke with the CLS Liaison on Elseemar, and he told me that the ship was in communication with one of the WirElspind leaders, who was stupid enough to threaten the Wospind." She shook her head and sighed. "And then the terrorist leader began yelling threats and orders. Some kind of altercation broke out on the bridge. Mark was shouting that more hostages were going to be killed when communications were cut abruptly--first visual, then audio. For a moment they could hear the sounds of a struggle, and ..."

  she hesitated, "weapons firing."

  "Oh, God ..."

  Mahree sighed, her dark eyes shadowed and weary. "Zahssez told me they tried for over an hour, but couldn't reestablish communications. Their mapping and weather satellites indicate that the Asimov is no longer orbiting Elseemar."

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  "Where could they have gone?"

  She frowned. "I don't know. Could the Wopind leader have ordered the ship to another destination?"

  "Where?" Rob said. "They'd be taken into custody."

  "Could they be heading for Sorrow Sector?" she asked, referring to the sector of space where the criminal elements of many planets took refuge and based their illegal activities.

  "The Wospind? They're fanatics, not crooks," Rob pointed out. "I can't imagine that they'd go there."

  "I suppose that it's also possible that the crew was finally able to regain control of the Asimov from the hijackers, and take it on to Berytin," Mahree said. "But if that happened, why didn't they notify the CLS base on Elseemar?"

  Rob shook his head, baffled. Then a sudden thought made his stomach knot. "Mahree ... could they have blown the ship up?" he asked, his mouth dry with fear.

  She shook her head again. "I asked, and the satellites recorded no evidence of any explosions in space."

  "At least that's something," Rob muttered.

  "I've requested communications operators on all nearby planets and stations to notify my office immediately if there is any word from, or about, the Asimov. I'm afraid we'll just have to wait until they initiate contact."

  Rob knew as well as she did that interstellar space was just too big to make any kind of a search operation possible. He nodded numbly. "Thanks for trying, Mahree ..."

  "Let me know if there's anything else I can do, Rob."

  "I will." He looked up at her, meeting her eyes across the parsecs, and tried to smile. "I love you."

  Minutes later, when he related the bad news to Kkintha ch'aait, the little Chhhh-kk-tu sighed aloud, rubbing her paws in distress. "Oh, Rob ... this is terrible."

  "Mark has no one left back on Earth, I know that. But Cara does. Do you want to call Cara's family or do you want me to?"

  "It is my job," she said, "but they are human, so I would appreciate it if you were with me when I speak to them."

  "Sure," he said. "My appointment can wait a little while. This is an emergency, after all." For a moment he wondered what time it was on OldAm's East Coast. Cara had told him

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  she lived in ... Atlanta, that was it. Would it be the middle of the night there?

  Probably, he thought grimly, it figures. Bad news always comes in the middle of the night, remember?

  The Asimov's forward passageway was badly warped, heavily damaged.

  Some of the supply lockers that lined the spaces between crew cabin doors were bent and jammed shut; others had sprung permanently open in the crash. The locker marked "Medical Supplies" was one of the latter. Mark found several med-kits and stuffed them into the front of his coverall. He also found a pair of socks and shoes that were only half a size too big, so he pulled them on. Walking through the debris with bare feet was becoming increasingly hazardous.

  His next goal was to look for possible survivors in the forward crew cabins, but, anxious to know Captain Loachin's fate, Mark decided to check the bridge first. He was gripped by a cold foreboding that the task wouldn't take him long.

  Mark quickly discovered that reaching the control room from inside the Asimov was impossible. The primary hatch was warped and would not respond to the controls, not even to the little-used manual release. The secondary hatch opened partway on his third try, but there was something blocking it.

  He tried to peer around the obstruction. No good. Only silence answered his repeated calls.

  Mark hurried back down the corridor to the second cabin on the starboard side. On the way to the bridge, he'd passed its open doorway and noted another huge rip that had penetrated the ship's outer skin.

  Carefully avoiding jagged edges, Mark crawled through the gash in the ship's side and dropped down on the desert floor. After the murky red dimness of the emergency lighting, the glare of daylight was painful. He jogged far enough away to avoid most of the wreckage, then headed for the forward point of the diamond, the nose of the Asimov where the bridge was located.

  Seeing the ship from this perspective, Mark's heart contracted. How the hell did we survive? he wondered. He'd realized from the interior that it had to be bad, but it was still a shock to see the reality.

  Captain Loachin had done a valiant job, trying to land a

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  craft that had never been constructed to land. Handling her ship like a glider, belly flopping it down on the desert floor ... no pilot could have done more.

  But their speed had been too great, their angle too steep, and the bulge of the cargo storage in the underbelly too curved to allow a successful belly flop. The Asimov had tilted from side to side, then slammed over to starboard, almost completely ripping off the starboard point of its diamond shape. The
port side was in better shape, mostly intact, though very battered.

  And the bow of the ship had been virtually plowed under when it had impacted with a massive boulder that had stopped the vessel's slewing, out-of-control slide across the desert. The Asimov's momentum, when it met the obstacle in its path, had crumpled the bridge back in on itself, folding the ship's nose like an accordion between the solid rock in front and the thousands of metric tons hurtling behind it.

  Mark stared at the building-sized boulder. Though rough rocks from pebble size to man height littered the hard-packed desert floor, there was nothing else this size anywhere in view. Where the hell did you come from? Mark demanded of it silently, angrily. Why did you have to be right here?

  He remembered feeling that last, awful jolt while lying in the hiber unit.

  Captain Loachin and all the others on the bridge would have already been dead then, smashed in a millisecond and dead even before the impact of their fatal collision could travel through the length of the ship.

  Loachin's face, not bruised and drawn from exhaustion as he'd seen it that last time, but beautiful and wearing the warm smile of Captain's Night, rose in Mark's memory. He hoped she'd never realized just how badly her vessel was tearing apart, how many people were dying as it careened across the desert.

  Struggling to maintain control, Mark hurried back. There still remained the necessity of checking the forward cabins.

  Every cabin he entered threatened to make real his old nightmare of opening a door to find bloody death behind it. Grief and fear coiled tighter and tighter inside him, and even the relief of finding all the starboard cabins empty didn't release the tension.

  Behind him from the lounge he could hear the first sweet,

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  shrill notes of Eerin's kareen. The joyful music sliced through the graveyard quiet like an intruder's attacking knife. Mark quickened his pace, anxious to get back to his friends.

  The first and second port-side cabins were also empty, but in the third one was the body of the beelike Apis, R'Fzarth, the other one of the two scientists headed for Elseemar. The Wospind must have left her here when when they took her companion, Sarozz, out to the lounge to be executed, Mark thought sickly.

  They'd tethered her to one bolted leg of the bed by a thin wire around her compact, fuzzy torso, but she'd been in flight, probably trying to dodge flying debris, when she died. A long, large spear of broken light panel had impaled her against the wall behind the bed. Wings outspread, she looked hideously like an oversize lab specimen--except for one thing. The force of the blow from the spear had driven her backward farther than the tether could reach, and the thin wire had sliced her neatly in two. The lower part of her body lay on the bed.

  Mark studied the pitiful scene for a moment, felt absolutely nothing, turned away to leave ... then dropped to his knees, hand pressed to his mouth, gagging.

  Tears filled his eyes, and this time he couldn't fight them back. Mark wept for Captain Loachin, for the mutilated Mizari lying back in the lounge, and his Apis companion who'd met her death all alone, for the orphaned babies--for all those who had died, whose bodies would never be found. His sobs came from deep in his chest, so deep that they were painful, and some of them were for himself. What could I have done differently? he wondered. Could I have prevented this?

  As soon as he could find enough control to do so, Mark wiped his eyes and nose, then rose shakily to his feet. He moved toward the bed, intending to take R'Fzarth down from the wall and cover her body.

  A shrill scream suddenly echoed through the dead ship. "Run, Eerin! Run!"

  Whirling, Mark raced out the door and down the corridor. What's happening?

  I shouldn't have left them. I knew better. You don't dance in the face of this much death. Not where humans are involved, anyway. God, let me be in time!

  He

  burst into the lounge, only to see a large, heavy

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  shouldered man throttling Eerin. The wiry Elpind was struggling, flailing wildly, but the huge man ignored hin's blows.

  "Stop!" Mark shouted, but the man ignored him. Dragging the weakening Elpind up off the floor, he shifted his grip to hin's shoulder and drew back his right hand, the edge of his huge palm aiming knifelike at Eerin's throat. From his self- defense training, Mark recognized the blow, knew that it would crush the Elpind's windpipe, killing Eerin.

  Mark saw it as if it were happening in slow motion. Only meters away and already at a full run, he knew with a cold certainty that there was no way he could reach them in time.

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  Chapter 11 CHAPTER 11

  The Apis and the Simiu

  From out of nowhere, rescue came.

  She must have been watching from outside and flew in, Mark decided later, when there was time to think. "She" was an Apis, one of the wasp-resembling type like StarBridge's dietician. Her meter-long body seemed small and fragile next to the man's bulk.

  The insectoid alien darted at the man's head, beating her wings furiously in his face. She never actually touched him, but the human drew back

  instinctively, throwing up his hands to protect his eyes.

  "Stop it!" Mark yelled, startling the man further as he seized his shoulders, dragging him off Eerin. His opponent broke Mark's hold and turned, amazingly fast for his bulk. A second later the younger man found himself down on his back while the huge man screamed curses in his face and tried to throttle him. Managing to pull a knee up to use for leverage, the StarBridge student gave a mighty heave and shoved his attacker off.

  Mark rolled, coming up to his feet, but he stumbled over Eerin's kareen, and before he could regain his balance, a powerful hand yanked his ankle. He fell heavily.

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  The Apis moved in again, and the fingers around Mark's ankle released as the man again shielded his face from her beating wings. Still on the ground, Mark levered himself up on his hands and one knee. His foot lashed out, catching the man squarely on the point of his chin.

  The man fell back on the bloodstained carpet and was still.

  Breathing heavily and trembling from leftover adrenaline, Mark crawled over to the Elpind, who lay unmoving.

  The golden eyes were open ... and alive. "Eerin? You okay?"

  "Not hurt." But the Elpind made no immediate move to get up. One hand rubbed gingerly at hin's thin neck, and there was a shocked look in the golden eyes that hadn't been there even during the height of the crisis with the Wospind.

  Mark immediately turned to Cara, who was sitting up, looking every bit as shaken as the Elpind. "He hit me!" she cried, tentatively touching the side of her face. It appeared swollen, though her coloring hid any bruising.

  "Are you hurt?"

  "No, I'm all right. But he nearly scared me to death." She took a deep breath.

  "My God, he was going to kill Eerin!"

  "Where are the babies?" Mark looked around the lounge. In the silence, he could hear Terris crying.

  "Over there." She pointed to one squirming, squalling bundle of fur and one limp, silent one who lay on a cushion. Wavering to her feet, she stumbled over to them, then looked up, relieved. "They're okay. Terris is just mad."

  "Sit down for a minute and get your breath," advised Mark, suspecting that she was more shaken than she let on. He managed to right the couch, and she sank down on it gratefully. Eerin joined her, for once content to sit still.

  Mark turned his attention back to their rescuer. The Apis had settled down onto the deck, and was watching him curiously, patiently, from her faceted eyes. Mark hastily made the Mizari greeting gesture and addressed her in that language, knowing that she could "hear" him through the hairs on her antennae that could pick up sound waves. "Thank you for helping us." Past her, through the rip in the Asimov's side, he could see a large crowd of onlookers peering in and muttering. But no one made any move to help.

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  Mark bent over the man who lay on the floor.

  Their a
ttacker was breathing normally, and the student sighed with relief.

  The man's obviously expensive clothes were heavily bloodstained, but none of it was his own. Mark carefully checked the burly neck for displacement and found no signs of damage. Only then did he allow himself to sink down on the floor and rest for a moment. "He's okay," he told Cara. "Just knocked out."

  He regarded the Apis, who was still watching him. She's old, he found himself thinking. At StarBridge, the Apis students had all been young, and none of the instructors had been past middle age, as the insectoid race measured it ... but this one had a dry, shriveled appearance that made him suspect that she was quite elderly. His already considerable respect for her courage increased. The only person with enough guts to jump in and help, against a guy dozens of times her weight, and she's old, too!

  Mark bowed again to the Apis, bowed deeply to indicate his great respect, then said in Mizari, "I am very grateful to you. I think you saved Eerin's life."

  She moved closer on slender legs, her wings waving slightly, then touched her forehead, above her eyes. Mark saw that her voder, which she

  customarily operated with her antennae, was cracked. Detaching it, she put it on the deck between them. "Oh ..." Mark said, picking it up and examining it. "That's too bad. It doesn't look like it's repairable."

  "What are you doing?" a harsh voice demanded loudly. "Do not touch her!"

  A reddish blur came sailing through the gap in the Asimov's hull, then leaped so it landed between them.

  Even before the Simiu halted, Mark realized who it had to be. No other species could take the sibilant Mizari and make it guttural.

  "She helped my friend and me with some trouble," Mark said, backing away slightly. The big alien looked angry enough to deliver a challenge, and Simiu challenges were nothing he wanted to incur. He held up his hands, demonstrating that they were empty. "I was just thanking her."

  The Simiu snorted. "She does not require your approbation, human. She gained the highest honor before you were born!"

  Oh, shit! If this Simiu isn't honor-bound or related to the

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  Harkk'ett clan, I'll eat my socks, Mark thought bitterly. He wanted to groan aloud. A Harkk'ett ... that's all we need!