The Queen of Space, page 8
“Jil Gyrel!”
Pilot Arkel’s raucous burr startled her, blasting out of a speaker in the console.
“Message to you from the S.S. Purple Empress. Prince Ulnar regrets that we cannot turn back to attempt to search for you or attempt any aid. Baron Brendish has informed your unfortunate mother. She wishes to express her forgiving and undying love as she and the Prince bid you this last sad farewell.
“End of message.”
Silence rang again, but her first wild delight was dead. Wherever the pod happened to take her, she knew that all the puzzles of the Purple Empress—the cruel enigmas of her father’s fate and the change in Shon Macharn, the haunting riddles of the Keeper’s killing and the laser-maker’s cryptic whispers—all those agonizing problems would haunt her till she solved them.
“Well, Jil!”
The pilot startled her again, his voice relaxed and not so loud.
“The Baron’s gone below—you want to call him Baron. A chance now for a word of my own. Jil Gyrel! Wish I’d known you were aboard. We’re kin, you know. Related through your name and the gene I was born with, though I wouldn’t be surprised if you refused to claim me.
“However you feel about anything, don’t try to reply. Your tachyonic transponder doesn’t carry voice. All it does is send an automatic distress signal, indicating your identity and position. Range only a light-day or so. Designed to keep sending for a couple of months. That’s about the limit of your power for the drive and life-support systems.
“All I can do is wish you luck. Afraid you’ll need it. The Prince and the Baron made me steer into a pass called Devil’s Creep. For reasons you can guess. Safer when old Ben Gyrel marked and charted it, but the shockwave keeps rolling back. If you care to trust my advice, set a course for Gamma.
“It’s true we can’t try to pick you up. Troubles enough of our own. Troubles I was asking for when I signed on. The Baron and the Prince admitted they were running from the Legion, but they’ve turned out to be an odder pair than I expected. If, by chance, you do get out alive, I hope you’ll tell the Legion anything you know.
“As for me, I’m stuck—”
His voice had grown fainter as she fell behind the ship. Now it was cut off. Perhaps Brendish had come back. Feeling a rueful sympathy for Pilot Arkel, she thought he might have been an interesting man to know.
The pod was drifting on. She hauled herself into the control seat. The robotic pilot wanted her name. She punched it in and looked at the nebula in the conning hood. A dazing jolt. Here inside the shockwave, that hawk-headed shadow had vanished. Except for a few glowing rifts, dark dust-clouds hid everything around her. Even the Purple Empress was gone. She felt utterly alone, trapped in an infinite and directionless cosmic desolation.
She looked for the shape of Devil’s Creep, but nothing had a shape. With the pickup pushed to the limit, she searched for the dusty mascons around her and the tachyonic strobes old Ben had placed to mark them, but the hood showed nothing. If the Purple Empress had run into trouble, despite Arkel’s skill and all his instruments, what chance had she? What use was her silent gene . . .
A gong clanged.
The safety circuits had let the geodesic generator come on. The pod was suddenly alive, the console lighted, the internal G-field tugging her down to the seat. The sense of that soundless power changed her mood. All the hazards ahead had suddenly shrunk to her own size. The pod was her own starship.
Her first command!
She explored it. The service locker offered odd-tasting water and stale space rations, but not much else. The pod lacked most of the flight instruments she had learned to use. The conning hood had telescopic power enough to pick up a nearby planet or a close-passing starcraft, but its blank flicker showed nothing at all nearby.
Even the shockwave around her was only mocking emptiness. However deadly to starcraft at tachyonic velocities, its grains of dust were mostly microscopic, its expanding gas high vacuum. Again she looked for those ominous mascons rushing back to close the pass again, but they were too thin for the crude equipment to show them.
On the space-time scale of the nebula, the pod was only one more dust grain, lost in the astronomical ages and the long light-years. She might stay alive aboard it for a few months, move it a few billion kilometers and change nothing at all. Yet she still felt more elated than disheartened. At least for these brief months, she would be living out her dearest dream, flying on into the nebula.
On toward Gamma!
Even though her unlucky kinsman had confessed the loss of his pilot gift, she had no better guidance. Gamma itself was hidden in the dust ahead, but the robotic pilot projected its coordinates on the conning hood and she punched it in as her destination. Winking symbols gave her bearing and distance, relative velocity and projected time in flight.
The gong clanged again, and crimson legends flashed:
WARNING! COMPUTED FLIGHT TIME: 89 LEGION YEARS.
WARNING! INDICATED FLIGHT PLAN EXCEEDS CRUISING RANGE.
WARNING! SELECT ANOTHER DESTINATION.
She killed the warnings. With nothing else to do, because the winking data on the conning hood showed her neither the hazards in the channel nor anything outside it, she wandered back to the service locker. Recalling her recent hunger, she tried to eat an outdated ration. It refused to warm itself, and she found no appetite. Reclining the command seat, she tried to sleep. A dim sense of gathering wrongness kept her half awake.
The trouble she felt was something closer than the Keeper’s murder or the loss of AKKA or the sinister riddles around Rem Brendish. Nothing she could do would delay the traitors now. The trouble wasn’t even the stark likelihood that the pod would be her coffin.
What she felt was a nagging awareness of nearing danger, as bewildering as her first morning so long ago in the city-hive on Alpha III, when she woke up not knowing where she was. The feeling was hard to understand, because the pilot’s shining needle did show true galactic north. Yet she couldn’t shake it off. Weary of the struggle, she was more than half asleep when the console began to jangle and new symbols flickered:
WARNING! HEAVY MASCON DETECTED AHEAD WARNING! REDUCE EFFECTIVE SPEED
She peered up into the conning hood, which had begun to wink and crawl with changing mazes of instrumental data. Though that hazardous mass of energy and dust was too diffuse for her vision to detect, the hood made it a misshapen red bull’s-eye, ringed with black isodynes. Long orange arrows showed magnetic gradients. Flashing graphics indicated gamma radiation. Projected symbols flickered with readings and geodesic field intensity, relative acceleration and relative velocity.
On impulse, she hit the “clear” key to erase that whole bewildering display. Its vision function restored, the hood let her look outside for that haunting wrongness.
It was gone!
Suddenly, she had found herself.
With something better than mere sight, she could see the nebula. The mascon ahead. A thicker swirl of dust, still too far and too thin for her eyes but suddenly sharp in her mind. The nebular clouds beyond it swimming clearly into focus. She could feel their motion and sense the webwork of forces they obeyed.
Though Beta was still veiled in the dust behind, she knew its place and mass and motion as surely as she had almost always known galactic north. In her mind, she saw how it had swept out the channel, gathering meteor clouds to make those rains of fire that had delighted her childhood, leaving its wake for Ben Gyrel to map.
She felt the turbulent gas and dust rushing in again, to clog and finally seal that accidental tunnel. The mascon was only a minor eddy in those vast cosmic winds, but it whirled between her and Gamma. Arkel’s advice to head for it had been a deadly blunder. Following the Purple Empress, though only at a tiny fraction of its speed, the pod was already trapped. Yet, in that giddy instant, danger didn’t matter.
For she had the Gyrel gift!
Half her mind tried to doubt, tried to say that all she saw and felt and knew was mere illusion, a mental escape from cruel dilemmas. She could see the shape of every rushing cloud, feel the weight and flight of every deadly grain in the mascon ahead, hear the silent magnetic forces of the shockwave like the roar of a hurricane around her.
It was real! The mutant gene was working in her. The Gyrel legacy, it was worth infinitely more than the inheritance Macham and Brendish had stolen. Perhaps it could even save her life.
When that first trembling elation had begun to subside, she bent to resent the robotic pilot on a new course, turning away from Gamma toward a still-open section of the narrowed pass—and hoping Pilot Arkel had found it in time.
She couldn’t help that hope, even though the destruction of the Purple Empress would also kill the enemies aboard. She wanted answers to the riddles around Brendish and Macharn before they were erased. She didn’t want her mother to die, or the laser-maker, or her unlucky kinsman.
PILOT ERROR!
That yellow warning had flared across the hood.
WARNING! NO TACHYONIC MARKER AHEAD.
WARNING! NO CHARTED DESTINATION WITHIN CRUISING RANGE.
WARNING! RESET DESTINATION HEADING TO AVOID INDICATED HAZARDS.
Sure of herself, she let it blink.
13
Eight days later, the speakers thumped.
“S.S. Hedonian.” A woman’s voice, musical and low. “Calling Escape Craft C from S.S. Purple Empress. We hear your signal and we’re homing on it.”
Within a few hours, the same warm voice was telling Jil to kill the drive and stand by for rescue. At last her conning hood picked up the starship, a faint silver fleck that swelled until she heard the clatter of the magnetic line fired to haul the pod aboard.
When crashing air had filled the lock, she opened her exit hatch and found three women waiting. They astonished her. Tall and slender, golden-haired and golden-eyed, they were nearly nude. Their beauty took her breath. All three looked precisely alike; even their voices were identical.
Trying not to stare too hard, she thanked them for picking her up.
“Captain Larron commanded your rescue when he heard your name.” Devotion hushed their voices when they spoke of him. “He welcomes you aboard the Hedonian as his special guest.”
She told them she had urgent messages to send.
“You must ask Captain Larron.” The nearest frowned doubtfully. “We are flying under tachyonic silence, which cannot be broken except by his express command.”
They took her to a stateroom, larger and more inviting than her cell on the Purple Empress. The captain would be pleased to receive her in the main salon before dinner. Suitable clothing could be provided, if she chose to wear clothing. When she said she did, the gowns they brought looked more costly than any she had ever owned and only slightly long. Beginning to feel at ease with the women, she confessed that she couldn’t tell them apart.
“Nobody can, except the captain himself.” They seemed amused. “We’re android clones, you see, genetically identical. Distinctions between us are seldom required.”
When she was ready, they took her two decks up to meet Captain Larron. The main salon was even more elegant than Macham’s purple sanctum, though not so showy. Polished gemstones and hardwoods shone. Rare metals gleamed discreetly. The captain rose to receive her, smiling genially through a heavy red-brown beard.
A huge man, and powerful. Hard muscles swelled and rippled beneath a casual tan pullover that carried no insignia of rank or status. Red-brown hair flowed down around his shoulders, as thick and lustrous as the beard.
“Welcome to the Hedonian!” Regarding her, his greenish eyes lit with pleasure. “We left our course to pick you up because I respect the Gyrel name, but I’d never expected any such superb reward.”
He offered drinks from a well-stocked bar. Straw-colored Nebulon wine, liqueurs from Alpha and beyond, a rare Terran brandy. She asked for cold water and kept a wary distance, groping to know him and his enigmatic crew.
His rugged, dark-bronzed face looked open. He seemed at ease, his vibrant voice warmly cordial. She wanted to like him, but this Hedonian was another riddle, not yet so disturbing as those that came to haunt her on the Purple Empress but equally perplexing.
A tall, nude beauty brought iced water for her in a silver cup and the Nebulon wine for him, kneeling to them both as humbly as the spider-robots had made her kneel to Brendish and Macharn, smiling up into his face with a total devotion.
Jil sipped the water, feeling troubled by her own instinctive response to his hearty masculine vitality. His male appeal was almost an aura. Half captured by it, she could understand the girl’s adoration. Alarmed, she didn’t intend to let it overwhelm her.
“Captain, I’ve a favor to ask. A very urgent call I have to make.”
In absent affection, his powerful hand had fallen on the girl’s golden head. She shivered as if in ectasy. Smiling fondly, he nodded for her to rise.
“Any other favor.” He turned more gravely to Jil. “But circumstances force us to fly silent. You’ll approve when you know why.”
“You’ll let me call when you know the situation.”
“You’re my guest.” He smiled again. “I’m listening.”
“A matter of interstellar security.” She hesitated, uncertain how to convince him. “Did you know the Keeper has been killed?”
With his admiring eyes sweeping her again, he shook his head as if he hadn’t really heard.
“Murdered,” she told him. “Her great weapon likely lost. Maybe to conspirators plotting to restore the Ulnar Empire. They’re on the Purple Empress. Escaping into the nebula. I think they have alien allies there. There’s a Legion ship cruising in the channel. The Sunmark, under Pilot-Major Star. I must get what I know to him.”
She saw the doubt clouding his cragged features.
“Captain, please!” she whispered. “You’ve got to believe. You will, when I tell you more—”
His regretful shrug stopped her.
“I don’t like to doubt such a lovely witness.” He was gently tolerant. “But we’ve just come from a stop on Alpha.” He shook his head. “Not a word about any attack on the Keeper.”
“Because it’s a security secret,” she insisted. “It has to be kept secret. The Legion can’t tell our enemies that we’ve lost AKKA—”
She had seen his fleeting smile.
“Captain, I’m not crazy!”
“I didn’t say that. But your flight in the pod must have been a pretty grim ordeal. We’ll try to help you recover.”
She studied his features, the iron behind the genial charm.
“Where can you drop me off?” she demanded. “When?”
“A difficult problem.” He shrugged, with a momentary frown of apology. “I don’t know the answer.”
“Am I a prisoner?”
“Our guest,” he said. “But we must keep you—”
“Why?” She was on her feet, breathing hard. “I won’t submit—”
“Please sit down.” He gestured persuasively. “Listen for an instant. Perhaps the Legion is really in trouble, but so are we. With the most compelling possible reason to risk no contact with them. You see, we’re fugitives ourselves. If the Sunmark is actually cruising above us in the channel, perhaps we are the prey it’s waiting for.”
Unwillingly she sat.
“Another strange tale.” His brown smile tried to disarm her. “Nearly as odd as your own, but I hope you’ll try to believe me. We’ll both be happier when we come to trust each other.” He signaled the waiting girl. “Won’t you have some wine?”
She shook her head, but he let the girl refill his own glass.
“I was born in the nebula.” His tone was patiently appealing. “I’ve always known about the Gyrels, and you may have heard of my Dad. Raben Larron. Sometimes known as Robber Raben. For cause enough, I imagine.”
She couldn’t help liking his casual grin.
“Came out from Terra. On borrowed money, he used to say—I imagine it was stolen. Got here with nothing at all. That never mattered, because he was made for the nebula. He loved the daring. Even the danger. Shrugged off his losses and revealed when he won. Your Gyrel men were born with your pilot gene. He used to say his was the dealer gene. A gift for falling on his feet. Made his billions, yet never had enough.
“Mother was an acrobat from Derron IV. Came out on a tour he’d promoted. Fascinated at first with him and the nebula, but I guess his financial acrobatics got too giddy for her. Went home to civilization the year after I was born. Wanted me, but Dad laughed at her lawyers and took me out beyond the law.
“So I grew up with his love for the nebula. Grew up wanting to be just like him, till I found he wasn’t really happy with himself. In spite of all he used to win and lose, he’d always felt himself beneath the touring bloods, with all their class and manners and social arts he didn’t know.
“Sent me out the year I was twelve, to get the polish he wished he’d had. With funds enough to buy the best. I had a dozen years of high-class culture, with top-flight science to match, most of it on Terra. Learned a lot, including things he’d never expected. Lived a year with my mother again, before she saw she didn’t want me. All of which made me what I am.
“Like me or not.”
Smiling at her, he shrugged as if certain she must.
“Yet I’m no clone of either one. Never cared for Dad’s hard games to win another billion. Never learned to care for the Terran culture and old-style class my mother worshiped. Or the universe she called civilized. Guess I never will.”
Solemn again, he sipped the amber wine.
“No room back there for me.” He fixed his greenish eyes on her, as if anxious to make her see how he felt. “Too many people. Too many ‘isms.’ My college profs used to preach cultural evolution. All their theories meant to glorify social setups invented to enslave the individual human being.
