Текст книги "Sword of Damocles "

Автор книги: Geoffrey Thorne

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  “Kill you,” said A’yujae’Tak. She looked a little wobbly on her feet, despite her firm tone, so Vale shot her again. A’yujae’Tak fell first to one knee and then to both before dropping forward to use her upper arms for support.

  This time there were no more threats, only hums and clicks that, even without translation, seemed to indicate that A’yujae’Tak had been pacified.

  Vale edged toward Keru, who groaned in pain as he struggled to rise. It was clear she’d broken a couple of his ribs and perhaps even cracked his sternum.

  Nearby, Troi continued to support Ra-Havreii, who, while in better shape than Keru, was not quite as hardy as Vale had at first thought. His tunic was torn across the chest where A’yujae’Tak had slashed him, and there was blood in his hair from a gash Vale hadn’t seen before. Troi was attempting to clear some of it off his face with her sleeve.

  “You are a [possible meaning: pestilence],” said A’yujae’Tak. “You have murdered us.”

  Looking around her at the destruction and death, at her missing, probably dead teammates, listening to the sounds of thunder and catastrophe outside, which were not nearly as distant as they had been, Vale had to wonder if there was some truth to the Mater’s accusation. How many of these events would not have occurred if Titanhad not come to this place?

  She was still wondering a few moments later when the world around her began to sparkle and she was transported away.

  The next sight she saw was so welcome that she at first thought she might be hallucinating. As the shimmer of transport dwindled and the world became solid around her again, she easily recognized the contours of the Ellington’s hold.

  She could see through the nearby porthole that the little ship was high above the planet, just meters shy of the energy field that had set the sky on fire.

  She rapped hard on the nearest bulkhead, assuring herself of its solidity. This wasn’t a dream or a hallucination. It was real. The shuttle had survived and, in doing so, confirmed that Jaza and Modan must be intact as well.

  She cast around happily, checking on the other returnees. There was Keru, wheezing a bit from his injuries as Troi helped him into the medical cradle. There was A’yujae’Tak, still groggy from all the phaser hits, still fighting to get back to her feet and still failing. Ra-Havreii was not with them.

  “Computer,” said Vale. “Erect a level-two containment field around alien intruder.”

   “Acknowledged,”said the familiar female voice.

  A thin sheet of impenetrable energy rose up around the corner where the Orishan Mater still continued her struggle to remain conscious, to continue the fight.

  “Locate and contact Commander Ra-Havreii,” said Vale.

   “Commander Ra-Havreii is aboard this vessel.”

  The shuttle lurched a bit, causing A’yujae’Tak to stumble backward and to drop the little strip of cloth she had been clutching in her lower left talon. It was a piece of Ra-Havreii’s uniform, torn off no doubt during her ambush of the engineer.

  When she heard a small clattering noise as the strip impacted with the deck, Vale looked and saw that Ra-Havreii’s combadge had come off in the Orishan’s fist as well.

  Emergency auto-retrievals targeted badges, not life signs. The engineer was still on the planet, still in the Spire’s control center where they’d left him.

  Vale hollered up to flight control for Jaza to get a bio-lock on Ra-Havreii and get him out of there. When neither Jaza nor Ra-Havreii appeared, she yelled up again.

  “Jaza! What’s the problem?” she said. “Mr. Jaza, report!” Again there was no answer.

  “What do you mean, he didn’t make it?” said Vale when Modan had climbed down from the upper deck to inform her of Jaza’s status. “Are you saying he’s dead?”

  “Yes, Commander,” she said, and none of them, not even Troi, could read the emotion under the words. It was something new, perhaps unique to her experience. “For quite some time now, I expect.”

  There was also something odd about Modan’s behavior. The pattern of her speech was different, chaotic in a way. It was as if she was randomly shifting between two completely separate idiomatic patterns without realizing it.

  “What do you mean, Ensign?” said Troi, sensing Vale’s confusion and fury and needing to give her time to get it under control. “How did he die?”

  “I don’t know,” said Modan. “I wasn’t there.”

  “You weren’t there?” said Vale, her anger winning out over her grief for the moment. She grabbed Modan by the shoulders and slammed the younger woman against the bulkhead. “You left him somewhere and you don’t know if he’s dead?”

  Modan’s body seemed to shift suddenly in Vale’s grip. Her face elongated, her shoulders grew what looked like armored plates, and her long ropelike braids began to writhe as if they were alive.

  “Christine!” said Troi, putting a hand on her in an attempt to calm her. Vale shrugged her off.

  “He is dead,” said Modan. “He’s certainly dead. I didn’t have to see it. I know.” She was, just as obviously as Vale, in great anguish over Jaza’s loss. Her placid metallic features made a better mask than Vale’s fleshy ones, but Jaza had left a hole inside Modan as well. Vale was too caught up in her own anger and grief to know it, but to Troi it was clear.

  “Can you tell us what you mean, Ensign?” she said.

  “There’s no time, Deanna,” said Modan. Deanna?“I’ll have to show you.”

  “Show us what?” Vale asked, not relaxing her grip despite the fine golden spines that had begun to grow through Modan’s uniform to puncture Vale’s flesh.

  In response two of the tentacles on Modan’s head whipped out at Troi and Vale, attaching themselves to the women’s temples.

  “This,” said Modan, as Vale found the strength draining out of her arms and the world around her going dark. “I have to show you this.”

Chapter Eleven

   Black.

  The world was black and formless, made of something liquid that rolled over and beneath them like an ocean of molasses. They could hear voices, their own and each other’s certainly, but also in the distance, that of a man, a father they suddenly knew, talking to his young son.

  “The Prophets express their will through us, Jem,” said the man. They could suddenly see him-deep brown flesh on a big, thick-limbed body, with kindly gray eyes, standing just outside a battered building of wood and clay. Their home? “They show us what they wish but do not tell us always how to get there. Our life is to learn their will and follow it as best we can. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Father,” said the other. They could suddenly see him too. Not older than ten years, not quite grown into his own large bones, yet he was a near-perfect copy of his father in miniature. “I think so.”

   It’s him, thought Vale. It’s Najem as a boy.

  She had never seen him this way, so innocent and small. She had never even pictured him as a child. As something pulled her awareness from the scene, she was sure she would have difficulty picturing him any other way from then on.

  “We have to hit them back,” said another voice, this time female and intense. “Every day. We have to let them know they bit off more than they can ever chew by coming here.”

  A smallish, almost elfin woman who looked as if she’d been carved out of sandalwood appeared, naked but for the sheet that covered her and half of a young, equally nude man who was also somehow Jaza.

  Vale felt her body flush as she thought of her time with him and the things he’d taught her about the placement of Bajoran ridges. Despite their evolution into close friends, this too was an image of him she would never let go.

  “They own the planet, Sumari,” he said, his voice low and very slightly slurred. He seemed a little drunk. “They can do anything they want.”

  The woman, Sumari, rolled over onto his stomach and gazed at him. “You hate them,” she said. “I know you do. For what they let happen to your mother. For what they’ve done to all of us. For the way they spit on the Prophets.”

  “I don’t give a damn about the Prophets,” he said. His face had turned to stone. “And they don’t give a damn about me.”

  “You’re wrong, Najem,” she said. “It’s the Cardassians who’ve done this to you as well. They’ve stolen your faith.” She pushed herself closer to him, her hands moving over his chest slowly. “I want to give you that back. You’re going to need it for our children.”

  He sat up sharply, inadvertently knocking her off the bed that was too small for two, and making her smile and laugh.

  “Children?” he said. “You’re not-”

  “Oh,” she said, climbing back up. “I think I am.”

  “But we’ve only…” he stammered as she smiled and continued to kiss him. “I mean, we’ve barely-”

  “Your father’s a doctor,” she said, laughing. “You should know once is enough.”

  Again Vale felt herself being pulled away and was grateful. This wasn’t for her to see somehow, and she knew it. And, really, she didn’t want to see. This was a private moment, something of Jaza’s alone. It felt wrong that anyone should know of it.

  There were other images then, other scenes-Najem and his father screaming at each other during his mother’s funeral; Sumari dying in his arms, the victim of a Cardassian disruptor blast that he still felt had been meant for him; the sniper who had killed her dying in his hands only moments later; the birth of his children, Esola for his mother and Kren for her father-but all of these moments rushed past in a blur. Something-Modan, she realized-was forcing her away.

   What was all that?she thought.

   Apocrypha, came the reply from Modan. Extra bits that weren’t intended for me but spilled over anyway. Ignore them.

  They lingered on the vision Jaza had seen-or believed he’d seen-which Vale found odd and mystical and somewhat disconcerting. She was happy when it went away.

   Here, said Modan’s voice in her mind. Here is what you need to see.

   What’s wrong with the sky?thought Vale, looking up at it and seeing for the first time the chaotically oscillating Eye of Erykon. She had gotten glimpses of it during its eruptions, mostly the odd flash or strange multicolored ripple. These were all her human physiology had let her observe. Jaza’s Bajoran genes allowed him a better view, and she was seeing that view now.

  He stood there, motionless, frozen in fear by the realization that he had stepped into the scene from his vision. Ever since his meeting with the Prophets he had wondered about the moment, sometimes dreading it, sometimes wishing it would come so that he could finally understand its meaning. Now it was here, and all he felt was the brutal cold of his own imminent mortality.

  He couldn’t move. He couldn’t think or, if he thought, it was only the one sentiment playing over and over and over in his mind.

   I’m going to die. Here. Today. In moments or in hours, I’m going to die.

  He couldn’t move. He didn’t want to do anything that would either disturb the vision or, worse perhaps, bring it to its predicted end.

  Thoughts of his friends and his loves and his many adventures now flooded his mind like a storm. His entire life was suddenly laid before him. Every valley, every peak, every blemish, every virtue, everything rushed through him in its totality, and he was left breathless.

  There was fear with all of it too, unexpected, unplanned for, and inescapable for all that. Now that his moment was finally here, he feared that he might try to avoid his fate, proving that he loved his life just a little bit more than he loved the Prophets.

  It wasn’t true. It hadn’t been true since he’d regained his faith. But the fear, the terrible fear of oblivion ravaged him all the same.

  And he still couldn’t make himself move. He was held in the grip of this moment and it wouldn’t let him go.

  Then, as they always do, the moment passed.

  The moment passed and he didn’t die. It was followed by another in which he did not die. Another moment passed and another and, defying his expectations, through each of them he still continued not to die.

  The fear didn’t leave him then, but its effects began to drain away, allowing his rational mind to reassert.

  What was it he had been taught as a child?

   The Prophets reveal but they do not direct. We have to do the work ourselves.

  That was all well and good, he thought, but his work, his life was a thousand years in the future. There was nothing to do here but get off this planet before he and Modan did anything irreversible to the timeline.

  He suddenly remembered Modan. She had to be saved and both of them had to get away from here as soon as possible. If he died somewhere between this moment and that or in some moment yet to come, that must be part of the Prophets’ plan for him and he could only accept it as he had accepted their boon in the shrine so many years ago.

  He still wore the isolation suit. He still had his phasers, and as long as Modan still wore her badge, he could use the shuttle’s sensors to pinpoint her location. A few well-placed shots should scatter these primitives and he would have her away before they could regroup and follow. Easy.

  If he could manage it, no matter what else happened, he might be able to keep her from giving up her life for the Prophets’ vision, as had so many of his friends before.

  The two soldiers were of different factions, each sporting intricate but differently hued tattoos that had been scrawled all over the sides of their carapaces and each bearing a selection of similarly lethal hand weapons.

  Finding Modan, someone so outside their sensibilities that the words they used to describe her could not yet be translated, had caused them to put aside their differences for the moment while they tried to figure her out.

  “You are a fool,” said the one with the green and gold tattooing. “It is obviously a [meaning unknown] sent from Erykon to [possible meaning: test] us.”

  “You dare to claim to know the will of the Maker of the Eye?” said the one with the red and white. “You dare to speak the Maker’s name aloud?!”

  “See its odd appearance?” said the first soldier, her glassy black eyes twinkling in the evening light like a helix of precious stones. “It is not a creature of this creation. It is from Erykon. There is no other explanation.”

  “You are the fool, Tik’ik,” said the other soldier. “Your mind is broken if you think this is anything more than some [possible meaning: birth mutated] animal. How else could you have broken it and brought it to me?”

  “It was in the Shattered Place.”

  “We were in the Shattered Place,” said Kakkakit. “Are we sent by the Maker?”

  “I was sent by my Mater to murder the sisters in your blasphemous clan in quantity,” said Tik’ik. “But you agree that this creature is more important.”

  Kakkakit made a few skeptical clicks with her inner mandibles and began to circle Modan’s prone form, prodding her occasionally with a weapon that resembled a long walking stick with some kind of crystal formation at the top.

  Modan twitched away from the contact and moaned. From his vantage point a couple of meters away Jaza could see that she’d been caught in mid-transition between her humanoid and feral forms. She was still mostly humanoid, but there were spines breaching her suit.

  “I have a solution,” said Kakkakit at last. “We can eat it.”

  “Your brain is broken.”

  “Tell me, Tik’ik,” said the other. “Are you hungry?”

  “Soldiers are always hungry,” she said. “If you had a soul you would know this.”

  “I am as hungry as you,” said Kakkakit, leaning over Modan. “My soul tells me there is food here.”

  “If you touch it,” said Tik’ik, leveling her own nearly identical weapon at Kakkakit, “I will kill you here and now. To harm one of Erykon’s things is to beg the Eye to open again.”

  “The Eye has opened,” said Kakkakit. “We know it is because of your blasphemies. It is our slaughter of your hideous clan and all of the others that has caused it to close again. When the last of you is dead, the Eye will sleep.”

  “Your disgusting clan and all your sisters will be larvae food before the Daystar rises again,” said Tik’ik. “That will please Erykon. This creature is a gift to us for carrying out your destruction.”

  “Don’t be foolish,” said Kakkakit. “Think: If we can eat it, then we know it is just some animal. If it is something sent by the Maker to test us, as you say, or if it is some gift, the Maker will not let us eat it.”

  Tik’ik thought about it, chewing the idea as if it were a small and succulent mammal. “All right,” she said at last. “We will try your plan.”

  Each soldier had a long-handled serrated blade strapped to her back that they now withdrew from their respective sheaths.

  Taking positions at either end of Modan’s body, they raised the blades, which resembled machetes. Before they could bring them down again, twin beams of destructive energy lanced out at them from what seemed to the soldiers like empty air. The machetes dissolved to nothing in their talons, and both soldiers were thrown to the ground.

  They were up again in a flash, this time with guns in hand, firing small metal projectiles in the direction of the beams’ origin. Plants shredded, crystals exploded in every direction while the soldiers continued their lethal barrage.

  Tik’ik was empty first, the nose of her weapon so hot that smoke wafted up from the hole in a lazy undulation. She leaped over to the place she and Kakkakit had just destroyed, hoping to find a body in the broken turf or a blood trail at least.

  There was nothing.

  “What was it?” said Kakkakit. “Is it dead?”

  There was nothing.

  “You see?” Tik’ik said thoughtfully. “It is Erykon’s will that this creature must not be harmed.”

  “This is some trick of your clan’s, I think,” said Kakkakit, slowly and quietly replacing her gun’s empty packet of projectiles with a fresh one. “I will kill you and this creature and eat both your-”

  She never finished. Tik’ik’s clan blade, the small one she kept hidden in the broken part of her carapace, had pierced Kakkakit through the thorax, spewing her juice on the ground and sending the rest of her to Erykon.

  When Tik’ik had retrieved her blade and assured herself that Kakkakit was dead by eating one of her eyes, she stood and said, “I know you are here. I can taste your aura.” When there was no response she continued. “I know this creature belongs to Erykon. I have protected it from harm. It is my wish to know if Erykon desires further service from me.”

  Jaza regarded the creature from the protection of the isolation suit. He had only narrowly escaped death by diving clear when the warriors had opened fire.

  It had been instinct that told him to leap, an animal’s need to continue living, but now that he had done it, now that he had heard the request of this lethally pious creature, he wondered. Why had he not just stood there and allowed their bullets to shred him along with the landscape? Would that not have fulfilled the Prophets’ vision?

  The only answer was that he had to protect Modan, to get her back to the shuttle alive, to make their escape.

  But there was now the problem of Tik’ik.

  She stood there, all innocence despite her skill with murder, waiting for any word from her god as to what she must do next. She reminded him of himself, he realized, and in a fashion that was less than flattering.

  She was a puppet, unable to act in any way beyond what she deemed to be the wishes of Erykon. She was empty of motive, of desire, of anything but the automatic need to follow. Was that truly piety, or had she simply made herself an organic automaton, no more awake to the universe than a screwdriver or a calculator?

   The Prophets do not want us as their toys, his father had told him as a child. They want us to fulfill our lives, to expand our minds and knowledge as far as they can go.

   All right, he thought as realization washed over him. I think I understand.

  “Pick it up,” he said, and watched the little shiver that ran through the startled soldier. Tik’ik did as she was told, hefting Modan’s body with surprising grace up into the cradle of her four arms.

  “Follow,” he said, and she did. Apparently the isolation suit’s scent-masking properties needed work.

  Modan woke about a minute into her stay on the shuttle’s medical table. The lacerations and breaks she’d sustained fending off the two soldiers were uglier than Jaza’s had been but also less severe. She healed fast under normal conditions and even faster under the restorative beams.

  She rose to her elbows to see what he was up to and found him bent over the computer and the sensor controls. Sensing her motion, he turned to her and held his finger to his lips.

  She rolled quietly onto her feet and joined him at the console. He was inputting massive amounts of code into several systems. Some she understood to be navigational algorithms, but the rest were incomprehensible, even to her cryptographer’s eyes. She could tell the math was incredibly complex, but that was all.

  Motioning again for her to stay still and silent, he reactivated the stealth harness, disappearing from her sight. Presently the rear access hatch opened and closed again.

  Modan activated the exterior monitor and saw, to her surprise, one of her attackers standing just outside, engaged in conversation with the empty air. Jaza was talking to the creature.

  Presently the Orishan soldier prostrated itself briefly and then disappeared into the jungle.

  The rear access hatch opened again, and when it was closed and secure, Jaza reappeared. He had the queerest expression on his face, and she wasn’t sure it was one she liked.

  “Najem,” she said.

  “Najem,” he repeated slowly, as if tasting it for the first time. “Yes. Please say that. I think I’d like to hear someone say my name for a little longer.”

  She watched as he began selecting items from various storage lockers-the class-two medical kit, the remaining stealth harnesses, two phasers with replacement power packs, the poison analyzer, and various other survival equipment that was designed for extended stays in hostile locales.

  “Najem,” she said. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m sending you back, Y’lira,” he said. Then, turning on her with that same unsettling expression, “And I’m staying.”

  She stared at him, uncomprehending, as her mind failed to process what he had said.

  “You will have to explain that,” she said eventually.

  In response he leaned past her, activating the astrometrics station. A schematic of a rotating, undulating globe appeared on the monitor.

  “That’s the Eye,” he said. “At least, it’s the part of it that exists here. I mapped it while you were healing. With a little bit of luck, you can use the sub-x-11 vertex there to slide back to our era.”

  “I can?”

  “Yes, Ensign,” he said. “I’d say it will put you within a few days of Titan’s arrival. Hopefully a few days before rather than after.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Modan, staring at the construct on the screen. “What?”

  “And you have to go fairly soon, I think,” he said, making a minor adjustment to the figures on the screen. “I’m not sure how stable that thing is.”

  “I failed to return with the flux regulators, Najem,” she said. “I don’t think the shuttle is going anywhere.”

  “Not a problem,” he said, plugging a tricorder into the download cradle. All Titan’s accumulated data about Orishan history and culture began to transfer itself into the smaller device.

  The proximity alarm pinged, automatically activating the external viewers. The Orishan soldier was back, carrying both of the flux regulators that Modan had dropped during her attack. She watched as the creature set the components down on the turf outside the shuttle. It knelt again in that same abbreviated way and then disappeared once more between the leaves and vines.

  The sounds of the battle outside had diminished somewhat, but periodically, a fuel bomb exploding or the report of projectile weapons firing could be heard.

  “I wish she’d stop doing that,” said Jaza, removing the tricorder from the cradle and shoving it into the pack he was building. “This hierarchical clan system is going to be a problem.”

  “Commander-”

  “Najem,” he said.

  “Najem,” she repeated, fighting to stay calm. “Please tell me what’s happened.”

  “I’ve told you,” he said.

  “You haven’t,” she replied. “Nothing you’ve said has made me consider leaving you here in this planet’s past.”

  “If I tell you I finally understand the vision the Prophets showed me, will you accept my decision?”

  “I’m sorry, no,” she said. “That is irrational.”

  “All right,” he said, sitting down beside her. “Rationally, then.”

  In soft reasonable tones he explained his thinking to her, how Titanmight yet be saved from destruction and their fellows on the away team as well.

  He talked about coincidence and the need to prevent paradox. Someone had to take the information about the tesseract’s exact contours back to their own time. Those contours couldn’t be mapped in their era by the tesseract’s very nature.

  Lastly, but most important, someone had to stay here to ensure that the Orishans continued to develop as their history required.

  “That person has to be me,” he said. “You don’t have the necessary background in the sciences to handle any trouble that might arise from Titan’s wreckage. Stabilizing the warp core was primary, but there are all sorts of tech and chemicals that might show up to plague these people. I have to be here for that.”

  “But that creature,” said Modan. “It was kneeling. To you. Does it believe you are a god?”

  He laughed. “She thinks I represent their god,” he said. “Like an Oracle.”

  “Or a Prophet?”

  “I doubt I’ll be quite so cryptic.” He smiled. “But I’ll disabuse her of that notion in time.”

  She digested it. Most of it made a certain kind of sense, except for the bit where he stayed behind.

  “Won’t you pollute the timeline if you stay?” she said. “Isn’t that why we both have to go?”

  “It’s already polluted,” he said. “The crashed starship alone has already done catastrophic damage. I have to stay and make sure the society gets as close to its proper track as possible.”

  “Starfleet will never condone this,” she said.

  “This is bigger than Starfleet.”

  “Then send the shuttle back on autopilot,” she said after some consideration. “I will stay also.” He shook his head. “I can be of help to you.”

  “No, Modan,” he said. “Autopilot won’t work if there’s any trouble on the other end. This takes a living mind, and luckily, we have one to spare.”

  She was silent for a time, still weighing arguments, still searching for the one that would compel him to leave with her or force him to let her stay.

  “Najem,” she said slowly. “These beings, the Orishans, they are nothing like you, nothing at all.”

  “That’s true.”

  “How can you imprison yourself here, with them, forever?”

  He smiled that familiar smile, the one that lit up his face when he was on the verge of some new and exciting discovery.

  “Because I can help them,” he said.

  “You will be alone,” she said, feeling the despair over his choice that he wouldn’t, perhaps couldn’t. “All alone.”

  “It’s my fate,” he said, taking her shoulders in his strong gentle hands. “I thought the vision meant I would die, but maybe it wasn’t meant to be a literal death, Modan. Everything that was Jaza Najem is dead in our time. It has been for hundreds of years. Here I’ll be something new. An ending and a beginning.”

  They spent an hour fitting Titan’s flux regulators to the shuttle’s much smaller warp core, and then it was time to go. Modan had not been gifted with tear ducts, so her parting from him, while emotional for both, was a parched affair.

  He had found a place in Titan’s wreckage where he could build a comfortable and mostly hidden shelter. The Orishans had already begun to refer to it as the Shattered Place because of its obviously destroyed nature and the random arcs of electricity that continued, from time to time, to erupt from a few of the components. Most of them gave the area wide latitude, a tendency he meant to cultivate.

  They stood on the ground just inside the shuttle’s stealth field, saying the final good-bye. She couldn’t really comprehend his decision. Too much of it was based upon an esoteric understanding of reality that she had not been designed to process.

  She told him that this experience was significant enough for her to share it with the other Seleneans at the next confluence and even with her Pod Mother. Perhaps future Y’liras would be capable of understanding faith in the way that he did.

  “You understand it well enough, I think,” he said. Then he told her the final reason for her being the one who had to go back. She was a failsafe. “I need you to link with me the way you did before.”

  “Why?”

  “In case the computers fail or get scrambled in transit,” he said. “The information in my head can still be passed on through you.”

  She saw the wisdom in that and came close to him, letting him hold her as he would a lover as her linking spines undulated around her head.

  “What I take I can’t keep long,” she said. “A day or two at most.”

  “Let’s hope it won’t be needed at all,” he said. Her spines attached to his skin and her mind burrowed into his, lifting out those bits he wanted her to take as well as a few more that couldn’t be avoided.

  Sometime during the exchange he asked her for the last kiss he would ever have.

  She gave it to him.

  Modan couldn’t see the tesseract as Jaza could, not even with the memory of its image temporarily stored inside her, but she felt it when the shuttle crossed its event horizon.

  Reality seemed to flicker and bend around the Ellingtonas it navigated the unseen contours of the immense four-dimensional object. There was no real sense of acceleration or of time passing, only the initial jolt, the bizarre light show, and then suddenly she was back in normal space in low orbit over Orisha.

  The computer lit up immediately with the locator signals of three of the combadges of the missing away teammates, and she was elated. She wondered at the missing member of the team, whether he or she had been lost or if the absent signal was only the result of a damaged combadge.