The Death of Sleep (16 page)

"Did you capture the pirate?" Lunzie asked eagerly, leaning forward.

The Admiral shook his head regretfully. "Sunspots, no. That'd have been a pretty star on my bow if we had. We engaged them as they streaked after the merchant ship, exchanging fire. That poor little merchant begged heaven's blessings down on us, and scooted! The pirate had no choice. He couldn't turn his back on me again. My ship was holed, but no lives were lost. The pirate wasn't so lucky. I saw hull plates and other debris shoot away from the body of his ship, and the frayed edges curled, imploded! Must have been an atmosphered chamber, which meant crew. I hope to heaven it didn't mean prisoners.

"Whatever they had in their engines, ours was better. We chased them outside the system into the radiation belt, we chased them past comets. Finally, my gunner struck their port engine. They spiraled in circles for a couple of turns, and got back on a steady course, but my gunner hit them again. Dead in the water. As soon as we relayed to them that we were going to board them with a prize crew, they blew themselves up!" The Admiral held out his hands before him, cupping air. "I had them like this, so close! No captain has ever succeeded in capturing a planet pirate. But I flatter myself, that if I couldn't, no man can."

"You do flatter yourself, Admiral," Sharu remarked flippantly. "But most likely, you're right."

Lunzie still joined the Admiral and his aide in the holo-room during the evenings after she held infirmary call. Coromell had two favorite holos he requested in the alcove in which he and Don spent the hours before turning in. The first was the bridge of his flagship, the
Federation.
The second appeared when Lunzie suspected that Coromell was in a pensive mood. It was a roaring fireplace with a broad tiled hearth and an ornamented copper hood set in a stone-and-brick wall.

The quality hologram system was equipped with temperature and olfactory controls as well as visual display. She could smell the burning hardwoods and feel the heat of the flames as she took a seat in the third of the deep, cushiony armchairs furnished in the alcove. Don stood up as she approached, and signaled a server to bring her a drink. As she suspected, Coromell sat bent with one elbow on his knee and a balloon glass in the other hand, staring into the dance of shadows and lights and listening to the soft music playing in the background. He hadn't noticed her arrive. Lunzie waited a little while, watching him. He looked pensive and rather sad.

"What are you thinking of, Admiral?" Lunzie asked in a soft voice.

"Hm? Oh, Doctor. Nothing. Nothing of importance. Just thinking of my son. He's in the service. Means to go far, too, and see if he doesn't."

"You miss him," she suggested, intuitively sensing that the old man wanted to talk.

"Dammit, I do. He's a fine young man. You're about his age, I'd say. You . . . you don't have any children, do you?"

"Just one; a daughter. I'm meeting her on Alpha Centauri."

"A little girl, eh? You look so young." Coromell coughed self-deprecatingly. "Of course, at my age, everyone looks young."

"Admiral, I'm closer to your age than to your son's." Lunzie shrugged. "It's in the ship's records; you could find out if you wanted. I've been through cold sleep. My little girl will be seventy-eight on her next birthday."

"You don't say? Well, well, that's why you understand all the ancient history I've been spouting. You've been there. We should talk about old times." The Admiral shot her a look of lonely appeal which touched Lunzie's heart. "There are so few left who remember. I'd consider it a personal favor."

"Admiral, I'd be doing it out of blatant self-interest. I've only been in this century two years."

"Hmph! I feel as though I've been on this ship that long. Where are we bound for?"

"Sybaris Planet. It's a luxury spa. . . ."

"I know what it is," Coromell interrupted her impatiently. "Another dumping ground for the useless rich. Phah! When I get to be that helpless you can arrange for my eulogy."

Lunzie smiled. The server bowed next to her, presenting a deep balloon glass like the one the Admiral had, washed a scant half inch across the bottom with a rich, ruddy amber liquid. It was an excellent rare brandy. Delicate vapors wafted out of the glass headily as the liquid warmed in the heat from the fire. Lunzie took a very small sip and felt that heat travel down her throat. She closed her eyes.

"Like it?" Coromell rumbled.

"Very nice. I don't usually indulge in anything this strong."

"Hmph. Truth is, neither do I. Never drank on duty." Coromell cupped the glass in his big hand and swirled the brandy gently under his nose before tipping it up to drink. "But today I felt a little self-indulgent."

Lunzie became aware suddenly that the background music had changed. Under the lull of the music was a discreet jingling that could have been mistaken for a technical fault by anyone but a member of the crew. To the crew, it meant impending disaster. Lunzie set down her glass and looked around the shadows.

"Chibor!" She hailed a mate of Perkin's staff who was passing through the immense chamber. She looked up at the sound of her voice and waved.

"I was looking for you, Lunzie. Perkin told me . . ."

"Yes! The alarm. What is it? You can speak in front of the Admiral. He doesn't scare easily."

Coromell straightened up, and set aside his glass. "No, indeed. What's in the wind?"

Chibor signaled for a more discreet tone and leaned toward her. "You know about the engine trouble we've been having. It was giving off some weird harmonics, so we had to turn it off and drop out of warp early. There's no way to get back into warp for a while until it's been tuned, and we jumped right into the path of an ion storm. It's moving toward us pretty fast. The navigator accidentally let us drift into its perimeters, and it's playing merry hell with the antimatter drives. We're heading behind the gas giant in the system to shield us until it passes."

"Will that work?" Lunzie asked, her eyes huge and worried. She fought down the clutch of fear in her guts.

"May do," Coromell answered calmly, interrupting Chibor. "May not."

"We're preparing to go to emergency systems. Perkin said you'd want to know." Chibor nodded and rushed away. Lunzie watched her go. No one else noticed her enter or leave the holo-room. They were involved in their own pursuits.

"I'd better go up and see what is going on," Lunzie said. "Excuse me, Admiral."

The gas giant of Carson's System was as huge and as spectacular as promised. The rapidly rotating planet had a solid core deep inside an envelope of swirling gases thousands of miles thick. A few of her fellow passengers had gathered on the ship's gallery to view it through the thick quartz port.

The captain of the
Destiny Calls
increased the ship's velocity to match the planet's two-hour period of rotation and followed a landmark in the gas layer, the starting point of a pair of horizontal black stripes, around to the sunward side of the planet, where they stood off, and held a position behind the planet's protective bulk. The green-and-yellow giant was just short of being a star, lacking only a small increase in mass or primary ignition. The planet's orbit was much closer to the system's sun than was common with most gas giants, and the sun itself burned an actinic white on the ship's screens. Telemetry warned of lashing arms of magnetic disturbance that kicked outward from the gaseous surface. This was the only formed planet in this system, and ships passing by were required to use it when aligning for their final jump through the sparsely starred region to Sybaris. Still the planet's rapid rotation and the massive magnetic field it generated meant that here gases and radiation churned constantly, even on its dark side. Lunzie suspected they were closer to the planet, which filled half the viewport, than was normal, but said nothing. Other passengers, the more well-traveled looking ones, seemed concerned as well. The captain appeared a few minutes later, a forced smile belying his attempts to calm his passengers' fears.

"Gentlebeings," Captain Wynline said, wryly, watching the giant's surface spin beneath them. "Due to technical considerations, we were forced to drop out of warp at this point. But as a result, we are able to offer you a fabulous view seen by only a few since it was discovered: Carson's Giant. This gas giant should have been a second sun, making this system a binary without planets, but it never ignited, thereby leaving us with a galactic wonder, for study and speculation. Oh . . . and don't anybody drop a match."

The passengers watching the huge globe revolve chuckled and whispered among themselves.

The
Destiny
waited behind the gas giant's rapidly spinning globe until they were sure that the particularly violent ion storm had swirled past and moved entirely out of the ecliptic. The first edges of the storm, which an unmanned monitor had warned them of the instant they had entered normal space, filled the dark sky around the giant with a dancing aurora.

"Captain!" Telemetry Officer Hord entered the gallery and stood next to the captain. "Another major solar flare on the sun's surface! That'll play havoc with the planet's magnetic field," he offered softly, and then paused, watching to see how the captain reacted. The chief officer didn't seem overly concerned. "This will combine with the effects of the ion storm, sir," he added, when no response was forthcoming.

"I'm aware of the ramifications, Hord," the captain assured him and tripped his collar mike. He spoke decisively in a low voice. Lunzie noticed the change in his hearty tone and moved closer to listen. The captain observed her, but saw only another crew member, and continued with his commands. "Helm, try to maneuver us away from the worst of this. Use whatever drives are ready and tuned. Telemetry, tell us when the storm's passed by enough to venture out again. I don't like this a bit. Computer systems, get the ceramic brick hard copies of our programming out of mothballs. Just in case. Inform Engineering. What's the period for magnetic disturbance reaching us from the sun, Hord?"

"Nine hours, sir. But the flame disturbances are coming pretty close together. I estimate that some are coming toward us already. There's no way to tell, too much noise to get anything meaningful from the monitor." Both officers looked worried now. The com-unit on the captain's collar bleeped. "Engineering here, Captain. We're getting magnetic interference in the drives. The antimatter bottle is becoming unstable. I'm bringing in portable units to step it up."

The captain wiped his forehead. "So it's begun. We can't depend on the containment systems. Prepare to evacuate the ship. Sound the alarms, but don't launch. Gentlebeings!" Everyone on the gallery looked up expectantly. "There has been a development. Will you please return immediately to your quarters, and wait for an announcement.
Now
, please."

As soon as the gallery cleared, the captain ordered the Communications Officer to make the announcement over shipwide comsystems. When Lunzie turned toward the gallery's door to go back to the holochamber, everything went dark, as the ship abruptly went onto battery. The emergency lights glowed red for a brief instant in the corners and around the hatchway.

"What the hell was that?" the captain demanded as the full lights came back on.

"Overload, probably from the solar flares," Hord snapped out, monitoring his readouts on his portable remote unit. "We'll lose the computer memory if that happens again. Watch out, here it goes!"

Lunzie dashed back toward her cabin through flickering lights. Interstellar travel is safer than taking a bath, less accidents per million, she repeated the often-advertised claim to reassure herself. No one was ever in two incidents, not in this modern age. Every vessel, even one as old as the
Destiny,
was double-checked and had triple back-ups on every circuit.

"Attention please," announced the calm voice of the Communications Officer, cutting through the incidental music and all the video and Tri-D programs. "Attention. Please leave your present locations immediately and make your way to the lifeboat stations. Please leave your present locations and make your way to the lifeboat stations. This is not a drill. Do not use the turbovators as they may not continue to function. Repeat, do not use the turbovators."

The voice was interrupted occasionally by crackling, and faded out entirely at one point.

"What was that?" A passenger noticed Lunzie's uniform and grabbed her arm. "I saw the lights go down. There's something wrong, isn't there?"

"Please, sir. Go to the lifeboat stations right now. Do you remember your team number?"

"Five B. Yes, it was Five B." The man's eyes went huge. "Do you mean there's a real emergency?"

Lunzie shuddered. "I hope not, sir. Please, go. They'll tell you what's going on when you're in your place. Hurry!" She turned around and ran with him to the dining hall level.

The message continued to repeat over the loudspeakers.

The corridor filled instantly with hundreds of humanoids, hurrying in all directions. Some seemed to have forgotten not only which stations they were assigned to, but where the dining hall was. Emergency chase lights were intermittent, but they provided a directional beacon for the terrified passengers to follow. There were cries and groans as the passengers tried to speculate on what was happening.

The crowd huddled in the gigantic holo-room near the metal double doors to the dining room, milling about, directionless, babbling among themselves in fear. The holo-room was the largest open space on the level, and could be used for illusions to entertain thousands of people. At one end of the room, several dozen humans, unaware that anything was going on around them, were fending off holographic bandits with realistic-looking swords. In a cave just next to the doors in the dining room, a knot of costumed cavedwellers huddled together over a stick fire. At that moment, the illusion projectors in the alcoves shut off, eliciting loud protests from viewers as their varied fantasies disappeared, leaving the room a bare, ghost-gray shell with a few pieces of real furniture here and there. The costumed figures stood up, looking around for ship personnel to fix the problem, and saw the crowds bearing down on them into the newly opened space. They panicked and broke for the exits. More passengers appeared, trying to shove past them into the dining hall, yelling. Fights began among them. Into the midst of this came the child-caretakers with their charges. The head of child care, a thin Human male, spoke through a portable loudspeaker, paging each parent one at a time to come and retrieve its offspring.