took himself between Griffin and Gawain and Lynn at main controls, just standing there, in case.
“Well?” Dela asked.
“We don’t have contact,” Percivale said, beside Modred. “We keep sending, but the object doesn’t respond. We were asked about range: we don’t know that either. Everything has failed.”
“Where is this thing we’re talking about?” Dela asked, and Modred reached and punched a button. It came up on the big screen, a kind of a cloud on the scope, all gridded and false, just patches of something solid the computer was trying to show us.
“I think we’re getting vid,” Percivale said, and that image went off, replaced with another, in all the flare of strange colors and shapes that drifted where there ought to be stars, in between blackness measled with red spots like dapples that might be stars or just the cameras trying to pick up something that made no sense. And against that backdrop was something that might be a misshapen world in silhouette, or a big rock irregularly shaped, or something far vaster than we wanted to think, no knowing. It was flattened at its poles and it bristled with strange shapes in prickly complexity.
“We’ve been getting nearer steadily,” Modred said. “It could be our size or star-sized. We don’t know.”
“You’ve got the scan on it,” Griffin snapped at him. “You’ve got that readout for timing.”
“Time is a questionable constant here,” Modred said without turning about, keeping at his work. “I refrained from making unjustified assumptions. This is new input on the main screen. I am getting a size estimate.—Take impact precautions. Now.”
Near ... we were coming at it. It was getting closer and closer on the screen. My lady caught at Griffin, evidently having given up her theory of being dead. “Use the engines,” Griffin yelled at Gawain and Lynn, furious. “If we’re coming up against some mass they may react off that ... use the engines!”
“We are,” Gawain said calmly.
We grabbed at both Dela and Griffin, Lance and I, and pulled them to the cushioned corner and got the bar down and the straps round them, then dragged Vivien, who was paralyzed and nearly blanked, with us to the remaining pad. The crew was putting the safety bars in place too, all very cool. That we couldn’t feel the engines ... no feel to them at all ... when normally they should have been kicking us hard in some direction....
Screens broke up. We were just too close to it. It had filled all our forward view and the last detail we got was huge. Something interfered with the pickup. I wrapped the restraints about myself while Lance did his, and all the while expected the impact, to be flung like some toy across a breached compartment on a puff of crystalizing air.... I didn’t know what was out there, but the most horrible fate of all seemed to me to be blown out of here, to be set adrift naked in that , whatever that stuff was out there. This little ship that held our lives also held whatever sanity we had been able to trick our eyes into seeing, and what was out there—I wondered how long it took to die in that stuff. Or whether one ever did.
The last buckle jammed. I refitted it, in sudden tape-taught calm. I was with the ship and my lady. I had my referents. My back was to the wall and my most favorite comrades were with me. I didn’t want to end, but there was comfort in company—far better, I conned myself, than what waited for us by our natures, to be taken separately by the law and coldly done away. This was like born-men, this was—
“Repulse is working,” Gawain said, about the instant my stomach felt the slam of the engines. “Stop rotation.”
Don’t! I thought irrationally, because I trusted nothing to start working again once it had been shut down in this mad place, and if rotation stopped working the way it did when we would go into a dock at station, we would end up null G in this stuff, subject to its laws. We were not,
“Well?” Dela asked.
“We don’t have contact,” Percivale said, beside Modred. “We keep sending, but the object doesn’t respond. We were asked about range: we don’t know that either. Everything has failed.”
“Where is this thing we’re talking about?” Dela asked, and Modred reached and punched a button. It came up on the big screen, a kind of a cloud on the scope, all gridded and false, just patches of something solid the computer was trying to show us.
“I think we’re getting vid,” Percivale said, and that image went off, replaced with another, in all the flare of strange colors and shapes that drifted where there ought to be stars, in between blackness measled with red spots like dapples that might be stars or just the cameras trying to pick up something that made no sense. And against that backdrop was something that might be a misshapen world in silhouette, or a big rock irregularly shaped, or something far vaster than we wanted to think, no knowing. It was flattened at its poles and it bristled with strange shapes in prickly complexity.
“We’ve been getting nearer steadily,” Modred said. “It could be our size or star-sized. We don’t know.”
“You’ve got the scan on it,” Griffin snapped at him. “You’ve got that readout for timing.”
“Time is a questionable constant here,” Modred said without turning about, keeping at his work. “I refrained from making unjustified assumptions. This is new input on the main screen. I am getting a size estimate.—Take impact precautions. Now.”
Near ... we were coming at it. It was getting closer and closer on the screen. My lady caught at Griffin, evidently having given up her theory of being dead. “Use the engines,” Griffin yelled at Gawain and Lynn, furious. “If we’re coming up against some mass they may react off that ... use the engines!”
“We are,” Gawain said calmly.
We grabbed at both Dela and Griffin, Lance and I, and pulled them to the cushioned corner and got the bar down and the straps round them, then dragged Vivien, who was paralyzed and nearly blanked, with us to the remaining pad. The crew was putting the safety bars in place too, all very cool. That we couldn’t feel the engines ... no feel to them at all ... when normally they should have been kicking us hard in some direction....
Screens broke up. We were just too close to it. It had filled all our forward view and the last detail we got was huge. Something interfered with the pickup. I wrapped the restraints about myself while Lance did his, and all the while expected the impact, to be flung like some toy across a breached compartment on a puff of crystalizing air.... I didn’t know what was out there, but the most horrible fate of all seemed to me to be blown out of here, to be set adrift naked in that , whatever that stuff was out there. This little ship that held our lives also held whatever sanity we had been able to trick our eyes into seeing, and what was out there—I wondered how long it took to die in that stuff. Or whether one ever did.
The last buckle jammed. I refitted it, in sudden tape-taught calm. I was with the ship and my lady. I had my referents. My back was to the wall and my most favorite comrades were with me. I didn’t want to end, but there was comfort in company—far better, I conned myself, than what waited for us by our natures, to be taken separately by the law and coldly done away. This was like born-men, this was—
“Repulse is working,” Gawain said, about the instant my stomach felt the slam of the engines. “Stop rotation.”
Don’t! I thought irrationally, because I trusted nothing to start working again once it had been shut down in this mad place, and if rotation stopped working the way it did when we would go into a dock at station, we would end up null G in this stuff, subject to its laws. We were not,
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