for mercy’s sake, coming in at a safe dock with crews waiting to assist, and there was no place to put the Maid ’s delicate noseprobe, all exposed out there.
G started going away. We were locking into station-docking position, the crew going through their motions with heart-breaking calm, doing all the right things in this terrible place; and the poor unsecured Maid was going to be chaos in her station-topside decks.
A touch came at my fingers. It was Lancelot’s hand seeking mine. I closed on it, and reached beside me for Vivien’s, which was very cold.
She had, Lance had said it, planned to live, and everything was wrong for her. No hope for Vivien, whose accounts and knowledge were useless now. I understood suddenly, that Vivien’s function was simply gone for her; and she had already begun to die, in a way as terrible as being dumped out in the chaos-stuff.
“The lady will need you,” I hissed at Viv, gripping her nerveless hand till I ground the bones together. “She needs us all.”
That might have helped. There was a little jerk from Viv’s hand, a little resistance; and I winced, for Lance closed down hard on mine. My lady and Griffin screamed—we hit, ground with a sound like someone was shredding the Maid ’s metal body, and our soft bodies hit the restraints as the ship’s mass stopped a little before that of our poor flesh. I blanked half an instant, came out of it realizing pain, and that somehow we had not been going as fast as I feared a ship might in this place (which estimate ranged past C and posed interesting physics for collision) or what we had hit was going the same general direction as we were, at an angle. Mass, I thought, if that had any meaning in this place/time ... a monstrous mass, to have pulled us into it, if that was what it had done. Our motion had not stopped in collision. The noise had not. We grated, hit, hung, grated, a shock that seemed to tear my heart and stomach loose.
“We’re up against it,” Modred’s cool voice came to me. “We’d better grapple or we’ll go on with this instability.”
Instability. A groaning and scraping, and a horrifying series of jolts, as if we were being dragged across something. The Maid shifted again, her dragging force of engines like a hand pushing us.
Clang and thump. I heard the grapples lock and felt the whole ship steady, a slow suspicion of stable G that crawled through the clothes I wore and settled my hair down and caressed my abused joints and stomach and said that there was indeed up and down again. It was a kilo or so light, but we had G . Whatever we were fixed to had spin and we had gotten our right orientation to it .
The crew was still exchanging quiet information, doing a shutdown, no cheers, no exuberance in their manner. That huge main screen cleared again, to show us ruby-spotted blackness and our own battered nose with the grapples locked onto something. Strong floods were playing from our hull onto the surface we faced, a green, pitted surface which was flaring with colors into the violets and dotted with little instabilities like black stars. It made me sick to look at it; but it was indeed our nose probe, badly abraded and with stuff coming out of it like trailing cable or black snakes, and there was our grapple locked into something that looked like metal wreckage. The lights swung further and it was wreckage, all right, some other ship all dark and scarred and crumpled. The lights and camera kept traveling and there was still another ship, of some delicate kind I had never imagined. It was dark too, like spiderweb in silhouette, twisted wreckage at its heart with its filament guts hanging out into the red measled void.
My lady Dela swore and wept, a throaty, loud sound in the stillness about us now. She freed herself of the restraints and crossed the deck to Gawain and Lynn, and Griffin came at her heels. I loosed myself, and Lance did, while Dela leaned there on the back of Gawain’s chair, looking
G started going away. We were locking into station-docking position, the crew going through their motions with heart-breaking calm, doing all the right things in this terrible place; and the poor unsecured Maid was going to be chaos in her station-topside decks.
A touch came at my fingers. It was Lancelot’s hand seeking mine. I closed on it, and reached beside me for Vivien’s, which was very cold.
She had, Lance had said it, planned to live, and everything was wrong for her. No hope for Vivien, whose accounts and knowledge were useless now. I understood suddenly, that Vivien’s function was simply gone for her; and she had already begun to die, in a way as terrible as being dumped out in the chaos-stuff.
“The lady will need you,” I hissed at Viv, gripping her nerveless hand till I ground the bones together. “She needs us all.”
That might have helped. There was a little jerk from Viv’s hand, a little resistance; and I winced, for Lance closed down hard on mine. My lady and Griffin screamed—we hit, ground with a sound like someone was shredding the Maid ’s metal body, and our soft bodies hit the restraints as the ship’s mass stopped a little before that of our poor flesh. I blanked half an instant, came out of it realizing pain, and that somehow we had not been going as fast as I feared a ship might in this place (which estimate ranged past C and posed interesting physics for collision) or what we had hit was going the same general direction as we were, at an angle. Mass, I thought, if that had any meaning in this place/time ... a monstrous mass, to have pulled us into it, if that was what it had done. Our motion had not stopped in collision. The noise had not. We grated, hit, hung, grated, a shock that seemed to tear my heart and stomach loose.
“We’re up against it,” Modred’s cool voice came to me. “We’d better grapple or we’ll go on with this instability.”
Instability. A groaning and scraping, and a horrifying series of jolts, as if we were being dragged across something. The Maid shifted again, her dragging force of engines like a hand pushing us.
Clang and thump. I heard the grapples lock and felt the whole ship steady, a slow suspicion of stable G that crawled through the clothes I wore and settled my hair down and caressed my abused joints and stomach and said that there was indeed up and down again. It was a kilo or so light, but we had G . Whatever we were fixed to had spin and we had gotten our right orientation to it .
The crew was still exchanging quiet information, doing a shutdown, no cheers, no exuberance in their manner. That huge main screen cleared again, to show us ruby-spotted blackness and our own battered nose with the grapples locked onto something. Strong floods were playing from our hull onto the surface we faced, a green, pitted surface which was flaring with colors into the violets and dotted with little instabilities like black stars. It made me sick to look at it; but it was indeed our nose probe, badly abraded and with stuff coming out of it like trailing cable or black snakes, and there was our grapple locked into something that looked like metal wreckage. The lights swung further and it was wreckage, all right, some other ship all dark and scarred and crumpled. The lights and camera kept traveling and there was still another ship, of some delicate kind I had never imagined. It was dark too, like spiderweb in silhouette, twisted wreckage at its heart with its filament guts hanging out into the red measled void.
My lady Dela swore and wept, a throaty, loud sound in the stillness about us now. She freed herself of the restraints and crossed the deck to Gawain and Lynn, and Griffin came at her heels. I loosed myself, and Lance did, while Dela leaned there on the back of Gawain’s chair, looking
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