Pirates of the Thunder by Jack L. Chalker Page A

varying degrees of reaction, but all of them clearly had seen something, something uniquely their own. Sabatini looked scared to death, and the Chows were shivering. Sooner or later, Hawks decided, he would find out what each had seen, but for now he just noted the differences. Of them all, Raven and Warlock looked the least affected and the least concerned.
    The thunder was quiet now; there was nothing but a very low steady vibration through the deck and walls, quite distant. None of them, except perhaps Koll, understood what had just happened, but Hawks grasped at least the basics. Somehow, they were no longer in the universe at all. Somehow, now, they were in another medium, somewhere else, traveling across a ripple in space-time by the shortest available route.
    It was a frightening, awesome concept, yet it meant one thing above all.
    “Well, I’ll be damned,” Raven commented aloud to no one in particular. “We actually got away.”
     
    Spanning hundreds, perhaps thousands, of light-years by the punch method was incredible, but it still took time.
    Some of that time was spent in attaining a more livable, civilized environment. Star Eagle now had a reasonable command of the ship’s systems and how they worked. The maintenance computer subsystem was employed creating and then using an army of spindly robots that were able to turn chambers in the bow of the Thunder into reasonably private rooms. Much of the old ship was dismantled, its essential parts modified and duplicated by the Thunder’s transmitters. A square meter of passenger-lounge carpeting was sufficient for the transmuters to create a carpeted floor for the new rooms and for the bridge. The old ship’s toilets were modified and duplicated, as well, and tied into new piping using the vast support system of the Thunder. The old ship’s transmuter-driven automated galley was reinstalled with some modifications, allowing the old menus to be used. The bridge chairs were replaced with copies of the more practical and comfortable passenger lounge chairs. Since the Thunder wasted nothing and recycled everything, even a shower chamber was possible, although in the zero gravity it had to be a more or less sealed system and strictly a one-at-a-time affair.
    Of equal importance were the interfaces that had to be designed and installed between the passengers and the pilot and master of the Thunder, a central amplifier and communications system that might eventually extend to the whole of the ship; a way of specifying human-supplied designs for the transmuters to work with, to create things like furnishings for the new cabins and some basic clothing. The women chose robes with soft linings and rope ties; the men got flimsy versions of Sabatini’s usual shirt and pants. Only Manka Warlock broke the pattern by insisting on the shirt and pants for herself.
    China and Reba Koll worked on installing the interface helmets on the bridge. China was anxious to see if they would work here as on the old, smaller ship. The idea of interfacing with Star Eagle and becoming one with this ship excited her.
    Some tubular lighting was arranged, but it was still kept low and indirect. In normal space there was no power problem, but during a punch the ship was the only reality; there was nothing at all outside, according to the pilot. Nothing. That meant that all transmuting—all power consumption—was accomplished using materials within the ship, and particularly with all the modifications and construction going on it was a drain. There was a consensus not to start cannibalizing the ship for luxuries until they knew their limits and understood their new environment.
    They also began exploring the ship.
    There were over twenty thousand pods in the transport bay. There had been a hundred ships like this one, and an Earth population of possibly six billion, when the grand project had begun. That meant that each ship had made hundreds of round trips over the two or more centuries of