The Dark Beyond the Stars : A Novel by Frank M. Robinson

reflex action for a book, which was now clinging to the metal bulkhead. I had dozed off before I had a chance to put it back on the shelf.
    “Let’s go, Sparrow.”
    I twisted out of the hammock, blinking in the sudden flare of light, and looked over at the man who had called my name. His features were almost lost in the gloom of the shadow screen, though I could make out the chevron of Security stenciled on a bulky shoulder and the bulge of a pellet gun in his waistcloth. I was annoyed at being woken up, I objected to the stink of him, and I resented the obvious pleasure he took in his own authority.
    “The Captain wants to see you.”
    The Captain …
    He shoved me into the corridor while I was still rubbing the sleep out of my eyes. We shot through almost empty passageways, at one point passing through the corridor where I had seen the quarantine sign. It was gone now and I wondered if I had seen it at all, if the strange compartment hadn’t been one of my nightmares.
    I had no time to brood about it. We spiraled upwards through the different decks of the ship, my guide staying close behind and showing me the way by blows to alternate shoulders. On the last level there were two guards outside the hatchway to what I guessed was the bridge. Before I could enter, Abel suddenly filled the opening, and I flattened against a bulkhead. He glanced at me sourly,then sailed down the corridor like a balloon. I didn’t have time to wonder what he was doing there; the next moment I was pushed into the compartment.
    The bridge was enormous. Suspended in the middle was a small halo of light surrounding the figure of a man seated behind a floating controlpanel. The panel itself encircled a plotting globe ofOutside , all of it clinging to an almost invisible arch of crystal that grew from the deck. The globe with its three-dimensional projection of the galaxy was the center of a compartment whose bulkheads were the Astron’s hull and whose windows were huge ports that extended the equivalent of two levels from deck to overhead.
    Outside the ports was a slightly-above-the-ecliptic view of the galaxy, a brilliant fuzzy ball of light, orangish -yellow at its core, surrounded by spiral arms of cloudy blue flecked with bright dots of red and white and smudges of green.
    The dark of space, lit by a thick sprinkling of diamonds and emeralds and rubies.It was a color-enhanced simulation beautiful beyond belief.
    My eyes were getting used to the dark now and I could make out the technicians hovering about other control panels around the periphery of the compartment. Scattered among them were crewmen wearing the Security chevron. There were a lot of them and I felt tiny prickles of fear, wondering why there were so many. I put on my eye mask but there were no changes in the compartmentnor in the view through the ports.
    “What you see is what you get, Sparrow. Please come here.”
    The voice was soft but it cut easily through the murmur in the compartment. I pushed over, trailing my hands against the crystal arch so I slowed to a stop perhaps half a meter from the control panel. The light from the plotting globe outlined the man sitting in a sling beside it, his face partly hidden by a haze of smoke coming from a small bowl he held in his hand.
    The Captain.
    I looked down, both embarrassed and frightened, and noted the small metal plaque inlaid in the desktop, captain michael kusaka . His name was unique to him, I thought with surprise; he wasn’t named after a mountain or a bird or a character from the Bible or Shakespeare.
    The fragrant smoke from the bowl tickled my throat and I coughed. He held it up so I could see the stem curving away from its bottom.
    “It’s called tobacco, Sparrow. Pipit raises the plant in Hydroponics and I have it dried and shredded so I can smoke it in this pipe.” He smiled. “Private stock—rank has its privileges, so they say. I’ll put it out if you prefer.”
    He didn’t wait for me to answer but