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"Everybody glued back there?" Kalahari said into the inship. Trafalgar's voice floated lightly back. "Wonderful. A little sunburned maybe, or that could be my imagination. And my wristchron' s going backward." "I'm fine," Val said. "I think I'm some shorter from RACE ACROSS THE STARS 179 G forces and a bit purple-skinned where I sat down so hard. somewhere in her mind. Nice work, Captain Cuw!" Kalahari ignored the compliment, though it registered "Twenty-three seconds," Pransa said. "Double-P?" Whitey asked. "Double-P?" Kalahari repeated. "You strapped down?" "Pos Captain thank you," came the weak voice of Petaluma Peeh. "What I have left is strapped down...." Whitey shook his head ruefully. "It's a wonder that poor woman has a stomach left." "Five seconds!" Pransa snapped. "And here we go!" Kalahari said as Disc & Bud hit the Tachyon Trail for Barbro. 16 One thing I know about my life is, I can't live without it. . . . Robin Kincaid, We Can Talk About It "Ali, are you all right?" Ulf felt his limbs as he spoke, hardly daring to believe he was uninjured. "Pos. I'm fine. Everything feels right. What happened to the lights?" Ulf swung his gaze around in the blackness of the cabin. He recalled the phrase "survival with unspecified damage," that described one of the possible results of going City. "Don't know," he said. He groped for the comm button. "Ig? Eissa! Can you hear me back there? Anyone hurt?" Nothing. Then a bumping, a scrape, and "Negatory, Captain," Igeya said. "Unless you count bumps and . bruises." "Comm's up," Ulf said, "so we've got " "Same here, Captain," Eissa said. "We got tossed around, 'sall." "Good," Ulf said. "Try to check Ah!" SIPACUM's lights winked twice and came alive. Almost immediately thereafter the cabin lights flashed and came back on. "Run full systems checks," Ulf told Alianora. I ll scan our position. Everyone else check for localized damage 180 RACE ACROSS THE STARS 181 Ulf called up star charts from the computer's membanks, comparing them to what he saw on the mainscreen When it became apparent that they were nowhere in the vicinity of Skylla and Karybdis he ordered SIPACUM to compare charts of the known universe at speed. In just under a mjnute he had his answer. They were nowhere. No known chart matches any of this," he muttered. "Even extrapolating and rotating for hypothetical positions in other known galaxies. Either we're in a part of the universe no one knows about or. ..." "Or we're in another universe," Alianora fmished. Ulf nodded. "Systems checks?" "ASP.* Everything functional according to SIPACUM. Ship seems to have integrity unless SIPACUM's lying to us. "Lying?" "Unless SIPACUM itself is fobbied and our scrute is unreliable." "Negative damage aft, Captain," Ig reported. "Shift forward and keep scanning as you go," Ulf ordered. "Well," Ali said, "if this is the Dark Universe it's not so bad." Ulf shook his head. "No. We appear to be in the lucky percentage who have survived intact." "So can we go back? Do we try?" "The True God knows, to your first question. No one who's gone City and returned has ever reported any of these star formations. Or even being aware of a Dark Universe. Returners from City know only that they took a flit on the Tachyon Trail. Presumably those are the ones who lucked out on a safepoint. Evidently we didn't. Although we've * ASP: All Systems Pos 182 JOHN CLEVE suffered no apparent damage, and some of them had. "As to your second question pos. What else can We do?" The others reported in: negative damage throughout. "That temporary outage must have been due to the plasma," Ulf said. "Everything else checks. You got an SPTC, Ali?" "Pos. But ... will converting take us home? I mean when we convert in our universe we stay there, or at least return there." "I don't know. We'll just have to try. We'll convert, then reconvert. See where we end up. Since we don't know where we're starting from, we can't plot a course." "Ulf? If that doesn't work. . . ?" He sighed. "Then we jam-cram again. From here to, we hope, there." "Do you know the odds on surviving that twice?" Ali reached for the console to compute them. "Neg, and don't bother telling me. It's that or stay here. Unless we decide on the latter the odds make no difference." She removed her hand. "Firm." "That safepoint?" Ulf asked. "Coming up in five." They waited. Quietly, with nothing worth saying until they had determined whether they were to live or die. Igeya and Eissa joined them oncon. At one minute to SPTC Ulf ordered them to strap down. He looked at Alianora, his mouth set. "Here we go," he said as SIPACUM counted down the seconds. A red light flashed on, their vision distorted, their innards shifted then settled. SIPACUM showed Starsucker safely in conversion. "Well!" Alianora said. "Well indeed as you so aptly put it. Halfway there. Next SPTC?" RACE ACROSS THE STARS 183 "We're in luck. I guess. ....,Depending. Ninety- foursecs. "Don't even have to strap down twice, Ulf said over his shoulder to the two crewmembers Again they waited. Again SIPACUM used up the seconds. Firm, then," Ulf said. "With a touch more luck we'll soon be on a course to Barbro" [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |