by A. A. Ripley
The pirates surrounded them, cutting them off from the rest of the bar.
‘I see you got promotion, Lisbeth,’ said Alan. ‘Maud would be proud.’
‘Don’t speak of Maud, traitor,’ said the Maud-like pirate. Her voice was still calm, but a few degrees colder. ‘Time for you to come home, stray puppy. And we’re taking your alien buddies, too.’ She grabbed his arm with her hand, but Alan brushed it off with both hands, locking, twisting and pushing her wrist. Lisbeth took a step back, catching her balance. The humans advanced, but Lisbeth stopped them with a single gesture.
‘Little puppy still has teeth. Maud taught you well,’ growled Lisbeth. ‘I’ll teach you too – to whine like a drowning mongrel.’
‘Help!’ Inan called out, hoping it would attract whoever was in charge of security. It was a port bar, such things happened all the time, right? From the corner of her eye, Inan saw an elegant movement, like a dancer assuming the position before the music starts.
‘Order,’ a vamess moved in from the side. ‘We do not tolerate aggression or violence upon our patrons.’
His voice was pleasant, but insistent. He was armed; a pair of lightweight, electrified gauntlets enveloped his knuckles – a perfect weapon for fighting in close and crowded quarters. Lisbeth laughed.
‘Are you threatening me, stick-alien? Really?’
‘No threat,’ the bouncer responded. ‘Just receive the polite notice.’
‘Scram. This is a private business, got it? And suck on your polite notices.’
The gathering started to interest other bouncers. Inan watched as similarly dressed and armed vamess started to approach them.
‘Be ready,’ hissed Alan, his face tense and alert.Hijinks picked up her drink from the table and chugged it all in one go. Inan tried to figure out the best hiding place, just in case.
‘I said, move it, rag-hanger,’ said Lisbeth. ‘I won’t repeat myself.’
The bouncer started to speak again, but only managed a few words. Lisbeth’s hand sprang out and hit the bouncer between the nose-slits. The connecting strike crunched like a breaking nut. The bar exploded. A group of vamess loader-drivers jumped the humans, as if the punch was their cue. A mixed group of spacers joined in, followed by bar security, handing out electrified punches to one and all. Inan dived under the table just as the first cups and plates started flying. A mug of High-Gravi Special shattered over her head, followed by someone’s neloth-bird roast with extra sauce. She began crawling along the floor, taking cover under furniture as the brawl raged over her head. She tried to spot Alan or Hijinks, but the melee was a blur of bodies, a blare of crashes and screams.
‘Where are you going?’ somebody bellowed above her, as a tungsten-capped boot nearly crushed her fingers. A gnarly hand pulled her up by her neck as if she was a trotting-fowl. She kicked and clawed, catching the human in the face, but the pirate held her firmly despite his swelling eye and torn ear.
‘You—’ He didn’t finish. Something landed on his head. The pirate screeched. Inan was dropped because a flurry of purple frenzy was riding his shoulders. He tried to pull the nimble assailant off him and tripped. Flapping his arms, he went crashing down. The shape jumped off the hapless human just a second before he hit the ground. Inan caught a glimpse of Hijinks squealing triumphantly.
Inan spotted Alan at the food-dispenser, fighting off Lisbeth but just barely. She had the advantage of height and experience, and was pushing him closer and closer towards the corner. A few steps more and he’d have his back to the wall.
Without thinking, Inan grabbed a small table. Wielding it before her like a buffer she charged, screaming her lungs out. She hit Lisbeth from the side, throwing her off balance. Using the distraction Alan lashed out, hitting the solar plexus and chin. Lisbeth gasped and fell down unconscious.
‘Thanks, Inan,’ said Alan, and dodged a thrown bottle.
‘Let’s make a break for it!’ He pointed towards the back door.
‘Hijinks!’ Inan called to the marsupial. ‘We are going!’
Alan grabbed Inan by her wrist and hurled himself towards the exit. Inan followed and made sure Hijinks was right behind them. Just before they passed through the door, Inan thought to herself that Hijinks had been having way too much fun back there.
They busted out into a back alley. The evening brought rain and the alley was soaked in lukewarm water.
‘Run,’ called Hijinks. ‘Before port guards come.’
And they were coming. Inan could see the lights flashing on their approaching vehicles, casting tri-coloured shadows onto nearby buildings. The alleys turned into a red, yellow and blue kaleidoscope. The alarms rumbled and howled, changing pitch and modulation.
They kept running down the alley towards the side road, so they could get lost in the maze of warehouses and cargo terminals. The end of the alley darkened. Something was approaching. Something was coming for them.
Inan cried out, startled, when a small, rented vehicle pulled down right next to them. The butterfly doors to the passenger compartment opened.
‘Get in! Quick! You don’t want to see a vamess prison. Trust me,’ called Ure from within the vehicle.
Without thinking, Inan dived inside head first, followed by Alan and Hijinks.
They started vertically, leaving the ground level of starport buildings. Inan looked out of the window. Below them, the vamess port guards were pulling the brawlers out of the bar. They were methodically administering stun charges and packing the unruly crowds into bulky transporters. Inan breathed out a long sigh of relief. She would not become a confirmed delinquent this day after all.
*
Back on their ship, Inan decided that she was just about ready to fall into bed and forget that she had ever visited Amalonde, or that she’d been in an actual bar fight, but Ure seemed to have different plans.
‘You’d just love this thing I have found,’ said Ure, trying to synchronise his comm-pad with the main computer of Yi-yik-ke.
‘Why did you come back?’ asked Inan, but Ure just shrugged.
‘I changed my mind about the whole thing. I can do that, can’t I? Especially with this stuff.’ He tapped the side of his comm-pad and began connecting it to the main computer.
‘I get it, it’s something special,’ said Alan, folding his arms on his chest. ‘But we want to know why you are back. Don’t you have a resurrection to celebrate?’
‘Let’s just say that my contacts on Amalonde fell through and I am sick to death of vamess. Hah, excuse my unhealthy punning. There!’
The displays synchronised and now the main screen of the ship showed an enlarged duplicate of the image Ure had on his device. The entirety of the screen was occupied by an object, rotating slowly as the 3D scanners captured it from all angles. It was as dark as the disc that Inan had with her, but instead of being perfectly dark and featureless, it had thin grooves running parallel to each other and intersecting at half-angles. The grooves created a complicated design with white light coming through them – sharp and thin like razor blades. But when Inan looked closer it became apparent to her that it was not the grooves that were shining, it was the light that came from the background, passing through from the other side.
‘Same material,’ said Hijinks.
‘That’s what I said,’ said Ure, grinning widely. ‘And I bet it has the same properties as your disc. It is a perfectly black body, so it doesn’t reflect any light back at you. That is why it looks like a hole in the universe.’
‘Like black hole,’ said Hijinks.
‘I know about black holes,’ said Inan, happy that the time she’d spent sneaking around with astronomy books was paying off finally. ‘The gravity of one is so strong that even light cannot escape it. But what makes the light not reflect from those objects? Surely not gravity, because it would mean that the object is so dense it would have the mass of a coup
le of suns at least.’
‘That is correct; it is not a black hole, nor is the disc you have, but it eats up the light like one.’
‘So what is it? And what makes it absorb all the light?’ asked Inan, anxious to finally get some answers.
‘That is what the people that were studying it tried to find out.’
With a few moves of Ure’s fingers the display changed and now showed row after row of mathematical equations squiggling on the white background of a text document. To Inan it looked like pictographs of some long lost civilisation, illegible to the modern and untrained eye. A lone number stood out from time to time in between the arcane symbols of hyper-advanced mathematical language. It was enough to give Inan a headache.
‘So what does all that amount to?’ she said, abandoning all hope of deciphering the equations.
‘Basically,’ Ure took a deep breath, ‘they have no idea.’
Inan groaned with disappointment.
‘It’s like nothing any known civilisation can manufacture or even understand at this moment.’
‘Great, that gets us exactly where we started,’ said Alan.
‘Not exactly, because what we know is where it was found. Here. This is the manifest of an expedition that went to investigate the origin of this artefact. It is an inter-species venture, led by Grand Researcher Linai-Linai of La-Ab. She’s a great woman, has more knowledge about xenoarcheology stored in both of her heads than some universities in their entire departments. Bit naïve though.’ He muttered the last sentence under his breath.
‘Well anyway,’ Ure continued, ‘I have the coordinates of their destination over here. That is where the artefact was found.’
Hijinks called up the navigational interface and fed it the coordinates, then enhanced the results. A small unnamed star system came up on the screen.
‘But will they even let us on site?’ asked Inan.
‘You can show Linai-Linai your disc. I’m sure she will be interested. If not… well, I’m sure I can convince her,’ said Ure with a wide, confident smile.
‘And how did you come by all that information?’ said Alan. ‘And in only a few hours, too?’
‘They might not like me on Amalonde,’ said Ure, ‘but I am still a professional and I have my ways. So, my dear companions, shall we go?’
Hijinks opened her mouth to speak, but Alan was faster.
‘I want to talk to you,’ he said. ‘Inan, Hijinks, let’s go to the cargo hold.’
Hijinks nodded. Inan looked at Ure, who made a wide gesture with his hands. Behind him, on the main screen, the unnamed star shone dully, like a horn-ring dropped into a deep, dark pool.
*
‘Call me crazy,’ said Alan, ‘but I don’t like the way he talks.’
‘Why? His tradespeak seems to be satisfactory even if a bit unusual, but—’
‘That is not what I mean,’ said Alan. He crossed his arms over his chest, leaning on the closed cargo door. Inan noticed how often he assumed this stance with Ure around.
She wondered why Alan was bringing up the subject. Weren’t they all sounding strange to each other?
‘What I mean is the way he just appeared so suddenly and with his mind already changed. With precious info and a ready-made plan.’
‘Yarg said Ure is questionable,’ said Hijinks.
Inan sat down on a cargo crate, pulling legs and tail close to herself. Is that it? she thought. After all they had been through today, the money they put into finding this human, should we just abandon the whole affair?
‘I just don’t trust this guy.’
Inan sighed inwardly, feeling in the roots of her talons and in the very tip of her tail that Alan was right. But that would mean abandoning the pursuit, leaving the mysterious disc with its secrets. She felt the eyes of her companions upon her, waiting for her to break the silence. She tried to summon the voice of Matriarch Salrran, the same tone she would adopt while addressing senior Mothers – calm confidence with a deep shade of reason.
‘What do you propose we do?’ she said finally. ‘We barely have any tradeunits left; getting somebody else is out of the question. And after that unpleasantness at the bar, we are lucky to be free.’
‘And what about Cochrane?’ she continued, feeling her tail twisting with anxiety at the sound of that name. ‘Do you think that he will let us go if I throw the disc into the next black hole we find? Do you think he will let you go?’
She stopped suddenly. One look at Alan’s face was enough to shut her jaws tight. It was like a sun going nova in silence, bleaching the entire colour off his face.
Hijinks touched Alan’s arm.
‘This is true,’ she said.
Stupid! thought Inan. She shouldn’t have said that. Not now and not in this voice. But the colour had already started to return to Alan’s cheeks.
‘Okay,’ he said slowly. ‘But I don’t want him near anything important, especially the navig console. No, he shouldn’t be in the cockpit at all unless we’re all present, for triple safety.’
‘No entry to engine room,’ said Hijinks. ‘At all.’
‘I agree,’ said Inan.
‘I will make the computer generate pass keys for all of us,’ said Alan. ‘Until then we’re not letting him out of our sight.’
Inan thought that excessive but said nothing, glad that she was able to convince her companions. She could not wait to be back among the stars, travelling towards an adventure.
*
They left Amalonde without any trouble, hidden in heavy traffic that was coming in and out of the spaceport. Inan didn’t even grace the planet with a farewell look, preferring not to remind herself of the way vamess reared their young.
Soon they found themselves in free space, cruising below FTL speed, waiting for the batteries of the ship to recharge. Inan came over to the cockpit, glad that they might finally see something other than the grey landscape of the faster-than-light flight that had accompanied the ship for the past week and a half.
Alan was there, scrolling the star-charts. Under his fingers the star systems moved silently, giving way to larger clusters and nebulas, the navig console humming peacefully, its internal, astarium-powered mechanism idling in preview mode.
‘I thought you couldn’t fly Yi-yik-ke,’ said Inan.
‘I can’t,’ said Alan, without looking up from the charts. ‘I can make the main computer talk it the navig console, but we have no auto-manoeuvre module. Even if we had one I’d have no idea how to program it anyway. Best leave that to Hijinks.’
Inan looked at the blackness behind the main screen, where one of the distant stars had just begun to grow from a pinprick of silver into a vaguely reddish dot. How different the star-charts were in contrast to the screen! The gaseous nebulae were distilled through filters, assigned different colours according to the radiation they emitted and overlaid on the many-dimensional charts like rainbow amoebas. Outside the screens they looked pale at best, almost invisible to the naked eye at worst. Still the constellations passed under Alan’s fingers, the planetary systems boasting many planets, the local groups of stars creating patterns and hiding behind clouds of black matter, whole sections of galactic arms unfolding like sequinned material.
Inan retreated into the arms of the flight chair and wrapped her tail around its mounting.
‘There are a lot of places to go, aren’t there?’
‘Yes!’ said Inan, thinking about all those places she had already been to, many more than she could have hoped for when she was living in the House complex. And those were just grains of sand on the galactic road.
But then Alan was not here for an adventure; he was hoping to find his way home. His back bent over the console, his head-fur almost covering his eyes, he was sifting through the galaxy, hoping to spot the one place that was his.
Inan pondered for a minut
e, watching Alan and the ceaseless wandering of his fingers.
‘Do you think you could teach me that?’ she said.
‘Teach you what?’ he said, without looking away from the starry paths.
‘How to navigate,’ said Inan.
‘I don’t know if I can.’
‘But you taught yourself, didn’t you? And without anyone to help you.’
‘No, I had Gloria to help me, a whole battleship computer full of tutorials and training scenarios. Do you even know how to calculate a trajectory?’
‘That I know,’ perked up Inan. ‘I used to sneak out old books about physics and astronomy from the complex’s library. I couldn’t use any databases or the teaching Mothers would know.’
‘Alright then,’ said Alan. He brought up a planetary system onto the screen – two planets orbiting a single star. ‘Let me see you calculating Hohmann transfer between those two planets.’
‘Whose transfer?’ said Inan, wondering if this Hohmann was a place, a thing or a person. What was she doing here anyway, asking a male to teach her as if he was a class-supervising Mother? But Alan was no izara male, made to work with his hands, legs and back. Besides, wasn’t one of her brothers a spaceship captain? Alan manipulated the image. Now it showed a tiny rocket leaving the orbit of the first planet and looping towards the other in a graceful arc.
‘You know,’ he said. ‘The most fuel-efficient trajectory between two planets.’
‘Oh! The Calculations of Mother Rosst with Planetary Observations,’ laughed Inan. ‘It took me weeks to figure them out. Let me try this one.’ Inan moved towards the console, but then the lights flickered. The console erupted into a tsunami of red warning lights and alarm notifications.
Alan’s hands stopped abruptly, suspended over the console, his eyes reading the messages and symbols.
‘What happened?’ said Inan, but her voice was drowned in the shrill sound of alarm bells.
‘Fire!’ Alan yelled, scrambling towards the back of the ship. Inan followed.