He turned his head to the left, half-expecting to see Logan's multi-armed form again at work by the corry's retaining wall. The result of one small head movement was an immediate and unbearable agony across his neck and shoulders, enough to make him cry out. He froze, unwilling to shift his position another millimeter. He found himself staring at Grace. She was lying by his side, and according to her suit monitors she was alive but unconscious.
After two minutes he felt that he must try to do something, no matter how little. He made a feeble attempt to sit up. The pain in his back forced him to abandon the idea at once, but he had raised his head just enough to see that he was tied down to the floor of the corry by a dozen loops of cable. His effort had made all his joints throb, as though he had been stretched to the limit in every possible direction.
He groaned again and heard a murmur over his suit radio.
"Do not move if you can avoid it. I tied you down for a reason. Both your shoulders are dislocated, and possibly your knees and elbows."
Shelby moved anyway. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he turned his head the other way and confirmed his impression of the voice. On his right, standing at the corry's central controls, was the suited and improbable figure of Scrimshander Limes.
Shelby had been unable to hold back another moan, and at the sound Scrimshander came across to lean over him. Apologetic grey eyes peered into his.
"I am sorry. I did not sedate you, because I thought you would prefer to know what is happening. Would you like me to do so?"
"What about Grace?"
"Her problems are more severe. I have given her painkillers, but I am afraid that she has internal injuries. I cannot determine their extent while she remains in her suit."
"When can you get her out of it?"
"Only when we are again on board the Harvest Moon. And before you ask me when that might be, I will confess that I do not know." Scrimshander gestured to the apex of the corry. "Do not try to look, but our harvester lies far off in that direction, beyond the two reefs. Although I followed you as soon as possible when the cable broke, it was necessary to travel a considerable distance before I could reach you. You were in a communications blind spot and traveling fast. In fact, had it not been for the visual sighting of another harvester, I would have had no idea where to look."
"That was the Southern Cross. What happened to it?"
"I was hoping that you would be able to tell me. A sounder appeared, and then disappeared. The harvester seemed to vanish with it."
Shelby lay back and closed his eyes. "The sounder got them. Swallowed them up. I saw it happen. The ship, and Pearl Mossman, and Knute Crispin. All gone."
"I feared as much." Scrimshander straightened up. "Now, if you will excuse me, I must attend to our own problems."
"You're flying us back home?"
"Ah—yes. In a manner of speaking." Scrimshander was oddly hesitant. "There is one other thing that I must mention. If we take a straight-line return course toward the Harvest Moon, I estimate that the flight between the Portland and Lizard Reefs will require at least ten hours."
"Don't worry about me. I can stand it." Shelby had a terrible thought. "Unless you mean that in ten hours Grace—"
"Be reassured, I judge that she is in no immediate danger of dying from her injuries. However, that is not the problem. It has been a long time since we left the Harvest Moon."
"They won't go away. They'll still be looking for us."
"Of course they will. The problem is not with them. It is with us. We each started out with full air supplies in our suits." Scrimshander gave a little cough. "Unfortunately, that as I said was a long time ago. We each have only six hours left before our air is exhausted."
Shelby jerked his head upward and at once regretted it. He groaned and lay back. "Six hours. But you said the trip home will take at least ten."
"That is correct. If we make the direct flight between the Portland and Lizard Reefs, it will be a minimum of ten hours." Scrimshander leaned over Shelby, and again those mild grey eyes stared into his. "We need a velocity boost. I am sorry, but I am afraid that we have absolutely no choice. If we are to have any hope of surviving, we must attempt to thread the eye of one of the reefs."
When he had leaped from the apparent safety of the Southern Cross into open space, Shelby was terribly afraid that he would die within the next few hours. Now, watching Scrimshander Limes preparing to enter the eye of the Portland Reef, he was totally convinced of it.
He had told Scrimshander everything that he knew or conjectured about the encounter with the Southern Cross, but now he doubted that any of the three of them would live to pass it on to others. To survive a passage through the eye of a reef called for great skill. Only the best pilots in the Cloud dared to think of trying, and only when they were in fully equipped rakehells. How many times had Shelby seen Scrimshander, flying this same underpowered corry with its primitive instruments, roll and yaw and stagger his way to a messy and chaotic rendezvous with the Harvest Moon?
The little vessel was rolling now, when the smallest jolt or turn was agony. Shelby wished that he had asked to be sedated and followed Grace into peaceful sleep. It was so obvious that Scrimshander was inadequate for the task ahead. Even during the approach to the Portland Reef, where the disturbing forces were small, the corry was tilting and jerking in response to the pilot's commands.
The random element of their motion grew more apparent as they approached the outer edge of the reef. Its center lay straight ahead, an eye with a pupil of cloudy black. Turbulent forces began to shake the corry, racking Shelby's back and shoulders with intolerable agony. He did not realize that he was crying out in pain, but as the reef grew from a featureless eye to a rolling funnel of darkness, Scrimshander came rapidly across to his side.
"I must do this now, or not at all. Once we are into the central channel it will be impossible for me to leave the controls even for a moment." He smiled down at Shelby. "Courage now. In less than three minutes this will ease your pain."
The injection went in through the suit's neck access point. Shelby did not even feel it. He wondered if the shot was going to make him unconscious, or if he would be awake and aware at the moment of his own death.
He fixed his eyes on the apex of the corry. The central channel of the reef lay in that direction, a hole in space lined up like a dark target in the crosshairs formed by the corry's thin support struts. A wall of blackness was gradually growing about them, replacing the normal blue glow of the Messina Cloud. They were moving past the safety point, heading into a region of no return. Soon the reefs own forces would drag them in, even if they turned and applied maximum thrust in the opposite direction.
New forces came to buffet the corry, powerful fields arising from within the reef itself. They were compounded by Scrimshander's inept handling of the ship. The surface on which Shelby was lying began to wobble and jerk, but he felt no pain. The shot had taken effect. He was drifting in a state where consciousness was a sometime thing, fading in and out beyond his control.
A tremendous shudder of the whole corry brought him briefly awake. He looked around, knowing that the movement was doing something awful to his neck, knowing that if he lived he would regret it later. Now he felt neither pain nor fear.
They were within the eye of the reef. Blackness lay on all sides, unrelieved by any sign of stars or dust clouds.
In regions of the spectrum beyond those wavelengths visible to human eyes it was not quiet at all. Shelby heard over his suit radio strange bursts of sound and hair-raising banshee screams. Twice there came the shreep-shreep-shreep of a sounder, rising and falling in pitch like a siren rushing past them.
How could a sounder be here, within the dark heart of a reef? Trying to understand that, he drifted off into an uneasy doze.
A change in the motion of the corry and a new sound on his suit radio brought him once more awake. The forces he felt were more intense now, but also somehow smoother, as though the ship was sa
iling on the fields within the reef rather than fighting them.
He looked across toward the corry's central boss. Scrimshander was there, hunched over the controls. In the shrouding darkness of the reef his face showed as a pale patch of white in the control panel's dim light.
Scrim was talking to himself. That was the sound that Shelby had heard on his suit radio.
"Come on, now, you can do it," Scrimshander was saying. "You know you can. We must be close to the halfway point, and we're still in one piece. You just have to hold it together for another hour or two." He gave a gurgling little laugh, almost a giggle, as a new surge of force hit the corry. The lattice of support struts twanged like giant harp strings, and the corry floor shuddered in response. "Oops! Little surprise there. Your own fault. Stay awake. Now's not the time to nod off. You can sleep later."
Shelby, staring at Scrimshander's dim-lit face, wondered how long it had been since the other had slept. They had left the Harvest Moon in the middle of the afternoon, with more than twenty-four hours' supply of air. Now—Shelby squinted at his suit monitor—they were down to less than three. He and Grace had been unconscious for much of the time, but Scrim had been awake and obliged to be alert for over thirty hours.
He closed his eyes again. The soft and oddly changed voice went on in his ear. "We're going to make it, you know. Stands to reason. Look at the facts. You were outside at the right time and sitting in the perfect place to see what happened when the kids went shooting off. Two bits of luck right there. Saw the sounder and the Southern Cross, otherwise you'd never have spotted those two little suits in the middle of nowhere. Another nice bit of luck. Uh-oh."
There was a swooping lurch of the corry floor beneath Shelby's back, forcing sharp pain even into his drugged mind. The voice in his ear snorted its disgust.
"I didn't like that one bit. Hey, Lady Luck, are you listening? You're not supposed to do that to me. Remember, I'm your best buddy? It's your job to help me. Come on, Lady Luck, make me lucky. Come on, Lady Luck, make me lucky. Come on, Lady Luck . . ."
It was a ritual chant, repeated over and over. After the first half-dozen times Shelby lost count. The corry veered and rolled and shivered and groaned, slithering its way through the gnarled and tortuous sea of force fields that made up the dark heart of the Portland Reef. The voice, the chanting voice of the stranger who was also Scrimshander Limes, went on and on and on: "Come on, Lady Luck, make me lucky. Come on, Lady Luck, make me lucky . . . ."
And Shelby, not knowing how much he heard and saw and how much he imagined, went drifting far off on his own voyage across seas of time and space.
Shelby returned to full consciousness screaming in pain.
"Easy, now," said a gruff voice. "One more go, and you'll feel loads better."
The awful, impossible agony came again, this time on Shelby's other side. He screamed again and opened his eyes.
"There we are." Uncle Thurgood Trask was bending over him, manipulating Shelby's left shoulder in his big hands. "They're both back in place. A couple of weeks and you'll be as good as new."
Shelby realized several things at once. The pain was not as bad as it had been. He was alive. He was on the Harvest Moon.
"Grace—" He looked around. There was no sign of her. On a bed next to him lay the silent form of Scrimshander Limes.
"Lana is looking after Grace." Thurgood released Shelby's shoulder. "I'm afraid she's in pretty bad shape."
"Scrimshander?"
"Fine. Just totally exhausted." Uncle Thurgood shook his head. "That man is a living, breathing miracle. He takes two hands to find his own nose, but somehow he threads the eye of the Portland Reef after he's been thirty-three hours without food or sleep. He passed out the minute we pulled him aboard, and he's been out ever since. But if I ever say one bad word to him or about him again, you can paint me purple and dump me out of the lock. If you'd have asked me—"
"He didn't."
"Eh?" Thurgood frowned at Shelby. "Didn't what?"
"Didn't fly through the eye of the Portland Reef."
"Now that's where you're wrong, young man." Thurgood sniffed. "You were probably unconscious, but that's exactly what he did—and I know it's hard to believe, because I found it hard to believe myself."
"It wasn't Scrimshander who did it." Shelby struggled to sit up, winced, and stared hollow-eyed at Uncle Thurgood. "I was awake. I heard what he was saying. The man who flew us through the eye wasn't Scrim. It was Jack Linden. Lucky Jack Linden, the only person to survive the Trachten blowout."
Thurgood Trask jerked back as though he had been slapped. "You mean he said—you mean that he knew—"
"I don't know what he knew. But I can tell you what he said."
Shelby repeated what he had heard on the corry as accurately as he could remember it. As he spoke, Thurgood Trask's ruddy face paled.
"It is, it is." He was squeezing his hands together until the knuckles went white. "Oh, Lord, don't let it happen. Tell me it's not so."
He took a step toward where Scrimshander lay, then hesitated. "He must have his rest, he's totally exhausted. We can't disturb him now. He must sleep until he wakes naturally."
He came back and perched on the end of Shelby's bed. "What did he say in the corry? Tell me again, every word, exactly what he said."
Shelby did his best. At the end of it Thurgood nodded and muttered "Thank you," but it was clear that he hardly knew that Shelby was in the room. His eyes were fixed on Scrimshander's sleeping face. Again and again he half stood up and then subsided, muttering, "He must have rest. He must. He's exhausted."
But Thurgood's face twitched constantly with tension. Finally, after only half an hour, he rose from the bed and turned to Shelby.
"You see, I have to know." He was apologizing, but it was not clear to whom. "I can't help it. I have to."
He stepped quickly across, took Scrimshander by the shoulders, and shook him gently. "Scrimshander. Scrimshander Limes! Do you hear me?"
The pale grey eyes opened. There was no hint of recognition in them. Thurgood Trask groaned aloud, and his shoulders slumped in despair. "Oh, no! He's gone, he's gone back. It's finally happened."
"He's gone," Scrimshander repeated slowly. "Who has gone, Thurgood? What happened?"
"You know me!" Uncle Thurgood gasped. "You remember my name. Do you know who I am?"
"Of course I do. You are Thurgood Trask." Scrimshander's face clouded and he frowned in perplexity. "But Thurgood, I have had another dream."
"Don't say that." Thurgood stood over the bed wringing his hands. "For God's sake don't say that. I've told you, Scrimshander, that dream you have—it means nothing. It's all imagination. It just means you're overtired, and overexcited, and overworked. You mustn't let yourself think of it. Forget it."
"No, Thurgood." Scrimshander shook his head. "You are wrong. I must not forget it. This was another dream, not the one that I have had before. And this time it was different. This time I did not stand by helpless while . . . they died. This time—this time I was able to do something."
A look of weary peace came to his face. He sighed and placed his cheek flat against his folded hands like a tired child. "Go away now, Thurgood," he said firmly. "I want to dream." The gray eyes closed.
"Scrimshander Limes," began Thurgood. "You don't go telling me to—" Then he turned to Shelby and placed a finger to his lips. "Shh! He must sleep. Come on, we have to leave him to rest."
"I can't move." The pain in his shoulders was less, but that allowed Shelby to become more aware of his swollen and throbbing knees and elbows.
"No more you can." Thurgood Trask came again to the bedside. He bent, grunted, and hoisted everything, bedframe and mattress and Shelby, into the air. "You need rest, too. Do you want to go to your own cabin?"
"No. I want to see Grace."
"Mm." Thurgood paused. "I'm not sure that's a good idea."
"I don't care. I must know how she is, even if it's bad— you had to know about Scrimshander."
>
"Aye. That I did. I had to. All right, then." Thurgood, his shoulders braced against the weight that he was supporting, headed for the exit and sidled his way carefully through into the corridor. "I don't want one word from you to Grace or about Grace," he added, as he carried Shelby through the silent and darkened interior of the harvester. "Not unless Lana says it's all right. You're in good shape, even if you don't feel it. Grace isn't."
The warning was unnecessary. Shelby, craning his head back and to one side as far as the pain in his neck and shoulders would allow, saw Grace at once as he was carried headfirst into the ship's little medical center.
His first impression was that she was dead. Her cheeks were white and shrunken, as if all the blood had been drained out of her body. Her eyes were closed and deep set within their bruised sockets.
The Billion Dollar Boy Page 20