"Melantha is correct," Karoly d'Branin said quietly. "Royd's foibles and neuroses are his business, if he does not impose them on us."
"It makes me uncomfortable," someone complained weakly.
"For all we know, Karoly," said the xenotech, "we might be traveling with a criminal or an alien."
"Jupiter," someone muttered. The xenotech flushed red, and there was sniggering around the long table.
But the young, pale-haired telepath looked up suddenly and stared at them all with wild, nervous eyes. "An alien," he said.
The psipsych swore. "The drug is wearing off," she said quickly to d'Branin. "I'll have to go back to my room to get some more."
All of the others looked baffled; d'Branin had kept his telepath's condition a careful secret. "What drug?" the xenotech demanded. "What's going on here?"
"Danger," the telepath muttered. He turned to the cyberneticist sitting next to him, and grasped her forearm in a trembling hand. "We're in danger, I tell you, I'm reading it. Something alien. And it means us ill."
The psipsych rose. "He's not well," she announced to the others. "I've been dampening him with psionine, trying to hold his delusions in check. I'll get some more." She started toward the door.
"Wait," Melantha Jhirl said. "Not psionine. Try esperon."
"Don't tell me my job, woman."
"Sorry," Melantha said. She gave a modest shrug. "I'm one step ahead of you, though. Esperon might exorcise his delusions, no?"
"Yes, but—"
"And it might let him focus on this threat he claims to detect, correct?"
"I know the characteristics of esperon," the psipsych said testily.
Melantha smiled over the rim of her brandy glass. "I'm sure you do," she said. "Now listen to me. All of you are anxious about Royd, it seems. You can't stand not knowing what he's concealing about himself. You suspect him of being a criminal. Fears like that won't help us work together as a team. Let's end them. Easy enough." She pointed. "Here sits a class one telepath. Boost his power with esperon and he'll be able to recite our captain's life history to us, until we're all suitably bored with it. Meanwhile he'll also be vanquishing his personal demons."
"He's watching us," the telepath said in a low, urgent voice.
"Karoly," the xenobiologist said, "this has gone too far. Several of us are nervous, and this boy is terrified. I think we all need an end to the mystery of Royd Eris. Melantha is right."
D'Branin was troubled. "We have no right—"
"We have the need," the cyberneticist said.
D'Branin's eyes met those of the psipsych, and he sighed. "Do it," he said. "Get him the esperon."
"He's going to kill me," the telepath screamed and leapt to his feet. When the cyberneticist tried to calm him with a hand on his arm, he seized a cup of coffee and threw it square in her face. It took three of them to hold him down. "Hurry," one commanded, as the youth struggled.
The psipsych shuddered and quickly left the lounge.
* * *
Royd was watching.
When the psipsych returned, they lifted the telepath to the table and forced him down, pulling aside his hair to bare the arteries in his neck.
Royd's ghost materialized in its empty chair at the foot of the long dinner table. "Stop that," it said calmly. "There is no need."
The psipsych froze in the act of slipping an ampule of esperon into her injection gun, and the xenotech startled visibly and released one of the telepath's arms. But the captive did not pull free. He lay on the table, breathing heavily, too frightened to move, his pale blue eyes fixed glassily on Royd's projection.
Melantha Jhirl lifted her brandy glass in salute. "Boo," she said. "You've missed dinner, Captain."
"Royd," said Karoly d'Branin, "I am sorry."
The ghost stared unseeing at the far wall. "Release him," said the voice from the communicators. "I will tell you my great secret, if my privacy intimidates you so."
"He has been watching us," the male linguist said.
"Tell, then," the xenotech said suspiciously. "What are you?"
"I liked your guess about the gas giants," Royd said. "Sadly, the truth is less dramatic. I am an ordinary Homo sapien in late middle-age. Sixty-eight standard, if you require precision. The holograph you see before you was the real Royd Eris, although some years ago. I am older now."
"Oh?" The cyberneticist's face was red where the coffee had scalded her. "Then why the secrecy?"
"I will begin with my mother," Royd replied. "The Nightflyer was her ship originally, custom-built to her design in the Newholme spaceyards. My mother was a freetrader, a notably successful one. She made a fortune through a willingness to accept the unusual consignment, fly off the major trade routes, take her cargo a month or a year or two years beyond where it was customarily transferred. Such practices are riskier but more profitable than flying the mail runs. My mother did not worry about how often she and her crews returned home. Her ships were her home. She seldom visited the same world twice if she could avoid it."
"Adventurous," Melantha said.
"No," said Royd. "Sociopathic. My mother did not like people, you see. Not at all. Her one great dream was to free herself from the necessity of crew. When she grew rich enough, she had it done. The Nightflyer was the result. After she boarded it at Newholme, she never touched a human being again, or walked a planet's surface. She did all her business from the compartments that are now mine. She was insane, but she did have an interesting life, even after that. The worlds she saw, Karoly! The things she might have told you! Your heart would break. She destroyed most of her records, however, for fear that other people might get some use or pleasure from her experience after her death. She was like that."
"And you?" the xenotech said.
"I should not call her my mother," Royd continued. "I am her cross-sex clone. After thirty years of flying this ship alone, she was bored. I was to be her companion and lover. She could shape me to be a perfect diversion. She had no patience with children, however, and no desire to raise me herself. As an embryo, I was placed in a nurturant tank. The computer was my teacher. I was to be released when I had attained the age of puberty, at which time she guessed I would be fit company.
"Her death, a few months after the cloning, ruined the plan. She had programmed the ship for such an eventuality, however. It dropped out of drive and shut down, drifted in interstellar space for eleven years while the computer made a human being out of me. That was how I inherited the Nightflyer. When I was freed, it took me some years to puzzle out the operation of the ship and my own origins."
"Fascinating," said d'Branin.
"Yes," said the female linguist, "but it doesn't explain why you keep yourself in isolation."
"Ah, but it does," Melantha Jhirl said. "Captain, perhaps you should explain further for the less improved models?"
"My mother hated planets," Royd said. "She hated stinks and dirt and bacteria, the irregularity of the weather, the sight of other people. She engineered for us a flawless environment, as sterile as she could possibly make it. She disliked gravity as well. She was accustomed to weightlessness, and preferred it. These were the conditions under which I was born and raised.
"My body has no natural immunities to anything. Contact with any of you would probably kill me, and would certainly make me very sick. My muscles are feeble, atrophied. The gravity the Nightflyer is now generating is for your comfort, not mine. To me it is agony. At the moment I am seated in a floating chair that supports my weight. I still hurt, and my internal organs may be suffering damage. It is one reason why I do not often take on passengers."
"You share your mother's opinion of the run of humanity, then?" the psipsych said.
"I do not. I like people. I accept what I am, but I did not choose it. I experience human life in the only way I can, vicariously, through the infrequent passengers I dare to carry. At those times, I drink in as much of their lives as I can."
"If you kept your ship under weightless
ness at all times, you could take on more riders, could you not?" suggested the xenobiologist.
"True," Royd said politely. "I have found, however, that most people choose not to travel with a captain who does not use his gravity grid. Prolonged free-fall makes them ill and uncomfortable. I could also mingle with my guests, I know, if I kept to my chair and wore a sealed environment suit. I have done so. I find it lessens my participation instead of increasing it. I become a freak, a maimed thing, one who must be treated differently and kept at a distance, I prefer isolation. As often as I dare, I study the aliens I take on as riders."
"Aliens?" the xenotech said, in a confused voice.
"You are all aliens to me," Royd answered.
Silence then filled the Nightflyer's lounge.
"I am sorry this had to happen, my friend," Karoly d'Branin said to the ghost.
"Sorry," the psipsych said. She frowned and pushed the ampule of esperon into the injection chamber. "Well, it's glib enough, but is it the truth? We still have no proof, just a new bedtime story. The holograph could have claimed it was a creature from Jupiter, a computer, or a diseased war criminal just as easily." She took two quick steps forward to where the young telepath still lay on the table. "He still needs treatment, and we still need confirmation. I don't care to live with all this anxiety, when we can end it all now." Her hand pushed the unresisting head to one side, she found the artery, and pressed the gun to it.
"No," the voice from the communicator said sternly. "Stop. I order it. This is my ship. Stop."
The gun hissed loudly, and there was a red mark when she lifted it from the telepath's neck.
He raised himself to a half-sitting position, supported by his elbows, and the psipsych moved close to him. "Now," she said in her best professional tones, "focus on Royd. You can do it, we all know how good you are. Wait just a moment, the esperon will open it all up for you."
His pale blue eyes were clouded. "Not close enough," he muttered. "One, I'm one, tested. Good, you know I'm good, but I got to be close." He trembled.
She put an arm around him, stroked him, coaxed him. "The esperon will give you range," she said. "Feel it, feel yourself grow stronger. Can you feel it? Everything's getting clear, isn't it?" Her voice was a reassuring drone. "Remember the danger now, remember, go find it. Look beyond the wall, tell us about it. Tell us about Royd. Was he telling the truth? Tell us. You're good, we all know that, you can tell us." The phrases were almost an incantation.
He shrugged off her support and sat upright by himself. "I can feel it," he said. His eyes were suddenly clearer. "Something— my head hurts— I'm afraid!"
"Don't be afraid," the psipsych said. "The esperon won't make your head hurt, it just makes you better. Nothing to fear." She stroked his brow. "Tell us what you see."
The telepath looked at Royd's ghost with terrified little-boy eyes, and his tongue flicked across his lower lip. "He's—"
Then his skull exploded.
* * *
It was three hours later when the survivors met again to talk.
In the hysteria and confusion of the aftermath, Melantha Jhirl had taken charge. She gave orders, pushing her brandy aside and snapping out commands with the ease of one born to it, and the others seemed to find a numbing solace in doing as they were told. Three of them fetched a sheet, and wrapped the headless body of the young telepath within, and shoved it through the driveroom airlock at the end of the ship. Two others, on Melantha's order, found water and cloth and began to clean up the lounge. They did not get far. Mopping the blood from the tabletop, the cyberneticist suddenly began to retch violently. Karoly d'Branin, who had sat still and shocked since it happened, woke and took the blood-soaked rag from her hand and led her away, back to his cabin.
Melantha Jhirl was helping the psipsych, who had been standing very close to the telepath when he died. A sliver of bone had penetrated her cheek just below her right eye, she was covered with blood and pieces of flesh and bone and brain, and she had gone into shock. Melantha removed the bone splinter, led her below, cleaned her, and put her to sleep with a shot of one of her own drugs.
And at length, she got the rest of them together in the largest of the cargoholds, where three of them slept. Seven of the surviving eight attended. The psipsych was still asleep, but the cyberneticist seemed to have recovered. She sat cross-legged on the floor, her features pale and drawn, waiting for Melantha to begin.
It was Karoly d'Branin who spoke first, however, "I do not understand," he said. "I do not understand what has happened. What could…."
"Royd killed him, is all," the xenotech said bitterly. "His secret was endangered, so he just— just blew him apart."
"I cannot believe that," Karoly d'Branin said, anguished. "I cannot. Royd and I, we have talked, talked many a night when the rest of you were sleeping. He is gentle, inquisitive, sensitive. A dreamer. He understands about the volcryn. He would not do such a thing."
"His holograph certainly winked out quick enough when it happened," the female linguist said. "And you'll notice he hasn't had much to say since."
"The rest of you haven't been usually talkative either," Melantha Jhirl said. "I don't know what to think, but my impulse is to side with Karoly. We have no proof that the captain was responsible for what happened."
The xenotech make a loud rude noise. "Proof."
"In fact," Melantha continued unperturbed, "I'm not even sure anyone is responsible. Nothing happened until he was given the esperon. Could the drug be at fault?"
"Hell of a side effect," the female linguist muttered.
The xenobiologist frowned. "This is not my field, but I know esperon is an extremely potent drug, with severe physical effects as well as psionic. The instrument of death was probably his own talent, augmented by the drug. Besides boosting his principal power, his telepathic sensitivity, esperon would also tend to bring out other psi-talents that might have been latent in him."
"Such as?" someone demanded.
"Biocontrol. Telekinesis."
Melantha Jhirl was way ahead of him. "Increase the pressure inside his skull sharply, by rushing all the blood in his body to his brain. Decrease the air pressure around his head simultaneously, using teke to induce a short-lived vacuum. Think about it."
They thought about it, and none of them liked it.
"It could have been self-induced," Karoly d'Branin said.
"Or a stronger talent could have turned his power against him," the xenotech said stubbornly.
"No human telepath has talent on that order, to seize control of someone else, body and mind and soul, even for an instant."
"Exactly," the xenotech said. "No human telepath."
"Gas giant people?" The cyberneticist's tone was mocking.
The xenotech stared her down. "I could talk about Crey sensitives or githyanki soulsucks, name a half-dozen others off the top of my head, but I don't need to. I'll only name one. A Hrangan Mind."
That was a disquieting thought. All of them fell silent and moved uneasily, thinking of the vast, inimicable power of a Hrangan Mind hidden in the command chambers of the Nightflyer, until Melantha Jhirl broke the spell. "That is ridiculous," she said. "Think of what you're saying, if that isn't much to ask. You're supposed to be xenologists, the lot of you, experts in alien languages, psychology, biology, technology. You don't act the part. We warred with Old Hranga for a thousand years, but we never communicated successfully with a Hrangan Mind. If Royd Eris is a Hrangan, they've certainly improved their conversational skills in the centuries since the Collapse."
The xenotech flushed. "You're right," she mumbled. "I'm jumpy."
"Friends," Karoly d'Branin said, "we must not panic or grow hysterical. A terrible thing has happened. One of our colleagues is dead, and we do not know why. Until we do, we can only go on. This is no time for rash actions against the innocent. Perhaps, when we return to Avalon, an investigation will tell us what happened. The body is safe, is it not?"
"We cycled it through
the airlock into the driveroom," said the male linguist. "Vacuum in there. It'll keep."
"And it can be examined on our return," d'Branin said, satisfied.
"That return should be immediate," the xenotech said. "Tell Eris to turn this ship around."
D'Branin looked stricken. "But the volcryn! A week more, and we will know them, if my figures are correct. To return would take us six weeks. Surely it is worth one week additional to know that they exist?"
The xenotech was stubborn. "A man is dead. Before he died, he talked about aliens and danger. Maybe we're in danger too. Maybe these volcryn are the cause, maybe they're more potent than even a Hrangan Mind. Do you care to risk it? And for what? Your sources may be fictional or exaggerated or wrong, your interpretations and computations may be incorrect, or they may have changed course— the volcryn may not even be within light-years of where we'll drop out!"
"Ah," Melantha Jhirl said, "I understand. Then we shouldn't go on because they won't be there, and besides, they might be dangerous."
D'Branin smiled and the female linguist laughed. "Not funny," said the xenotech, but she argued no more.
"No," Melantha continued, "any danger we are in will not increase significantly in the time it will take us to drop out of drive and look about for volcryn. We would have to drop out anyway, to reprogram. Besides, we have come a long way for these volcryn, and I admit to being curious." She looked at each of them in turn, but none of them disagreed. "We continue, then."
"And what do we do with Royd?" D'Branin asked.
"Treat the captain as before, if we can," Melantha said decisively. "Open lines to him and talk. He's probably as shocked and dismayed by what happened as we are, and possibly fearful that we might blame him, try to hurt him, something like that. So we reassure him. I'll do it, if no one else wants to talk to him." There were no volunteers. "All right. But the rest of you had better try to act normally."
The Reel Stuff Page 33