Emil began to wheeze, as if something was caught in his lungs. Max and Lucinda crawled over to him.
“Emil,” Max whispered.
The boy was struggling to say something, but Max heard only more wheezing. He touched Emil’s forehead. It was hot with fever.
“He’s worse,” Lucinda said.
They crawled back to the barrier. Its hardness felt cruel against Max’s back. He felt angry and resentful. Was there an alien turning it on and off somewhere?
Lucinda rested against him. “All we can do is wait,” he said, “until the barrier lets us through. There’s nowhere else we can go.”
“We can die here or wander around some more,” she said, “and end up even more lost.” Her body shuddered against him, but she didn’t cry. He clenched his teeth and tried to think. It seemed certain that the return to Earth had somehow started this chain of events. Why couldn’t the habitat have stayed away? From Centauri it might have gone on to another star, and then another.…
He put his arm around Lucinda as she fell asleep. He listened to her breathing for a while, then closed his eyes and surrendered to the dark.
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13
Voices echoed through the dark passageway, as if two or more people were conversing at the entrance.
Impossible, Max told himself as he slipped back into sleep. When he heard the voices again, he felt vaguely that he was not dreaming, but still tried to ignore the sounds. The voices went on talking, and once in a while he could almost make out words. It reminded him of when he would try to hear what his parents were saying in their room. He smiled to himself, feeling superior; dreams had rarely fooled him, and this one wasn’t going to either, no matter how hard it tried to convince him it wasn’t a dream.
“Max,” Lucinda whispered.
“What?” he asked, sitting up.
She sat up next to him, and he was suddenly alert, thinking that Emil was at the exit, talking to himself in a fever.
“Do you hear voices?” Lucinda whispered.
“Yes,” Max said, staring toward the opening.
Lights flashed. Emil still lay on the floor, breathing heavily as the lights came toward them. Footsteps echoed. Aliens were marching into the tunnel, on their way through to a distant world. The barrier would come down, Max realized as he moved toward Emil.
“Pull him over,” he whispered. They grabbed Emil by the shoulders, slid him over to the wall, and huddled with him as the lights grew brighter.
“Who are they?” Lucinda whispered.
He felt her shaking next to him, and put his arm around her. Fear jolted through him as he watched the lights. These were the strangers who had built the interstellar passages, the star-people whose fault it was that Emil was dying. Anger surged through him as he stood up, unable to control himself.
“Come on!” he shouted, stepping into the center of the tunnel and facing the lights. “We’re over here! Why’d you set up your damn passages so we’d get lost in them? Who do you think you are hijacking our habitat? You don’t own the whole universe! We live in it too!” He shook, pushing the words out with his anger. “There’s more of us—billions! You my get the three of us, but the rest will hunt you down, even if you are more powerful. We’ll find you wherever you are, no matter how long it takes!”
Lucinda was tugging at his arm. “Max, what are you saying?”
The aliens probably couldn’t understand him anyway, Max thought, so his defiance was useless. He stood his ground and watched the lights, feeling helpless as they came nearer, but trying to take heart from the fact that there were billions of human beings—a whole solar system full of them—too many for the aliens to stop, he told himself. He was now glad that there were so many.
Beams of light played over his face. He glanced at Lucinda. She was kneeling by Emil, raising his head into her lap.
“Hey—it’s a bunch of kids!” a man’s voice shouted.
The intruders’ beams pointed upward, and Max saw two-legged, two-armed figures standing in front of him. He rushed at the figure directly in front of him, determined to strike a few good blows, but an appendage reached out and grasped his arm, holding him back.
“Who are you?” a man’s voice asked.
Max was unable to answer. The aliens were in his mind, using his memories to fool him into seeing and hearing human beings.
“This one’s hurt,” the man said. “Who are you?” he demanded again.
“Easy,” a second male voice said. “They may be in shock.”
“I’m Lucinda ten Eyck. This is my brother, Emil LeStrange. Please help him.”
“They’re Jake and Linda’s kids!” the second male voice cried. “Older, of course. But they went back to Earth nearly ten years ago.”
“Who’s the other boy?”
A light played over Max’s face. “He looks familiar. What’s your name, son?” The man let go of his arm.
“He’s Max Sorby,” Lucinda said.
“I knew his folks!” A light shone on the man’s face. “Max, it’s me, Lucian Russell. Lucky Russell, remember?”
Max heard the words, but couldn’t answer.
“They may be in shock,” the other man said.
“How’d you get here, Max?” Lucky asked.
“Where’s here?” Lucinda demanded.
“Centauri A-4. How did you get here?”
“It’s impossible,” the other man said.
“Got to get them out of here,” Max heard Lucky say. “This one’s out of his head.”
Suddenly it all made sense, Max realized with a jolt. The three suns…
“My brother,” Lucinda pleaded. “He was caught in some grass with hooks on the stalks. You’ve got to save him!”
“Oh, my God,” Lucky said. “He got into the grass. He’ll die if we don’t get him up to the habitat fast.”
Max tried to shake off his fear and panic. “Lucky,” he started to say, realizing that the passages had led them back to Centauri, where they had been found by a team from the new habitat. This man knew him. He was Lucky Russell, the planetary specialist.I know him—and he isn’t an alien, Max told himself as he passed out.
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14
Max dimly remembered being carried out of the tunnel and through the forest to a waiting shuttle craft. He recalled the pressure of acceleration when the ship took off. Someone had spoken to him, assuring him that he would soon arrive at the Centauri habitat. He woke up in a clean bed, trying to remember what had happened.
A brown-eyed woman was smiling at him. “How do you feel, Max?” she asked.
“Better,” he said, thinking that she didn’t seem very alien, then remembering that the aliens had turned out to be human.
“You passed out from exhaustion.” She looked at him uneasily. “Max, are you up to having a visitor? Lucian Russell wants to talk to you.”
“Where are Emil and Lucinda?”
“She’s in the next room.”
“Is Emil okay?”
“We don’t know yet. We’re hoping.” She touched his cheek as she got up. “My name’s Marilyn Soong. I’m your medical doctor. I’ll come back when Dr. Russell leaves.” She was a small, slender woman with long, black hair; her body swayed gracefully as she went to the door. She paused there and smiled at him. “By the way, it is Max, and not Maxwell?”
“It’s Maxwell, but everyone calls me Max.”
“Were you named after someone in your family?”
“Dad named me after James Clerk Maxwell, because his roommate in college always kept saying that Maxwell should be as famous as Newton and Einstein. Dumb, huh, to have a first name that’s actually a last name.”
“I think it’s just fine, she said. “And it’s not always a last name.” She turned and hurried out the door.
When it slid open again, Lucian Russell came in and sat down by the bed. “Hello, Max. I’m glad you’re feeling better.” He smiled nervously. “Now, I
know damn well that it’s impossible that you kids were left behind and that you were living there all these years, so can you tell me exactly how you got to be on A-4? Does it have something to do with the barrier we came upon in the passage?”
“Where’s Emil?”
Lucian Russell scratched his head, mussing his neatly combed brown hair. His gray eyes gazed steadily at Max. “We made an antitoxin to the poison from the grass, but odds are we’re too late. One of our team got scratched a while back, so we know the antitoxin works. I just hope we got to your friend in time, but—”
Max looked into Lucian Russell’s face. The man had aged a little; the lines around his eyes were deeper, and his hair was graying at the temples.
“You weren’t looking for us,” Max said.
“Just lucky, I guess.” He smiled, curling his lip. Max frowned, unable to laugh. “We were on A-4 investigating a periodic power surge we’ve been picking up. Do you know what’s going on in that tunnel?”
“Emil’s got to recover,” Max said.
Lucian Russell gave him a serious look.
“Are you sure he’s that sick?” Max asked.
He shrugged. “Let’s just hope the doctors are wrong this time.”
Max took a deep breath. “I think the power surge in the tunnel comes from the operation of an alien transport system.”
Dr. Russell listened intently as Max told the story of how their habitat had been drawn toward the Sun and into the black sphere; how the three of them had been lured out into the station one evening, where they had discovered the terminal columns and passed through several of them, emerging at different points in what seemed to be a vast interstellar network. “We had no idea this was Centauri,” Max finished, “not even when we saw the three suns.”
“That’s understandable, Max. You were struggling to escape danger. This kind of triple system might have been anywhere in the Galaxy.”
“You do believe me?”
“You’re here. There’s no way you three could have been left behind ten years ago, and you wouldn’t have survived if you had been. You’re not sure where this alien sphere that swallowed your habitat is located?”
“It was waiting for us, but exactly where I don’t know. The habitat was making its approach to Saturn’s Titan docks when the stars disappeared, then reappeared. We seemed to be jumping in and out of normal space, and each time we got closer to the Sun. Then just as it seemed that we would plunge into the Sun, it became ghostly. We passed into it and were drawn toward a giant black sphere, where the Sun should have been.” Max’s mind raced with excitement as he began to suspect the larger reasons for what had happened.
Lucian Russell shook his head in amazement. “Supertechnology. It’s all around us, from what you’ve told me, and has been for a long time. They’ve done so much. Makes us look like children.”
“Every place we came out seemed deserted,” Max said, sitting up suddenly. “Doctor Russell—”
“Lucky, please. No one’s ever suggested more possibilities to me than you have today.”
“We’ve got to get back as soon as possible,” Max said. “Nobody knows where we are. They’ll discover the passages, and people may get hurt looking for us. I told you how the columns spin, so you can’t tell where you came in or where you’ll come out. They’ve probably spun since we got here, so we’ll have to start all over again!”
Lucky rubbed his chin. “Maybe not, if the barrier is still blocking our terminal. It does seem deliberate, the way they got you here. Maybe you were meant to get lost and find your way here. Emil’s getting hurt was an accident, of course, but I think they might have wanted human beings to become aware of the passage system, to learn how it works, especially to find this link between Earth and Centauri. It means that our colony won’t be cut off by decades of slow, relativistic space travel. Living out here won’t be the isolation from Earth that we expected. People will be able to go back and forth at will. It changes everything for us.”
“But if this was meant to happen, why don’t they show themselves? What if they built this system a long time ago, and there’s no one left?”
“I hope that’s not true.”
“Or maybe the way we were lured into the system is just their kind of instruction course, operating on automatic for anyone who comes by.”
“Could be, but I hope it’s not just a blind program. You’ve been thinking about what you’ve seen, haven’t you?”
“We’ve got to get back,” Max said softly.
Lucky nodded. “I’ll go back with you, if the passage lets us. Don’t have any strong personal ties to hold me, even if my friends might miss me.” Max dimly recalled that the man had been something of a loner. “But I’m needed for a lot of things here, so I’ll have to prepare others to fill in for me.”
“We could try to get back on our own,” Max said.
Lucky smiled at him. “I’m sure you could. They can do without me here for a week or two, but what if I can’t come right back?” He laughed. “Four light-years, and I’ll be right back. Never thought I’d say such a thing in my lifetime and mean it. But if the passage closes up, the only way I’d be able to return is by slow starship. I don’t want to lose the years of work I’ve put in to make the habitat work, but I think I should go with you.”
“But you will get back,” Max said, “if they meant for us to find and use the system.”
“We’re still only guessing about why you were lured into the system. As you said, it could have been a series of accidents, or an old automatic program.”
Max started to get out of bed. Lucky lifted a hand, as if about to restrain him. “It’s all right,” Max said. “I don’t really feel sick any more.”
“Lucinda’s room is through that door,” Lucky said, pointing. “You’ll find fresh clothes in the closet. There’s a cafeteria down the hall. You and Lucinda get something to eat. I’ll go brief some people on what you’ve told me.”
As he left, Max went over to the closet. The fresh clothes were his own, newly cleaned. He dressed quickly, went over to Lucinda’s door and was about to knock, but hesitated, trying to sort out his feelings. She was very important to him now. The tenderness he felt for her surprised him.
He knocked twice.
“Come in,” she answered.
Max brushed the touchplate with his fingers, and the door slid open. Lucinda sat in a chair, wearing her own shirt, shorts, and hiking shoes, playing nervously with the ends of her long hair.
“I saw Emil,” she said, looking up with tears in her eyes. “He’s very sick.”
Max went to her as she stood up. They embraced, and she held him close. At home, Max realized, he had seen only her pride and intelligence. He would not have guessed that she was also soft and caring. Emil was not unlike her, but more dependent on his sister than he would admit. Both were as vulnerable inside as he was, reaching out to others as well as they could, and hurting when they failed.
“We should eat something,” he said finally.
She drew away from him, avoiding his gaze, and he wondered if she would care for him when they got home.
They went out the door, down a long hallway, and stopped at a picture window, where they looked out into the Centauri habitat. Even after ten years, much of it was still unfinished, but the incurving land of the asteroid hollow was mostly green. The sunplate was a bright, clear yellow. Buildings were under construction everywhere. Max saw people working overhead, landscaping, cutting pathways and roads. A stream ran around the equatorial region of the egg-shaped space. There was more than enough room for the small population to grow.
Lucinda took his hand. They watched the new world at work, and Max felt hopeful.
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15
After eating, he and Lucinda sat and watched people come and go through the cafeteria. There were nurses and doctors, maintenance people, parents and children. Max looked for people he might know from the time before the colonists mo
ved into this habitat, but it was unlikely that he would recognize anyone after ten years, even when faces seemed familiar. He had been born as his habitat-starship entered the Centauri system, and had been only seven when it left. He had visited this habitat during its construction, but he remembered only a dark, muddy asteroid cavern lit by harsh work lamps, filled with the roar and whine of heavy mining machines and voices shouting over public address systems.
News of their rescue had spread quickly. Many of the people entering the cafeteria nodded in greeting, but kept away. The looks of sympathy and concern on their faces revealed that Emil’s condition was common knowledge.
As Lucinda gazed out the window, Max found himself admiring her slightly upturned nose, the way she held her perfect lips together, the pale skin of her neck. Her ears were a bit large, but they were mostly hidden by her abundant hair. She seemed to be ignoring him, and that was like the Lucinda he had watched from afar back home.
“Want to go for a walk?” he asked, feeling out of place.
Her green eyes looked at him sadly. “Emil might wake up.” She wanted to be at her brother’s side, Max realized, in the hope that he might wake from his coma before he died, and she would have a chance to say good-bye. I wonder what’s happening back home,” she added, sounding lost.
“Maybe they’ve found out what’s going on,” Max said.
Lucinda stood up, looking terrified as she stared past him. Max started to turn around.
“Oh, here you are,” Lucky said, sitting down.
Max tensed. Lucinda was trembling, as if she was expecting to hear that Emil was dead.
“There’s been no change in Emil,” Lucky said, looking up at her.
She sat down.
“Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean to scare you. I shouldn’t have come up to you so abruptly.”
Lucinda took a sip of water and seemed calmer.
Lucky looked at Max and said, “We have to be in the passage, ready to go through if it opens.” He turned to Lucinda. “I know you feel you have to stay with Emil, but he is getting the best possible care. He might be unconscious for a long time.”
The Sunspacers Trilogy Page 43