Into the Sea of Stars

Chapter 10

Colonial Unit 13

First Completion Date: 2023

Primary Function: Cosmos Society. Organization of pro- space activists. One of the first units to demonstrate the feasibility of the O'Neill Cylinder design.

Overall Design: Single cylinder, 1400 meters by 350 me ters.

Propulsion: Matter/Antimatter.

Course: SETI Anomaly One. Galactic Core.

Political/Social Orientation: Multinational Japanese, Russian, English. Cited by Beaulieu as "a colonial unit of exceptional promise, showing the possibilities of international harmony through peaceful coopera tion in space." With the coming of the Holocaust the citizens of 13 voted to evacuate rather than be turned against each other by their less-civilized ancestors below.

"Jesus, what the hell is this!"

The jump-down from light speed was complete, but Ian was ignoring Stasz's shouted questions because he was still nauseated from the transition.

"Get on the board, Ian."

Convinced for the moment that dinner wasn't going to come rushing back up, Ian pushed forward to hover be hind Stasz's shoulder.

"I'm getting a lot of debris," Shelley called from the Co's position. "I've locked onto a beacon two thousand klicks ahead, declination five degrees off. But there are no significant mass readings."

"Ian, look at this!" Shelley dialed the CRT up to a higher magnification.

A human body was at screen-center slowly tumbling through space.

"I'm picking up more, Ian, dozens of them. Do you want to look?"

He shook his head and turned away.

Within minutes Stasz was maneuvering the Discovery through a nightmarish jumble of debris-the twisted rem nants of what had once been a vessel of several hundred thousand tons. On a number of occasions hard maneu vering was required to avoid torn hunks of metal and, in one case, a mummified fragment that had once been hu man.

"As near as I can estimate," Stasz reported, "a thin cloud of debris is traveling outward from Delta Sag at a velocity of just over 230 miles per second."

Delta Sag was straight ahead of them and outshining all the other stars in the heavens. Another half hour's run would have jumped them within twenty A.U. of the star. But the signal beacon had caused them to stop and jump down into a floating funeral.

Ian scanned the trajectory backplot and passed it over to Stasz.

Stasz punched in the data and within seconds had a response. "Approximately fifty-two years, six months outward bound from Delta Sag," Stasz reported, "assum ing constant velocity."

"I have the beacon source on visual," Shelley an nounced.

The five of them huddled around the primary screen as the image came up. It was a nondescript hulk of in terstellar flotsam slowly tumbling end over end.

"Approximately a hundred meters long by fifty wide," Stasz reported. "It looks like the reactor core. It's still hot, I'm picking up some trace readings."

Even as Stasz spoke, the Discovery lurched slightly as it weaved past a large fragment that its shields could not vaporize. Stasz guided the vessel back onto an intercept course and before the hour was over he was fine-tuning the final approach that would bring them up alongside the reactor unit.

"This is a waste, Ian," Ellen said, "whatever colony unit this was, it's been blasted beyond recognition."

The others murmured their agreement. They were flying formation with a drifting junk-yard-torn metal, shredded shielding, shards of glass, and mummified bodies.

"I need to find out more," Ian replied coldly. "We started out aimless, but with each step farther out, the path seemed to point us into this direction, and to that star." He pointed at Delta. "Now, damn it, we're only a fraction of a light-year out from it and we find this. I've got to know why. Was this an accident or was it something else?"

"You mean Smith's colony?" Richard asked.

"Isn't it obvious?"

"By my hairy butt," Stasz shouted. "There's someone aboard that hulk!"

They crowded forward to see where he was pointing.

"There, in that window, I saw a light flashing. Look, it will roll into view again in another couple of seconds. There, there it is!"

As the window came into view, a strobe flashed once, then again and again in rapid succession, and in the flashing light Ian thought he saw a figure waving.

After half a dozen passes they were convinced that there was somebody alive in there. But how to get at him?

Twelve hours later they were still debating the ques tion.

"Look," Stasz repeated yet again, as if they were ig norant children. "First, there's no docking port."

"But there does seem to be an airlock."

"We're not sure its functional," Stasz replied. "Second, there's only one person in here who's had experience with an EVA propulsion device, and that's me. And if you think I'm going out into that floating junkyard, you're crazy. Remember, comrades, if I buy it, who the hell is going to fly you back home?"

None of them liked to be reminded of that. Stasz was all they had, and as such, he was treated with special care when it came to dockings and explorations.

"So, who wants to go?" Shelley asked again, and all were silent.

"We could always tie a tether line to someone, he could push out, and if he runs into a problem we could reel him back in."

"Well, sister," Richard said reproachfully, "what do you mean 'him'? I thought after that dose of liberation at our last visit, you would be more than eager to prove yourself yet again."

"Just remember, buster, it was I who saved you from an operation that might have improved your personality."

"And you never did tell us, sister Ellen, just how sisterly you and Carrie got. My, my, I would have loved to have seen that show."

"You rotten son of a bitch!" Ellen stood up with such vigor that she tumbled from her seat and catapulted clear into the forward cabin.

Her shrieks filled the air and it was some seconds before the rest of them realized that the shrieks were not screams of rage but of terror.

They pushed forward and Ian felt his heart skip over into a near palpitation as he looked toward the forward window. A mummified face was looking in the window from the outside. But this mummy was grinning and its eyes were rolling. It brought up a space-suited hand and waved.

"Guess that settles the question of whether we go to the neighbors or the neighbors come here," Richard said. "I better get a bottle, it looks like he needs a drink."

"Crack one for me, as well," Ellen said hoarsely. "I need it."

"Elijah, they called me Elijah Crump." He spoke slowly, each word formed distinctly and with effort, as if every syllable was a physical form that had to be worked over before expelled.

With quiet ceremony Richard drifted forward and of fered a drink container, but first he shook it lightly. The tinkle of ice could be heard.

"Richard, should you?" Ellen asked.

Elijah looked at him, a glint of suspicion in his eyes.

"Are you from Sagit?"

" Sagit?" Ian asked.

"He must mean Delta Sagittarius," Shelley interjected, and pointed back to the front of the ship where the one star now dominated the sky before them.

"Yes, Delta Sagittarius." He stumbled over Sagittarius but they knew what he had said. "Curious name, what does it mean? We never did know."

Ian wrestled with so many questions. He had almost leaped upon Elijah the moment he had cleared the airlock, so eager was he to find out why. Why? There were so many whys, but he had to be patient. Elijah was not the typical image of what one expected to come floating in for a friendly visit.

First off, his suit was downright dangerous. It was of an ancient pattern, last seen in Earth environment a mil lennium ago. Patched and repatched in a crazy-quilt pat tern that looked like the efforts of a hallucinating seamstress. He was clothed in a set of coveralls that had been worked on in the same way, worn and threadbare from a thousand cleanings, matching the appearance of the man who wore them.

Elijah was lean, gaunt, and stretched out thin, his fingers long and sensitive, his high forehead fringed with a thin wisp of snow-white hair that matched the long flowing beard framing his face. Eagerly his eyes darted from one to the other of them, drinking in the sight of them; yet his look was also one of suspicion and fear.

"I haven't spoken to anyone in, how long is it?… " He lapsed into silence again, then noticed the drink still being offered by Richard.

Tentatively he took the container in his hand and brought the straw to his lips.

Tears came to his eyes.

"Bless you," he whispered. "I remember now, it's… it's called alcohol."

"Gin, my man," Richard replied cheerfully, "and the best to be had in this part of the cosmos."

"You were saying that you hadn't spoken to anyone," Ian interjected, fearful that Richard would start in on a comparative study of alcohol that would drag their guest into a numbing oblivion. "How long has it been?"

Elijah nodded his head slowly, took another sip and savored it.

"I remember a name for it, we called it godt. I had a chronometer aboard, back there." He gestured vaguely back toward the airlock. "It broke after measuring fifty- one godt."

"That's Old Russian for years," Ian whispered in quiet amazement.

Elijah took another sip and smiled gravely at them. "I have survived upon that hulk alone. The other survivors died within the first year, and I was left alone. Alone after the destruction. It's been at least fifty years," he whis pered, "since I have talked to another man." Elijah started to laugh.

"Alone, alone, all, all alone,

Alone on a wide, wide sea!

And never a saint took pity on

My soul in agony."

Ian sat enrapt, but it was Shelley who interrupted.

"I've heard a fragment of that."

"Coleridge, The Ancient Mariner."

"We've only a fragment," she continued. "The rest is believed lost."

"I know it all, right in here," Elijah said, pointing to his head. His voice rose up with a deep sonorous tone that echoed through the ship.

"I closed my lids, and kept them close,

And the balls like pulses beat;

For the sky and the sea, and the sea, and the sky

Lay like a load on my weary eye,

And the dead were at my feet."

He stopped and looked at them.

"I'm sorry, I was alone, you see. Never a voice to respond, never a soul to listen as I shouted my words to the universe."

Ian could hardly respond, stunned by the magnitude of what he was observing. Fifty years alone, lost in the endless reaches of the universe! "What happened?" he asked tentatively.

Elijah took another sip and there was a wild glint in his eye.

"'For I alone have lived to tell thee this tale!' "

"What?"

"You don't realize, my friends, that I've waited two score and ten years to utter those simple words, 'for I alone have lived to tell thee this tale,' can't you see? Can't you see what this means?" His voice broke and he started to sob.

Ian looked across at Richard and the others.

"Not now, Ian, don't push him yet. It can wait," Rich ard said softly. "It can wait, let him have his drink."

Richard gently took Elijah by the arm and led him astern.

"A nation, no, a race," he shouted, "and down from across the millennium I am all that is left of my world, for I am Lazarus returned from the realm of the dead to tell thee all!"

"I was working in the backup reactor housing when they hit us." Ian turned with a start of fear. It was his watch, and as the others slept he had settled back to watch Elijah's slowly tumbling realm and the sharp, cold light of Delta Sag. He had never heard Elijah's quiet approach.

Ian beckoned for Elijah to join him in the Co's chair. He was no longer wearing the bizarrely patched coveralls, and he was freshly shaved and washed. Elijah looked at Ian and smiled softly. Ian was shocked to notice that most of his teeth were missing.

Elijah looked out the starboard window and stared at the slowly turning reactor unit.

"That was my entire world, nay, my entire universe. Main corridor eighty-three meters, fifty-two point one centimeters from main bulkhead to bulkhead. Shall I tell you how many tiles were set in the floor? How many were cracked and what each crack looked like? How about screws securing each air vent? I spent eternity floating, nameless, voiceless, eternally alone. Ah, such will be my eternity in Hell for having endlessly cursed the name of God in my madness."

Elijah looked back to Ian and smiled again. "I'm not mad, Ian Lacklin, not mad at all. Perhaps I am saner than any man alive, for I have learned the power of waiting, but I shall not make you wait. First I will tell you all, then you can tell me what I desire. Will you tell me of the paradise of my grandsires, where you walk upon the outside of your world and all is green and blue skies above? But first I will tell you."

Ian nodded and smiled encouragingly. He was half afraid that Elijah was tottering on the edge of a complete break down, and when that came, his message would be lost forever.

"As I was saying, I was working on the backup reactor when they came."

"Who?"

"Ah, yes. From Delta Sagit, the followers of the Fa ther."

"The Father?"

"Ah, yes, forgive me. You don't know. My world… I believe you call them colonies, had at last made Sun Fall. I was, let's see, sixteen that year, and already proven on the reactors and bio support."

Ian looked at him in amazement. Sun Fall he called it. A journey of a thousand years and at last they make Sun Fall. What it must have been like, arriving in a new realm.

"I can remember it. Our world was indeed desperate when we arrived. Across the millennium of the voyage some systems had failed, others had gradually been de pleted, and we needed what our science people called a gas giant with hard-surfaced satellites, so that necessary resources could be mined. Coming in on Delta Sagit also gave us a new energy source, which we had already been exploiting through the use of parabolic mirrors.

"There are five gas giants around Delta Sagit and we went into, how do you say-" He waved his hands vaguely in a circular motion.

"Orbit?" Ian prompted.

"Yes, orbit, that's the word, around the second farthest from the sun. Even as we arrived, they were waiting for us."

"Who? Was the Father's name Franklin Smith?" Ian ventured.

Elijah looked at him with incredulous eyes. "How did you know?"

"We've been following his path since the beginning."

"They said he was a great prophet," Elijah said, "who spoke of the Satan that had driven them into the Hegira.

"Our beacon was on as we approached. For five years before orbit we had intercepted some of their broadcasts, and they were aware of us, as well."

"Who are they?" Ian asked.

"They are followers of the Father," Elijah repeated in a vague singsong manner.

"You say they met you?"

"Remember, Ian Lacklin, I was not even of one score years. We of my age and station had no word of our leader's decisions, you see, our society was ruled by a philosophos."

"I don't recognize that…"

"From Plato, at least that's what I remember. I only saw the Father's delegation once, when they first docked with us. They were tall men and women, proud in their bearing, with dark faces and eyes that bespoke some inner vision. At least, that is how I remember, but you know the tricks that memory plays with an old man."

Ian nodded, trying to envision the encounter between two alien cultures separated by a thousand years from the common cradle of their birth.

"Our philosophos then told us that we were leaving. He said that they desired of us what we would not give and told us to do what we would refuse. Therefore, we would leave. We had but one month to stock up enough raw material for the replicator machines, and then we left."

"You had replicator machines?" Ian asked.

"Yes, a replicator. We always had them, don't you?"

Ian shook his head. "According to Beaulieu, they were only legend, machines that could be programmed to make whatever was desired, as long as enough raw material was fed in from the other end. Before the Holocaust some ninth-generation devices were used to mass-produce elements for the colonial development, but true replicators, capable of producing just about anything, including models of themselves, were only in the developmental stage when the war came. At least, so Beaulieu thought."

"Ah, so I see," Elijah said pityingly.

"What was it they wanted?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know?"

"Have you ever been sixteen and in love? Her name was Rachel…"

Ian nodded and understood. In the reality of sixteen-year-olds, there were some things even more important than the destiny of worlds.

"So we left. For six months we accelerated up and away, using the hydrogen mined from the gas giants along with matter/antimatter drives. And then there came the day."

His voice broke and he looked out the window at the ship.

"You know, she's over there still," Elijah said softly.

"Who?"

"My beloved Rachel. You realize I couldn't send her out with the rest. I found her a year or so after the dark day." He stopped for a minute, as if trying to control himself, and then pushed on. "I found her floating in the wreckage and brought her back. A room in my area had been ripped open to space. I tied my love in there with a cable, so she wouldn't float away. You know, I went to visit her every day and looked through the window at her. I said good-bye to her before coming. I asked her if she wanted to come with me but she said no, she wanted to stay with our world, forever sixteen. I said good-bye to her and she said good-bye to me and said she would miss me…

"My love she sleeps,

And may her sleep,

As it is lasting so be deep,

Soft may the worms about her creep."

His voice started to rise and crackle like old parchment being mishandled.

"It's all right, old boy." Ian turned with a start, and there was Richard smiling at the two of them, drink in hand. Ian sighed with relief.

"She understands, my good man, she understands," Richard said soothingly. "Here, have a little bracer." And he offered a chilled drink container.

Elijah snatched the container and took a long, deep pull.

"You were talking about the day," Ian asked softly. Richard gave him a look of reproach, but he decided to push ahead anyhow.

"I was working on the reactor, changing a fuel rod. Routine sort of thing. Suddenly it was as if my world had slammed into a solid rock. I thought we had taken a- what's the word?"

"Meteor… asteroid?"

"Yes, asteroid hit. I had heard of such things. We had a collision drill once a year. In fact, it was such a ritual that it was a festival day, The last one was the first time Rachel and I…" Elijah suddenly looked at them with cold clear eyes. "But that is gone forever."

His voice now took on a clipped urgency, as if he were making some official report that had waited half a century to be given.

"The first salvo hit the torus in sections one through twenty. I went to the primary observation port and saw entire sections going up, exploding outward in flashes of light, tumbling debris, and shattered bodies. I saw it, I saw it! My God, that was my family, my mother and father! Damn you, damn you bastards forever!"

Richard placed a hand on his shoulder and Elijah looked at him with a haunted expression.

"Maybe you shouldn't," Richard said.

Elijah gave him a weak smile. "You know, I never saw them-I mean, who it was that did it. I saw the flash of the beams, but nothing else. I knew at once that somehow the followers of the Father had caught up with us. The beam weapons slashed out, again and again, with such neat surgical precision, slicing out section after section. The imbalance of the cylinder now started its own actions, ripping it apart from the central core that I was in.

"We screamed in impotent rage as the beam finally caught us out and slashed the core wide open.

"The section that I was in separated, cut from the main. ' Subreactor one and agro research and development sec tion one, reporting in. Is there anyone there, is there anyone there?'"

He looked again at the hulk then turned back to them.

"Ten of us with air. We had thrown enough emergency locks to seal the section off. Six of them were badly in jured, mostly from a radiation spill in the containment area.

"We fought for weeks. Patching leaks, stabilizing the research lab, and creating an environmental support sys tem. We alone had survived. We found a couple of suits and rigged up an airlock, and thus started my scavenging operations. I would crawl through the corridors, pushing past the bodies. You know, a body can make excellent fertilizer. Oh, you'll do it if there's need enough. You know, you can do something else, as well. They're frozen dry, all you have to do is add a little water and the meat's almost as tasty as fresh," Elijah whispered.

Ian was unable to respond.

"The others couldn't stand it. I watched them go, one by one. They'd crawl into the airlock, some of them crying, others praying. One was laughing. They'd pop the door and take the leap. The Big Leap, that's what we called it. I'd watch them struggle out there, and later I'd go out after 'em. After all, they were fresh…"

Ian was stunned.

"There was nothing else you could have done," Rich ard said, his voice soft and soothing. "There was nothing else for you, it was necessary in order to survive."

Elijah looked at him and smiled. "Conservation, recycling, that was the world, the world of my forefathers. So I lived, I salvaged and lived, forever alone, in a world of floating death. Anyhow, it tasted quite good. Still does, you know."

He smiled at Richard. "If you want, I'll go out and get you one. I've got a whole stockpile of legs. Only the best for my friends."

"No, that's quite all right, quite all right, my friend," Richard replied, making a supreme effort not to show his emotions. Ian floated in the corner and tried not to gag.

"Rachel and I…" Elijah continued. "My poor, dear Rachel who floated in an airless room. And the one book, treasured in the museum. A book from before the Great Sailing. I found it floating in the wreckage. Literature of the English-Speaking People. Oh, I know it by heart, I do. I know it all by heart, for I read it to Rachel every day, and I shouted it to the heavens my entire life as I floated with my dinner in that corridor-eighty-two me ters, fifty-two point one centimeters."

He looked over at the hulk again.

" 'Let us fly these troubled waters, Ahab, let us come h ard about.' "

He turned back to them with imploring eyes.

" 'For I alone have lived to tell thee this tale.' Please, for God sake, take me away from here."

Elijah looked at Ian slyly and reached into his pocket.

"In payment Ian, in payment I'll give you this and yet another legend to pursue. But it's our secret." And so saying, he gave a paranoid look at Richard. "Only one, there's only one and I can't share."

Ian hesitated for a moment, fearful of some horror, but Richard came up to lan's side and whispered.

"It's all right, it means he trusts you, if it's a piece of meat just pocket it, thank him, and leave. It's a bonding gift."

Richard smiled at Ian, nodded at Elijah, and floated out of the room, leaving the two of them alone. Ian smiled uncomfortably at Elijah and cleared his throat. If this is a piece of meat, Ian thought, I'll get sick, I know it, and he braced himself.

Elijah drew out his hand and opened it. A slender metal rod six inches long and the diameter of a straw floated up. A small blue button jutted from one end. The strange shimmer to the metal caught lan's eye and he drew closer. It could have been a swizzle stick from Richard's drinking kit.

"What the hell?… "

"It scared the hell out of me," Elijah said softly.

"What?"

"The thing that owned that rod."

"What thing?" Ian suddenly noticed his heart was rac ing.

"The thing."

Ian gulped. "Do you mean an alien?"

He snatched the rod out of the air and nervously ex amined it. It was cool to the touch and a minuscule flowing script curled around the length of the shaft. He had never seen such writing before and with that realization his hands started to shake.

"How did you get this?"

"Promise you won't tell, the others might get mad at me, 'cause I didn't save any. You're the leader so I have to tell you but not the others." There was a pleading whine to his voice.

Ian nodded in agreement, not really paying attention to the words, as if he was listening to the fearful chatter of a little child.

"All right then." Elijah drew closer.

"It knocked on my door, it did. Honest, I heard a knock on the airlock. I looked out the window and there it was, a ship docked to mine. So I popped the door and, sweet holy of holies." His voice rose to a near shriek and Ian had to reach out to calm him down.

"What was it like?" Ian begged.

Elijah looked at him and smiled.

"Lucky I had some garlic and artificial butter," he whispered.

"Oh, no. You didn't…"

"He sure did look like a giant snail to me. Tell me, Ian, have you ever had a hundred-kilo escargot?"

"By heavens, Ian, he's sick."

Ian looked across at Ellen and nodded in affirmation. "But that's not the question we're dealing with, Ellen."

"I don't give a good god damn what you think we're dealing with, I think we should put him under sedation, turn about, and head for home. And another thing, we should let the Exploration Board come back out here and figure out what the hell is going on with this Father, or whatever it is those people over there are worshiping." Ellen waved her hand off in the direction of Delta Sag.

"First off, I'm not going to sedate Elijah as long as his behavior is reasonable."

"Reasonable, my ass, that madman came up to me and asked if we had any fresh meat. He even pinched my leg. Good Lord, Ian, he gives me the creeps."

"Reasonable, my ass," Richard whispered sotto voce to Stasz. "I'd like to see him take a bite out of her buns, she might enjoy it."

"Shut up, pig! Remember I saved your butt from the IFF."

"And I remember in some detail what yours looked like. Stasz, you should have seen it, a little heavy perhaps, but still worth a-"."Shut up, all of you," Ian shouted. "We've got to make a decision, damn it!"

"Look, Ian," Ellen interjected, "this was originally conceived of as a way for the Chancellor to get rid of some nonconformist or incompetent faculty members."

"Yes indeed," Richard interrupted. "But do speak for yourself, Ellen dearest, when deciding which of the two."

"Give her a chance, will you?" Ian replied, amazed at himself for defending Ellen against Richard's barbs.

Choosing to ignore his comments, she continued.

"I was also going to say that this is an academic mis sion. We were to establish contact if possible with one or more colonies and find out what happened. Look, Ian, we can't even gather any more data. Our memory banks are crammed to capacity, to enter even one more item requires us to dump something else. There's enough data in there to keep our respective professions busy for the next century. Ian, we can go back home, we can go back as heroes, and screw the Chancellor."

Ian shot Richard a glance to suppress the obvious re tort.

"I know you want to get back home, too," Ian said, looking at Richard.

Richard merely shook his head and smiled. "I want to see how this argument turns out."

"And you, Stasz?"

"They've got beam weapons-look what they did to that out there." He pointed at the wreckage that drifted just outside their forward viewport.

"So that means you'd prefer to turn back?"

"Look, Ian, it's been run. I've racked up six months of translight time. By the time we get back, I figure I can take standard retirement plus ten percent. Do you think I want to blow my retirement checks just to go visit the followers of a crazy man dead for the last thousand years?"

"But your curiosity is there, isn't it?"

Stasz shifted uncomfortably, so that he floated out of his couch. "Don't ruin the image of indifference that I've tried to cultivate."

"And, Richard, what do you have to say?" Ian asked, turning away from Stasz.

"The arguments for turning back are obvious. Smith's people are armed and have twice proven their madness. Confrontation with them is something I think is totally beyond our capacity. We already have a valuable cargo of data, which I think should take precedence at this stage of the mission."

Ellen gave an audible sigh of relief.

"But…" It was Richard who was prompting.

"Yes, the but," Ian replied. "There're two buts here. We can go back home and turn over this investigation to the bureaucracy. I want you to think about that. Think about our beloved Chancellor. For that matter, think about most any bureaucrat you've ever known. When presented with a problem like this, what will they do? For that matter, what does any bureaucrat excel at?"

"They'll screw it up," Stasz replied.

"That's my point," Ian said softly. "Out toward Delta Sag there is one hell of a mystery, and I fear what someone like the Chancellor and his kind would do to that situation. I'd rather have a group of half-assed intellectuals like ourselves in the driver's seat. And this might sound strange coming from old Ian Lacklin, but damn me, I'm just plain curious. This journey has scared me from day one. It's still scaring me, but I guess I'm getting used to it. We've come this far, I think it's worth the risk to take the final step. The historian in me is dying to know just what really happened to Franklin Smith's people."

"Let's hope you don't die finding out," Stasz replied.

The others fell silent; Ian nodded to each and floated out of the room to his small retreat in the aft storage area. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out the rod that Elijah had given him. He couldn't tell any of them the real reason that he wanted the expedition to continue, at least not yet.

Even more than finding out about Smith, he now wanted to find out about the alien who came for dinner. If one alien was in the area, there might be another. Ian only hoped that he found them before Smith did. Elijah had been unable to enter the alien's ship, which apparently disappeared while its pilot was becoming dinner for one. Ian thought it might have been launched by a dead-man switch hidden in the alien's equipment or by a timing circuit in the autopilot. The only thing to survive their first encounter was the small cylinder Elijah said had been carried in a metal holster on the alien's carapace. Ian didn't want to consider the possible consequences of Smith's people having the first contact with another civ ilization. First contact, that is, if one didn't consider Eli jah. But how would Smith react to the visitors from Earth?… Ian again examined the strange artifact in his hand. It did look somewhat like a swizzle stick with a blue button on top, but he had yet to work up the nerve to press down on that button. Considering where they would be in a matter of hours, he suddenly realized that the only evi dence of intelligent nonhuman civilization should be safely stored away. And he knew the perfect place. While the arguments continued up forward, he poked around in Richard's affects and placed the object in his comrade's portable drinking kit. The artifact fitted in like it had been made to match.

"Ready for translight," Stasz called.

"'And who will turn back from the greatest hunt of all,'" Elijah shouted as the faint tremor of the overdrive system began.

Ian opened his eyes for a moment to look forward. Delta Sag was straight ahead, its Doppler shift already noticeable. Soon the jump would kick in completely and radical distort would slide its light through the visible spectrum. The jump would be a short one, then their destination would no longer be a mere pinpoint of light, a distant star. For the first time in over half a year, their cabin would again be flooded with the light of a sun.

The jump shifted up with Stasz's shouted reminder of the chance of breakup. Ian leaned forward, his stomach rebelling in protest.