The Quillian Sector

Chapter Seven

Jumoke lay where he had died, looking very small now, a limp figure with burned and blackened hands and a face which had one cheek pressed hard against the bulk of the generator which he had ruined. A face still tormented by the devils which had possessed him, one unrelaxed by the peace he had hoped to gain.

"The bastard!" Allain was bitter. "If he wanted to die, why take us with him?"

"He was crazy," said Dilys. "You said so yourself."

"And who sent him that way?" The steward's anger was the product of fear. "You could have given in to him. Let him have you and kept him sane."

"I'm not property. The ship doesn't own me."

"Where would have been the harm? You went with him before and you knew how he felt. You could have lied, promised, given him hope. Damn it, a kiss could have saved us!"

"That's enough," said Dumarest. "Dilys isn't at fault. If anyone is to blame, it's you. You knew he was eating smoke. Why didn't you stop him?"

"I tried."

"Like hell you tried!" Dilys flared with a sudden rage. "Did you report it to Yarn? Did you tell anyone? Did you take precautions against something like this happening?" She gestured to the body, the machine. "Damn you, Allain. Damn you!"

Dumarest caught her lifted hand before she could send its palm against the steward's cheek. For a moment, she struggled with him and he felt the strength of her, the fear and anger which powered the muscles beneath the skin, then, abruptly, she was against him, her face pressed against his own, a dampness on her cheek.

"Earl! Oh, Earl!"

He held her, waiting for the moment to pass, knowing that until it did, nothing constructive could be done. When she finally straightened, he said, "How bad is the damage? Can it be fixed?"

"I don't know. I'll have to check."

"Then get on with it." Stopping, Dumarest gripped the body and swung it to one side. "Allain, you'd better get back to the passengers. Give them tranquilizers if they need them, and any lies which can give them comfort. We've had a temporary breakdown which will take a little while to fix. In the meantime, they can enjoy the hospitality of the ship. Break out some spirits and strong wines. Euphoriants, too, and get that woman to play more of her recordings."

"They aren't stupid, Earl. They know what it means once the field is down."

As they all knew-knowledge which gave no peace of mind. Once the shimmering haze of the Erhaft field was down the ship dropped to below light speed, to drift in the immensity between the stars, to be vulnerable to any wandering scrap of debris which might cross their path-motes which could penetrate the hull and larger fragments which would vent their kinetic energy in a fury which would turn metal into vapor. And there were other dangers, less tangible, but more to be feared. The impact of invisible energies which could twist and distort the vessel and all within it, forces which were thick in the area they now traversed.

"Dilys?"

"I'm working as fast as I can, Earl." She was at the generator, tools spread in orderly confusion around her, hands grimed, as was her face, her hair. She had stripped off her blouse and wore nothing above the waist but the fabric confining her breasts. They, and the flesh of back and shoulders, glistened with perspiration. "He'd loosed the covers," she said. "Lifted them and put something inside. A scrap of wire which he used to short out the coils."

"So?"

"Like Allain said, the poor devil was crazed. He must have wanted to attract my attention in some way."

"He wanted to die."

"Perhaps not, Earl. He didn't know too much about generators. He needn't have meant to do much damage."

"He wanted to die and take us with him." To Dumarest it was obvious and he wondered why she would want to think of excuses for her ex-lover. Because of that, perhaps, a reluctance to think ill of someone who had been so close. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

For answer, she shook her head. He had done enough, dragging the dead body into the hold and cycling it through the lock. Dead meat, fit only to be dumped into the void, but once it had been a man and one she could have saved had she been less harsh. Allain had been right. A kiss could have saved them all.

A kiss, and a little less carelessness on her part.

Had she not left the engine room untended. Hadn't wandered down the passage to enter Dumarest's cabin and waste time talking to Bochner. Hadn't become enamored of the picture he had painted, the house and prospects, the position he'd mentioned. The one dependent on marriage. Would Earl have married her to make himself eligible?

Was he a man who could be bought?

Questions which now had no meaning. Looking into the interior of the generator, she could see the damage which Jumoke had caused; delicate installations now seared and blacked, insulation charred, surfaces which should have gleamed like mirrors now dulled with the impact of heat, stained by condensed vapors. Things which could be repaired, and would be repaired if given the time, but the main problem was within the triple helixes. Each set at right angles to the other, things of delicate fabrication, matched to within five decimal places of similarity. How badly had they been distorted?

It would take instruments to tell. Tests and calibrations, and more tests with the instruments she had at hand and the knowledge she had acquired. But, to retune them was another matter. To match them so they would restore the field, was a matter of luck and skill and time. Luck, in that they weren't too badly damaged. Skill, to sense and adjust and manipulate and balance. Time, in which to work.

Time!

Egulus shook his head when Dumarest made his report.

"We haven't the time, Earl. That bastard did a good job on us. He worked on the instruments before heading for the generator. I guess he wanted to get us in any way he could."

The captain was being generous-Jumoke had only been interested in killing the engineer and her new lover.

"Radio?"

"Out. I don't mean we just can't get messages in the Quillian Sector. That's bad enough, but at least we might have been lucky. No. The crazy idiot took care of that. Busted it all to hell and the spare unit with it. I guess we should be thankful he didn't wreck the screens while he was at it."

A small advantage, and of dubious merit. Had the screens been wrecked they would have been "blind" but as it was, they could see the cold hostility of the universe in which they now drifted helplessly. See the flare of a nearby sun and the ugly corona around it, the leaping prominences, the blotches of roiling vapors which gave it a pocked appearance as if it were a thing alive and horribly diseased.

"We're heading towards it," said Egulus, "and without power we're going to hit it. Jumoke's last gift to his friends and partners." His hands closed as if he could feel a throat. "I was too gentle," he said bitterly. "I smelled the stink of that smoke but never thought he would be such a fool. To lose his head over a woman!"

"That's all you noticed? The smoke?"

"He was tense and withdrawn, but that's normal when in the Rift. To make a living, we have to take chances and always something can go wrong. It's worse in the Quillian Sector, but you know about that. We make profits but we earn them." He ended bleakly. "Greed. It's killed more men than anything else. The temptation to make an easy profit. To take that one extra chance."

"Kumetat?"

"We didn't have to go there. I was going to give it a miss this time and hit it on the way back in. Only there was a cargo, and how could I refuse?"

An odd cargo for a desert world, Dumarest remembered, but odd things were carried at times. And he'd had no choice but to stay with the Entil. The worlds at which it had touched had been too backward for plentiful shipping. Too undeveloped for a man to earn the price of another passage. Bad worlds on which to be stranded. Hard planets to easily leave. Impossible places on which to hide.

"And if we hadn't got that cargo?"

"We'd be on Tullon by now. At least, that's where we were headed until we touched at Kumetat. They had an urgent delivery for Mucianus. A good world. One on the rim of the Sector and close to the edge of the Rift. We could have stayed awhile, a day or two, maybe. There's always a choice of cargoes." He ended bitterly, "Now it looks as if we're going to roast in hell."

The Garden of Emdale had gone, the bright colors vanished, the flowers, the darting insects, all had disappeared. They had been followed by the chill mistiness of the Chephron Gorge, with its souring walls and looming masses, its blurred details and rocks stained and weathered with time and climate so as to give the appearance of ranked and leering skulls. Other recordings had followed, and now she sat engulfed by the glittering magic of the Elg Cavern. A place of winking points of variegated hue as crystals caught and reflected a mote of light, amplifying it, splintering it into a hundred component parts, distorting it, filling the salon with a snowstorm of sparkles, of eye-catching joy.

But now they gave her no pleasure. Nothing now could give her pleasure. She was filled with the knowledge that she was to die.

What had she said to Bochner?

An end. An extinction. The total erasure of a personal universe. The termination of existence.

And he had called it a form of beauty!

She looked to where she had seen him last, but failed to spot him in the flickering showers of brilliance. At the table, perhaps? Talking to Threnond about his wares? A stupidity, if he was-how could there be interest now in instruments of death? Better to buy some of Fele Roster's compounds. They, at least, could bring sweet dreams and illusions and a release from the fear of death.

And she was afraid.

God, she was afraid!

"Here!" The mercenary loomed beside her, his scarred face grotesque in the splintering glitters. He lifted the bottle in his hand and she could smell the alcohol on his breath. "Have a drink," he urged. "The steward's been generous. The best, and all free."

"No."

"Drugs then? He-"

"No," she said again, and then added, "Please, I'd rather sit alone."

"In the salon?" His tone was dry and she realized that he was far less drunk then he seemed. "Haven't you a cabin?"

"Charl, you're an opportunist." The dancer had joined them, her eyes glittering, mouth twisted in a smile. "But she's too young for you."

"I was offering her a drink."

"And asking for payment, eh?" She gave a harlot's laugh. "Reminding her that time is short and not to be wasted. Asking about her cabin. Hinting that one more experience can do her no harm and do you a lot of good. Why her? Can't I give as much as she can?"

He said flatly, "You've a dirty mouth."

"To match your dirty hands! Mercenaries! Scum! Killers of women and children! Murderers!" The slap of an open hand preceded her scream of anger. "Bastard! You hit me! I'll-"

A scuffle, a muffled sound, and the mercenary swore before he collapsed, his eyes vague, the bottle falling to spill its contents on the floor. The dancer picked it up, laughing, lost in her drugged euphoria. She had used the wrong ring, the man would recover and be none the worse for his experience, but if he struck her again she would make no mistake. A dart in his throat or one in his eye. One for the uppity young bitch who played with light. And the third?

The third she would save for herself.

Allain said, "They're getting restless, Earl. I've given them drink and drugs but they know there's little hope. People act oddly when they know they're going to die. Some try to cram everything into the last few days. Some just sit and look at their hands. Some pray. Some even commit suicide. Can you understand that? They kill themselves because they are certain they are going to die."

"Everyone has to die."

"That's what I mean. Why anticipate it?" The steward shrugged with strained bravado. His face was a little too tense, his eyes a little too bright, but he had a responsibility and recognized it. And some of the hope he disseminated among the passengers had stuck. Death was something which happened to others. Always it happened to others. "The generator?"

"Nothing, as yet."

"Maybe if I helped?"

"You can't help." Dumarest, understanding, was patient. "It's all up to Dilys."

She'd worked like a machine, drugs giving her a temporary reprieve from the need to sleep, other compounds robbing tissue and nerve to provide a chemical strength. Now, she took the steaming cup Dumarest handed to her and gulped at the protein-rich fluid, sickly sweet with glucose and laced with vitamins. A second cup of basic followed the first. She waved aside a third.

"No more, Earl. You'll have me as fat as a pig."

"You need the energy. It's been a long time."

"Yes." She set down the container and glanced at the bulk of the generator. Dark rings of fatigue circled her eyes and her hands held a slight tremble. She looked at them, splaying the fingers, examining her cracked nails, the tips stained with acid, torn with abrasives. "How long, Earl? Five days?"

"Seven." A week, during which time she hadn't slept and had rarely eaten. The food he had given her was the prelude to the exhausted sleep which would follow. "Here." Dumarest handed her a glass filled with a smoky amber fluid. "Brandy, and Allain tells me it's the best. From his own private stock." He added, "He has reserved another bottle-one with poison."

The final drink, but one which she knew he wouldn't share. Death, when it came, would be met by Dumarest with open eyes. He would fight it as he had fought it all his life. Facing impossible odds because, no matter how high they were against him, there was always the chance that, somehow, he could win.

Lifting the glass, she said, "You'll join me?"

"In a toast, yes." Dumarest raised a second glass. "To success!"

"I can't guarantee that. Let us drink to hope."

"To success," he insisted. "Nothing else will do."

A fact she knew too well, and she drank, slowly, feeling the warmth of the spirit sting her mouth and throat and trace a warm path to her stomach. Conscious, too, of the fatigue which dulled her mind and made every muscle an aching irritation. Had she done all that needed to be done? The cleaning? The coils? The connections? The adjustments? Had a tool been overlooked? A scrap of wire? A shred of metal, or a fragment of insulation? Work had slowed as the hours had passed and it was easy to overlook the obvious when tired.

"Dilys?" She jerked, aware that she had been dozing, on the edge of sleep. Dumarest said, "If you've finished your drink, let's find out how good an engineer you are."

The drink-the remains rested in her glass and she emptied it with a single swallow. A silent toast to the oblivion which could be waiting at the turn of a switch. A silent prayer to the gods of chance on whose laps they now all rested. Dumarest was right, they could use nothing less than success.

Had she achieved it?

There was only one way to find out.

She took a step forward and swayed, and felt the edge of the workbench press hard against her spine as she moved back against it. She sagged, welcoming the support, shaking her head as Dumarest came toward her.

"No, Earl, I can't. I'm beat You do it. Everything's set- just throw the switches."

She watched as he obeyed, hearing the generator hum into life, feeling a success which blazed through her so powerfully that she straightened and smiled her triumph; a smile which died as the hum faltered, to steady, to falter again.

"I've failed," she smiled dully. "I tried but I wasn't good enough. The damned generator isn't going to last."

The place held the memory of summer flowers, of fields graced with blossoms harvested by smiling girls, to be taken and treated and condensed into vials of concentrated joy. Traces of perfume which held the stamp of the one who had worn it Dilys, lying now on her bed, her face flaccid, the curves of her figure like those of an erotic dream.

Dumarest tightened the restraints, which held her in broad bands of yielding webbing to her cot. Extra thicknesses of mattresses lay beneath her and he had arranged further padding so as to cocoon her within the restraints. Her condition made his task easy; drugged, deep in exhausted unconsciousness, she had barely stirred as he'd worked.

A woman who had burned herself out. Who had done her best and discovered it wasn't good enough. An added ingredient to Jumoke's revenge.

Outside the cabin Dumarest paused, looking along the passage. Allain emerged from a door, curses following him fading as he closed the panel. The dancer spitting her venom.

"She's drunk," the steward explained, "but not drunk enough. God, what a hag!"

"You've put her in restraints?"

"I tried, but she fought like a wildcat. Well, to hell with her."

"Try again later," said Dumarest. "If she's drunk, she isn't responsible. The rest?"

"Warned and as ready as they'll ever be. Now I'm going to look after myself." The steward hesitated. "Do you think we'll make it?"

"If the generator holds out, yes."

"And if it doesn't?" Allain answered his own question. "We burn, we drift, we starve. If we're lucky, we die quick."

"Or we live," said Dumarest. "Luck comes in two kinds."

"Sure, that's what I mean. With good luck we go out easy-with bad we linger. Well, to hell with it. I'm going to hit the bottle."

He headed for his own cabin as Dumarest moved on. As he entered the control room, Egulus said, "Dilys?"

"Still out. I wrapped her well."

"The others?" The captain shrugged as he heard the report. "Passengers! At times they act as if they're crazy. Well, they've had their warning. My main concern now is with the Entil."

A crippled ship, now heading towards an isolated world. Taking his place in the navigator's chair, Dumarest could see it in the screens, a mottled ball of green and ocher, patched with expanses of dingy white, streaked with smears of dusty black.

"That's Hyrcanus, as far as I can make out." said Egulus. "But right or wrong, it's the only chance we have. We make it or burn." He glanced at the sun, which blazed with awesome splendor. "But if the generator holds, we've a chance."

One which grew as the ball of the planet swelled larger, colors breaking into a blurred jumble, the instruments in the control room clicking as they relayed information.

Closer, and the ship began to shudder a little as opposed gravities fought for supremacy. A slight shift told of a dying vortex, spewed from some flaring sun. A peculiar turning sensation as it passed through an area of intra-dimensional instability. The normal hazards to be expected within the Rift.

Another which was not.

Egulus swore as the ship died beneath his hands. "The generator! It's dead!"

Strained beyond endurance by the impact of external forces, the interior now a mass of fused and molten rubbish, the Erhaft field gone, and this time never to be replaced.

And the world was close.

Close!

Dumarest said, "The directional vents, are they working?"

"Yes, thank God."

"Then skip! Skip!"

The only chance they had and one which the captain had already assessed. Now, as they fell towards the mass of the planet below, Egulus proved his skill. In order to kill their velocity and to prevent being burned by the atmosphere, he had to maintain height while remaining within orbit. To use the air-blanket as a boy would a pond. To send the ship skimming over it as if it were a flung stone, touching, bouncing, touching again.

The hull turned red as air blasted over it with a thin, high scream, a scream echoed from somewhere within the vessel. Both screams died as Egulus operated the vents, lifting the ship a fraction, letting it hurtle on to drop again, to glow as it had before, to lift and pray and curse as dials showed red and alarm bells shrilled their warning.

"Kill that damned noise!"

Sweat dripped from Dumarest's face as he hit the switches. The hull screamed again as the bells fell silent, the shriek maintained as the air grew hotter, became stifled, became a searing torment.

"Up! Up, damn you!"

"I can't! I-" Egulus hit the controls, feeding extra power into the vents, praying ever as he worked, prayers which sounded like curses as, slowly, the screaming died and, velocity killed, the Entil fell towards the surface below.

Dumarest watched as the ground streamed past on the screens. They needed a flat and even expanse, covered with soft dirt, sand, snow, stunted vegetation, even ice. A place on which to skid for miles until they came to a halt and, even then, such a landing would be close to a miracle.

"Nothing." Egulus snarled his anger. "The damned place is a nightmare!"

Hills, crevasses, chasms, stony wilderness with boulders like waiting teeth, trees resting on the edges of precipices, plains marked with undulating serrations like the teeth of saws.

"Water," said Dumarest. "We need water."

It showed ahead and a little to one side, a long narrow inlet which opened to the grayness of a sea. A strand, and it was below and before them, choppy waves bearing patches of kelp and whiteness caused by spume thrown from upthrust rocks. Then they were over it.

"Down," yelled Dumarest. "Down, man, down!"

They were going too fast, but ahead he had caught the loom of mountains standing etched against the sky. Pillars of stone too high for them to surmount and too widespread to avoid. The choice between hitting them and plunging into the sea was no choice at all.

No choice, but a gamble, and one Egulus took as he had when entering the atmosphere. The Entil tilted a little, headed downwards, hit the water to bounce as it had when meeting the atmosphere. Steam rose, created by the impact of hot metal, the vapor forming a cushion between the water and the hull.

Bouncing, skipping, as the mountains came closer. As the vessel creaked and shuddered and blood ran from ears and noses, as soft flesh suffered from the savage buffeting.

To hit for the last time. To sink. To hit bottom, to lift a little, to settle again and come to a final rest.

After an eternity, Varn Egulus said, "No water. The hull remained intact." He sounded as if he couldn't believe it.

"Luck," said Dumarest.

"For us, maybe." The captain wiped the back of his hand over his face and looked at the blood. "For the others?"