C. J. Cherryh - Voyager In Night

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Voyager in Night
By
C.J. Cherryh
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter One
1,000,000 rise of terrene hominids
75,000 terrene ice age
35,000 hunter-gatherers
BC 9000 Jericho built
BC 3000 Sumer thriving
BC 1288 Reign of Rameses in Egypt
BC 753 founding of Rome
Trishanamamndu-kepta was <>'s name, of shape subject to change and configurations of consciousness likewise
mutable. But Trishanamarandu-kepta within-the-shell kept alert against the threat of subversive alterations, for some
of the guests aboard were unreliable in disposition and in sanity.
Concerning <>'s own mental stability, <> was reasonably certain. <> had a longer perspective than most and
consequently held a different view of events. The chronometers which might, after so many incidents and so frequent
transits into jumpspace, be subject to creeping inaccuracies, reported that the voyage had lasted more than 100,000
subjective ship-years thus far. This agreed with O's memory. Aberrations in both records were possible, but <>
thought otherwise.
AD 1066 Battle of Hastings
AD 1492 Columbus
AD 1790 early Machine Age
AD 1800 Napoleonic Wars
AD 1903 Kitty Hawk
AD 1969 man on the moon
<> never slept. Some of the minds aboard might have seized control, given that opportunity, so <> managed O's body
constantly, sometimes at a high level of mental activity, sometimes at marginal awareness, but <> never quite slept.
Closest analogue to dreamstate, <> felt a slight giddiness during jumpspace transits. That was to be expected in a
mind, even after long and frequent experience of such passages. <> leapt interstellar distances with something like
sensual pleasure in the experience, whether the feeling came from the unsettling of O's mind or O's physical
substance. Fear, after all, was a potent sensation; and all sensations were precious after so long a span of life.
<> traveled, that was what <> did.
<> set <>'s sights on whatever star was next and pursued it.
AD 2300: discovery of FTL
AD 2354: The Treaty of Pell
End of the Company Wars Founding of the Alliance 1/10/55: colonization of Gehenna, Building of Endeavor.
Another voyage began. Little Lindy moved up in the immense skeletal clutch of a Fargone loader into the cargo sling
of the can-hauler Rightwise, while Rightwise's lateral and terminal clamps moved slowly to fix Lindy in next to a
canister of foodstuffs. She actually massed less than most of the constant-temp canisters Rightwise had slung under
her belly, less than the chemicals and the manufacturing components destined for station use.
She was in fact nothing but a shell with engines, an unlovely, jerry-rigged construction; and the Lukowskis, the
Viking-based merchanter family which owned Rightwise, having only moderate larceny in their hearts and a genuine
spacers' sympathy for Lindy's young owners, settled for the bonus Endeavor Station offered for the delivery of such
ships and crews in lieu of Lindy's freight, and took labor for the passage of the Murray-Gaineses themselves.
Rightwise had muscle to spare, and Lindy's bonus would clear two percent above the mass charge: the owners were
desperate.
So Rightwise checked Lindy's mass by Fargone records, double checked the dented, unshielded tanks that they were
indeed empty for the haul, grappled her on and took her through jump to Endeavor-unlikely reprieve for that bit of
scrap and spit which should long since have been sent to recycling.
The Murrays and Paul Gaines arrived at Endeavor with the same hopes as the rest of the out-of-luck spacers
incoming. Endeavor was a starstation in the process of building, sited in the current direction of Union expansion, in a
rich (if unexportable) aggregation of ores. But trade would come, extending outward to new routes. Combines and
companies would grow here. And the desperate and the ambitious flocked in. There were insystem haulers, freighted
in on jumpships, among them a pair of moduled giant oreships, hauled in by half a dozen longhaulers in pieces,
reassembled at Endeavor, of too great mass to have come in any other way. They were combine ships out of Viking,
those two leviathans, and they collected the bulk of the advertised bonus for ships coming to Endeavor. There was a
tanker from Cyteen; a freighter from Fargone, major ships while most of the independent cold-haulers that labored the
short station-belt run were far smaller, patched antiquities that gave Endeavor System the eerie ambiance of a
hundred-year backstep in time. They were owned by their crews, those ancient craft, some family ships, most the
association of non-kin who had gambled all their funds together on war surplus and ingenuity.
And smallest and least came ships like the Murray-Gaineses' Lindy, an aged pusher-ship once designed for nothing
more complex than boosting or slowing down a construction span or sweeping debris from Fargone Station's
peripheries, half a hundred years ago. They had blistered her small hull with longterm lifesupport. A human form
jutted out of her portside like a decoration: an EVA-pod made of an old suit. Storage compartments bulged outward at
odd angles almost as fanciful as the pod. Tanks were likewise jury-rigged on the ventral surface, and a skein of
hazardously exposed conduits led to the war-salvage main engine and the chancy directionals.
No established station would have allowed Lindy registry even before the alterations. She had been scheduled for
junk at Fargone, and so had many of her parts, taken individually. But at Endeavor Lindy was no worse than others of
her size. She was rigged for light prospecting in those several rings of ore-laden rock which belted Endeavor System,
feeding the refiner-oreships, which would send their recovered materials in girder-form and bulk to Station, where belt
ores and ice became structure, decks, machine parts and solar cells, fuel and oxygen. Lindy would haul only between
belt and oreship, taking the richest small bits in her sling, tagging any larger finds for abler ships on a one-tenth split.
She even had an advantage in her size: she could go gnatlike into stretches of the belt no larger ship would risk and,
supplied by those larger ships, attach limpets to boost a worthwhile prize within reach: that kind of risk was negotiable.
And if she broke down in Endeavor's belt and killed her crew, well, that was the chance the Murray-Gaineses took, like
all the rest who gambled on a future at Endeavor, on the hope of piling up credits in the station's bank faster than they
needed to consume them, credits and stock which would increase in worth as the station grew, which was how
marginal operators like the Murray-Gaineses hoped to get a lease on a safer ship and link into some forming Endeavor
combine.
There was Endeavor Station: that was the first step. Rightwise let go the clamps; the Murray-Gaineses sweated
through the unpowered docking and the checkout, enjoyed one modest round of drinks at the cheapest of Endeavor
Station's four cheap bars, and opened their station account in Endeavor's cubbyhole of a docking office, red-eyed and
exhausted and anxious to pay off Rightwise and get Lindy clear and away before they accumulated any additional
dock charge.
So they applied for their papers and local number, paid their freight and registered their ship forthwith with hardly
more formality than a clerical stamp, because Lindy was so ridiculously small there was no question of illicit weaponry
or criminal record. She became STARSTATION ENDEAVOR INSYSTEM SHIP 243 Lindy, attached to SSEIS 1, the
oreship/smelter Ajax. She had a home. And the Murrays and Paul Gaines, free and clear of debt, went off arm in arm to
Lindy's obscure berth just under the maindawn limit which would have logged them a second day's dock charge. They
boarded and settled into that cramped interior, ran their checks of the charging that the station had done in their
absence, and put her out under her own power without further ado, headed for Endeavor's belt.
For a little while they had an aftward single G, in the acceleration which boosted them to their passage velocity; but
after that small push they went inertial and null, in which condition they would live and work three to six months at a
stretch.
They had bought three bottles of Downer wine for their stores. Those were for their first tour's completion. They
expected success. They were high on the anticipation of it. Rafe Murray, his sister Jillan, merchanter brats; Paul
Gaines, of Fargone's deep-miners, unlikely friendship, war-flotsam that they were. But there was no doubt in them, no
division, when playmates had grown up and married: and Rafe was well content. "It's tight quarters," Jillan had said to
her brother when they talked about Endeavor and their partnership. "It's a long time out there, Rafe; it's going to be
real long; and real lonely.”
Paul Gaines had said much the same, in the way Paul could, because he and Rafe were close as brothers. "So, well,"
Rafe had answered, "I'll turn my back.”
They called Rafe, half-joking, half-not, their Old Man, at twenty-two. That meant captain, on a larger ship. And they
were his. Jillan planned on children in a merchanter-woman's way. They were life, and she could get them, with any
man; but, unmerchanter-like, she married Paul, for good, for permanent, not to lose him, and snared him in their dream.
Their children would be Murrays; would grow up to the Name that the War had robbed of a ship and almost killed out
entire . . . and he dreamed with desperate fervor, did Rafe Murray, of holding Murray offspring in his arms, of a ship
filled with youngsters-being himself a merchanter-man and incapable of pregnancy, which was how, after all, children
got on ships: merchanter-women made them, and merchanter-women got his and took them to other ships which did
not need them half so desperately.
He had had his partnerings with the women of Rightwise and bade all that good-bye "Go sleep-over," Paul had
advised him on Endeavor dock. "Do you good.”
"Money," he had said, meaning they could not spare the cost of a room, or the time. "Had my time on Rightwise.
That's enough. I'm tired.”
Paul had just looked at him, with pity in his eyes.
"What do you want?" he had answered then. "Had it last night. Three Rightwisers. Wore me out." And Jillan walked
up just then, so there was no more argument.
"We'll have a ship," Rafe had sworn to Jillan once, when they were nine and eight, and their mother and their uncle
died, last of old freighter Lindy's crew, both at once, in Fargone's belt. Getting to deep space again had been their
dream; it was all the legacy they left, except a pair of silver crew-pins and a Name without a ship.
So Rafe held Jillan by him-Don't leave me, don't go stationer on me. You take your men; give me kids give me that, and
I'll give you-all I've got, all I'll ever have.
Don't you leave me, Jillan had said back, equally dogged. You be the Old Man, that's what you'll be. Don't you leave
me and go forget your name. Don't you do that, ever. And she worked with him and sweated and lived poor to bank
every credit that came their way.
Most, she got him Paul Gaines, lured a miner-orphan to work with them, to risk his neck, to throw his money into it,
Paul's station-share, every credit they three could gain by work from scrubbing deck to serving hire-on crew to miners
when they could get a berth.
Having children waited. Waited for the ship.
And Endeavor and a dilapidated pusher-ship were the purchase of all they had.
Rafe took first watch. He caught a reflection on the leftmost screen of Jillan and Paul in their sleeping web behind his
chair, fallen asleep despite their attempt to keep him company, singing and joking. They had been quite a handful of
minutes and there they drifted, collapsed together, like times the three of them had hidden to sleep, three kids on
Fargone, making a ship out of a shipping canister, all tucked up in the dark and secret inside, dreaming they were
exploring and that stars and infinity surrounded their little shell.
Mass.
<> came fully alert, feeling that certain tug at <>'s substance which meant something large disturbing the continuum.
Trishanamarandu-kepta could have overjumped the hazard, of course, adjusting course in mid-jump with the facility of
vast power and a sentience which treated the mindcrippling between of jumps like some strange ocean which <> swam
with native skill. But curiosity was the rule of <>'s existence. <> skipped down, if such a term had relevance, an
insouciant hairbreadth from disaster.
It was a bit of debris, a lump of congealed material which to the questing eye of Trishanamarandu-kepta appeared as a
blackness, a disruption, a point of great mass.
It was a failed star, an overambitious planet, a wanderer in the wide dark which had given up almost all its heat to the
void and meant nothing any longer but a pockmark in spacetime.
It was a bit of the history of this region, telling <> something of the formational past. It was nothing remarkable in
itself. The remarkable time for it had long since passed, the violent death of some far greater star hereabouts. That
would have been a sight. <> journeyed, pursuing that thread of thought with some pleasure, charted the point of mass
in O's indelible memory in the process.
The inevitable babble of curiosity had begun among the passengers. O's wakings were of interest to them. <>
answered them curtly and leaped out into the deep again, heading simply to the next star, as <> did, having both
eternity and jump capacity at O's disposal.
There was no hurry. There was nowhere in particular to go; and everywhere, of course. <> was now awake, lazily
considering galactic motion and the likely center of that ancient supernova.
Such star-deaths begat descendants.
Chapter Two
The Downer wine was opened, nullstopped and passed hand to hand in celebration. Music poured from Lindys
corn-system. There was food in the freezer, water in the tanks, and a start to the fortunes of the Murray-Gaineses, a
respectable number of credits logged on the orehauler Ajax, from what they had delivered and a share of what others
had brought in with their beeper tags. They were bathed, shaved and fresh-scented from a docking and sleepover on
Ajax. Even Lindy herself had a mint-new antiseptic tang to her air from the purging she had gotten during the hours of
her stay.
"None of them," Jillan said, drifting free, "none of them believed we could have come in filled that fast. No savvy at
all, these so-named miners." "Baths," Paul Gaines murmured, and took the wine in both hands for his turn, smug bliss
on his square face when he had drunk. "We're civilized again.”
"Drink to that," Rafe agreed. "Here's to the next load. How long's it going to take us?”
"Under two months," Jillan proposed. "Thirty tags and a full sling.”
"We can do it." Rafe was extravagant. He felt a surge of warmth, thinking on an Ajax woman who had opened her
cabin to him in his onship time. He was feeling at ease with everything and everyone. He gave a quirk of a smile at
Jillan and Paul, whose privacy was one of the storage pods when they were down on supplies, but they were full
stocked now, with solid credit to their account, stock bought in Endeavor itself. "Someday," he said, "when we're very
old we can tell this to pur kids and they won't believe it.”
"Drink to someday," Paul said, hugging Jillan with one arm, the bottle in the other. The motion started a drift and spin.
Rafe snagged the bottle from Paul's hand as they passed, laughing at them as the hug became a tumble, the two of
them lost in each other and not needing that bottle in the least.
I love them, Rafe thought with an unaccustomed pang, with tears in his eyes he had no shame for. His sister and his
best friend. His whole life was neatly knitted up together; and maybe next year they could build old Lindy a little
larger. Jillan could look to family-getting then, lie up on Ajax for the first baby; be with them thereafter-close quarters,
but merchanter youngsters learned touch
and not-touch, scramble and take-hold before they were steady on their feet.
And even for himself-for his own comfort Endeavor was a haven for the orphaned, the displaced of the War, people
like themselves, taking a last-ditch chance. There might be some woman someday, somehow, willing to take the kind
of risk they posed.
Someone rare, like Paul.
"Drink up," Jillan insisted, drifting down with Paul. The embrace opened ... a little frown had crossed Jillan's face at the
sight of his; and Paul's expression mirrored the same concern. For that, for a thousand, thousand things, he loved
them.
He grinned, and drank, and sent their bottle their way.
Trishanamarandu-kepta was in pursuit of delicate reckonings, had chased plottings round and round and busily
gathered data in observation of the region. <> might have missed the ship entirely otherwise.
<> detected it in the Between, a meeting of which the ship might or might not be aware. It was small and slow, a bare
ripple of presence.
It too was a consequence of that ancient star-death ... or came here because of it. Weak as it seemed, it might well use
mass like that which <> had recently visited as an anchor, a navigation fix when the distance between stars was too
great for it. <> diverted <>'s self from <>'s previous heading and followed the ship, eager and intent, coming down at
another such pockmark in the continuum, where <>'s small quarry had surfaced and paused.
(!), <> sent at once, in pulses along the whole range of O's transmitters. (!!!) (!!!!!) It was an ancient pattern, useful
where there was no possibility of linguistic similarity and no reasonable guarantee of a similar range of perceptions.
<> waited for response on any wavelength.
Waited.
Waited.
Even delays in response were informational. This might be recovery time, for senses severely disorganized by
jumpspace. Some species were particularly affected by the experience. It might be slow consideration of the pulse
message. The length of time to decide on reply, the manner of answer, whether echo or addition, whether linear or
pyramidal . . . species varied in their apprehension of the question.
The small ship remained some time at residual velocity, though headed toward the hazard of the dark mass by which it
steered. Presumably it was aware of the danger of its course.
<> remained wary, having seen many variations on such meetings, some proceeding to sudden attack; some to
approach; some to headlong flight; some even to suicide, which might be what was in progress as a result of that
unchecked velocity.
Or possibly, remotely, the ship had suffered some malfunction. <> retained corresponding velocity and kept the same
interval, confident in O's own agility and wondering whether the ship under observation could still escape.
<> observed, which was O's only present interest.
The little ship suddenly flicked out again into jump. <> followed, ignoring the babble from the passengers, which had
been building and now broke into chaos.
Quiet, <> wished them all, afire with the passion of a new interest in existence.
The pursuit came down again as <> had hoped, at a star teeming with activity on a broad range of wavelengths.
Life.
A whole spacefaring civilization.
It was like rain after ages-long drought; repletion after famine. <> stretched, enlivened capacities dormant for
centuries, power like a great silent shout going through O's body.
Withdraw, some of the passengers wished <>. You'll get us all killed.
There was humor in that. <> laughed. <> could, after O's fashion.
Attack, others raved, that being their natures.
Hush, <> said. Just watch.
We trusted you, <-> mourned.
<> ignored all the voices and stayed on course.
The intruder and its quarry went unnoticed for a time in Endeavor Station Central. Boards still showed clear. The
trouble at the instant of its arrival was still a long, lightbound way out.
Ships closer to that arrival point picked up the situation and started relaying the signal as they moved in panic.
Three hours after arrival, Central longscan picked up a blip just above the ecliptic and beeped, routinely calling a
human operator's attention to that seldom active screen, which might register an arrival once or twice a month.
But not headed into central system plane, where no incoming ship belonged, vectored at jumpship velocities toward
the precise area of the belt that was worked by Endeavor miners. Comp plotted a colored fan of possible courses, and
someone swore, with feeling.
A second beep an instant later froze the several techs in their seats; and "Lord!" a scan tech breathed, because that
second blip was close to the first one.
"Check your pickup," the supervisor said, walking near that station in the general murmur of dismay.
That had nearly been collision out there three lightbound hours ago. The odds against two unscheduled merchanters
coinciding in Endeavor's vast untrafficked space, illegally in system plane, were out of all reason.
"Tandem jump?" the tech wondered, pushing buttons to reset. Tandem jumping was a military maneuver. It required
hairbreadth accuracy. No merchanter risked it as routine.
"Pirate," a second tech surmised, which they were all thinking by now. There were still war troubles left, from the bad
days. "Mazianni, maybe.”
The supervisor hesitated from one foot to the other, wiped his face. The stationmaster was off-shift, asleep. It was
hours into maindark. The supervisor was alterday chief, second highest on the station. The red-alert button was in
front of him on the board, unused for all of Endeavor's existence.
"... it's behind us," he heard next, the merchanter frequency, from out in the range. "Endeavor Station, do you read, do
you read? This is merchanter John Liles out of Viking. We've met a bogey out there . . . it's dragged us off mark . . .
Met ...”
Another signal was incoming. (!) (!!!) (!!!!!)
". . . out there at Charlie Point," the transmission from John Liles went on. An echo had started, John Liles' message
relayed ship to ship from every prospector and orehauler in the system. Everyone's ears were pricked. Bogey was a
nightmare word, a bad joke, a thing which happened to jumpspace pilots who were due for a long, long rest. But there
were two images on scan, and a signal was incoming which made no sense. At that moment Endeavor Station seemed
twice as far from the rest of mankind and twice as lonely as before.
". . . It signaled us out there and we jumped on with no proper trank. Got sick kids aboard, people shaken up. We're
afraid to dump velocity; we may need what we've got. Station, get us help out here. It keeps signaling us. It's solid.
We got a vid image and it's not one of ours, do you copy? Not one of ours or anybody's. What are we supposed to
do, Endeavor Station?" Everywhere that message had reached, all along the time sequence of that incoming message,
ships reacted, shorthaulers and orehaulers and prospectors changing course, exchanging a babble of inter-ship
communication as they aimed for eventual refuge out of the line of events. What interval incoming jumpships could
cross in mere seconds, the insystem haulers plotted in days and weeks and months: they had no hope in speed, but in
their turn-tail signal of noncombatancy.
In station central, the supervisor roused out the stationmaster by intercom. The thready voice from John Liles went on
and on, the speaker having tried to jam all the information he could into all the time he had, a little under three hours
ago. Longscan techs in Endeavor Central were taking the hours-old course of the incoming vessels and making
projections on the master screen, lines colored by degree of probability, along with reckonings of present position
and courses of all the ships and objects everywhere in the system. Long-scan was supposed to work because human
logic and human body/human stress capacities were calculable, given original position, velocity, situation, ship class,
and heading.
But one of those ships out there was another matter.
And John Liles was not dumping velocity, was hurtling in toward the station on the tightest possible bend, the exact
tightness of which had to do with how that ship was rigged inside, and what its capacity, load, and capabilities were.
Computers were hunting such details frantically as longscan demanded data. The projections were cone-shaped flares
of color, as yet unrefined. Com was ordering some small prospectors to head their ships nadir at once because they
lay within those cones. But those longscan projections suddenly revised themselves into a second hindcast, that
those miners had started moving nadir on their own initiative the moment they picked up John Liles' distress call the
better part of three hours ago. Data began to confirm that hypothesis, communication coming in from SSEIS 1 Ajax,
which was now a fraction nadir of original projection.
Lindy had run early in those three hours, such as Lindy could . . . dumped the sling and spent all she had, trying to
gather velocity. Rafe plotted frantically, trying to hold a line which used the inertia they had and still would not take
them into the collision hazard of the deep belt if they had to overspend. Jillan ran counterchecks on the figures and
Paul was set at com, keeping a steady flow of John Liles' transmission.
If Lindy overspent and had nothing left for braking, if they survived the belt, there were three ships which might
match them and snag them down before they passed out of the system and died adrift ... if they did not hit a rock their
weak directionals could not avoid ... if the station itself survived what was coming in at them. They could all die here.
Everyone. There were two military ships at Endeavor Station and Lindy had no hope of help from them: the military's
priority in this situation was not to come after some minuscule dying miner, but to run, warning other stars-so Paul
said, who had served in Fargone militia, and they had no doubt of it. It was a question of priorities, and Lindy was no
one's priority but their own.
"How are we doing?" Rafe asked his sister, who had her eyes on other readouts. The curves were all but touching on
the comp screen, one promising them collision and one offering escape.
"Got a chance," Jillan said, "if that merchanter gives us just a hair.”
Paul was transmitting, calmly, advisingyo/m Liles they were in its path. On the E-channel, Lindy's autowarning
screamed collision alert: the wave of that message should have reached John Liles by now.
"Rafe," Jillan said, "recommend you take all the margin. Now.”
"Right." Rafe asked no questions, having too much input from the boards to do anything but take it as he was told.
He squeezed out the last safety margin they had before overspending, shut down on the mark, watching the computer
replot the curves. In one ear, Paul was quietly, rationally advising/o/m Liles that they were ten minutes from impact; in
the other ear came the com flow from John Liles itself, babble which still pleaded with station, wanting help, advising
station that they were innocent of provocation toward the bogey. "Instruction," John Liles begged again and again,
ignoring communications from others. It was a tape playing. Possibly their medical emergency or their attention to the
bogey behind them took all their wits.
"Come on," Rafe muttered, flashing their docking floods in the distress code, into the diminish
ing interval of their light-speed message impacting the 3/4 C time-frame of John Liles' Doppler receivers. He was not
panicked. They were all too busy for panic. The calculations flashed tighter and tighter.
"We've got to destruct," Paul said at last in a thin, strained voice. "Three of us-a thousand on that ship-O God, we've
got to do it”
Sudden static disrupted all their scan and com, blinding them. "She's dumping," Jillan yelled. John Liles had cycled in
the generation vanes, shedding velocity in pulses. They were getting the wash, like a storm passing, with a flaring of
every alarm in the ship. It dissipated. "We're all right," Paul yelled prematurely. In the next instant scan cleared and
showed them a vast shape coming dead on. Rafe froze, braced, frail human reaction against what impact was coming
at them at a mind-bending 1/10 C.
It dumped speed again, another storm of blackout. Rafe moved, trembled in the wake of it, fired directionals to correct
a yaw that had added itself to their motion. Scan cleared again.
"Clear that," Rafe said. "Scan's fouled." The blip showed itself larger than Ajax, large as infant Endeavor Station itself.
"No," Paul said. "Rafe, that's not the'merchanter.”
"Vid," Rafe said. Paul was already flicking switches. The camera swept, a blur of stars onscreen. It targeted, swung
back, locked.
The ship in view was like nothing human-built, a disc cradled in a frame warted with bubbles of no sensible geometry,
in massive extrusions on frame and disc like some bizarre cratering from within. The generation vanes, if that was what
those projections were, stretched about it in a tangle of webbing as if some mad spider had been at work, veiling that
toadish lump in gossamer. Lightnings flickered multicolor in the webs and reflected off the warted body, a repeated
sequence of pulses.
It had exited C and actually gone negative, so that their relative speeds were a narrowing slow drift.
"Twenty meters-second," Jillan read the difference. "Plus ten, plus five-five, plus five-seven K.”
There were no maneuvering options. Lindy was already at the edge of her safety reserve, and a ship which could shift
course and stop like that could overhaul them with the merest twitch of an effort. Rafe flexed his fingers on the main
throttle and let it go.
"Maybe it's curious," Jillan said under her breath. "Liles never said it fired.”
"Got their signal," Paul said, and punched it in for both of them . . . (!) (!!!) (!!!!!).
"Echo it," Rafe said. They were still getting signal from John Liles, a screen now Dopplered in retreat, echoed from
other ships. Station might be aware by now that something was amiss; but there was still the lagtime of reply to go.
As yet there was only Ajax sending out her longscan and her frantic instruction to John Liles.
Lindy, on her own, facing Leviathan, sent out a tentative pulse.
Scan beeped, instant at their interval. "Bogey's moving," Jillan said in a still, calm voice. It was.
"Cut the signal," Rafe said at once; and on inspiration: "Reverse the sequence and send.”
(!!!!!), Paul sent. (!!!) (!)
No. Negative. Reverse. Keep away from us.
The bogey kept coming, but slower, feather-soft for something of its power, as if it drifted. "10.2 meters-second," Jillan
read off. "Steady.”
"It could shed us like dust if it wanted to," Paul said. "It's being careful.”
"So we ride it out," Rafe said. A hand closed on his arm, Jillan's* He never took his eyes from the screens and
instruments. Neither did she.
The bogey filled all their vid now, monstrous and flashing with strange lights, a sudden and rapid flare.
"It's braking," Jillan said. "4 . . 3 ... relative stop.”
"Station," Paul sent, "this is SSEIS 243 Lindy, with the bogey in full sight. It's looking us over. We're transmitting vid;
all ships relay.”
There was no chance of reply from station, a long timeline away. "Relaying," a human ship broke in, someone calling
dangerous attention to themselves by that sole and human comfort.
"Thank you," Paul said, and kept the vid going, still sending.
The surface of the bogey had detail now. The warts were complex and overlapping, the smallest of the extrusions as
large as Lindy herself. The camera swept the intruder, finding no marking, no sign of any identifiable structure which
might be scanning them in turn.
Suddenly scan and vid broke up.
And space did.
Chapter Three
Capture.
Trishanamamndu-kepta reached for the mote with <>'s jump field.
<> left the star, dragging the captured mote along.
Rafe had time to feel it happening. He screamed a long, outraged "No!"-at the utter stupidity of dying, perhaps; at
everything he lost. His voice wound strangely material through the chaos of the between, entwined with the
substance and the terrified voices of Jillan and Paul. He was still screaming when the jump came, the giddy insideout
pulse into here and when, falling unchecked out of infinity into substance that could be harmed. He reached out,
groping wildly after controls as the instruments flashed alarm. Orientation was gone. They were moving, his body
persuaded him, though he felt no G. He pushed autopilot: red
lights flared at him, a bloody haze of lights and blur.
Lindy's autopilot kicked in, and it was wrong . . . he felt it, the beginning of a roll, a braking insufficient for their
velocity. The wobble Lindy had always had with the directionals betrayed her now. He tried to shut it down, while G
was whipping blood to his head, rupturing vessels in his nose, a coppery taste at one with the bloody lights and the
screams.
Paul and Jillan.
"Jillan!”
Paul's voice.
Tumble went on and on. Instruments broke up again, and another motion complicated the spin: autopilot malfunction.
They had been dragged through jump, boosted to velocity a good part of C, and Lindy was helpless, uninstrumented
for this kind of speed. Every move the autopilot made was wrong, complicating Lmrfy's motion.
He fought to get his hand to the board, to do something, a long red tunnel narrowing black edges between him and
the lights.
Someone screamed his name. His eyes were pressing at their sockets and his brain at his skull, his gut crawling up his
rib cage to press his lungs and heart and spew its contents in a choking flood that might be hemorrhage. The tunnel
narrowed and the pressure acquired a rhythm in his ears. Vision went in bursts of gray and red, and mind tumbled
after.
<> maneuvered carefully to secure the ship: field seized it, stabilized it from its spinning, snugged it close. Getting it
inside once stable was no problem at all.
Getting inside it . .,. was another matter altogether.
Kill it, some advised.
</> moved to do that. <> blocked that attempt with brutal force. An extensor probe drifted along a track and reached
down, punched through the hull with very precise laser bursts and bled off an atmosphere sample from the innermost
cavity.
Nitrogen, argon, carbon dioxide, oxygen . . . Trishanamarandu-kepta had no internal atmosphere. <> started acquiring
one, here and in other sections.
<> had no need of gravity; but <> began to' acquire it, basing calculations on the diameter and rotation of the
structure back at the star.
<> extended other probes and surveyed the small ship's hull, locating the major access.
The interior was, once <> had gotten a probe inside to see, messy. The occupants, stained with red fluids, stirred only
feebly, and more and more extensors cooperated in freeing the occupants from their restraints, in moving them
outside, while other extensors intruded into every portion of the diminutive ship, testing the instrumentation,
sampling the consumables. <> flurried through incoming data in a general way, relating that and what it discovered in
the tiny ship's computers, simple mathematical instruments adequate only for the most basic operations.
The subjects offered resistance, though weakly, at being containered and moved a great and rapid distance through
Trishanamarandu-kepta's twist
ing interior. One was very active: it thrashed about at intervals, losing strength and smearing the transparent case
with red fluids at every outburst, which indicated rapidly diminishing returns, whether this motion was voluntary or
not. It screamed intermittently, and whether this was communication remained to be judged.
It screamed a very long scream when it was positioned in the apparatus and the recorder came on and played through
its nervous system. So did the other two. Most vocal organisms would.
Each collapsed after the initial spasm. Vital signs continued in a series of wild fluctuations which seemed to indicate
profound shock. <> maintained them within the recorder-field and realigned them with the hologrammatic impression
<> had taken.
<> took cell samples, fluid samples, analyzed the physical structures from the whole to the microscopic and chemical
while the entities remained conscious. <> was careful, well aware that some of the procedures might cause pain. <>
reduced what wild response <> could, elicited occasional murmurings from the subjects. <> recorded those sounds
and played them back; played back all response it had ever gotten from this species, here and from the other ship and
from the star system in general.
The subjects responded. Sympathetically, on both recorded words and answers, the holo images <> had constructed .
. . reacted.
<> used lights and sounds and other stimuli, and mapped reflexes in the hologrammatic brains, obtaining sensory
reactions from the imprints along the appropriate pathways. <> discovered what seemed to be a rest state and
maintained the organisms close to sleep, yet able to react and speak, prolonging this interrogation in words and
sensations.
The two weakest sank deeper, refusing when prodded to come out of this state, eventually deteriorating so that it
required more and more stimulus to keep them functioning. At last decomposition set in.
The third subject remained in sleep-state. <> questioned it further and it reacted in dazed compliance.
The simulacra still reacted ... all three of them.
The surviving organism fell into deeper and deeper sleep and <> let it rest.
<> further examined the remains of the other two, analyzed them in their failure, finally committed them to cryostorage.
<> wasted nothing that <> took in.
Rafe moved, and knew that he moved. He felt no pain. His limbs seemed adrift in void, and when he opened his eyes
he thought that he was blind.
"Jillan!" he cried, struggling to stand, reaching out with his hands. "Paul, Jillan!”
"Rafe-!" Jillan's voice came back; and she was there, coming toward him in the starless void. Paul followed. They were
naked, both; so was he; and their bodies glowed like lamps in the utter dark, as if they were their own light, and all the
light there was. They began to run toward him, and he ran, caught Jillan in his arms, and Paul,
ashamed for his nakedness and theirs and not caring, not caring anything but to hug their warmth against him. He felt
the texture of their skin, their hands on him, their arms about him.
He wept, shamelessly. There was a great deal of tears, that first, that most important and human thing. "You're here,"
Jillan kept saying; "you're all right, we've got you, oh Rafe, we've got you-hold on.”
-Because the fainting-feeling was on him, and they all three seemed to drift, to whirl, to travel in this dark. There were
sounds, far wails, like wind. Something brushed past them through the dark, vast and impersonal, like the whisper of a
draft.
"Where have we got to?" Paul wondered, and Rafe looked at Paul and looked at Jillan as they stood disengaged, in
this dark nowhere.
"I don't know," he said, ashamed for his helplessness to tell them. I'm scared. He kept that behind his teeth. He looked
about him, into nothing at all, and kept remembering jump, and the sinuous wave of arms.
"There was something” Jillan said, her teeth chattering. "Oh God, God” She stood there, shivering in her nakedness,
and Paul hugged her against him. "Don't," he said, "don't. Don't think, don't”
摘要：

VoyagerinNightByC.J.Cherryh  Contents ChapterOneChapterTwoChapterThreeChapterFourChapterFiveChapterSixChapterSevenChapterEightChapterNineChapterTen ChapterOne 1,000,000riseofterrenehominids75,000terreneiceage35,000hunter-gatherersBC9000JerichobuiltBC3000SumerthrivingBC1288ReignofRamesesinEgyptBC753f...

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