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Chapter Twenty-One

IT might have been nervousness, wondering if this was one last night before an eternity of darkness. Or maybe it was the vibration that shook every corner of Confluence Center and grew stronger with every passing hour; or perhaps even the suggestion planted in Jeff's head by Connie Cheever that by his action in describing the navy vessels for her he was guilty of treason—though he had sworn no oath to seek the destruction of peaceful people, in the Messina Dust Cloud or anywhere.

Whatever the reason, sleep proved impossible. Jeff lay restless, flat and curled up, on his back or side or stomach, covered or uncovered. Long before the usual waking time he abandoned the attempt to sleep and went wandering through Confluence Center to find a quieter spot.

His search was a failure. The sound followed him everywhere; always he felt that he stood at its exact center. The control-room door was, for the first time in Jeff's experience, locked. In any case, the noise level there seemed higher than ever. He tried Simon Macafee's hideout, hoping less to find escape from the vibration than to find Simon himself. The chamber was empty except for Billy Jexter, curled up in Simon's great padded chair and sleeping soundly.

Jeff was filled with envy. Oh, to be seven years old, and oblivious to danger.

At last he decided that the most peaceful place ought to be outside the main body of Confluence Center. That meant he must travel beyond the influence of the Anadem field, to an environment close to free fall. He could take that. Any amount of discomfort in his insides was preferable to the resonance that shook his bones and set his teeth on edge.

He called for a route guide. After examining the layout of Confluence Center, he set off for the farthest chamber of the longest extension corridor. On the way he passed the double torus of the Anadem rings. The air of the region smoked and shimmered. He knew from Lilah that the field could be used to store vast amounts of energy. How much? What happened if you tried to exceed that? And what did Connie Cheever and Simon Macafee hope to do with all that stored power when they had it?

The extension tube was not air-filled. Jeff logged out a suit, cycled through the lock, and entered the long arm of the corridor. The cylindrical dimly lit tunnel stretched off into the distance, as far as he could see. He headed out along it, feeling himself grow steadily lighter as he moved away from the zone of influence of the Anadem field. For the final half kilometer he floated, using only an occasional touch on corridor walls to make small corrections to his motion.

The arm ended in a launch facility and observation bubble. He spent a few moments examining the ships standing ready for launch, and wondered if Confluence Center had enough lifeboat capacity to evacuate everyone in case of emergency. Surely they must; space colonies had to be prepared for any disaster. But no one ever said a word about emergency procedures. "Abandon Confluence Center" was an unlikely command. The inhabitants of the Center had too much faith in their own creation. The idea that something could completely destroy their home probably never occurred to them.

Jeff moved into the observation bubble. He ordered the sensors to display the direction of the entry node from Sol. He didn't expect to see the node itself, and he knew there was no chance of detecting the approaching fleet until it was much closer. The displays showed only the vast, multicolored face of the Messina Dust Cloud. But he was clear of the nerve-tingling throb of power that filled the inner regions of Confluence Center, and looking out on the Cloud might help him to relax.

He went over to the clear window of the observation bubble. Electronic enhancers saw much more detail than human eyes, but there was something special about direct viewing.

The Cloud filled the sky. With plenty of time for examination, he could at last see logic behind the fanciful names that Lilah had offered. The Treasure Chest was an easy one, knotty strands of lustrous gas coiled and tangled in a jeweled rectangle defined by four bright supergiant stars. The Blind Man's Eye, off to the right, was a clouded oval of white light, like a cataracted pupil sitting at the center of a larger iris of royal blue. The Sisters were three tall columns of gas, bonded at their lower ends as the streams comprising them twisted and turned in response to local magnetic fields. The Snake formed a single luminous river of green, a colossal sidewinder coiling and wriggling its way across a third of the sky.

The Horsemen required more imagination. If you were generous and did not focus too hard, those four blocky islands of light might become hooded figures, galloping across the sky on spectral steeds of magenta and gold. But when you looked harder, those shapes, like Lilah's impression of Simon Macafee, would fade before your eyes.

Snakes, Horsemen. It was strange to find elements of far-off Earth named here. The labels must be old, established when Cloud residents still came from and knew well the worlds of Sol. It answered another of Jeff's questions: How permanent were the structures drifting before his eyes? Like the stars seen from Earth, the great dust rivers must endure over many centuries, otherwise the names would lose meaning within a person's lifetime.

Jeff's mind was wandering, well into the hypnotic stage that comes just before sleep, when he felt a gentle touch on his shoulder. It brought him to nervous, heart-pumping awareness. He turned violently, forgetting that he was in free fall, and found himself floating away from the wall of the bubble.

A suited arm reached out to hold and steady him.

"It's all right, Jeff." Lilah's voice sounded on his helmet channel. "It's only me."

He took a deep breath and tried to speak normally. "How did you know I was out here? I didn't tell anyone I was going."

"I tried your room, and you weren't there or anywhere else I thought you might be. I queried the general database as a last hope. I learned that you had checked out a suit for vacuum use, and where you did it. This was the only logical place you could be, with that exit point from the Center."

"What do you want?"

"Calm down. Maybe I couldn't sleep, either. Or maybe I just wanted to see you."

"I'm sorry." His question had been abrupt, betraying his nervous condition. "It was a shock, because I wasn't expecting anyone. I've been floating here for ages by myself, just looking at the Cloud. You're quite right, when you stare for a while you start to see all the shapes you told me about."

"Shapes. That's why I came looking for you." Lilah took his arm and urged him to move along the corridor toward the bulk of Confluence Center. "Simon Macafee isn't back yet, but Hooglich came dashing through the Inner Level. She wouldn't tell me what they were all doing, and she was in a terrible hurry. But I sketched her the pattern of dots on Simon's card, and she recognized it."

Jeff felt the hair-bristling mood return. "What is it? Some kind of code?"

"Easier than that. It's a constellation—a star pattern."

"I know what a constellation is. Was Hooglich sure?"

"She seemed to be. She said at once, 'I know that, it's the Dragon.' "

"But your mother didn't recognize it, and she used to be a Cloudship captain. She ought to know the constellations better than Hooglich."

"I think she does. But she knows constellations as they look from here, in the Cloud. You're forgetting, we're twenty-seven light-years from Sol. Lots of the bright stars are different, so the constellations change. Hooglich says that the dot pattern on the card is the Dragon constellation, as it looks from the region of Sol. You must have seen it when you were on Earth."

"I thought the pattern looked kind of familiar. But what does it mean? Why did Simon Macafee put it on the card?"

"I don't know. I was hoping you could tell me."

Helmet to helmet, they stared at each other in silence until Jeff at last shook his head.

"It's no use. Even if Hooglich is right and it's the Dragon constellation, that doesn't give me anything new." They were making easy progress, gliding side by side along the corridor toward the main bulk of Confluence Center. Even from a kilometer away, Jeff could feel the thrum of energy generation whenever his hand or foot touched the tunnel walls. "Did you tell your mother what Hooglich said?"

"I can't get near her. Everything in Control is locked up tight and has been for hours. I'm not sure that the messages I leave for her even get through. You thought she wasn't taking the danger from the Sol fleet seriously enough. Well, I can tell you, if that was true before it's not true now. I've never known Confluence Center to be wound up like this."

"So what do we do? We can't find Simon Macafee, we can't get to your mother, and the Space Navy will be here tomorrow."

He turned to face Lilah. She had stopped and was holding her gloved hand against the wall of the tunnel.

"Tomorrow?" she said. "Are you sure? Feel, Jeff. It ended."

He reached out his own glove. There was no longer a vibration, passing along into his whole body through his fingertips. The wall was dead to his touch. "They've stopped the power generation and storage. What does that mean?"

"It could mean we have all we need. Or"—Lilah was moving again, speeding along the corridor to and past Jeff—"maybe we ran out of time. You can't pump energy into the Anadem field rings and take it out at the same time. What's the earliest that the Sol fleet could get here?"

"At full speed? If it started not long after the Dreadnought arrived, the fleet could be here now. The Dreadnought would have mapped a fast and safe route."

"Then I think they arrived. Come on, Jeff."

She was moving fast, propelling herself along the walls with a skill and efficiency that he could not match. He caught the urgency in her voice and followed pell-mell along the corridor. He came to the airlock, already opened by Lilah, with his arms and legs flailing in all directions. He could not stop, and sailed across to ram into the far wall. By the time he got his breath the lock was already cycling.

"Suits off," Lilah cried. "Let's go, Jeff."

"What's the big hurry?" He followed her method and started to remove his suit from the bottom, so that his body was free while his helmet was still in position and he could breathe its air while the lock was working.

"You'll see." Her helmet was off, and she helped him with his. "If we're not careful, we'll be locked out of the interior."

He didn't have time to ask how that might happen. They had weight again, and he could keep up with Lilah as she dashed inward. Within seconds he could see the two great rings of the Anadem field.

As they approached the catwalk between the rings, a loud voice blared out: "FIELD PREPARING FOR POSSIBLE DISCHARGE. LEAVE THIS REGION AT ONCE."

"Keep going!" Lilah shouted. "We have to."

They were right between the rings, and Jeff could see a violet blue discharge in the air. They were running toward a vertical curtain, a smoking nimbus of ionized air. He could smell ozone, and he might have paused and turned around, but Lilah had him by the arm. She dragged him forward, into and through the shimmering screen.

He felt his weight double, then increase again. He staggered and nearly fell, but regained his balance at the last moment; then it was his turn to pull Lilah onward as her knees buckled under her.

They crawled the next ten yards side by side. Jeff felt his weight gradually return to normal. Behind him, the blaring voice announced: "THIS REGION CLOSED TO HUMANS WHILE FIELD DISCHARGE IS PREPARED. ENTRY IS PROHIBITED."

"It's all right." Lilah climbed awkwardly to her feet, stooping to rub her bruised and scraped knees. "We're safe now."

Safe, with a Space Navy fleet perhaps within firing range? Maybe they would have been better off to head outward, using their suits to jet as far away from Confluence Center as they could get. Jeff didn't pass that thought on to Lilah. It was too late to act on it anyway. He said, "We have to get to where we can see the displays. If the navy is arriving I may be able to guess what they are going to do from the positions they take up. Standard formations are designed for use in particular types of engagement."

"The control center—if we're not locked out of it. There are other display points, but they're not as good."

They were hurrying inward, toward the middle regions of Confluence Center. Another steady hum filled the air. Jeff glanced at Lilah, but she shook her head. "Nothing to do with energy storage or use. That's the general-address system. Everyone will want to hear what Control says to the fleet, and what the fleet says back. Think lucky, Jeff. We're almost there."

Even before she finished speaking, Jeff could see that the sliding door at the end of the corridor was open. Was that the luck that Lilah was talking about, that the control center would not be closed to them?

Before the day was over they would surely need a lot more luck than that.

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Framed