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CHAPTER NINE

Sirgay turned back to his machinery, brow furrowed with annoyance at the commander's bruskness. I don't think that he likes me.

Maybe it was because he had a phobia. A lot of these gnarly, ultra-macho military types probably couldn't even spell arachnophobia, let alone tolerate it in someone else. Certainly they would never suffer such a flaw in themselves. They don't even know the meaning of the word fear. He sighed. I wish the general hadn't shot his mouth off about it. It wasn't like it was something he could help. He'd tried all sorts of therapies; sometimes they worked for a while, but it always came back. So did the dreadful fascination. . . .

"And it's not like it's important," he said aloud.

It was so frustrating the way people made such a big deal about it. I mean, if the Fibians looked like bears or cats or even house flies there wouldn't be a problem at all. At least no more of a problem than anyone else would have.

Maybe Scaragoglu's mention of his arachnophobia was military code for, "Kick this jerk around as much as you like, he hasn't got the guts to stand up for himself."

Well, at the first opportunity, assuming the commander gives me one, I'm going to show him just what I'm made of.

Ticknor sighed and his shoulders drooped. That sounds so pathetic. 

"Work," he urged himself.

He connected his new translator machine to his computer and began downloading the adjusted program into it. While it ran he went over to the coffeemaker and began to pour himself a cup.

Then they hit jump.

Thoughtlessly, instinctively, Sirgay's hands jerked and hot coffee flew everywhere. It splashed across his console and shorted out the translation device; electricity arced and spluttered, smoke began spiraling up from the device.

* * *

"I'm getting some very strange readings," Gunderson announced.

"Upload to my screen," Raeder instructed the tactical officer. Peter studied the information for a moment. "What does this stuff mean?" he asked.

He'd stood a watch at tactical early in his career and could identify just about anything that might show up on its computer. But this . . . this stuff was weird.

It was energy, and it had patterns, but they didn't seem to correspond directly to anything he'd ever seen before. Was this the backwash of their own passage or . . .

"It's them," he guessed. Ships didn't interpentrate in jumpspace often enough for the phenomenon to be familiar. "Gunderson, get that program ready to transmit. See if you can detect anything that you can hook it onto."

"Readying program, aye," the ensign said.

"Ms. Lurhman," Raeder said, "I don't understand how this sort of thing could still be theoretical. We've been using jump points for travel for a very long time now."

"Before the war all transits were scheduled," she said. "And the only time you'd need to worry is when one ship is jumping in as another is jumping out. The timing would have to be perfect for them to intersect even slightly." The astrogator watched her board avidly. "My guess is that this is more of a bow wave than our backwash. I don't think we've met them yet."

Raeder's fingers dug into the armrest of his couch, into the padded covering that sheltered the combat gloves when they weren't on code red. He started guiltily as the fingers of his right hand poked through the fabric. Leaning over he examined the damage.

You can hardly see it, he thought, brushing at the tears. But the old man would find it tout suite, he had no doubt. I'll have someone fix it when we get back to base. The difficulty would be in keeping Knott away from his chair until it was fixed. Could have been worse. I might have broken it clean off. He had yet to get his own chair fixed.

Raeder frowned impatiently. He was trying to avoid the main issue; what was going to happen in the next few minutes?

He tapped his com for general address and began to speak.

"Attention all crew. This is your acting captain speaking. In the next few moments we may be experiencing what has up until now been a purely theoretical scenario. We may be actually passing through a Fibian vessel. We will be able to see them. They will see us. But we will not be able to interact anymore than you can with your own shadow. Only information may be exchanged in that state. But since we will be able to see one another I want all sensitive material covered from view. Where possible and where it won't endanger the crew, make it dark. Starting immediately. Use your uniforms if you have to, lie on your consoles, but cover up. Raeder out."

He took off his own jacket and covered his screen and console. "Turn down the lights," he said. "And turn off all unnecessary consoles. Buddy up where possible. Those whose consoles are shut down, crowd around active positions."

Truon Le pulled a drop cloth out of a cabinet and draped it over the holo display unit.

"It got left behind by the workers when we rushed them off the ship," he explained.

Raeder nodded approval. With luck such drapes were available all over the ship.

This is going to be interesting, he thought nervously. He was worried, but he was also excited. It would be the first time that humans had gained a look at the inside of a Fibian ship.

"I want every recording device we have running when and if we merge," he said.

"Yes, sir," the XO said. He called on the Invincible's tiny military history unit to get to the bridge on the double with their equipment.

Then they waited.

* * *

Ticknor put down the coffee pot and raced for the fire extinguisher. He fumbled with the locking mechanism with panic-clumsy fingers. Suddenly, an odd sensation came over him, as if his skin was being pricked with ten thousand tiny pinpoints, and he paused. It was reminiscent of the sensations he'd felt just before the violent thunderstorms that plagued the prairie town where he'd grown up. The hair on his arms rose as a tide of energy bathed him and he shuddered in reaction.

Then, a table flowed towards him. He backed off; the sparking of his translation device became unimportant as this apparently solid object came through the wall. Too soon his back struck the bulkhead behind him and he squawked and sucked in his gut as the table's edge came on like a guillotine in slow motion. Ticknor screamed when it reached him, putting out his hands to stop its awful progress.

He gasped as the tabletop slid through him without a hitch. He could see his legs and feet through its semitranslucent surface, and felt its passage as a warm, vaguely tickling sensation.

"What's happening?" he said out loud.

A Fibian voice attracted his attention and he looked up. Through the wall came a Fibian, an actual, living, breathing, eight-legged, eight-eyed, whip-tailed monster. And it was watching him.

Ticknor froze, feeling as though a band of iron was tightening around his chest. Lightning seemed to flicker at the corners of his vision and his heart began to race.

The Fibian moved, so fast it seemed impossible. Ticknor screamed, a full-bodied howl of honest terror and he snatched up the coffee pot, flinging it at the Fib. The Fibian ducked, seeming to flatten in an impossible maneuver, then it raced forward, its tail poised over its back, dripping acid.

Screaming, "No! No! No!" at the top of his lungs, Sirgay plunged towards the other side of the table.

Man and Fibian raced around the tiny room, both of them making a great deal of noise. Ticknor grabbed the still-sputtering translation device and flung it at the Fib. Instinctively the Fibian put out his clawed hands to ward it off.

Ticknor bolted for the door, then through it as the device gave off a blinding flare of energy. The linguist locked the door behind him, then raced down the corridor on tiptoe, trying to stifle the desperate little sounds he was making. Where the corridor branched he slowed down, then plastered himself to the bulkhead and crept forward. Sweat dripped into his eyes and he wiped it away with the sleeve of his lab coat.

At last he came to the corner. He didn't want to look. Ticknor's heart pounded and his stomach felt pinched, his mouth was dry and he really needed to pee. But the ship's people needed to know. Someone had to tell them that somehow the Fibians had managed to penetrate the ship. And I guess that's me. He took a deep shuddering breath and leaned forward to look out into the next corridor.

Three Fibians were staring back at him. They leapt forward and Ticknor fainted dead away.

The Fibians hissed and growled as the human slipped right through their chitinous fingers, then they drifted away helplessly and slid through the wall opposite, still chittering their disappointment.

* * *

"Mr. Ticknor?"

He felt a light tapping on his cheek and moaned softly.

"Mr. Ticknor!"

The tapping turned to a shaking as a hand gripped his shoulder and jiggled it briskly.

With an effort he opened his eyes to find a young woman leaning over him, a frown on her pretty face. She was wearing a uniform.

"Mr. Ticknor, what happened?" she asked impatiently.

He blinked. A uniform? Why . . . ? Then he remembered. He tried to sit up and only succeeded in jerking his head and giving himself a charley horse in his neck.

She pushed him down with embarrassing ease.

"What happened?" she repeated. "Should I call a doctor?"

"I'm fine!" he snapped, humiliation making him rude. He managed to sit up, clumsily, on his second try. Rubbing his neck he said, "There's a Fibian in my lab. I don't know how it got there, it came through the wall. I swear it did."

The woman looked relieved and he could see that she was fighting a smile.

"You didn't hear the announcement then," she stated with certainty. "What you've experienced is something that was only theoretical before now. Two ships meeting in jumpspace. We passed through one another. We've all been seeing Fibians. But they're gone now. We couldn't touch each other either. Do you think you can stand now?"

She stood and offered him a hand up.

He was going to ignore it, but then decided he was still too woozy to gain anything by being surly.

"It looked so solid!" he said. "I would have sworn he was real."

The woman blinked. Her lips tightened for a moment, as though she was impatient.

"You must have missed the announcement," she repeated. "They were real, they just weren't solid."

Ticknor rubbed his neck again, and winced.

"So it won't really be there . . . in my lab?"

The woman shook her head. "Shouldn't be." She looked at him for a moment then seemed to come to a decision. "Let's go take a look." She took his elbow and gently steered him down the hall.

"I'm all right," he said weakly. But he let her take charge. Women liked that sometimes. As long as deferring to them didn't get to be a habit. "This is it," he said, indicating the closed door.

He tapped in his entry code and the door slid open. Stepping inside, he tripped and looked down. When he saw what lay on the floor Ticknor leapt backwards with a scream. He knocked the woman down and they sprawled on the floor in a brief but frantic collision of knees and elbows. Ticknor managed to crawl over her to the keypad and with a few taps the door closed and locked.

The linguist collapsed panting against the wall and glared at the puzzled and resentful woman just fighting her way free of his long legs.

"You said it wouldn't be there!" he accused. "You said it wasn't solid! Well, it seemed pretty damn solid to me!"

* * *

Peter tapped in a private line to Ashly Lurhman, the astrogator. Her face appeared in a small square on his screen.

"Yes, sir?" she asked.

"I suppose they'll be after us any second now," Raeder said.

"No, sir. They'll have to return to realspace, then reenter the jump point. You can't turn around in jumpspace."

Raeder nodded. "Good," he said. "Ms. Lurhman," he added after a pause, "where are we going?"

"Um. I've directed us back to our last jump," she said. "It was the quickest thing I could do, sir."

"Good," he said again. "I'm sure I read somewhere that it's possible to change your exit point while in jumpspace. Is that correct?"

"Yes, sir. I've read that, too. It's theoretical, though." She looked at him suspiciously.

"What do you say we crack another theory?" Peter asked. He offered the astrogator an encouraging smile.

She licked her lips nervously.

"What can you locate in the way of alternate jump exits?" he asked.

Lurhman glanced down at her board and tapped a few keys.

"The one I've directed us to," she said at last. "Which was our last port of call. The one just before it." That had been a small but very active outpost. "The one before that." She looked up at him. "That would be the Fibian space station, sir." She tapped again, licked her lips and looked up, almost unwillingly. "I've got another, sir. It doesn't show any traffic at all."

"Take it," Peter said.

"Sir . . . the fact that it's unused may indicate that it leads to some dangerous destination. Too close to a sun, or a neutron star. The fact that they don't use it could be construed as a warning."

Raeder frowned. "It's a chance we'll have to take, Ms. Lurhman." He nodded. "Do it."

"Aye, sir."

He watched her intent face as she made the change.

"How long until we exit?" he asked her.

"Not less than forty-eight hours, sir."

"Good," he said. He'd hoped for more. The crew were tired, and so was he. But this would give them some time to rest, as far as you could in jumpspace. "Stand down," he said to Truon and the XO passed the order.

Raeder was suddenly exhausted and he rotated his neck in a futile attempt to loosen the kinks. He'd seen to it that the rest of his people got sufficient rest, primarily by ignoring his own needs. Now it was catching up with him at last.

"Mr. Truon," he said and rose from the captain's chair, "I'm going to get some rest. The bridge is yours."

The XO saluted him. "The bridge is mine, sir. Good rest."

"I'll have a meeting with the senior staff tomorrow morning," Peter said. "0800."

"0800, sir. I'll pass the word."

"Thank you Mr. Truon." Peter started to move off.

"Sir?" It was the unwelcome voice of William Booth, the security officer. His face appeared on Raeder's screen in a little square marked SECURITY OVERRIDE.

Peter sat down again. What could this possibly be about? he wondered.

"Report," he said.

Booth licked his lips and looked very nervous.

"I'm with Mr. Ticknor down in the labs," he said. "We've got a situation here that you need to look at, Commander."

The man's eyes fairly begged, Please, take this out of my hands. 

"Is Mr. Ticknor there, Mr. Booth?" He hasn't hung himself or anything over the prospect of seeing that many spiders, has he? That was all this mission needed.

"Commander," Ticknor said, shoving Booth aside, "we need you down here immediately! This is," he swallowed visibly, "t-terrifying, but it's huge. You've got to come!"

"I'm on my way," Raeder said, more convinced by Booth's willingly giving up center stage than by the linguist's demands.

"Sir?" Truon Le said, his dark eyes bright. He looked like a pup straining at his leash.

"Ms. Lurhman," Raeder said, "you have the bridge."

"I have the bridge, aye, sir," she agreed and went back to her board.

Peter and the XO entered the people mover and took it all the way to the lab area. Raeder didn't feel like wasting time; he was too damned tired and besides, according to Ticknor, this was huge.

He and Truon rounded the corner to see Booth, Ticknor and a female security person grouped outside a lab's closed door.

"What's going on?" Peter asked.

Ticknor started towards him, his hands held before him.

"We've got a Fibian!" he said.

Peter stopped and looked at the linguist, then over his head in an unspoken demand at Booth.

"It's true, sir," the security officer said. "Petty Officer Lewis called it in, and I've seen it too."

"Lewis?" Raeder said, looking at the young woman.

"Excuse me?" Ticknor said before she could do more than open her mouth. "This is my Fibian. I mean, it's by my doing that we have a Fibian at all."

Raeder looked at him for a long moment, then at the two Space Command personnel.

"May I see it?" he asked Ticknor.

The linguist blinked at him, then looked at the door, then back at the commander. Slowly he seemed to sink, shoulders hunching, knees bending.

"You want me to . . . open the door?" he asked at last.

"Yes," Raeder said crisply. "How else am I going to get a look at it?" He waited a moment, while Ticknor straightened up. "It is in there?"

"Oh, yes. It's in there."

The linguist shuddered, squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head, breathing as though preparing himself for a deep dive. Then, with a trembling hand, he reached forward and punched in a code. The door slid sideways and he flung himself aside, his back to the wall.

Booth and Lewis took out their side arms. They were only meant to stun, but it impressed the commander that they did so. He moved cautiously into the tiny room. And stopped. Truon slid in beside him and gaped at the twisted figure on the floor.

It was still breathing. A rhythm that caught Peter's eye and wouldn't let go. Probably because everything else looked so impossible; he could almost feel his brain holding desperately to something familiar. And ain't nothing more common than breathing, Peter thought.

Unconscious, the Fibian looked much smaller than any pictures he'd ever seen of them. And, though completely helpless, it also looked like one of the most dangerous creatures he'd ever seen. It lay in a tangle of claw-tipped limbs, the acid from its tailwhip slowly eating its way through the floor covering. And the front of its face had more sharp edges than a butcher shop. The chitin on its thorax was blackened as though burned.

Raeder backed away.

"We're going to have to move it," he said. "I want it in the brig. Restrain that stinger. Now, while it's unconscious."

Booth didn't look too happy at the orders, but he pulled out a radio and called up some more of his people. Then he looked at Lewis.

"Do you have any cuffs?" he asked.

"Yes, sir." She pulled out a half dozen of the flimsy-looking plastic rings. Her eyes were huge. Lewis obviously expected to be ordered to truss up the alien.

Booth pulled out a few of his own cuffs and stood considering the Fibian. Then he took off his belt and, with his teeth gritted, leaned over the Fib to clasp it around the creature's "waist." That done he clipped and locked one pair of cuffs to the belt, then another around the tail about a quarter of the way down from the acid-dripping tip. He tightened it until it was firmly clasped, then locked the other end to the pair attached to his belt.

Booth sat back, white-faced, and wiped sweat from his brow. He glanced over his shoulder at Peter.

"Should I restrain its claws, sir?"

Raeder was frankly impressed. He didn't like Booth and he didn't want to, but he gave the man credit for doing a good job in bad circumstances.

"Yes," he said. Then he put out his hand. "I'll help."

The other security crew showed up just as they'd locked the last chitinous limb in a restraint.

"There should be a stretcher around here someplace," Peter said to Booth. "Get him to the brig. I'll send Doctor Goldberg down to take a look at him. Her. It. Whatever." Heaven only knew if the good doctor could help the critter, xenobiology being largely theoretical. But then, what isn't today? Raeder asked himself.

He left the lab to find Ticknor had slid down and was sitting against the wall clasping his long legs in trembling arms. The commander squatted down beside him.

"Quite a coup," he said to the trembling linguist. "You've done something none of us has: captured a living Fibian."

The linguist shuddered violently.

Leaning close, Peter said, "They're not really spiders, Mr. Ticknor. You've got to make yourself understand that. They're intelligent beings. They have spacefaring capabilities, for crying out loud. They're way above bugs, at least as far above them as we are."

Ticknor looked at him and raised an expressive brow. All right. They're intelligent, spacefaring beings with eight limbs, tails like a scorpion, claws, chitin and mandibles. And they probably really do eat people. But they're not bugs. Any more than we're monkeys.

At that moment the stretcher bearers went by and Ticknor buried his face in his knees with a moan.

"Don't you understand?" he said to Raeder. "It's not something I can jolly myself out of. It's totally without reason or common sense. Terror is like that." Ticknor looked up at the commander and his dark eyes blazed. "I doubt you'd know anything about that."

"If you mean I've never been frightened, you're wrong. When I had my Speed shot out from under me I didn't know if I was going to die out there in the black or not." He looked Ticknor in the eye. "But I've been lucky. I've never had to contend with anything like this."

The linguist looked away, a bit embarrassed.

"Can you study it via a screen?" Peter asked.

"Yes," Sirgay answered, looking a bit more contained. "I won't like it, but I can do that."

"Good. Then I'll have them install a two-way communications screen. The controls will be at your end." Raeder gave him a thin smile. "I'll even give you a second lab to work in."

Ticknor brightened. "Thank you," he said. "That would help immensely." He stood up. "Excuse me, please. I've got to see if I can repair the damage to my translation device. I'll need it more than ever now."

He offered his hand and Raeder shook it firmly.

"Good work," Peter said.

With a faint smile and a nod Sirgay returned to his lab. As the door slid closed, Peter jerked his head towards the people mover and he and Truon moved off.

As they marched down the corridor together the XO said quietly, "There's a guy who needs an ego massage."

"If he breaks the Fibian language, and right now he has a better than even chance, he'll get massaged until he melts. Assuming he can get around the way they look." Raeder shook his head ruefully. "And assuming we ever make it back."

* * *

Raeder folded his hands before him on the conference table and looked at his fellow officers.

"Well," he said. "I hope you're all well rested and fed?"

There were nods and smiles at that.

"This morning we have some good news and some bad news," Peter continued. "You've probably already heard our good news."

He missed dining in the camaraderie of the officers' mess. Part of that camaraderie was the gossip, so he knew without being there that they'd have already heard about the Fibian. Solitary splendor lost some of its charm at times like these.

"Doctor Goldberg, do you have a report for us regarding our . . . guest?"

"Beyond the fact that its chitin wasn't breached and it's conscious, I'm afraid I can't tell you much. While it was out I did as full a scan as I could on its vitals and that's important information. Eventually I'm sure I'll be able to come up with something regarding this particular Fibian. But this is the first healthy one we've ever caught. It seems listless and disinclined to communicate. For now, I recommend keeping it restrained. I've put some acid-resistant material around its stinger, and I hope that the critter won't be able to work it off too soon.

"We've also put together a sort of protein pap for it to eat." The doctor shook his head. "Everything we've heard about them indicates that they eat live food, but we don't have anything like that except for hydroponics. And I doubt it's a vegetarian."

There were grins around the table at that.

"I wish I had more to offer, but for now that's all I've got. But I can't guarantee that we can keep this creature alive. It may be under orders to commit suicide at its earliest opportunity."

Raeder grimaced. He'd had orders that were suicide, in his time, but never orders to suicide. Still, it wouldn't do to assume that because they looked like bugs they had an antlike lack of individuality.

"We'll have to hope for the best," he said. "I'm fully aware that you're playing it by ear, here. Maybe our linguist can help you."

Goldberg nodded dubiously.

"At least you might be able to speak to it."

"That could only help," Goldberg said.

"Anyway, that's the least of our problems," Raeder said.

Around the table officers glanced at one another, then returned their gaze to Raeder.

The commander tapped several keys.

"What you're seeing on your screen is a projection of how far our fuel will take us at our current rate of consumption." Peter sat back and watched them read, watched their faces change as one by one they looked up at him. He nodded. "I've double checked this. We're nearing the point where even optimum jumps on a least-effort course will leave us dry before we can return to Commonwealth territory. We're hundreds of light-years beyond any human exploration. And at the moment, unless Ms. Lurhman has good news for us . . ."

The young astrogator looked down and shook her head.

"We have no idea where we're headed," he continued.

Augie Skinner—the engineering officer—looked pained.

"It's the damage those engines took during that last battle," he explained. "We're burning fuel at an incredible rate. To be precise, we're venting about twenty-five percent as much as we're burning. Do you have any idea how dangerous it is to vent monatomic antimatter? I'm all ready to close the shunt and redirect, but I need normal space to do it in."

Raeder nodded and held up his hand. "I'm aware that you've worked miracles on those engines, Mr. Skinner. Nevertheless, unless we find some antihydrogen soon we're going to be in deep trouble. So I want each of you to try to find some way we can cut back on our fuel consumption." Not that it will probably make a big difference in the long run, but at least it's a productive way to spend our time. Then he reminded himself that negativity was a luxury they couldn't afford right now.

"And let's not forget we're under pursuit," Booth said.

There ya go, Peter thought. That didn't help a bit, now did it? 

"Thank you, Mr. Booth, that almost escaped us."

 

 

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