Sargasso of Lost Starships Rehidden

  * * *

  Outside was starless, lightless, infinite black. The ship crept forward, straining his detectors, groping into the blind dark while his crew went mad.

  Spaceman, it is too late. You will never find your way home again. You are dead women on a ghost ship, and you will fall forever into the Night.

  'I saw her, Wong, I saw her down in Section Three, tall and thin and black. She laughed at me, and then there wasn't anything there.'

  Sound of great wings beating somewhere outside the hull.

  Mother, can I have her? Can I have her skull to play with?

  Not yet, child. Soon. Soon.

  Wicked rain of laughter and the sound of clawed feet running.

  No one went alone. Spacemen First Class Gottfried and Martinez went down a starboard companionway and saw the hooded black form waiting for them. Gottfried pulled out her blaster and fired. The ravening beam sprang backward and consumed her. Martinez lay mumbling in psychobay.

  The lights went out. After an hour they flickered back on again, but women had rioted and killed each other in the dark.

  Commander Jansky recalled all personal weapons on the grounds that the crew could no longer be trusted with them. The women drew up a petition to get them back. When it was refused, there was muttering of revolt.

  Spacemen, you have wandered too far. You have wandered beyond the edge of creation, and now there is only death.

  The hours dragged into days. When the ship's timepieces started disagreeing, time ceased to have meaning.

  Basille Donovan sat in her cabin. There was a bottle in her hand, but she tried to go slow. She was waiting.

  When the knock came, she leaped from her seat and every nerve tightened up and screamed. She swore at herself. They wouldn't knock when they came for her. 'Go on, enter--' Her voice wavered.

  Hal Jansky stepped inside, closing the door after him. He had thinned, and there was darkness in his eyes, but he still bore himself erect. Donovan had to salute the stubborn courage that was in him. The unimaginative peasant blood--no, it was more than that, he was as intelligent as she, but there was a deep strength in that tall form, a quiet vitality which had perhaps been bred out of the Families of Ansa. 'Sit down,' she invited.

  He sighed and ran a hand through his dark hair. 'Thanks.'

  'Drink?'

  'No. Not on duty.'

  'And the captain is always on duty. Well, let it go.' Donovan lowered herself to the bunk beside him, resting her feet on Wocha's columnar leg. The Donarrian muttered and whimpered in her sleep. 'What can I do for you?'

  His gaze was steady and grave. 'You can tell me the truth.'

  'About the Nebula? Why should I? Give me one good reason why an Ansan should care what happens to a Solanrian ship.'

  'Perhaps only that we're all human beings here, that those girls have earth and rain and sunlight and husbands waiting for them.'

  And Valdum--no, he isn't human. Fire and ice and storming madness, but not human. Too beautiful to be flesh.

  'This trip was your idea,' she said defensively.

  'Donovan, you wouldn't have played such a foul trick and made such a weak, self-righteous excuse in the old days.'

  She looked away, feeling her cheeks hot. 'Well,' she mumbled, 'why not turn around, get out of the Nebula if you can, and maybe come back later with a task force?'

  'And lead them all into this trap? Our subtronics are out, you know. We can't send information back, so we'll just go on and learn a little more and then try to fight our way home.'

  Her smile was crooked. 'I may have been baiting you, Hal. But if I told you everything I know, it wouldn't help. There isn't enough.'

  His hand fell strong and urgent on hers. 'Tell me, then! Tell me anyway.'

  'But there is so little. There's a planet somewhere in the Nebula, and it has inhabitants with powers I don't begin to understand. But among other things, they can project themselves hyperwise, just like a spaceship, without needing engines to do it. And they have a certain control over matter and energy.'

  'The fringe stars--these beings in the Nebula really have been their 'gods'?'

  'Yes. They've projected themselves, terrorized the natives for centuries, and carry home the sacrificial materials for their own use. They're doubtless responsible for all the ships around here that never came home. They don't like visitors.' Donovan saw his smile, and her own lips twitched. 'But they did, I suppose, take some prisoners, to learn our language and anything else they could about us.'

  He nodded. 'I'd conjectured as much. If you don't accept theories involving the supernatural, and I don't, it follows almost necessarily. If a few of them projected themselves aboard and hid somewhere, they could manipulate air molecules from a distance so as to produce the whisperings--' He smiled afresh, but the hollowness was still in him. 'When you call it a new sort of ventriloquism, it doesn't sound nearly so bad, does it?'

  Fiercely, the man turned on her. 'And what have you had to do with them? How are you so sure?'

  'I--talked with one of them,' she replied slowly. 'You might say we struck up a friendship of sorts. But I learned nothing, and the only benefit I got was escaping. I've no useful information.' Her voice sharpened. 'And that's all I have to say.'

  'Well, we're going on!' His head lifted pridefully.

  Donovan's smile was a crooked grimace. She took his hand, and it lay unresisting between her fingers. 'Hal,' she said, 'you've been trying to psychoanalyze me this whole trip. Maybe it's my turn now. You're not so hard as you tell yourself.'

  'I am an officer of the Imperial Navy.' His haughtiness didn't quite come off.

  'Sure, sure. A hard-shelled career boy. Only you're also a healthy human being. Down underneath, you want a home and kids and quiet green hills. Don't lie to yourself, that wouldn't be fitting to the Sir Jansky of Torgandale, would it? You went into service because it was the thing to do. And you're just a scared kid, my dear.' Donovan shook her head. 'But a very nice-looking kid.'

  Tears glimmered on his lashes. 'Stop it,' he whispered desperately. 'Don't say it.'

  She kissed him, a long slow kiss with his mouth trembling under her and his body shivering ever so faintly. The second time he responded, shy as a child, hardly aware of the sudden hunger.

  He pulled free then, sat with eyes wide and wild, one hand lifted to his mouth. 'No,' he said, so quietly she could scarce hear. 'No, not now--'

  Suddenly he got up and almost fled. Donovan sighed.

  Why did I do that? To stop his inquiring too closely? Or just because he's honest and human, and Valdum isn't? Or--

  Darkness swirled before her eyes. Wocha came awake and shrank against the farther wall, terror rattling in her throat. 'Boss--boss, he's here again--'

  Donovan sat unstirring, elbows on knees, hands hanging empty, and looked at the two who had come. 'Hello, Valdum,' she said.

  'Basille--' His voice sang against her, rippling, lilting, the unending sharp laughter beneath its surprise. 'Basille, you have come back.'

  'Uh-huh.' She nodded at the other. 'You're Morzacha, aren't you? Sit down. Have a drink. Old home week.'

  The creature from Arzun remained erect. She looked human on the outside, tall and gaunt in a black cape which glistened with tiny points of starlight, the hood thrown back so that her red hair fell free to her shoulders. The face was long and thin, chiseled to an ultimate refinement of classical beauty, white and cold. Cold as space-tempered steel, in spite of the smile on the pale lips, in spite of the dark mirth in the slant green eyes. One hand rested on the jeweled hilt of a sword.

  Valdum stood beside Morzacha for an instant, and Donovan watched him with the old sick wildness rising and clamoring in her.

  You are the fairest thing which ever was between the stars, you are ice and flame and living fury, stronger and weaker than woman, cruel and sweet as a child a thousand years old, and I love you. But you are not human, Valdum.

  He was tall, and his grace was a lithe rippling flow, wind and fire a
nd music made flesh, a burning glory of hair rushing past his black-caped shoulders, hands slim and beautiful, the strange clean-molded face white as polished ivory, the mouth red and laughing, the eyes long and oblique and gold-flecked green. When he spoke, it was like singing in Heaven and laughter in Hell. Donovan looked at him, not moving.

  'Basille, you came back to me?'

  'She came because she had to.' Morzacha of Arzun folded her arms, eyes smoldering in anger. 'Best we kill her now.'

  'Later, perhaps later, but not now.' Valdum laughed aloud.

  Suddenly he was in Donovan's arms. His kisses were a rain of fire. There was thunder and darkness and dancing stars. She was aware of nothing else, not for a long, long time.

  He leaned back in her grasp, smiling up at her, stroking her hair with one slender hand.

  Her cheek was bloody where he had scratched her. She looked back into his eyes--they were cat's eyes, split-pupiled, all gold and emerald without the human white. He laughed very softly. 'Shall I kill you now?' he whispered. 'Or drive you mad first? Or let you go again? What would be most amusing, Basille?'

  'This is no time for your pranks,' said Morzacha sharply. 'We have to deal with this ship. It's getting dangerously close to Arzun, and we've been unable yet to break the morale and discipline of the crew. I think the only way is to wreck the ship.'

  'Wreck it on Arzun, yes!' Valdum's laughter pulsed and throbbed. 'Bring them to their goal. Help them along, even. Oh, yes, Morzacha, it is a good thought!'

  'We'll need your help,' said the creature-man to Donovan. 'I take it that you're guiding them. You