Starship Summer (Starship Seasons, #1)(30)

“Watch,” Hawk said.

He reached out and slipped his hand into the chest area of the outline. I heard a faint hiss; Hawk’s hand glistened and he withdrew it for my inspection.

It was covered with what looked like a filmy coating of oil. He rubbed his fingers together. “The odd thing is, David, I can see the stuff but I can’t feel it. The really odd thing is that it deadens all sensation when I touch anything.” He reached out and grabbed the flange of the hatch, then shook his head. “Weird. I know I’m holding it, but it’s as if my brain hasn’t picked up on the fact. It’s like my tactile sense has been anaesthetised.”

I looked back at the outline. “And the Yall presumably coated themselves in the stuff from head to foot.”

Hawk nodded. “Strange isn’t the word.”

He made a few other discoveries that afternoon. The first was that, despite the ship’s age—the Ashentay had known about if for at least five hundred years—it was in a remarkable state of repair: an unknown source still powered sliding doors and lighting, and controlled the thermostat. The integrity of the vessel’s structure was in no way compromised by the centuries, and for all that it had crashlanded, it bore no real structural damage other than a few exterior dents and scrapes.

Hawk’s major discovery was that the main engines, for atmospheric flight, were still serviceable.

I found him sitting on the edge of an inspection pit in the belly of the ship, staring down at an arcane mass of silver metal and scratching his head.

He pointed. “That,” he said, “is the main drive. Don’t ask me how it works. The technology’s beyond me. But… like the rest of the ship, David, it looks like it last worked yesterday.”

“You think you could get it running?”

He grinned. “If I knew the first principles of Yall technology, then yes, I’m sure I could.”

Matt called round not long after that, and as we were opening beers and Hawk was telling Matt about the ship’s state of preservation, Maddie gate-crashed the party. We decided to retire to the Jackeral for a meal and a late night.

It was quiet in the main bar, and the veranda was deserted. We ordered the chef ‘s speciality, poached jackeral with a local potatoanalogue, and watched the majestic sight of Delta Pavonis lowering itself, degree by slow degree, into the silver waters of the bay.

Towards the end of the night, Matt said to me, “There’s another run to MacIntyre tomorrow if you’re interested.”

“I’ve nothing planned, Matt.”

“Would you pick up a visitor from the Station at one o’clock? She doesn’t know I know she’s coming. I’ve booked her into an Aframe a couple down from the Jackeral. Don’t mention that I sent you—make up some story about a mysterious stranger, okay?”

Maddie was leaning forward, intrigued and not a little jealous, I thought. “Who’s the woman, Matt? An old flame?”

He smiled. “An old acquaintance,” he said. “I knew her briefly years ago on Charybdis.”

“What does she want on Chalcedony?” Maddie asked, not to be deflected.

Matt shook his head. “That I don’t know. A mutual friend told me she was coming. I want to surprise her.”

Maddie nodded and tried not to look put out.

Towards midnight the meeting broke up. I returned to the Mantis, checked that the monitors were working, and turned in.

I think I dreamed again, but not of Carrie.

I was visited. The alien loomed over me and said—though I could not make out the spoken words, merely the sense of its communication in my head, “Will you help us, David Conway?”

And I found myself responding, “If you will spare me the nightmares…”

I felt the creature’s gratitude. “You will never again be plagued by visions of the tragedy.”

I sat up, fully awake, sure that I had not dreamed the encounter—but the alien was gone and the room was empty. I spent a sleepless few hours until dawn, wondering how I might conceivably help the spectral representative of the Yall.





ELEVEN



A little after noon on the following day I was making myself comfortable in the café above the translation pad of the Telemass Station when my com chimed. I checked the caller—Matt Sommers’ name appeared on the screen—and accepted.

“Matt,” I said. “Checking up?”

He smiled. “I just remembered—did I tell you last night not to mention that you know where I live?”

“No, just that I wasn’t to say that you’d sent me.”

“Well, I’d be grateful if you said nothing about me, David, okay?”

“Fine by me,” I said.

“It’s just that I… well, I want to be in control of our first meeting. Catch you later,” he said, and cut the connection.

I stared at the blank screen of my com, wondering at Matt’s sudden secrecy. Coming from someone usually so open, even transparent, his diffidence now was all the more puzzling.

I drank a coffee and watched an arrival from Yannis. The travellers looked wrecked as they peered around them, dazed, and I was glad that I had no plans to travel by Telemass ever again.

Just before one, I hired a softscreen from the store and tapped out the name of Matt’s mysterious visitor: Marrissa Tallan-Xanagua.