"Thank you, Grunfeld." He caught the edge of the skull's answering
grin. "We _are_ beginning to hit hydrogen," the quiet voice went on.
"Forward skin temperature's up to 9 K."
Beyond the friendly skull, a great patch of the rim of Uranus flared
bright green. As if that final stimulus had been needed, Jackson began
to talk dreamily from his suit.
"They're still welcoming us and grieving for us. I begin to get it a
little more now. Their ship's one thing and they're another. Their
ship is frightened to death of us. It hates us and the only thing it
knows to do is to kill us. They can't stop it, they're even less than
passengers...."
The captain was in his suit now. Grunfeld sensed a faint throbbing and
felt a rush of cold air. The cabin refrigeration system had started up,
carrying cabin heat to the lattice arms. Intended to protect them from
solar heat, it would now do what it could against the heat of friction.
The straight edge of Uranus was getting hazier. Even the fainter
stars shone through, spangling it. A bell jangled and the pale green
segment narrowed as the steel meteor panels began to close in front
of the spaceshield. Soon there was only a narrow vertical ribbon of
green--_bright_ green as it narrowed to a thread--then for a few
seconds only blackness except for the dim red and blue beads and
semi-circles, just beyond the captain, of the board. Then the muted
interior cabin lights glowed on.
* * * * *
Jackson droned: "They and their ships come from very far away, from the
edge. If this is the continuum, they come from the ... discontinuum,
where they don't have stars but something else and where gravity is
different. Their ships came from the edge on a gust of fear with the
other ships, and our brothers came with it though they didn't want
to...."
And now Grunfeld thought he began to feel it--the first faint thrill,
less than a cobweb's tug, of _weight_.
The cabin wall moved sideways. Grunfeld's suit had begun to revolve
slowly on a vertical axis.
For a moment he glimpsed Jackson's dark profile--all five suits were
revolving in their framework. They locked into position when the men in
them were facing aft. Now at least retinas wouldn't pull forward at
high-G decel, or spines crush through thorax and abdomen.
The cabin air was cold on Grunfeld's forehead. And now he was sure he
felt weight--maybe five pounds of it. Suddenly aft was _up_. It was as
if he were lying on his back on the spaceshield.
A sudden snarling roar came through his suit from the beams bracing it.
He lost weight, then regained it and a little more besides. He realized
it was their torpedo taking off, to skim by Uranus in the top of the
atmosphere and then curve inward the little their chem fuel would let
them, homing toward the Enemy. He imaged its tiny red jet over the
great gray-green glowing plain. Four more would be taking off from the
other ships--the fleet's feeble sting. Like a bee's, just one, in dying.
The cheekpieces and foreheadpiece of Grunfeld's suit began to close on
his face like layers of pliable ice.
Jackson called faintly, "_Now_ I understand. Their ship--" His voice
was cut off.
Grunfeld's ice-mask was tight shut. He felt a small surge of vigor as
the suit took over his breathing and sent his lungs a gush of high-oxy
air. Then came a tingling numbness as the suit field went on, adding an
extra prop against decel to each molecule of his body.
But the weight was growing. He was on the moon now ... now on Mars ...
now back on Earth....
The weight was stifling now, crushing--a hill of invisible sand.
Grunfeld saw a black pillow hanging in the cabin above him aft. It had
red fringe around it. It grew.
There was a whistling and shaking. Everything lurched torturingly, the
ship's jets roared, everything recovered, or didn't.
The black pillow came down on him, crushing out sight, crushing out
thought.
* * * * *
The universe was a black tingling, a limitless ache floating in a
larger black infinity. Something drew back and there was a dry fiery
wind on numb humps and ridges--the cabin air on his face, Grunfeld
decided, then shivered and started at the thought that he was alive and
in free-fall. His body didn't feel like a mass of internal hemorrhages.
Or did it?
He spun slowly. It stopped. Dizziness? Or the suits revolving forward
again? If they'd actually come through--
There was a creaking and cracking. The ship contracting after
frictional heating?
There was a faint stink like ammonia and formaldehyde mixed. A few
Uranian molecules forced past plates racked by turbulence?
He saw dim red specks. The board? Or last flickers from ruined
retinas? A bell jangled. He waited, but he saw nothing. Blind? Or the
meteor guard jammed? No wonder if it were. No wonder if the cabin
lights were broken.
The hot air that had dried his sweaty face rushed down the front of his
body. Needles of pain pierced him as he slumped forward out of the top
of his opening suit.
Then he saw the horizontal band of stars outlining the top of the
spaceshield and below it the great field of inky black, barely convex
upward, _that must_, he realized, _be the dark side of Uranus_.
Pain ignored, Grunfeld pushed himself forward out of his suit and
pulled himself past the captain's to the spaceshield.
The view stayed the same, though broadening out: stars above, a
curve-edged velvet black plain below. They were orbiting.
A pulsing, color-changing glow from somewhere showed him twisted stumps
of the radio lattices. There was no sign of the mirror at all. It must
have been torn away, or vaporized completely, in the fiery turbulence
of decel.
New maxs showed on the board: Cabin Temperature 214 F, Skin Temperature
907 K, Gravs 87.
Then in the top of the spacefield, almost out of vision, Grunfeld saw
the source of the pulsing glow: two sharp-ended ovals flickering
brightly all colors against the pale starfields, like two dead fish
phosphorescing.
"The torps got to 'em," Croker said, pushed forward beside Grunfeld to
the right.
* * * * *
"I did find out at the end," Jackson said quietly from the left, his
voice at last free of the trance-tone. "The Enemy ships weren't ships
at all. They were (there's no other word for it) space animals. We've
always thought life was a prerogative of planets, that space was
inorganic. But you can walk miles through the desert or sail leagues
through the sea before you notice life and I guess space is the
same. Anyway the Enemy was (what else can I call 'em?) space-whales.
Inertialess space-whales from the discontinuum. Space-whales that ate
hydrogen (that's the only way I know to say it) and spat light to
move and fight. The ones I talked to, our brothers, were just their
parasites."
"That's crazy," Grunfeld said. "All of it. A child's picture."
"Sure it is," Jackson agreed.