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Chapter Fourteen
THEY PASSED close, this time, to the worlds of the System, dangerously close. For many days their course had been taking them for the yellow star and its worlds, until now the largest of the i
Home? Niun wondered at first, and held his hope private in Melein's silence: if she knew, he reckoned, she would have told him. But as days passed a worried look settled on Melein; and often now she looked on the screens with fear in her eyes. It ceased to look as though they were hurtling toward the world rather that the world filled their sky and was falling down on them, a half-world first, that lent Niun some hope they would hurtle just past it terrifying, but an escape, all the same: but the disc began to rise in the scanner.
They were caught, going earthward like a mote in a bur-rower's sandpit: the image came unwelcomely to Niun as he sat by Melein's side and stared at the starscreen she had set in her own hall, to look constantly on the danger. He felt his own helplessness, a kel'en whose knowledge of ships was all theory; all his knowledge told him now was that everything was wrong, and that Melein, who likewise had never set hands to ship's controls, knew little more than he.
Perhaps, he thought, she knew the name of the world into which they were falling: but it was not going to stop them.
And the outrage of it grew in him that they should die by mischance. For a time he awaited a miracle, from Melein, from some source, certain that the gods could not have directed them so far only to this.
He waited on Melein; and she said nothing.
"You have two kel'ein," he reminded her at last, on the day that there was hardly any darkness left in the starscreen.
Still she said nothing.
"Ask him, Melein.”
Her lips made a taut line.
He knew the stubbor
There was long silence between them. Neither moved.
"It would assure," she said at last, "that one danger did not reach our destination. I have thought of that. But it would not stop the other. And in us is the knowledge of it.”
Such a thought shook at his confidence. He felt diminished, who had thought only of their own survival, who have been forward with her. "I spoke out of turn," he said. "Doubtless you have weighed what we ought to do.”
"Go ask him," she said.
He sat still for a moment, finding her shifts of mind as unsettling as transit, and his nerves taut-strung at the thought that the matter did indeed come down to Duncan.
Then he gathered himself up, called softly to his dus, and went.
Duncan sat, beneath the screen that held the sca
"Duncan," Niun said. The noise of the steel kept its rhythm. "Duncan.”
It stopped. Duncan looked up at him with that bleak hardness that had grown there day by day.
"The she'pan is concerned," Niun said, "about our near approach to this world.”
Duncan's eyes remained cold. "Well, you do not need me. Or if you do, then you can find some means to work around me, can you not?”
"I respect your quarrel with us." Niun sank down on his heels, opened his hands in a gesture of offering. "But surely you know that there is no quarreling with the world that is drawing us into it. We will die, and you will have no satisfaction in that. As for your cause with us, I do not want to quarrel at all on this small ship, with the dusei in the middle of it. Listen to me, Duncan. I have done everything I know to give you an honorable way to put aside this grievance with us. But if you threaten the she'pan, then I will not be patient And you are doing that.”
Duncan went back to his task, sweeping steel against steel. Niun fought with his temper, knowing the result if he laid hands on the tsi-mri: a dus that was already precariously balanced on the verge of miuk, and the ship plummeting toward impact with a world with some things indeed there was no quarreling. It was likely that the human was no more rational than the dus, affected by the ailing beast. If the dus went over the brink, then so did the mind that held knowledge of the ship.
Melein's handiwork. Niun clenched his arms about his knees and sought something to say that would touch the man.
"We are out of time, Duncan.”
"If you ca
"You are wrong from the begi
Duncan's eyes lifted suddenly to his, cynically amazed, and his hands fell idle. "Rely on that? Maybe regul automation is better than ours, but this is a human ship, and I would not trust my life to that if there were a choice. You could come down anywhere. And would you know how to engage it in the first place? Perhaps the she'pan is simply naive. You do need me, kel Niun. You tell her that.”
It had the sound of truth. Niun had no answer for it, shaken in his own confidence. There were things Melein could not reasonably know, things involving machines not made by the regul and motives of those not born of the People. Yet she proceeded on her Sight; he wished earnestly to believe in that.
"Come," he pleaded with Duncan.
"No," said Duncan, and fell to work again.
Niun rested unmoving, panic stirring hi him. The rhythm became louder, steel on steel, metal clenched hi taut, white-edged fingers. Duncan would not look up. A body's-length away, the dus stirred, moaned.
Niun thrust himself to his feet and stalked out of kel-hall, through the corridors, until he came again to Melein.
"He says he will not," Niun told her, and remained veiled.
She said nothing, but sat quietly and stared at the screen. Niun settled by her side, swept off mez and zaidhe and wadded them into a knot in his lap, head bowed.
Melein had no word for him, nothing. She was, he thought, finally reckoning with what she had wrought, and that reckoning was too late.
And by the middle of the night there was no more darkness left in the screen. The world took on frightening detail, brown patched with cloud swirls.
Suddenly a siren began, different from any that had sounded before, and the screens flashed red, a pulse terrifying in its implications.
Niun gathered himself to his knees, cast an anguished look " at Melein, whose calm now seemed thinly drawn.
"Go to Duncan," she bade him. "Ask again.”
He rose and went, covered his head, but did not trouble this time to veil himself: he went to plead with their enemy, and shame seemed useless in such a gesture.
The lights in kel-hall had dimmed: the screen, pulsing between the red of alarm and the white glare of the world, provided all the light, and Duncan sat, veilless, before it. There sounded still the measured scrape of metal, as if he had never ceased. Beside him lay the mass of the two dusei, that stirred and moved aside as Niun came and knelt before Duncan.
"If you know anything to do at this point," Niun said, "it would be well to do it. I believe we are falling quite rapidly.”
Duncan rasped the edge one long stroke, his lips clamped into a taut line. A moment he considered, then laid aside his work and wiped his hands on his knees, looked up at the world that loomed in the pulsing screen. "I can try," he said equably enough, "from controls.”
Niun stood up, waited for Duncan, who rose stiffly, then walked in with him through the ship. The dusei started to trail them. Niun forbade them with a sharp word, sealed a section door between, and brought Duncan into that section that belonged to the she'pan.
Melein met them there, in the corridor.
"He will try," said Niun.
She opened controls to them, and came in after, stood gravely by as Duncan settled himself into the cushion at the main panel.
Duncan paid them no further heed. He studied the screens, and touched control after control. A flood of telemetry coursed one stable screen. One after another the screens ceased their flashing and took on images of the world in garish colors.
"You are playing pointless games," said Melein.
Duncan looked half-about, back again. "I am. I have watched this world for some few days. It is puzzling. And it is still possible that the ship's defenses may take over when we reach the absolute limit: there are choices left, but for some reason it is not observing the safety margin, and the world's mass has anchored us, so that jump is impossible. Here." He took the cover off a shielded area of controls and simply pushed a button. Lights ran crazily over the boards. Immediately there was a perceptible alteration in course, the screens shifting rapidly. Duncan calmly replaced the cover. "An old ship, this, and it has run hard. A system failed. It should have reset itself now. It will avoid, then pull us back on course. I think that will solve the problem. But if there is an error in the tape that caused it to happen, why, we are dead.”
He offered that with a cynical tone, and slowly rose, still looking at the sca