Raft

Rees turned.

The sea of blood continued to churn; but now, Rees saw, there was a distinct whirlpool, a tight knot gathered beneath the Bridge. Shadows moved in that maelstrom, vast and purposeful. And — the whirlpool was moving with the hurtling ship, tracking its progress…

The whirlpool burst like a blister and a disc a hundred yards wide came looming out of the ocean. Its jet black surface thrashed; with bewildering frequency vast limbs pulsed out, as if fists were straining through a sheet of rubber. The disc hovered for long seconds; then, its rotation slowing, it fell back into the pounding ocean.

Almost immediately the whirlpool began to collect once more.

The old Scientist's face was gray. "That's the second such eruption. Evidently not all the life here is as civilized as us."

"It's alive? But what does it want?"

"Damn it, boy, think for yourself!"

At the heart of this gale of noise Rees tried to concentrate. "How does it sense us? Compared to gravitic creatures we are things of gossamer, barely substantial. Why should it be interested in us…?"

"The supply machines!" Jaen shouted.

"What?"

"They're powered by mini black holes… gravitic material. Perhaps that's all the gravitic creature can see, as if we're a ship of ghosts surrounding crumbs of…»

"Of food," Hollerbach finished wearily.

Again the creature roared up from its ocean, scattering whales like leaves. This time a limb, a cable as thick as Rees's waist, came close enough to make the ship shudder in its flight. Rees made out detail on the creature's surface; it was like a sculpture rendered in black on black. Tiny forms — independent animals, like parasites? — raced with eye-bewildering speed across the pulsing surface, colliding, melding, rebounding.

Again the disc fell away, colliding with its spawning sea with a fantastic, slow-motion splash; and again the whirlpool began to gather.

"Hunger," Hollerbach said. "The universal imperative. The damn thing will keep trying until it swallows us whole. And there's nothing we can do about it." He closed his rheumy eyes.

"We're not dead yet," Rees muttered. "If baby wants feeding, we'll feed baby." An angry determination flooded his thoughts. He hadn't come so far, achieved so much, merely to see it brushed aside by some nameless horror… even if its very atoms were composed of black holes.

He sca

Cautiously, one hand at a time, he loosened his grip on the Telescope mount. As the rope took his mass he drifted slowly toward one end of the chamber… but too slowly to matter. Rapidly he worked his way hand over hand along the rope.

With the port only feet away the rope came loose of its mountings and began to snake through the air.

He scrambled over the wall surface with the palms of his hands and lunged at the port. When he had reached its solid security he paused for a few breaths, hands and feet aching.

Once more the animal erupted from its ocean; once more its wriggling face loomed over the Bridge.

Rees shouted over the moans of the passengers. "Roch! Roch, can you hear me? Miner Roch…!"

At last Roch's broad, battered face thrust out of the mass of crushed humanity at one end of the cylindrical chamber.

"Roch, can you get up here?"

Roch looked about, studying the ropes clinging to the walls. Then he gri

"Roch, I need your help. Listen to me—"

One of the food machines had been mounted just inside the Bridge's port, and Rees found himself giving thanks for the fortuitous narrowness of the Bridge's access paths. A little more room and the thing would have been taken down to one of the Bridge's end chambers — and Rees doubted even Roch's ability to raise tons through the multiple-gee climb to the ship's mid point.

The ship shuddered again.

When Rees explained his idea Roch gri

The port slid aside. The air outside was hot, thick and rushed past at enormous speed; the pressure difference hauled at Rees like an invisible hand, slamming him into the side of the supply machine.

The open port was a three-yard square slice of chaos, completely filled by the writhing face of the gravitic animal. A tentacle a mile long lashed through the air; Rees felt the Bridge quiver at its approach. One touch of that stuff and the old ship would implode like a crushed skitter—

Roch crawled around the supply machine away from the port, so that he was lodged between the machine and the outer wall of the Observatory.

Rees looked at the base of the machine; it had been fixed to the Bridge's deck with crude, fist-sized iron rivets. "Damn it," he shouted over the roar of the wind. "Roch, help me find tools, something to use as levers…"

"No time for that, Raft man." Roch's voice was strained, as Rees remembered it once sounding as the big man had got to his feet under the five gees of the star kernel. Rees looked up, startled.

Roch had braced his back against the supply machine, his feet against the wall of the Observatory; and he was shoving back against the machine. The muscles of his legs bulged and sweat stood out in beads over his brow and chest.

"Roch, you're crazy! That's impossible…"

One of the rivets creaked; shards of rusty iron flew through the turbulent air.

Roch kept his swelling eyes fixed on Rees. The muscles of his neck seemed to bunch around his widening grin, and his tongue protruded, purple, from broken lips.

Now another rivet gave way with a crack like a small explosion.

Belatedly Rees placed his hands on the machine, braced his feet against the angle of floor and wall, and shoved with Roch until the veins of his arms stood out like rope.

Another rivet broke. The machine tilted noticeably. Roch adjusted his position and continued to shove. The miner's face was purple, his bloody eyes fixed on Rees. Small popping sounds came from within that vast body, and Rees imagined discs and vertebrae cracking and fusing along Roch's spine.

At last, with a series of small explosions, the remaining rivets collapsed and the machine tumbled through the port. Rees fell onto his chest amid the stumps of shattered rivets, his lungs pump oxygen from the depleted air. He lifted his head. "Roch…?"

The miner was gone.

Rees scrambled up from the deck and grabbed the rim of the port. The gravitic beast covered the sky, a huge, ugly panorama of motion — and suspended before it was the ragged bulk of the supply machine. Roch was spreadeagled against the machine, his back to the battered metal wall. The miner stared across a few feet into Rees's eyes.

Now a cable-like limb lashed out of the animal and swatted at the supply machine. The device was knocked, spi

With the last of his strength Rees closed the port.