Dushau

TEN

Lehiroh Wedding

The landing bay was open to space. Krinata followed Jindigar into the airlock suit-room and snatched a suit from the rack. Hers had been abandoned on Intentional Act.

'Krinata," objected Jindigar, struggling into his own suit, "you can't go out there! Even in the tube, you had difficulty."

"Never mind that. I'm going."

Arlai's voice could be heard, terse and harried, from inside Jindigar's helmet which lay at his feet. He picked up the helmet and said, "She's not going!"

But there was no reply. He shook the helmet in frustration, but there was no further word from Arlai. "I think Arlai's reached his capacity fending off those chunks of spaceship while mounting the rescue and fighting to hold our position despite the turbulence from the explosion."

"Look, even Arlai said I'm needed," she guessed. "So I'm going." She stared perplexedly at a stubborn fitting.

He plucked the suit off her shoulder, saying, "This isn't adjusted for a human. Take suit number five. But you'll have to do your own check. Arlai's too busy. Remember what I taught you?"

"Sure," she said confidently, and struggled to recall the first time she'd suited up. It seemed years ago, but once started, she had no difficulty going through the checklist, matching it to one engraved on the wall behind the suit's hook. She believed Arlai had hit critical load, for the lights and gravity didn't change around her as she moved.

Inside the suit wasn't much better, but she was distracted fighting down memories of that instant of stark terror she'd felt in the transparent walkthrough tube. The one Arlai had used to co

Krinata followed Jindigar, Trassle, and two Dushau who seemed to know what they were doing into the hard vacuum in the bay. Anchored with cables, she watched the experienced spacehands mounting lines and grapples on powered scooters.

Arlai's tractor beams had captured several of the pods. Other pods were receding from the center of the explosion. As she watched them tumble against the infinite backdrop of distant stars, which she tried to ignore, she saw several of the ship-sections had been torn in half, furnishings and bodies dribbling out into space. Others had been crushed. Scorched and melted debris floated everywhere.

Her breath caught in her throat and she clenched down hard over her gorge. As soon as three scooters were ready, the two Dushau mounted together. Trassle and Jindigar took seats alone. Krinata mounted the saddle behind Jindigar.

His voice came over the headset, ti

"Arlai can do that." Already, it seemed all the scurries Arlai owned swarmed inside the open bays or on the hide of Truth, preparing to receive space junk, and wounded flesh. "Let me help," she pled.

"No use arguing with you!" he conceded, and kicked the scooter to life.

It's about time you noticed that.

They swooped over the lip of the landing bay and targeted a pod, Arlai guiding them with intermittent and distracted attention, as if he were a juggler keeping too many objects in the air at once.

"This one first," said Arlai. "It's losing pressure."

They clanked onto a piece of ship's hull, Jindigar expertly catching a bossing with his towline, totally ignoring Krinata. There was a long, complex exchange with Arlai as Jindigar seated three more towlines, then the Dushau was back on the scooter, perfunctorily checking Krinata's seat belt, saying, "We're going to give a towing burn now, then go to the next one while this one drifts in."

Without apparent effort, Jindigar aligned their scooter's heavy-duty engines, and at Arlai's count, gave it maximum thrust. She could hardly see any change, but Arlai was satisfied, briskly dispatching them to the next fragment.

Krinata caught sight of Ephemeral Truth, her first glimpse of it from space. Since they were in deep space, not orbiting a sun, spotlights were aimed at the places where scooters worked, and dimmer ru

On their next pod, Jindigar admitted he could use help, and showed her how to place the towlines. And on the following one, he had her hold the scooter steady while he circled the pod looking for an unbroken bossing. The free-fall flights between fragments increased as they all receded from the center of the explosion. At last, they came to a large pod Arlai said held at least one living human.

"Krinata, think you can seat these lines while I anchor the big ones?"

'No problem," she said, trying to sound competent. She'd kept the fear at bay by concentrating on learning the job, not allowing her eyes to stray from objects immediately in front of her: her panel of indicators, Truth itself, the nearby pod, or the back of Jindigar's suit during the long flights between pods. People's lives depended on her not losing her nerve or making mistakes through haste. In her old job, thousands of lives had depended on her decisions about the safety of a planet. In that respect, this really wasn't all that different. It just happened faster. And she'd always told herself she had what it took to cope with life or death emergencies. She was going to be a colonist after all.

They both dismounted, and Jindigar fussed with the scooter's

controls until he was sure it would stay put. Then he fired his suit

tthruster to take him off to the edge of the pod. She took the smaller lines and nudged herself onto the surface of the pod, searching for intact bossings. She found the one she needed and anchored and tested her line. The second line was no more difficult. At least there are no imperial troops shooting at us.

What she'd faced in the last few weeks made the current job seem like a performance in a nice, safe gym. Feeling cramped, she stretched, arching her back, and caught sight of the canopy of stars. With no ship or ship's fragment in sight, it was a bottomless well beneath/around/within her. She gasped. Spellbound, she forgot about safety lines and towlines, for she saw a multibranched lightning tree etch itself between stars. She saw planets energized to life by that primordial lightning. Beyond the edge of perception, she heard the soul-vibrating hum made by the stars orbiting galaxy-center, pushing then-way through the void, dragging planets and clouds of charged particles with them.

Each star created a note of a different pitch, each orbiting planet added a note to that pitch to make a chord of transcendent beauty.

And it was beauty that drew her. A

Her very identity dissolved, and she knew only eternities of time and the infinity of space. The meaning of the tangible beyond the real seemed self-evident; she felt she could reach out to touch God.

Wisdom beckoned, tantalizing, just beyond the limits of knowledge, and she knew in a moment she'd understand all. She freed herself of all restrictions and pursued perfection that was the purpose of life itself.

"Krinata?" It was a tiny voice, easily ignored.

"Krinata! Krinata!" The louder noises washed through her meaninglessly. She fled into the beyond.