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“Trying to break through,” Gawain muttered, “possibly.”
“Wayne,” Percivale said abruptly, urgently. “I’m getting a pulse on com; same pattern. Response?”
“No!”Dela cried, before ever Gawain could say anything. “ No, you don’t answer it.”
“Lady Dela, they may breach us.”
“They. They. We don’t know what it is.”
“He’s right,” Griffin said. “That theyout there counts, Dela; and they’re trying a contact. If they don’t know we’re alive in here, they could breach that hull and kill us all—at the least, damage the ship, section by section. And then what do we do?—That area forward,” he said to the crew. “Put the emergency seals onto it.”
“Presently engaged,” Ly
“Don’t you give orders,” Dela snapped. “Don’t you interfere with my crew.”
Griffin no more than frowned, but he was doing that already. My lady pushed away from his arm, crossed the deck to stand behind Gawain and Ly
“Stop meddling.”
“Tapes never prepared your crew for this. How much do you expect of them? Are there weapons aboard? Have they got a block against using them?”
Dela looked about at him, wild. She seemed then to go smaller, as if it were all coming at her too fast. I had never imagined a born-man blanking, but Dela looked close to it. “There aren’t any weapons,” she said.
The hammering stopped, a dire and thickish silence.
“Are we still getting that signal?” Griffin asked.
“Yes,” Percy said after a moment, answering Griffin. It made me shiver, this yes-no of our lady’s, standing there, looking like she wanted to forbid, and not. Percy brought the sound from the com up so we could hear it, and it was a timed pulse of static. One. One-two. One-two-three.
“Maybe—” Dela found her voice. “Maybe it’s something natural.”
“In this place?” Griffin asked. “I think we’d better answer that call. Make it clear we’re in here.—Dela, they know, they knowthis ship’s inhabited if it’s whole: what areships but inhabited? And the question isn’t whether they breach that hull; it’s how they do it. Silence could be taken for unfriendly intentions. Or for our being dead already, and then they might not be careful at all.”
Dela just stared. The static pulses kept on. I held to Lance’s arm and felt him shivering too.
“Answer it,” Griffin said to Percivale.
“No,” Dela said, and Griffin stared at her, frowning, until she made a spidery, resigning motion of her hand.
“Go on,” Griffin said to Percivale. “Can you fine it down, get something clearer out of that?”
The whole crew looked round at their places, in Dela’s silence. And finally she nodded and shrugged and looked away, an I-don’t-care. But she did care, desperately; and I felt sick inside.
“Get to it,” Griffin snapped at them. “Before we lose it.”
Backs turned. Percy and Modred worked steadily for a few moments, and we started getting a clear tone.
“Answer,” Griffin said again, and this time Percy looked around at Dela, and Modred did, slowly and refusing to be hurried.
“Do whatever he says,” Dela murmured, her arms wrapped about her as if she were shivering herself. She rolled her eyes up at the screens, but the screens showed us nothing new.
And all of a sudden the com that had been giving out steady tones snapped and sputtered with static. It started gabbling and clicking, not a static kind of click, but a ticking that started in the bass register like boulders rolling together and rumbled up into higher tones until it became a shriek. We all jerked from the last notes, put our hands over our ears: it was that kind of sound. And it rumbled back down again—softer—someone had gotten the volume adjusted—and kept rumbling, slow, slow ticks.
“Not human,” Griffin said. “Not anything like it. But then what did we expect? Send.Answer in their pattern. See if it changes.”
Hands moved on the boards.
“Nothing,” Percy said.
Then the com stopped, dead silent.
“Did you cut it?” Griffin asked, ready to be angry.
“It’s gone,” Modred said. “No pickup now. We’re still sending.”
The silence continued, eerie after the noise. The ventilation fans seemed loud.
“Kill our signal,” Griffin said.
Percy moved his hand on the board, and the whole crew sat still then, with their backs to us, no one moving. I felt Lance’s hand tighten on mine and I held hard on to his. We were all scared. We stood there a long time waiting for something ... anything.
Dela unclasped her arms and turned, flinging them wide in a desperately cheerful gesture. “Well,” she said, “they’re thinking it over, aren’t they? I think we ought to go back down and finish off the drinks.”
Her cheer fell flat on the air. “You go on back,” Griffin said.
“What more can you do here? It’s their move, isn’t it? There’s no sense all of us standing around up here. Gawain and Modred can keep watch on it. Come on. I want a drink, Griffin.”
He looked at her, and he was scared too, was master Griffin. Dela had let him give us orders, and now whatever-it-was knew about us in here. I felt sick at my stomach and probably the rest of us did. Griffin didn’t move; and Dela came close to him, which made me tense; and Lance—Griffin might hit her; he had hit me when he was afraid. But she slipped her white arm into his and tugged at him and got him moving, off the bridge. He looked back once. Maybe he sensed our distress with him. But he went with her. Percy and Lynette got up from their places and Lance and Viv and I trailed first after Griffin and my lady, getting them back to the dining hall.
They sat down and drank. We had no invitation, and we cleaned up around them, even Lynette and Vivien, ordinarily above such things, while my lady made a few jokes about what had happened and tried to lighten things. Griffin smiled, but the humor overall was very thin.
“Let’s go to bed,” my lady suggested finally. “That’s the way to take our minds off things.”
Griffin thought it over a moment, finally nodded and took her hand.
“The wine,” Dela said. “Bring that.”
Viv and I brought it, while Lance took the dishes down and Percy and Ly
Especially when she had a man with her. And especially now, I thought. Especially now.
We went back to our quarters, where Ly
“Go a round?” I asked Lance. He shook his head, content to watch. I looked at Vivien, who was doing off her clothes and putting them away. No interest there either. I went to the locker and undressed and put on a robe for comfort, and came and sat by Lance, watching Ly
We would live. That change in our fortunes still rose up and jolted me from time to time. No more thought of being put down, no more thinking of white rooms and going to sleep forever; but it was strange—it had no comfort. It gave us something to fear the same as born-men. Maybe we should have danced about the quarters in celebration; but no one mentioned it. Maybe some had forgotten. I think the only thing really clear in our minds was the dread that the horrid banging might start up again at any moment—at least that was the clearest thought in mine: that the hammering might start and the hull might be breached, and we might be face to face with what lived out there. I watched the game board, riveting my whole mind on the silences and the position of the pieces and the sometime moves Ly