“I know they’re bitter,” I admitted. “But I’m not afraid of them.”
I spent the rest of the watch checking instrument readings and doing what I could to bolster morale.
After all, I told Ketzler, there wasn’t much the men could gain by mutiny.
The Erewhon was gone.
Our emergency craft, though mutineers might seize them, were none of them fit for the long voyage out to any inhabited planet.
Even though the station was drifting toward Nowhere, we were all safer inside than out.
Haunted by old Habibula’s tale about that call from Commander Star, I had the duty crew probe the region north of Nowhere with every available instrument.
They picked up nothing, yet I knew the search was inconclusive.
The raging interference was violent enough to drown any possible laser or radio signal.
Because I had to present a confident appearance, as much as for any other reason, I called Lilith Adams to ask her and old Habibula to meet me in the mess hall for dinner.
“Delighted!” Her cool voice was oddly calm, yet oddly tense.
“Captain, could you show us the station, too?
And tell us more about the anomaly and this new disturbance?
We’ve heard some alarming rumors.”
The truth would be more alarming than the rumors, but I didn’t tell her that.
I did agree to take them around the station before dinner—for at least two reasons.
I wanted to show the crew an air of duty-as-usual. I wanted more clues to the riddle of our uninvited guests.
Perhaps I also wanted to please the girl.
Methodically building an image of steadfast calm, I took time for a shower and a shave before I went to pick up our guests.
Brushing the dust off my best uniform, I caught myself whistling with anticipation.
On the way to meet them, I stopped at the control center.
The desperate tension there almost cracked my image of sure authority.
Ketzler was still on duty with the new watch, though he should have been in bed.
The center was a big, drum-shaped room, buried at the heart of the ice asteroid.
It spun slowly on its own axis, so that the rim of the drum was an endless floor.
One round end was a projection screen for our electronic telescopes; the other held the electronic chart where the computer integrated all the instrument readings to make a visible map of Nowhere.
I found Ketzler sitting rigid at the computer console, staring up at the shifting glow of the chart.
It showed an ugly black-bellied creature, crouching at the center of a great web of shining lines that reached up and down all the way to the curving floor.
The black belly of the creature was the heart of the anomaly, the region where all our instruments failed.
Its spreading purple legs were the charted zones of anomalous gravitic force.
The bright lines of the web were lines of magnetic force—already spread far beyond the tiny, bright green circle that marked the position of Nowhere Near.
Ketzler jumped when I touched his shoulder.
“How’s it going?”
I ignored his nervous response.
“Think it’s peaking out?”
“Not yet, sir.”
His glasses were pushed crooked on his haggard face, and they magnified his bloodshot eyes.
“It’s the worst it has ever been—and still getting wilder.
The gravitic drift has got me worried, sir.”
He pushed a button that lit a curving row of bright yellow dots on the chart.
The dots were numbered.
Each one showed a charted past position of Nowhere Near.
They marked the trail the drifting station had followed, always closer to that creature’s belly.
“It’s sucking us right in.”
He looked at me cross-eyed through the sweat-smeared glasses.
“Even with our position-rockets going full thrust.
We can’t control the drift, sir.”
“We’ve done all we can,” I assured him.
“If something does happen, I’ll be at dinner—”
Uneasily, he licked his dry lips.