STAR HOUNDS -- OMNIBUS (55 page)

T
he
Starbow
had landed.

It sat on the eternal plane called Omega Space, its engines idle, its energy screens off. No destination beckoned. No enemy threatened.

Nearby the spiraled towers and catwalks and twisted buildings of the Frin’ral city had materialized in curious harmony to the odd shape of the
Starbow
.

Between the two, on a grassy veranda, a party was taking place. A most unusual party.

“You see, it’s all simply a matter of knowing how to adjust to the reality you find yourself in,” said Cal Shemzak as he manufactured brightly colored balloons from the palms of his hands and sent them flying.

“You mean, like how you claim to be my brother?” Laura said briskly but playfully.

“Laura, I
am
your brother. You’re saying you believe that Lunatic Zarpfrin over my word?” Cal feigned a look of hurt.

“I don’t know who’s more of a lunatic, Cal,” she said. She believed him, all right. She just wanted to let him dangle a while longer before she let him off the hook.

“So what were you saying, Calspar?” asked Chivon Lasster, looking much improved for being out in the fresh air.

“I don’t think I even want to try it,” said Arkm Thur, shaking his head.

“I don’t like it here at all!” said Dansen Jitt. “It all gives me the willies!”

“Yeah,” said Laura, reclining with a drink in her hand. “And I suppose you’d rather be back in normal space being chased by the Federation!”

Jitt sat down. “Perhaps you’re right. But how long do we have to stay here, anyway?”

Arkm Thur shrugged. “Who cares? Just consider it an extended vacation.”

“I suppose we’ll have to venture back soon enough to save the galaxy,” Gemma Naquist said. “After all, Zarpfrin’s still running about, and the Federation’s still there … and just maybe there’s a real war going on with the Jaxdron.”

“Oh, will the macrocosmic conflict never cease?” said Cal softly, forming beautiful butterflies and sending them flying off into the breeze.

Laura sipped her drink and smiled over at him. She felt good. It was good to be back with Cal. And, being an eccentric himself, he fit in very well with this group.

They’d been in this strange dimension for two days now. At least, they knew them to be days because that was the way the
Starbow
’s clocks measured them. Shontill had indeed been of help in creating a peaceful coexistence with the Frin’ral. Even now, he and Dr. Mish were working with that civilization, learning much about the, potential of this dimension, about the very fabric of the universe.

But some of the deeper mysteries of the
Starbow
apparently still eluded Mish, foremost among them the riddle of the origin of the starship and portal itself. If they had learned one thing for sure, it was that the strange device at the core of the
Starbow
had nothing to do with Omega Space. Working, it would apparently take them someplace else entirely.

No, this was most certainly only a brief layover. Laura knew. There were things to be accomplished out there in Normal Space. And perhaps beyond Normal Space as well, for Omega Space seemed something of a dimensional
cul de sac
. The adventures had not ceased, and the fight was not yet fully fought. No, far from it.

As for her, she knew that she could no longer experience life as she had before: as one long, erratic high. Her drug had kept her shielded from all but the more intense emotions. She had to experience everything now … even boredom. She would take it one day at a time. That, after all, was the way it came to her.

No, that wasn’t quite true, she thought, savoring the delightfully tart punch that Cal had concocted. She did look forward to one thing. There was a spot of darkness deep inside her that she savored and nurtured secretly. Unhealthy? Perhaps. But it kept alive a spark of righteous indignation and desire for vengeance that might possibly help the
Starbow
in the future; it would certainly be a boon to the Free Worlds. And it would give her a dark and delightful joy when what she thought of was accomplished.

She was going to get Overfriend Arnal Zarpfrin.

All by herself.

And he was going to know that it was she on the triggering end of Death.

She smiled to herself as she listened to the wistful banter of the crew, lounging about fecklessly. The party was drifting peacefully along on the dregs of all the nervous energy that had been built up. Silver Zenyo suggested to Cal that a swimming pool might be nice, and Cal conjured one up. Silver shot off to get her bathing suit.

“How about you, Laura? You want to take a dip?” Cal asked.

“Are you kidding? With all the stuff in me, I would sink right to the bottom!”

“I could fix you up with some water wings.”

“No, thanks.”

The flaps of nearby exotic tents rippled in the breeze. The smell of the recent barbecue they had enjoyed still flavored the air. The air was clear and invigorating, a climate that was a gentle bairn to the soul. There was only one ingredient missing, and the lack of it irked Laura. “I wonder where Northern is?”

“Last time I saw him, he was still talking to Mish and the Frin’ral delegation … but then they seemed about finished and while Mish went off with Shontill and the others, Northern wandered back to the ship.”

“He should be out here, with us,” Laura said.

“Well, if he doesn’t
want
to … ” said Arkm Thur.

“It’s his duty.”

“So are you going to drag him out here?” asked Gemma Naquist playfully.

“No. I’ve got a better idea.” She turned to her brother. “Cal, do you think that if we put our heads together on this one we can drag dear Captain Tars Northern out here with the rest of his crew?”

Cal nodded casually. “Sure, as long as he doesn’t oppose it.”

“I don’t see how he could.”

“Okay,” said Cal. “Just remember how I told you todo it.”

Laura nodded, and then closed her eyes, visualizing Captain Tars Northern, wanting him there, imagining him there.

Tars Northern
, she mused idly. Something else she was going to have to take one step at a time. She opened eyes, and he was there.

“Good show,” someone cried.

Northern looked disheveled and bemused. In one hand was a brandy bottle, and in the other was a half-empty glass.

“I’m pretty drunk,” he said. “Must be. Don’t remember coming here. Just as well though. Meant to. Just got carried away.”

“Celebrating, Northern?” asked Cal.

Northern shook his head. “Nope. Just doing this one last time. Mish is taking me off the stuff. For a long time, he says. Just as well, I suppose. No matter what the remedy, it’s really no good for you.” He took a swig.

“Join the club, Northern,” said Laura, hoisting a bottle of punch.

“I think I started the damned club,” said Northern.

“So, did everything go well with the Frin’ral?” asked Gemma.

“Oh, yeah. Sure. Only one problem.”

“What’s that?”

“We have a problem getting out! With Cal Shemzak’s clone matrix destroyed, it’s taking us a while to figure out how to open a hole big enough to get the
Starbow
through!”

The crew seemed nonplussed.

“What?” Laura said first, speaking for them all.

“Oh, I shouldn’t worry,” said Cal. “We’ll work something out.” His expression grew slightly more doubtful as he thought about it. “I hope.”

“Yeah. I hope so, too,” said Northern. “And there are a lot of things to be settled back where we come from.”

“And light-years to go before we sleep, eh Captain?” said Cal.

“That’s right.” The Captain finished the brandy in the glass and poured another. “Long as Mish ain’t here, might as well drink up!”

“You know, Mr. Jitt,” said Cal. “Laura was telling me about that vision you had. Sounds as though it was accurate, but in strange ways.”

Jitt shook his head. “Well, if the captain is swearing off strong drink, I’m swearing off strong visions. No more for me! I’m just going to be a plain old navigator!”

“Yeah. I can see how that final battle was reasonably accurate,” said Laura. “But that business you mentioned about Captain Northern lying on the ground dead, and me laughing. It’s ludicrous!”

Jitt shrugged. “Sorry. I don’t know where it came from.”

“Captain,” said Laura. “Where do you think that kind of thing comes from? You think the Frin’ral might be able to give us an inkling … Captain? Captain!”

Northern did not respond. He lay still in his chair, clutching his bottle.

“Captain!” said Laura, getting up and going to him. She shook his shoulder.

Northern slipped from the chair onto the ground. The starship captain began to snore.

“Well,” said Cal Shemzak. “Jitt was right after all. Northern’s dead all right. Dead
drunk
!”

And Laura Shemzak began to laugh.

C
an the mind live without a body?

Harla Zox knew.

More specifically, can a human brain live without a body? Live uncontained by a skull and not perched upon a skeleton? Live unencased by skin and unsupported by all the organs—the heart, the liver, the blood vessels? Live unfed by stomach or by intestines large and small?

Dr. Harla Zox knew.

But assuming that such a thing was even possible—that a human brain could be plucked from its seat and placed elsewhere, still functioning and conscious—would the resulting organism still be human?

Dr. Harla Zox, space pirate, knew the answer.

Absolutely not!

In his ship, thousands of light years from his birthworld of Mars, Dr. Harla Zox sat before the sensor screens of his great ship
Prometheus
and watched a planet die.

Its demise began as a spark, a flicker of lightning near the polar region, a white spark that was little more than a flash of incandescence. But then another spark snapped up silently, straining above the white ice cap. This ignited a veritable aurora borealis effect, with curtains of swaying colors shifting from ocean aqua down through shimmering shades of frozen ice cap cream, and finally flickering wanly toward the dun and emerald of the continents below.

“Ignition,
mon capitan
!” a voice rattled over the speakers.

“Observed, Number One,” stated Dr. Harla Zox, thumbing up the magnification for a better view of the cosmic show of a lifetime.

The tenor voice quavered a bit as it said, “Perhaps,
mon capitan
, observation might be best procured from a safer distance.”

“No!” snapped Zox. “Are you questioning my calculations, Brilliantine?”

“Of course not, sir. It’s just that simulations show a possibility of harmful radiation from quantum polarization.”

“Absorbed by my buffers. You must think me a fool.”

“No,
mon capitan
. Of course not … ”

“Silence. All is noted … We stay in this position until I command differently. Understood?”

That “position” was more than two million kilometers from the planet called Williamson, located near the M10 cluster, and was the fourth planet outward from the G star named Beta Ophiuchi. Williamson had been colonized over three centuries before by the Second Wave of Earth colonization. But it had been a Freehold World, cut off from normal trading zones and self-sufficient. It was a perfect planet for a pirate to hide upon as he tended to his wounds. A pirate scientist, experimenting with a weapon of terrible power.

That same pirate scientist had nursed himself back to health and begun darting once again into the deeps of space for quarry, but he had found himself under political attack. The governing bodies of Williamson had ruled that pirates weren’t welcome to keep harbor within their space, and he was requested to evacuate.

But that … that was unfortunate.

For Williamson’s attempt to persecute had produced in this pirate scientist an uncontrollable ire, and that ire had given him the perfect excuse for using his weapon of unimaginable power. A weapon with massive destructive capability. A weapon that, as it happened, required testing.

Once upon a time this pirate scientist had believed he might test his weapon upon some airless world, some lifeless speck in creation’s eye. But then he realized that there was really no need to go to so much trouble. He had a much better place to test it, a place where the test would be so much more meaningful.

And ever so much simpler!

His base had been at the tip of a peninsula jutting out into the sea from the frozen wastes in the planet’s northern latitudes. While most of Williamson’s population congregated around that world’s pleasant equatorial islands and archipelagoes to form their pointless civilization, Zox had chosen a cold, abandoned and inhospitable location, which served to keep the planet’s denizens far away. It was an expansive station (though endangered by the revelation of Dr. Zox’s identity) and was located near warm ocean currents that flowed northward from the planet’s more temperate zones. These currents had the advantage of attracting hordes of wildlife that he could use to test the weapon upon.

Why not test it once more, the pirate scientist thought, and in the most glorious fashion imaginable?

And so, even as his team held diplomatic meetings where they promised to abandon the planet forthwith, his technicians rigged their equipment so that it could be activated remotely. A most old-fashioned tradition! mused Zox.

Then, with most of his employees dismissed, Zox ferried a select crew to the great vessel
Prometheus
, which Zox kept perpetually in orbit around Williamson. The intent was for the ship to travel via normal impellors to a safe place in the system from which they could jump into Underspace and thus be gone.

And yet once they had attained their desired position two million kilometers from the planet, Zox had chosen instead to linger, bringing sensors to bear on Williamson. His vu-tank provided him with a crystal-clear mosaic of planetary wide-angle views and data. How pleasant to remain for a few final moments in orbit, Zox thought, rather than to flee. For he could never achieve such a view in the blur and chaos of Underspace, on their way to … wherever.

And with the priming sequence complete, the planet’s destruction began in earnest …

Sparks!

Yes, sparks, multicolored illuminations of dazzling grace! They flared from the pole, as though it were the very end of a fuse that would touch off the payload within: the planetary core itself.

Oh, if that sound could have traveled through space! Such a noise would that explosion have made. Great gouts of plasma, gas, and matter hurled upward in plumes of destruction. Green and dead shades of black were exhumed, planetary fungus abloom in the sun’s corona.

“Ah!” said Dr. Zox. “Beautiful, no?”

“The bastards!” said Brilliantine, his Number One. Excited breaths seethed between jagged teeth. “Paid those bastards back! Paid in full!”

Nothing came from any other members of the crew. Nothing, after all, was expected. Zox had been careful to select the proper kind of psychopaths whom he could mold to his whim with his mind-adjusters. With such flotsam and jetsam he had crewed his ship.

“Look,
mon capitan
!” crackled the crazed voice over his speaker. “Look!”

And Zox beheld.

“Magnificent!” he cried, the explosion filling his vu-tank.

The sepia mushroom atop the world suddenly whirled into a cyclonic frenzy, lashing out in smaller blasts like whips and chains feathered with flame. These ripped the planet’s surface, digging channels and fissures into the world’s crust. The process was slow and inexorable and nothing less than spectacular. Oceans sizzled into steam. Continents ripped in twain and then shredded into smaller and smaller fractions.

Williamson trembled, immersed in clouds—and in one great God’s breath of slow motion, it blew out, up, around and beyond. From a fracture filled with flames, it silently fed its hell canyons into each other, and with a final black caul, like the devil’s own eyelid, closed into a black blood-pulsed cloud of gas.

As lights flickered intermittently in the caul, dark gas entrails spread throughout the cloud. The sunlight once visible from the world’s surface evaporated into nothingness, and Dr. Zox chuckled.

“Excellent! Excellent indeed,
mon capitan
,” said Number One. “Now, however, we must flee.
Oui
?”

“No!” cried Zox. “And I do mean no. I want to make sure there are no escaping ships.”

“Escaping ships? But of course there will be ships, yes? The planet controlled this entire system, and their ships will most assuredly fix upon us in their desire for revenge!”

“I don’t enjoy having my authority questioned, Number One. Engage our cloak. That should ensure we are not targeted. In the meantime, we wait.”

Moments of tense silence passed.

Satisfaction rose up in Dr. Zox like the afterglow of a fine Vegan wine or the taste of an aromatic Daak hookah …

Alerted by the startled communication of a sub-drone set up to monitor the whole event, warnings began to blare.

“
Capitan
!
Capitan
!” it squawked in Zox’s inner ear. “Interference on quantum sub-charm stratum!”

“Don’t disturb me,” said Zox, casually glancing at his own holo-board. “I see nothing but glorious and distant destruction.”

“
Capitan
,” said Number One, looking over at Zox with worry. “There is something quite wrong. I recommend we jump.”

Zox looked on unperturbed. “I still observe nothing amiss.”

“
Capitan
!”

“Silence! You are ruining my moment of vict—”

And then, slowly … he saw it.

He saw it in the control-bubble, hovering just to his left.

The control bubble was a holographic rendering of the quantum strata of the neighboring area. Such was necessary to navigate Underspace, but Zox also had found uses for it in Normal Space.

From spots of emerald green off to the far end of the bubble, just past halos of dun brown, a cool magenta emerged. It spread quickly. Like the jaws of some space dragon it grew—sharp, vivid, and deadly.

A spike! A quantum spike! There was no mistaking it. But it wasn’t the data provided by his vu-tank that had confirmed this most unexpected event, nor was it his mind.

It was his gut.

Intellect was overpowered by an instinct for survival, the same instinct that would be triggered by the sight of a wolf in the woods or a shark in the sea.

“Jump!” he cried. “Jump!”

“Engaging now!” cried Number One.

The spike grew with a flash of speed that was startling. It seemed to reach out from the depths of Underspace with angry teeth. Reached out and opened hungrily—just for him, just for Zox.

Quantum spikes were essentially tears in Normality, tears in the very fabric of the universe. If in Underspace, ships could dart just within or below the skin of the universe to emerge elsewhere, “spikes” simply ripped that skin apart. Astronomers could see them at the edge of the known universe, snapping at whole galaxies, devouring them, sending them to—

To who knew where?

“Damn it! Why was I not warned about this!” cried Dr. Zox.

“But, sir!”

Excuses died in the whirlwind that shook the
Prometheus
.

Zox had disdained halters for any of his sensory extensions. Who cared if they were damaged? he often thought. They were mere objects. But this situation was different. More violent than anything he had previously encountered, his dainty multi-armed sensory casing was torn from its control pedestal and slammed against the side of the bulkhead. Through a veil of oozing liquid, he saw the holo-bubble twist and distort.

And as though seeking him and him alone, red teeth reached out for him and snapped closed.