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hear the cavernous thunder of retro rockets, a sound that climbs and climbs in
my head as Ship crushes me harder and harder with all its power. I am bent
over against the clamps so painfully I cannot even scream. I feel every organ
in my body straining to push out through my skin and everything suddenly goes
mottled...then black.
How much longer, I don t know. I come back from the gray place and realize
Ship has started to accelerate at the same appalling speed. I am crushed back
in the berth and feel my face going flat. I feel something crack in my nose
and blood slides warmly down my lips. I can scream now, as I ve never screamed
even as I m being wracked. I
manage to force my mouth open, tasting the blood, and I mumble-loud enough,
I m sure,  Ship...you are old... y-your pa-rts can t stand the
str-ess...don t--
Blackout. As Ship decelerates.
This time, when I come back to consciousness, I don t wait for Ship to do its
mad thing. In the moments between the changeover from deceleration to
acceleration, as the pressure equalizes, in these few instants, I thrust my
hands toward the control board, and I twist one dial. There is an electric
screech from a speaker grille connecting somewhere in the bowels of Ship.
Blackout. As Ship accelerates.
When I come to consciousness again, the mechanism that makes the screeching
sound is closed down. Ship doesn t want that on. I note the fact.
And plunge my hand in this same moment toward a closed relay...open it!
As my fingers grip it, Ship jerks it away from me and forcibly closes it
again. I cannot hold it open.
And I note that.
Just as Ship decelerates and I silently shriek my way into the gray place
again.
This time, as I come awake, I hear the voices again. All around me, crying and
frightened and wanting to stop me. I hear them as through a fog, as through
wool.
 I have loved these years, all these many years in the dark. The vacuum draws
me ever onward. Feeling the warmth of a star-sun on my hull as I flash through
first one system, then another. I am a great gray shape and I owe no human my
name. I pass and am gone, hurtling through cleanly and swiftly. Dipping for
pleasure into atmosphere and scouring my hide with sunlight and starshine, I
roll and let it wash over me. I am huge and true and strong and I
command what I move through. I ride the invisible force lines of the universe
and feel the tugs of far places that have never seen my like. I am the first
of my kind to savor such nobility. How can it all come to an end like this?
Another voice whimpers piteously.
 It is my destiny to defy danger. To come up against dynamic forces and quell
them. I have been to battle, and I have known peace. I have never faltered in
pursuit of either. No one will ever record my deeds, but I have been strength
and determination and lie gray silent against the mackerel sky where the bulk
of me reassures. Let them throw their best against me, whomever they may be,
and they will find me sinewed of steel and muscled of tortured atoms. I know
no fear. I know no retreat. I am the land of my body, the country of my
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existence, and even in defeat I
am noble. If this is all, I will not cower...
Another voice, certainly insane, murmurs the sane word over and over, then
murmurs it in increments increasing by two.
 It s fine for all of you to say If it ends it ends. But what about me? I ve
never been free. I ve never had a chance to soar loose of this mother ship. If
there had been need of a lifeboat, I d be saved, too. But I m berthed, have
always been berthed, I ve never had a chance. What can I feel but futility,
uselessness. You can t let him take over, you can t let him do this to me...
Another voice drones mathematical formulae, and seems quite content.
 I ll stop the vicious swine! I ve known how rotten they are from the first,
from the moment they seamed
the first bulkhead. They are hellish, they are destroyers, they can only fight
and kill each other. They know nothing of immortality, of nobility, of pride
or integrity. If you think I m going to let this last one kill us, you re
wrong. I intend to burn out his eyes, fry his spine, crush his fingers. He
won t make it, don t worry; just leave it to me. He s going to suffer for
this!
And one voice laments that it will never see the far places, the lovely
places, or return to the planet of azure waters and golden crab swimmers.
But one voice sadly confesses it may be for the best, suggests there peace in
death, wholeness in finality; but the is voice ruthlessly stopped in its
lament by power failure to its intermind globe. As the end nears, Ship turns
on itself and is strikes mercilessly.
In more than three hours of accelerations and decelerations that are meant to
kill me, I learn something of what the various dials and switches and touch
plates and levers on the control panels--those within my reach--mean.
Now I am as ready as I will ever be.
Again, I have a moment of consciousness, and now I will take my one of
ninety-eight chances.
When a tense-cable snaps and whips, it strikes like a snake. In a single
series of flicking hand movements, using both hands, painfully, I turn every
dial, throw every switch, palm every touch plate, close or open every relay
that Ship tries violently to prevent me from activating or de-activating. I
energize and de-energize madly, moving moving moving...
&
Made it!
Silence. The crackling of metal the only sound. Then it, too. stops. Silence.
I wait.
Ship continues to hurtle forward, but coasting now... Is it a trick?
All the rest of today I remain clamped into the control berth, suffering
terrible pain. My face hurts so bad.
My nose...
At night I sleep fitfully. Morning finds me with throbbing head and aching
eyes, I can barely move my hands;
if I have to repeat those rapid movements. I will lose; I still don t know if
Ship is dead, if I ve won, I still can t trust the inactivity. But at least I
am convinced I ve made Ship change tactics.
I hallucinate. I hear no voices, but I see shapes and feel currents of color
washing through and around me.
There is no day, no noon, no night, here on Ship, here in the unchanging [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]