Jamal snorted. “What’s to remember? We were rigging along just fine, and when the time came to get out, we couldn’t.”
Legroeder glanced at Deutsch. “You didn’t notice anything along the way? Any hint of problems?”
Poppy waved his hand in agitation. “Jamal, you’re forgetting—there was that whole business of when we went through a sort of funnel. It wasn’t such a big deal—except we all thought the Flux felt different afterward.”
“Oh yeah,” said Jamal, scratching his head. “But it’s not like we thought anything was wrong, then.”
“Not wrong. But different.”
“Different, how?” Legroeder asked.
Poppy grimaced, as though trying to recall something from very long ago. “Different, like it was harder to get a grip. A purchase. We were still flying, but there was some slippage, if you know what I mean. Not enough to clue us that something was really wrong. But then, later, when we tried to come out…”
“What happened then?” Legroeder asked, wondering, was the funnel just another image of the raindrop Phoenix had gone through?
“Nothing happened!” Poppy and Jamal cried together.
“Do you mean, there was no response from the net?”
“It was as if it had gone dead,” said Poppy. “I don’t mean dead: it still worked. But we couldn’t do anything, couldn’t change our position or speed… couldn’t even change the image much. And that’s more or less how it’s been ever since.”
“Did you check the reactor? Try increasing the output?”
“Oh, yeah.” Jamal chuckled grimly. “Of course. We gave it a real good goosing.”
“And?”
Poppy gestured around the room. “That’s when this time business started—”
“That’s when people started blinking out.” Jamal studied the opposite wall for a moment, rubbing with a thumb and forefinger at his lips. He looked back at Legroeder. “Let me tell you. That scared us real good. Real good.” His eyes filled with fear as he spoke.
Legroeder remembered their effort to increase power when they were trying to grapple Impris with the net. It had only made the problem worse.
“So do you know how to get us out or not?” Poppy asked.
Legroeder hesitated, and Deutsch spoke instead. “We have thoughts on the matter,” he said.
Jamal burst into bitter laughter. “You have thoughts? Well, isn’t that a relief! Rings, man—we’ve had thoughts!”
Legroeder flushed. “He means that the Narseil riggers who got us in also think they can get us out. But—”
“But they don’t know, is that it?” Jamal’s laugh gave Legroeder a shiver. “Hell, man, don’t tell me you came all this way just to sit and rot with us!”
“Not that we don’t appreciate the company,” Poppy added.
Legroeder exhaled softly. “We hope our situation is somewhat improved from yours. For one thing, we have the benefit of more than a hundred years of rigger science since you flew. Plus, we have a hybrid crew—with and without augmentation.”
“I see you’ve got some augmentation yourself,” Poppy said pointedly, reminding Legroeder that in Impris’s time the Kyber were a dreaded enemy, considered barely human.
Legroeder frowned. “I do have augments, but I don’t use them much while rigging—unlike Rigger Deutsch here, who uses them extensively. So we’re pairing our skills. Plus, we have two excellent Narseil riggers, who have a good understanding of the latest research.”
“If they understand it so well—”
“What I’m trying to say is, we have a variety of different viewpoints—”
Legroeder was interrupted by the movement of a dark shadow over his head. He glanced up in alarm. It looked like a large ocean breaker, rising over him from behind. It was not a shadow on the walls, but a darkness in the air itself. It curled over, well above his head, and came down past the far side of the table, before curling under the table. Then it stopped, hovering, enclosing the conference table in the tube of its curling wave of blackness. “What the hell?” Legroeder whispered.
Deutsch rose on his levitators and approached the leading edge of the shadow. He rotated in midair, inspecting it from various angles, his regular eyes and his cheekbone eyes swiveling. “I can’t tell what it is,” he murmured. The augments on the side of his head were afire with activity. Floating forward, he telescoped his left hand out toward the phenomenon.
“Freem’n, wait—”
Deutsch reached into the wave until his hand disappeared. Then he pulled it back out. “Seems okay,” he said, turning his hand over. “Whatever it is, it didn’t hurt me. Let’s have a closer look.”
“Freem’n, wait!”
Deutsch floated forward and leaned into the shadow. “ ’S okay…” His voice became muffled, then cut off. Abruptly, as though yanked, he toppled headfirst into the shadow.
“Freem’n!” Legroeder yelled, jumping up. But his friend was gone, lost in the wall of darkness. Legroeder swung to Captain Friedman and the Impris riggers. “What’s going on?”
Jamal and Poppy were shaking their heads.
A heartbeat later, the wave of darkness surged forward. Before he could move, it engulfed him, too.
Legroeder blinked, stunned. He was sitting on a cold metal deck, in a very deep gloom. “Captain? Freem’n?” There was no answer. As his eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness, he realized he was no longer in the meeting room. Then where was he? There was some illumination: emergency or night-lighting, emanating from hidden sources spaced along the base of the walls. His eyes adjusted slowly. He was in a corridor. He could hear a distant ticking sound, and a noise like the closing of a door. “Hello?” he called.
There was no answer.
(What can you tell me?) he asked the implants.
// We registered a discontinuity in all readings. Our chronometry is totally desynchronized. //
(In other words, you don’t know much.)
// Acknowledged. // The implants sounded almost rueful.
Legroeder groaned to his feet and looked both ways down the corridor. There was nothing to indicate where in the ship he was, so he chose a direction at random and started walking. In due course, he came to a series of doors outlined in a pale luminous blue. A hum was audible behind the wall. He tried two of the doors, but they didn’t budge. Probably an engineering area—ventilation or hydroponics or something.
He continued walking, but his feelings of unease grew steadily. Was anybody here? He felt as if he were on a ghost ship, the only one still alive.
He drew a breath, cupped his hands, and bellowed down the corridor, “HALLOOO! ANYBODY HER-R-RE?” He turned and called the other way.
At first there was no answer. Then he heard an amplified voice calling back, “Legroeder? Is that you?”
His heart quickened. “Yes! This way!”
Deutsch appeared around a corner, some distance down the corridor. He was an eerie sight, floating toward Legroeder on his base with his augments winking slowly on the sides of his head. “Are you all right?” he called.
“Yah.” Legroeder hurried to meet his friend. “Thank God! I thought I was the only one left.” He stopped and turned around. “Do you have any idea what happened? I was—was—” He suddenly stopped, shaking his head. He had completely lost his train of thought.