“Time,” Deutsch said. “That’s all I know. There was a time fluctuation. My internal clocks are all scrambled. It’s ship’s night now.” The Kyber’s eyes, glowing in the dark, made him seem more robot than human. “Did we just lose a bunch of hours?”
Legroeder blinked. “Weren’t we just—?” He shook his head; he was having trouble remembering where he had been. “We were… talking… in the meeting room.”
“Yes,” Deutsch said.
“And that wave of shadow—”
“Temporal displacement wave, I think,” Deutsch said slowly.
“It pulled you right out of the meeting room—and then hit the rest of us—”
“Which, by my reckoning, was about ten minutes ago. I’ve been wandering the passageways,” Deutsch said.
“Did you see anyone?”
“A couple of people. When they saw me, they ran the other way. I think they thought I was a ghost.” Deutsch scanned the corridor. “Do you know what I’m wondering?”
“I’m wondering a lot of things.”
“Well, I’m wondering where we were, physically, between the time we were in that meeting room, and now.”
Legroeder cleared his throat uneasily. “You have any thoughts on that?”
“Yeah, but you won’t like it.”
“I already don’t like it.”
“Yeah, well, I’m thinking maybe we were far away… especially if this quantum fluctuation that Palagren and Cantha talk about is spread out over a large area. Or maybe we weren’t exactly in existence at all.” Deutsch’s round glass eyes seemed to loom in the near-darkness.
Legroeder chewed his knuckles for a moment, trying to focus constructively. Before he could come to any conclusions, he was startled by a strange-sounding cry behind him in the corridor. He turned and saw three people walking toward him. Or not so much walking as rippling toward him, stretching through the air like ghostly time-lapse holos, then contracting forward. They were talking, or possibly shouting; their voices were distorted, incomprehensible.
As they drew close, it became clear they did not see Legroeder and Deutsch before them. “Excuse me!” Legroeder called, stepping out to get their attention. They still appeared not to see him, and he flattened himself to the wall to get out of their way.
The nearest, a heavyset man, brushed against him; the man passed through him as if he were a ghost. Legroeder turned to gape as the trio receded down the passageway. Their voices dopplered down to a distorted bass rumble.
“That was very interesting,” Deutsch remarked, floating out into the center of the corridor again. “What do you suppose just happened?”
“I don’t know,” Legroeder said. “But I hope we can find someone on this ship who can talk to us.”
“Or on Phoenix,” Deutsch said. “I’m not getting a com-signal. Are you?”
Legroeder felt a sudden chill; he’d not thought to check. (Are we?)
// There is no com-signal. //
He shook his head. “You don’t suppose it could just be our implant function messed up?”
“Maybe. Or maybe we haven’t quite made it all the way back to our own space,” Deutsch said softly.
Legroeder’s jaw muscles tightened. If Impris could be trapped in its own space, floating like a specter out of contact with others, what was to prevent individuals from being similarly trapped? He squeezed his hands into fists. Don’t jump to conclusions. “Do you know which way to the bridge?”
“This way, I think.”
They walked awhile, and finally found a directional map showing them to be aft of the passenger’s recreational area. Once they located the main corridor, they moved quickly along its deserted length. Were there any real people here?
The answer came finally when they passed through a large passenger lounge and found a scattering of people, as one might on a large ship, late at night. “I wonder if these folks will see us,” Deutsch murmured.
Seated at a coffee table, two women were playing cards. One, blonde, looked to be in her twenties; the other was a brunette, somewhat older. The brunette sat with her blouse partly open in back—as if she had been interrupted in process of dressing and transported to this spot, with no memory of what she had been doing. The blonde, sitting opposite, was absorbed in her hand of cards. As Deutsch and Legroeder approached, she looked up at them. She seemed to focus on Legroeder’s face and started to speak. For a moment he thought she was going to address him; then the older woman said something, and the blonde looked back down at her cards.
Legroeder frowned, stepping close to the table. He peered at the cards and asked, “What are you playing?”
The younger woman held out a card, placing it on the center of the coffee table—and as Legroeder bent for a better look, she peered right through him. She spoke again, and her voice was incomprehensibly distorted.
“They don’t see you,” Deutsch said. “Let’s go.”
Passing along the length of the lounge, they came to a young man absorbed in a stand-up holo-game of twisting lights and strange sounds, all contained within a ghostly shadow-curtain. Was this what the game was supposed to look like? Legroeder wondered—or was it, too, being distorted? He stepped up beside the young man. “Good game?”
“Mrrrrk-k-k-k-ll…”
“Can you hear me?”
The man, reaching out to fiddle with a control on the game board, put his hand through Legroeder’s left arm. Legroeder drew a deep breath. If there’s a way to get here, there has to be a way to get out, he told himself, as though chanting a mantra. Only half believing it, he followed Deutsch onward.
At the end of the lounge, an old man was sitting with his feet propped on the table, reading a book. As they went by, the man looked up, arching his eyebrows. “Don’t recall seeing you two here before,” he said. “You must be off a’ that other ship, the one that’s knockin’ us off kilter—”
Legroeder could scarcely breathe. “You can see us?”
“I’m talking to you, aren’t I?”
“Yeah, but… well, you’re the first person who’s—”
“Wait a minute,” said Deutsch. “You said we’re knocking you off kilter?”
The man chuckled. “Well, begging your pardon—things have gone from bad to worse since you got here, what with the time waves and all.” He marked his place in the book and closed it. “Don’t get me wrong. But I hear people saying your arrival must have upset something in the continuum. Not that I understand how things could possibly be worse—except if we take you along with us.”
Legroeder stared at him open-mouthed.
// If we might interject—it could be very important to determine whether or not this is true. //
(No kidding,) Legroeder thought.
“We passed through an instability ourselves, not long ago,” Deutsch said.
The man laughed. “You’re in good company. Twice now, since I been reading my book here, I found myself having dinner again last night.” He grimaced. “The first time was bad enough. They used to have good food on this ship. That was before everything came from the recyclers.”
“Do you have any idea where we might find the captain?” Legroeder asked. “We were meeting with him, and then this wall of darkness—”