Chub returned to his mind suddenly. "It works well, Moyshe man-friend. Be patient. Will have little time to chat. Is hard to think thoughts in commanders of ships-that-kill, and in machines-that-think. Sangaree minds twisted. Different than man-minds." The dragon faded away.
What was this? he asked himself. Were the fish trying to control the Sangaree?
The raidships massed thickly, then pushed hard. The sharks grew agitated, as if dimly aware that they were about to be drawn into the inferno. The starfish began drifting their way, as if to cover the fleet's retreat.
"Be ready, Moyshe man-friend!" It was a sudden bellow, and all the warning he received.
The trickle in the root of his brain suddenly became a flaming torrent. It hurt! God, did it hurt! Searing, the power boiled through him, into whatever Danion used to control and convert it, and out to the silvery sails. Moyshe followed the flow for an instant, then became lost in an ocean of pain.
The harvestship began moving toward the massed raidships, all weapons firing, not aiming, simply trying to erect an irresistible wall of destruction. The compacted Sangaree were unable to bring all their firepower to bear. They wavered, wavered.
A raidship blew up. It left a momentary hole in the fire pattern. Another vessel began to come apart.
Service ships were doing the same. One harvestship ceased firing. Her auxiliary power was exhausted. Sangaree missiles began picking her apart.
BenRabi felt that infinite sadness again.
The enemy drifted backward, not really retreating, just being pushed inexorably. It could not last, but the harvestfleet's ferocity, for the moment, was greater than the raidfleet's.
Afar, the starfish suddenly struck at the sharks, who scattered in dismay. The strike was pure bluff on the dragons' part. A determined shark attack would have destroyed the herd in minutes.
Something screamed across benRabi's mind, a mad voice babbling, shrieking fear and incoherencies. Its power was such that it inundated his pain. He made no sense of the mind-touch, other than warning and terror.
Phantoms, grotesqueries from the most insane medieval imagination, gathered in space around him. Things that might have been gargoyles and gorgons, Boschian nightmares writhing, all fangs and talons and fire, became more real than the battleships. Every one of them shrieked the message, "Go away or die!"
I've gone completely insane, he thought. My mind has snapped under contact pressure. They can't be real. He screamed.
Then the warm feeling came, soothing, gently calming his terror, pushing the madness away. His dragon told him, "We succeed, Moyshe man-friend. Maybe win." Then, darkly, "Monsters are Stars' End sending. Fear and visions are Stars' End mind-thing. Planet machine is mad. Mad machine uses madness weapons. Soon, other weapons.
"Look, Moyshe man-friend!"
Shielded by Chub's touch, Moyshe turned his attention to a Stars' End grown huge with their approach. The Sangaree were silhouetted against the glowing planetary disk. The face of the world had become diseased behind them. It was spotted blackly in a hundred thousand places.
The disk was receding. The harvestfleet was on the run, scattering as fast as it could. Moyshe suspected that, had any been able, the harvestships would have gone hyper. That could not be accomplished on minddrive.
The Sangaree could not jump out while locked into their master battle-computer. Breaking lock and getting up influence took time.
Two thousand kilometers closer to the fortress world's weapons, they were trying. With the desperation of the condemned they were breaking lock, scattering, throwing out defensive missiles, trying to get up influence.
They did not have time. The mad world's weapons reached them first.
"Close mind!" Chub shrieked. "Get out! Not need power now. Save mind!"
How? He couldn't remember. It became another nightmare, of the sort where all efforts to elude pursuit were vain.
Feeling returned to his left hand. Another hand rested upon it, pulling upward. The reality of the Contact Room returned.
He could feel his helmet, the couch beneath him—and a tremendous sense of loss. He missed his dragon already, and in missing Chub he understood Starfishers a little better. Maybe the contact was one reason they stayed so far from the worlds of men. The fish-Fisher thing was a unique experiential frontier.
Perhaps only one in a thousand Fishers would ever experience contact, but that one could share the vision with his blind brethren... He had suffered a range of emotions out there. Only one thing had been missing while Chub was in his mind. The ordinary, everyday insecurity which so shaped human life.
He was drowning in his own sweat. And he was shivering cold, as if his body temperature had dropped while he was linked. The room surrounding him was silent. Where were his technicians? Was he alone? No. Someone had helped him get out.
The thoughts, reflections, fears flashed by in scant seconds. Then:
His head exploded in a thundering migraine, the most sudden and terrible of his experience. It obliterated all conscious control and thought. He screamed. He fought the straps that held him, the helmet that stole his vision. He became pure trapped animal.
Danion shuddered, staggered, staggered. Vaguely, through the agony, he heard screams. Loose objects rattled around. Gravity surged and faded. Mind monsters momentarily broke through the pain, taunting him with visions of Hell.
The Stars' End weapons had found the Sangaree. The fringes of their fury had brushed the harvestfleet like the cold breeze of the passing wings of death. And he was pinned here, helpless, in agony.
Slowly, slowly, the breeze faded. The screams died with it—all but his own. Excited chatter surrounded him. He could distinguish no words. His head was tearing itself apart. Once, when he was a kid, it had been almost this bad. He had nearly killed himself smashing his head against a wall.
Someone finally noticed him. His helmet came off. A needle stung his arm. The pain began fading.
The room was nearly dark, so weak were the lights. Gravity had been reduced to half normal. Danion was rationing power.
The faces crossing his field of vision seemed unconcerned with Danion's condition. They were exuberant. There was laughter. Little jokes flew.
"We've won!" motherly Clara told him. "Stars' End killed them."
Not all, Moyshe thought, though he said nothing. One or two had made hyper in time.
The Seiners had just moved up the Sangaree vendetta list, perhaps surpassing Jupp von Drachau.
"But we lost four harvestships," the younger half of his tech team told him. "Four harvestships." He was having a hard time believing that.
It was a victory day, all right, but one which left the Seiners little to celebrate.
Blessed darkness enfolded Moyshe. He fell into the blissful sleep of the needle, a sleep untroubled by fearful dreams.
Eighteen: 3049 AD
Operation Dragon, the Change
He ignored the shoulder-shaking as long as he could. Finally, sleep-slurred, he muttered, "Wha'd'ya wan'?"
"Get up, Moyshe. Time to go to work. There's a million things to do."
So. Amy, he thought. Altogether too businesslike for a girl who thought she should be a wife. He opened an eye, checked the time.
"Five hours? What the hell kind of rest is that?" he grumbled. "How the hell did I get here? I was in Contact."
"It's been eleven hours. The clock's unplugged. To save power. They brought you down on a stretcher. I thought you'd been mind-burned... " She threw herself on top of him, clinging with desperation. "Moyshe, I was so scared... "
"All right. All right. I survived," he grumbled. He still was not accustomed to the Seiner habit of showing emotion.