The world of the eleventh sense pushed in on him.
He caught the Captain's thought: “… sloppy civilian get of a sthondat…” and frantically tuned it out. He hated the Captain's mind. He found other minds aboard ship, isolated and blanked them out one by one. Now there were none left. There was only unconsciousness and chaos. Chaos was not empty. Something was thinking strange and disturbing thoughts.
The Telepath forced himself to listen.
Steve Weaver floated bonelessly near a wall of the radio room. He was blond, blue-eyed, and big, and he could often be seen as he was now, relaxed but completely motionless, as if there were some very good reason why he shouldn't even blink. A streamer of smoke drifted from his left hand and crossed the room to bury itself in the air vent.
“That's that,” Ann Harrison said wearily. She flicked four switches in the bank of radio controls. At each click a small light went out.
“You can't get them?”
“Right. I'll bet they don't even have a radio.” Ann released her chair net and stretched out into a fivepointed star. “I've left the receiver on, with the volume up, in case they try to get us later. Man, that feels good!” Abruptly she curled into a tight ball. She had been crouched at the communications bank for more than an hour. Ann might have been Steve's twin; she was almost as tall as he was, had the same color hair and eyes, and the flat muscles of conscientious exercise showed beneath her blue falling jumper as she flexed.
Steve snapped his cigarette butt at the air conditioner, moving only his fingers. “Okay. What have they got?”
Ann looked startled. “I don't know.”
“Think of it as a puzzle. They don't have a radio. How might they talk to each other? How can we check on our guesses? We assume they're trying to reach us, of course.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Think about it, Ann. Get Jim thinking about it, too.” Jim Davis was her husband that year, and the ship's doctor full time. “You're the girl most likely to succeed. Have a smog stick?”
“Please.”
Steve pushed his cigarette ration across the room. “Take a few. I've got to go.”
The depleted package came whizzing back. “Thanks,” said Ann.
“Let me know if anything happens, will you? Or if you think of anything.”
“I will. And fear not, Steve, something's bound to turn up. They must be trying just as hard as we are.”
Every compartment in the personnel ring opened into the narrow doughnut-shaped hall which ran around the ring's forward rim. Steve pushed himself into the hall, jockeyed to contact the floor, and pushed. From there it was easy going. The floor curved up to meet him, and he proceeded down the hall like a swimming frog. Of the twelve men and women on the Angel's Pencil, Steve was best at this; for Steve was a Belter, and the others were all flatlanders, Earthborn.
Ann probably wouldn't think of anything, he guessed. It wasn't that she wasn't intelligent. She didn't have the curiosity, the sheer love of solving puzzles. Only he and Jim Davis—
He was going too fast, and not concentrating. He almost crashed into Sue Bhang as she appeared below the curve of the ceiling.
They managed to stop themselves against the walls. “Hi, jaywalker,” said Sue.
“Hi, Sue. Where you headed?”
“Radio room. You?”
“I thought I'd check the drive systems again. Not that we're likely to need the drive, but it can't hurt to be certain.”
“You'd go twitchy without something to do, wouldn't you?” She cocked her head to one side, as always when she had questions. “Steve, when are you going to rotate us again? I can't seem to get used to falling.”
But she looked like she'd been born falling, he thought. Her small, slender form was meant for flying; gravity should never have touched her. “When I'm sure we won't need the drive. We might as well stay ready 'til then. Because I'm hoping you'll change back to a skirt.”
She laughed, pleased. “Then you can turn it off. I'm not changing, and we won't be moving. Abel says the other ship did two hundred gee when it matched courses with us. How many can the Angel's Pencil do?”
Steve looked awed. “Just point zero five. And I was thinking of chasing them! Well, maybe we can be the ones to open communications. I just came from the radio room, by the way. Ann can't get anything.”
“Too bad.”
“We'll just have to wait.”
“Steve, you're always so impatient. Do Belters always move at a run? Come here.” She took a handhold and pulled him over to one of the thick windows which lined the forward side of the corridor. “There they are,” she said, pointing out.
The star was both duller and larger than those around it. Among points which glowed arc-lamp blue-white with the Doppler shift, the alien ship showed as a dull red disk.
“I looked at it through the telescope,” said Steve. “There are lumps and ridges all over it. And there's a circle of green dots and commas painted on one side. Looked like writing.”
“How long have we been waiting to meet them? Five hundred thousand years? Well, there they are. Relax. They won't go away.” Sue gazed out the window, her whole attention on the dull red circle, her gleaming jet hair floating out around her head. “The first aliens. I wonder what they'll be like.”
“It's anyone's guess. They must be pretty strong to take punishment like that, unless they have some kind of acceleration shield, but free fall doesn't bother them either. That ship isn't designed to spin.” He was staring intently, out at the stars, his big form characteristically motionless, his expression somber. Abruptly he said, “Sue, I'm worried.”
“About what?”
“Suppose they're hostile?”
“Hostile?” She tasted the unfamiliar word, decided she didn't like it.
“After all, we know nothing about them. Suppose they want to fight? We'd—”
She gasped. Steve flinched before the horror in her face. “What—what put that idea in your head?”
“I'm sorry I shocked you, Sue.”
“Oh, don't worry about that, but why? Did—shh.”
Jim Davis had come into view. The Angel's Pencil had left Earth when he was twenty-seven; now he was a slightly paunchy thirty-eight, the oldest man on board, an amiable man with abnormally long, delicate fingers. His grandfather, with the same hands, had been a world-famous surgeon. Nowadays surgery was normally done by autodocs, and the arachnodactyls were to Davis merely an affliction. He bounced by, walking on magnetic sandals, looking like a comedian as he bobbed about the magnetic plates.
“Hi, group,” he called as he went by.
“Hello, Jim.” Sue's voice was strained. She waited until he was out of sight before she spoke again.
Hoarsely she whispered, “Did you fight in the Belt?” She didn't really believe it; it was merely the worst thing she could think of.
Vehemently Steve snapped, “No!” Then, reluctantly, he added, “But it did happen occasionally.” Quickly he tried to explain. “The trouble was that all the doctors, including the psychists, were at the big bases, like Ceres. It was the only way they could help the people who needed them — be where the miners could find them. But all the danger was out in the rocks.”
“You noticed a habit of mine once. I never make gestures. All Belters have that trait. It's because on a small mining ship you could hit something waving your arms around. Something like the airlock button.”
“Sometimes it's almost eerie. You don't move for minutes at a time.”
“There's always tension out in the rocks. Sometimes a miner would see too much danger and boredom and frustration, too much cramping inside and too much room outside, and he wouldn't get to a psychist in time. He'd pick a fight in a bar. I saw it happen once. The guy was using his hands like mallets.”
Steve had been looking far into the past. Now he turned back to Sue. She looked white and sick, like a novice nurse standing up to her first really bad case. His ears began to turn red. “Sorry,” he said miserably.