“It’s probably spread.”
“Are we close to any stars?”
“Yes sir,” the duty officer informed him gruffly. “We are about to sidestep a system with an inhabited planet, as a matter of fact. We’ll pass within three light-days.”
“We’d best make for it. Our investigation can start there. Decelerate and alter course.”
While the tiger obeyed, quietly speaking instructions, the cobweb lines reappeared. Archier could see now that they emerged from the walls. They gave him the impression of being immensely, immensely long—light-years, at least.
They vanished. “What do you make of it?” Archer asked Menshek. He paused. “Could they be something to do with recession lines?”
“Nothing in our universe could make recession lines visible,” Menshek pointed out. “But did you ever watch Cursom’s book on what other facets might be like? Purely speculative, of course, but the point is they might not consist of three-dimensional realms containing particulate matter, like ours. The ‘flattening’ or collapse of the Simplex might take other forms, well-nigh incomprehensible to our intellects. Specifically, Cursom predicts there will be facets where it’s the recession lines, not the particles they connect, that become the ‘material entities’, while the original particles would play the part of separating locations or end-points. The fundamental unit of such a facet would not be a pointlike particle but a sort of extensible line, no limit being placed on length. Such lines, infinitesimal in themselves, would be able to collect themselves together to form the equivalent of higher structures—atoms, molecules and so forth—but always strictly in parallel. The threads we have seen answer to that description. They might even be living forms.”
“Linear matter,” Archier pondered, while the animals stared, struggling to comprehend. “But could it exist in our kind of space?”
“Perhaps, once it arrived here. Or perhaps their space and ours is intermingling.”
“And if they are intelligent, how would they see us?”
“Ah, that’s a question,” Menshek seemed to find the question intriguing. Briefly he turned to watch the data form in the air as the Fleet Manoeuvres Department did its work. “They would lack our sense of individuality as something existing at a defined place—indeed, they would scarcely understand the notion of ‘place’ as we do. Their equivalent of a single particle might sometimes extend throughout the whole of their spacetime, and it would be the same for larger structures. For them, the concept of ‘being’ would be associated with linear dispersal.
“They might not, yet, have been able to find anything here they can recognise as having material properties.”
Archier sighed fretfully. “I wish Diadem could have sent us a scientist! We’re out of our depth!”
“Have you tried to find any among the passengers?” Menshek asked. “Passengers” was how Star Force crews referred to the inevitable hangers-on aboard ships of the fleets.
“I did put the word out, but you know how reluctant these people are to get involved in anything.”
“Perhaps you should have made it clear what’s involved.”
Archier shook his head. “There’s state security to think of.”
The conversation was interrupted by a sound of tumult from the outside. Snarling softly, the duty officer whirled round as through the door there burst a shouting group of what Archier, because they still wore costume, the bellicose images rearing above those who were human, presumed at first were revellers who had inconsiderately intruded into the working area.
But they were clearly terrified. A lissom-figured young woman, her senile face set into the belly of a writhing, evil-looking Mother Kali, rushed up to him, her woe-begone expression an incongruous contrast.
“Admiral!” she screamed. “They’re coming through the intermats! They’re killing everybody!”
Archier tried to free himself of the clutching arms of both herself and her costume.
“Who?”
“Rebels! Pirates! I don’t know!”
Shucking off its silvery-grey covering that vaguely resembled a feetol shell, an impala trotted up to Archier to paw him nervously. “Savages, Admiral, savages! Do you know what they’re wearing? Animal skins! Do you hear me? Animal skins!”
The impala’s voice broke on a hysterical note.
“Call commando quarters,” Archier ordered the duty officer. “If you find any troops there, tell them to arm themselves. When you’ve done that, check with the rest of the fleet. I’ll go and look into this.”
He ran from the Command Centre and back down the broad passageway that led towards the ballroom. But he soon stopped, his blood freezing. Spilling down the corridor, fleeing from the salon, came a panicking mob, a jostling forest of screaming, multicoloured shapes.
Trying to give himself time to think, he pressed himself against the wall as the crowd surged by. How could this horror have come about? Through the intermats, she had said. And the kiosks in the salon were only one of several sets throughout the big battleship. But how could rebels have gained access to the intermat facility?
Suddenly he remembered the Claire de Lune.
Ragshok was roaring with delight on the mezzanine, clad in a shaggy bearskin coat, the beast’s dead snarl a helmet for his skull, a gun in each hand, while turmoil and the satisfying silent flicker of scangun beams filled the music-blasted area below him.
It was incredible. Star Force, terror of the galaxy, dreaded arm of the hard-faced Empire, and here was its real face: a motley of old women (though they seemed trim of figure, he observed), animals and children, and not one of them with the guts to do anything but run and scream.
It would be different with the commando troops, but there probably weren’t many of those, and then only on a few ships. He was putting two hundred men and women apiece into Standard Bearer and some of the capital ships where he guessed they were stationed. Generally he had to try to take each vessel with only a few dozen.
A sweating Morgan swaggered up in a leather cuirass and tigerskin pants. Ragshok’s people often wore animal-derived clothing; it was a way of expressing one’s ferocity. In this case Ragshok had ordered them to do so, knowing how much it would dismay and outrage the animals who far outnumbered the humans on the fleet. A good many of their hides would be hung out for curing by the end of the day.
“It’s a walkover,” Morgan said.
“It sure is so far,” Ragshok agreed.
To Ikematsu, the change in the mental ambience was instantly obvious. Withdrawing his concentration from the room where Pout and Gruwert conversed, he diffused it, taking in the whole surrounding atmosphere of thought.
The whole ship was in a state of blood-curdling fright, which in the direction of the ballroom was like a thick, clotted mass.
Quickly he spoke to the two boys, pointing down the corridor. “Something bad is happening. Go, and hide yourselves.”
Trixa looked bewildered. Sinbiane, attuned to his uncle’s perceptions, and used to obeying him instantly, tugged at his friend, urging him to run.
A kosho facing danger without his weapons… he truly had let himself be put at a disadvantage, Ikematsu thought wryly; and for a second time, and for the same cause.
Stealth would be called for, until he could obtain new weapons… Gruwert, he thought then, might know where his own armoury was stored. The pig might be prevailed upon to divulge…
As he turned towards the door, it opened and Pout emerged, blinking. Ikematsu’s gaze lit upon him, then upon the two boys running down the corridor, then to the end of the corridor.
Not long previously he had fleetingly observed threadlike lines in the air, barely visible. He had taken them for hallucination, a by-product of his mental concentration on radiated thought. But now, approaching from the far end of the corridor, came what looked like a horizontal grid of glistening metal rods. They seemed to move slowly at first, their tips lurching forward, now some in advance, now others, but suddenly they accelerated. The two running boys were momentarily transfixed, and in the same instant they vanished. Then Pout was touched, and vanished.