Free The Broken Cycle by A. Bertram Chandler Page B

drive on his console, his gloved fingers clumsy. He looked down, realized that the pilot lights of the machine—which he had left ticking over in neutral gear—were all out. Somehow the drive had stopped.

    He jiggled switches frantically.

    Nothing happened.

    It refused to restart.

    It was . . . dead.

    It was . . . .

    He . . . .

Chapter 14

    "Wake up!" an insistent voice seemed to be saying. "Wake up! Wake up!" And somebody was shaking him, gently at first, then violently. Shaking him? The entire boat was being jolted, to a disturbing rattle of loose equipment "Your air!" went on that persistent voice. "Your helmet!"

    Grimes was gasping. The suit's air tank must be very close to exhaustion. He realized that he was no longer in the pilot's chair but sprawled prone on the deck. He had no memory of having gotten there. He rolled slowly and clumsily on to his side, got a hand to his helmet visor, opened it. He gulped breath greedily. The boats too-often-recycled atmosphere tasted like wine. He wanted just to enjoy the luxury of it, but there were things to do. That voice—whose was it? where was it coming from?—was still trying to tell him something, but he ignored it. He crawled to where Una was lying and with fumbling hands twisted and lifted her helmet off. Her face had a bluish tinge. She seemed to have stopped breathing.

    "Look to your mate!" came the unnecessary order.

    Grimes lay down beside her, inhaled deeply, put his mouth on hers. He exhaled, slowly and steadily. He repeated the process. And again. And again . . . . Then, suddenly, she caught her breath in a great, shuddering gasp. He squatted there, looking down at her anxiously. She was breathing more easily now, and the blueness was fading from her skin. Her eyes nickered open and she stared up, at first without awareness.

    Then she croaked faintly, "What's . . . . What's happening?"

    "I wish I knew," he whispered. "I wish I knew!"

    He got shakily to his feet, turned to address whom ever—or whatever—it was that had been talking to him. But, save for the girl and himself, there was nobody in the boat. He remembered, then, the sleep-inducing humming noise. The voice, like it, was probably some sort of induction effect.

    He asked, "Where are you?"

    "Here," came the answer.

    An invisible being? Such things were not unknown.

    "Who are you?"

    "Panzen."

    "Are you . . . invisible?"

    "No."

    "Then where are you?"

    "Here."

    Grimes neither believed nor disbelieved in ghosts. And there was something remarkably unghostlike about that voice. "Where the hell is here? "he demanded irritably.

    "Where I am." And then, with more than a touch of condescension, "You are inside me."

    "Call me Jonah!" snarled Grimes. He walked unsteadily forward to the control cabin, stared out through the ports. The frightening simile that flashed at once into his mind was that the boat was like a tiny insect trapped in the web of an enormous spider. Outside the circular transparencies was a vast complexity of gleaming girder and cable, intricately intermeshed. And beyond the shining metal beams and filaments was darkness—the utter blackness of interstellar Space.

    Una Freeman joined him, falling against him, holding tightly on to him.

    She whispered, "Panzen . . . Who . . . what is Panzen?"

    "I am Panzen," came the reply.

    They were in a ship, decided Grimes, one of the strange, skeleton spheres. He could see the shapes of machines among the metal latticework, he could make out a complexity of huge, spinning, precessing gyroscopes that could only be an interstellar drive unit. He asked, "Are you the Captain? The Master?"

    "I am the Master."

    "What is the name of your ship?"

    "I am the ship."

    Grimes had served under commanding officers who identified closely with their vessels, who never, when talking with a planetary Aerospace Control, used the first person plural. Somehow he did not think that this was such a case.

    He said