Free Crystal Universe - [Crystal Singer 03] - Crystal Line by Anne McCaffrey Page B

fractals,” Lars added, sounding oddly languid. “I could watch—hey, what’d you do that for?” She had given him such a push that he had nearly lost his balance.
    “You were becoming thralled. Junk’s hypnotic,” Killa said, her voice sharp. “Maybe even addictive.”
    “
Should
we give it crystal then?” Lars asked, his tone crisp and alert again.
    “That’s what we came to do. So let’s do it!”
    “All the crystals to old Hungry Junk?”
    “No, just one,” Killashandra said. “Let’s see what happens.”
    She pointed to a large swag of the Junk that was flowing toward the floor. Lars took the largest crystal, the B-flat, and, holding it in the calipers, inserted the blue. Junk obligingly flowed over it.
    The two crystal singers held their breath as they watched.
    “Yup!”
Killashandra let out a triumphant crow. “It can’t eat crystal.”
    “It can’t?” Brendan asked. “What’s it doing?”
    “Holding it in its cheek,” Lars said flippantly, grinning at Killashandra, “having a good taste.” The Junk was rippling back and forth across the crystal insertion, going through all the colors of its visible spectrum without altering the outline of the cube. Then it seemed to push the cube upward, toward the crown in the center of the ceiling. Though apparently drawn deep into the opalescence, the crystal patently retained its integrity.
    “Now what?” Brendan asked when the singers had nothing further to report.
    “Look!” In astonishment Killashandra pointed to the half-open sack of crystals at her feet. They pulsed from midblue to dark and then paled. “Damn!” She dropped to her knees beside them. “Are they singing? Can’t hear a bloody thing.”
    Tentatively Lars placed the tip of his gloved finger on the faceted surface of the nearest one.
    “Vibration all right!” He grinned in triumph. “Communications established?”
    “Could be, but pulsations and color alterations are no more intelligible than drum codes—until a code or even a language can be established. And semanticists we are not,” Killashandra said, a degree of regret in her voice.
    “Then let us by all means leave it to the experts,” Brendan said. “Around such an unknown quantity, I find that I get almost as nervous for you as I do for Boira.”
    “Why, thanks, Bren,” Killashandra said, touched by the ship’s concern. “But I don’t think we’re in any danger.”
    “You are edible,” he replied succinctly.
    Killashandra laughed and Lars grinned at her.
    “I wonder if any of the other Junk has expanded.”
    “We only fed this one,” she replied. “Let’s go see.”
    Lars picked up the remaining crystal, which continued to glow until they had entered the airlock and Brendan had lifted from the immediate vicinity of Big Hungry. They checked the other locations and found that no other formation had increased as significantly as Hungry Junk, although all had begun to flow downward again.
    “Got anything on board to feed the starving?” Lars asked.
    “In point of fact, I do,” Brendan said. “Penwyn had nonrecyclable wastes he did not care to dispose of on-planet …”
    “Dirty stuff?”
    “Obliging I am; stupid I’m not! No, most of it’s clean litter from the spacefield. I thought we might use the refuse to better effect.”
    “Indeed we can,” Killa said, pleased. “I think the Junk’s starved too long.”
    Lars was dubious. “We might be making more problems …”
    “We might,” she said with a shrug, “but I can’t
not.
”
    “I’ve kept a file on the metallic and organic content of what we’re feeding it,” Brendan said.
    “Then we do a comparison, a standard scientific practice,”Lars replied, dismissing his reservations. “We feed four metallic and four organic.”
    It was tiring work, even in .7 gravity, distributing and feeding eight very hungry opalescents. As they trudged back to the 1066, both singers felt a curious satisfaction in the heightened glow and