Free The Stardance Trilogy by Spider & Jeanne Robinson Page B

left. We strapped into our acceleration couches to await ignition. There ensued a long and heavy silence, compounded of a mutual sadness that bravado could only have underlined. We did not look at each other, as though our combined sorrow might achieve some kind of critical mass. Grief struck us dumb, and I believe that remarkably little of it was self-pity.
    But then a whole lot of time seemed to have gone by. Quite a bit of intercom chatter came faintly from the next compartment, but ours was not in circuit. At last we began to talk desultorily, discussing the probable critical reaction to Mass Is A Verb , whether analysis was worthwhile or the theater really dead, anything at all except future plans. Eventually there was nothing else to talk about, so we shut up again. I guess I’d say we were in shock.
    For some reason I came out of it first. “What the hell is taking them so long?” I barked irritably.
    Tom started to say something soothing, then glanced at his watch and yelped. “You’re right. It’s been over an hour.”
    I looked at the wall clock, got hopelessly confused until I realized it was on Greenwich time rather than Wall Street, and realized he was correct. “Chrissakes,” I shouted, “the whole bloody point of this exercise is to protect Shara from overexposure to free fall! I’m going forward.”
    “Charlie, hold it.” Tom, with two good hands, unstrapped faster than I. “Dammit, stay right there and cool off. I’ll go find out what the holdup is.”
    He was back in a few minutes, and his face was slack. “We’re not going anywhere. Cox has orders to sit tight.”
    “What? Tom, what the hell are you talking about?”
    His voice was all funny. “Red fireflies. More like bees, actually. In a balloon.”
    He simply could not be joking, which meant he flat out had to have gone completely round the bend, which meant that somehow I had blundered into my favorite nightmare, where everyone but me goes crazy and begins gibbering at me. So I lowered my head like an enraged bull and charged out of the room so fast the door barely had time to get out of my way.
    It just got worse. When I reached the door to the bridge I was going much too fast to be stopped by anything short of a body block, and the crewmen present were caught flatfooted. There was a brief flurry at the door, and then I was on the bridge, and then I decided that I had gone crazy too, which somehow made everything all right.
    The forward wall of the bridge was one enormous video tank—and just enough off center to faintly irritate me, standing out against the black deep as clearly as cigarettes in a darkroom, there truly did swarm a multitude of red fireflies.
    The conviction of unreality made it okay. But then Cox snapped me back to reality with a bellowed, “ Off this bridge, Mister. ” If I’d been in a normal frame of mind it would have blown me out the door and into the farthest corner of the ship; in my current state it managed to jolt me into acceptance of the impossible situation. I shivered like a wet dog and turned to him.
    “Major,” I said desperately, “what is going on?”
    As a king may be amused by an insolent varlet who refuses to kneel, he was bemused by the phenomenon of someone failing to obey him. It bought me an answer. “We are confronting intelligent alien life,” he said concisely. “I believe them to be sentient plasmoids.”
    I had never for a moment believed that the mysterious object which had been leap-frogging around the solar system since I came to Skyfac was alive . I tried to take it in, then abandoned the task and went back to my main priority. “I don’t care if they’re eight tiny reindeer; you’ve got to get this can back to Earth now .”
    “Sir, this vessel is on Emergency Red Alert and on Combat Standby. At this moment the suppers of every one in North America are getting cold unnoticed. I will consider myself fortunate if I ever see Earth again. Now get off my bridge.”
    “But