Free Outward Borne by R. J. Weinkam Page B

want to think
about that again and refused to say any more.
    Zep was horrified by Kit’s tale,
but hopeful. If they could get to that room it might be possible to
capture one of the Hags, but her hopes were dashed when Kit claimed
the room was far away. How that could be was beyond imagining.
Their habitat was already larger than anything she had ever seen.
How could it be in a space that was much larger still?
    The day after they put Kit on that
table to do whatever they did, they came again. She was put to
sleep somehow, but woke a little when they moved her. She was still
weak and sore from the day before, but could see what was
happening. One of the rolling table bots put a mask over her face
that provided breathing air. Perhaps the air outside the laboratory
was no good. It took her out of the room and down a ramp into some
very large space; it was the empty insides of an unfinished
building. It was too dark to see the ceiling, and it was cold. A
large black pipe came down through the above and into the floor. It
looked very old and had stains down the side. When the cart got
near the tube, some doors opened into a much smaller space and it
went in there. The doors closed with a hiss and the chamber started
to accelerate upwards. It seemed to be moving very fast, it shook
and there were scraping sounds as if it were passing things by. It
was strange. Kit claimed that she began to feel very light, the
straps across her body started to float around, the whole room
stopped and seemed to turn around and it began to go down, then,
after a while, everything became heavy again.
    Kit was not very clear about what
happened next, she might have fallen asleep, but she had the
impression that she was taken a short way through a very dark area
until she came to a large building that was standing inside another
huge space. It was our habitat.
    Zep was stunned. Where were they?
Most believed that they had been lifted into the sky, because that
is where the lander came from. Zep did not know, but she never
imagined that there could be anything so immensely large. She never
had a real plan to attack the Hags, but she had assumed they would
be nearby. Now she would need to find them in a large unknown
complicated place. How could she do that?
    Zep went slowly to her room to think about
what Kit had told her. All the Cathians had feared that the missing
people were dead, but it was a shock to hear they had been killed
by some experiment. What were the Hags after? When would it stop?
Why had they impregnated Kit? Did they want the colony to survive,
or were they all in some type of experiment that would end in
death?
    Sut and Pok came in. The robots
that they had captured had been taken to bits and were being
examined to see if they held anything of use. Zep was not
interested. She told them what she had learned about the ship and
how large it was. It was clear that Zep thought they would never be
able to find the Hags or get to them.
    Pok was sorely disappointed. She
had come to hope that if they could capture one of the Hags they
could gain some advantage. She sat down next to Zep with some
resignation. Pok thought they should try to somehow lure the Hags
into this habitat, but Sut was being silly and proposed that they
ask the Hags to take them there. Sut had little faith in Zep’s
ideas and was not so upset to see the thing go bust.
    Looking up at her, Zep ignored the
sarcasm and wondered how, how could we do that? There was something
about Sut’s quip that stuck in Zep’s mind, but she had not quite
sorted it out. The crewmates kept meeting and Zep kept probing the
idea that Sut had unintentionally surfaced. Day by day, they worked
through the problem until it became a plan. It was a plan that the
three had to follow by themselves. The Cathians on the Outward were
disorganized and still unwilling to follow anyone who had not held
the old recognized authority.
    Pok went to the bright room to
begin their plan. She knew all of these