Free The Fenris Device by Brian Stableford Page B

nobody.”
    â€œIt’s all nobody so far as you’re concerned,” he told me. “You’ll live, and so will your friends.”
    â€œCount me down,” I said to Johnny. I had already matched periods with the planet. I was directly above the spot that Stylaster had wanted me to aim for the day before. It was a real hell-hole down there.
    Johnny was counting through the fifties.
    â€œAnd you better all remember one thing more,” I said. “I’m going down fast—I’ll have to keep the shields up. But there’s so much mass in the atmosphere I’m bound to lose one, maybe two, even in a matter of seconds. The rest will be stripped when I pull my daredevil trick at the bottom. Now, when the shields finally go the gravity will go with them for a second or two. There’ll be a down all right, but it won’t be the down you’re used to. Make sure that you’re all absolutely secure. Especially you, Maslax. I don’t want you to hit that trigger by accident.”
    â€œWe’re all strapped in like good boys and girls,” the little man assured me.
    Johnny reached the twenties.
    â€œWe’re on our marks,” I said, and I gritted my teeth to keep from saying anything more.
    I powered the cannons, building up thrust and loading the flux, and I flipped the ship. Down we went, plummeting like a stone, faster and faster.
    It was only a matter of seconds, but seconds can be terribly long and terribly full. I had the wind to help me and he would do his utmost, but nerves are nerves, and the ship’s nerve-net was designed to be sensitive—sensitive enough to alert me to mass densities many orders of magnitude smaller than those I would be crashing through. It was going to hurt me—and it was going to hurt the ship. Coming up might be a lot easier than going down, but in a crippled ship it could be just as fatal. But I intended to bring back the Swan , no matter what Maslax’s plans might be.
    Johnny reached zero and we plunged. The drive screamed, but the flux was in perfect synch. I had the web down low to cover the deration. Our effective mass was tremendous, but that only meant we were falling faster. I didn’t care about mass because I didn’t intend maneuvering except once. I was betting my whole stack on one turn.
    It was like diving into an acid bath. An acid bath with an undertow. I began to burn, and without the passage of any subjective time at all I was consumed by flames. At the same time I felt the hands of the atmosphere smash into the shielding, millions of them, chopping it away, shattering the force-lines into Hinders. All of it hit me at once. It was like dying.
    There was only one instant in that dive. I don’t know how many times the clock ticked, how many times my heart beat, because from the moment we hit the air I was no longer in the same world as the clock and the heart. I was suspended in eternity, blasted right out of body and mind by the sheer power that poured into the ship and which the reaction poured back into me. I was flying with the Swan ’s body, feeling with the Swan ’s senses, and I knew that if the Swan had had any mind, any identity except for me she’d have destroyed me for putting her through that dive. But I was she, and she couldn’t destroy me because I wouldn’t let her destroy herself. I held her still, plasma, discharge, and mind, and the wind held the stillness, and down we went, apparently forever.
    Something inside me was still tuned to the instruments, but I have no idea what it was or how. Somewhere, there was a trigger to pull me out of the dive, but the trigger had to pull itself because all the “I” that I knew about was totally bound up with that wave of agony and that shearing shield.
    We lost one, vanished just like that, gone. There was no bleeding of either power or balance. There was just no time. We were suspended in time and balance. The