Free Tachyon Web by Christopher Pike

Then the bottom seemed to drop out of Excalibur , the computer had automatically given up maintaining the ship’s gravity, no doubt trying to preserve every last morsel of energy.
    A tornado swept Eric’s sense of balance, and he felt nauseous. The white wig he was supposed to wear swiped the side of his head. Another bell began to yell, and this time Sammy was unable to reach the switch to turn it off. The thunder swelled to the roar of a volcano, Eric tasted blood in his mouth. He had bitten his tongue, or his lip, or both.
    Then the lights went out. Someone screamed.
    Then there was nothing. No movement, no sound. Nothing.
    The lights came back on.
     
    Eric looked at his friends. They looked at him. Naturally, Strem was the first one to relocate his mouth. His words came out as muffled whispers. Their eardrums were throbbing.
    “So I guess we’re still alive,” he said.
    Eric smiled and nodded and felt his neck crack. Cleo’s suitcase floated by his head. They were in free fall, and a part of him wanted to fly. Smoke wafted from a minor electrical discharge in the ceiling. The control console was a blanket of red lights. It did not matter. Strem’s guess was right.
    Sammy lifted the shields from the windows. All sense of perspective turned inside out. A long curving silver wall now hung above Excalibur , which his intellect could only tenuously connect with the tiny objects he had been studying in the holographic cube minutes before. This was the edge of one of the Kaulikans’ ships’ three rotating wheels. A sparkling purple jet fanned out behind them and he felt its warmth in his chest.
    “They’re really here,” Jeanie whispered in awe.
    Sammy took a quick inspection of the Kaulikan ship and began to turn Excalibur on her tail. The colossal wheel floated closer. Its white hull was virtually seamless, and Eric wondered if entry would be as easy as it had sounded from millions of miles away. He did spot, however, a small antenna dish – which in all possibility was bigger than their own ship – and watched as it drifted along a sweeping arc as the wheel spun. Then the antenna appeared to halt as Sammy synchronized their drift with that of the huge hub. They glided inwards toward a shadow cast by the curled rim of the bright metal walls.
    “Think they know we’re here?” Strem breathed.
    “Your guess is as good as mine,” Sammy replied. Then he abruptly leaned forward, repeatedly pressing a single button.
    “What is it?” Eric asked.
    “One second,” Sammy said.
    The curve of the wheel’s rim opened into a dim hollow. Excalibur had been constructed in space and was not designed to land. Technically, this was a docking and not a landing, but as they were going under the influence of external gravity, it would have been nice to have shock pads. If they didn’t touch down gently, the bang would reverberate throughout the Kaulikan craft.
    “We have a problem,” Sammy said finally. “Our dampers are fused in place.”
    “Does that mean we can’t keep the drive on?” Strem asked.
    “It means we can’t turn it off,” Sammy said. “Not and restart it. I can idle the graviton flux and hold us in place but we’ll just keep heating.”
    “For how long?” Cleo asked.
    “Until we blow up,” Sammy said.
    “How much time do we have?” Eric asked.
    “If we can keep a minimum idle,” Sammy said, “maybe six hours, maybe less. I was really hoping to turn most of our systems off.”
    Eric hardly felt the touchdown on the inside rim of the rotating wheel. The hovering wigs and clothes settled to the floor. Looking straight up, through a gape cut by the shadowed rim and the reflecting hull, he saw a dozen nearby Kaulikan ships, much more widely spaced than he could have imagined from his earlier examination of the fleet. Excalibur was only a needle in a spread-out haystack, and it gave him reason to hope they had not been spotted.
    They undid their belts, stood and stretched – even Sammy, who they