Free Investments by Walter Jon Williams Page B

children, proud parents, the pet dog and the stuffed Torminel doll. He raised his head, shook it violently to clear his mind, and scanned the other stations. Nothing seemed to warrant his attention. No alarms sounded, no violent colors flashed on the displays.
    He called up Warrant Officer Chamcha’s game onto his own display, saw the comprehensive rate at which Chamcha was losing, and sighed. Perhaps when Chamcha conceded, Severin would challenge Chamcha to a game of hyper-tourney, or something. Anything to keep awake.
    While waiting for Chamcha’s position to collapse he called up the navigation screen. Surveyor, heading straight from Wormhole One to Wormhole Two, was well outside of the normal trade routes that ended at Chee.
    No navigational hazards threatened.
    Severin looked at Chamcha. Hadn’t he lost yet?
    Something flashed on the sensor screens, and Severin looked down at his display, just as the lights and the display itself went off, then on . . .
    “Status check!” Severin shouted, as the lights dimmed again, then flashed bright.
    Warrant Officer Lily Bhagwati gave a sudden galvanic leap on her acceleration couch. There were shrill panicky highlights in her voice. “Power spike on Main Bus One! Spike on Main Bus Two!”
    Severin’s fingers flashed to his display, tried to get the ship’s system display onto his board.
    The lights went off, then returned. The image on Severin’s displays twisted, slowed.
    How very interesting, he thought distinctly.
    “Breaker trip on Main Bus One!” Bhagwati said. “Main engine trip! Emergency power!”
    Whatever was happening to the ship was happening too fast for Bhagwati’s reports to keep up. Automatic circuits were responding to protect themselves faster than the Terran crew could possibly act. Severin did catch the words “main engine trip” and had time to register their impact before the all-pervading rumble of the engine ceased, and he began to drift free of his couch.
    He reached for his webbing to lash himself in and every light and every display in the room went dark, leaving him in pitch blackness save for the afterimage of his displays slowly fading from his retinas.
    “Emergency Circuit One breaker trip!” Bhagwati shouted unnecessarily.
    In the ensuing silence Severin heard the distant whisper of the ventilation slowly fade, like the last sigh of a dying man.
    This never happens, he told himself.
    And because it never happened, there were no standard procedures to follow. An absolutely cold startup of all ship systems, including the ones that had been mysteriously damaged?
    This also never happens, he thought.
    “Everyone stay in your cages!” he said. “I don’t want you drifting around in the dark.”
    He tapped Lady Liao’s ring on the arm of his couch while he tried to think what to do next. Little flickers of light, like fireflies, indicated here and there where battery-powered flashlights waited in their chargers. These weren’t intended for emergencies, because the emergency lighting wasn’t supposed to fail— rather the lights were intended getting illumination into odd corners of the displays that were undergoing repair.
    The flickering lights were inviting. Severin thought he should probably get a flashlight.
    “I’m going to get a light,” he said. “Everyone else stand by.”
    His fingers released the webbing that he’d never quite fastened down, then he unlocked his display and pushed it above his head, out of the way, a maneuver that also pushed him more deeply into his couch. Now free, he reached out, found one of the struts of his cage, and tugged gently till his head and torso floated free of the cage.
    With careful movements, he jackknifed to pull his legs out of the cage, a movement that rolled the cage slightly. He straightened his body and his feet contacted the floor.
    He couldn’t push off the floor to approach the flashlights: that would send him the wrong way. Instead he flung the acceleration cage with both