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off the body field, not caring if the ship suddenly decided to leap into ward
rive and spatter him all over the bulkhead. Redfaced, he started scrambling
over broken tubing and sparkling short-circuits up to where Truzenzuzex lay in
his own battle couch. His own muscles refused to respond and he damned his
arms which persisted in slipping off grips like damn hemp. He hadn't realized,
in the comfort of HIPnosis, how badly the little vessel had been damaged. Torn
sheeting and wavering filaments floated everywhere, indicating a loss of
shipboard gravity. But the pod had remained intact and he could breathe
without his hoses.
The thranx's position was longer and lower than his own, since the insect's
working posture was lying prone and facing forward. Therefore the first
portion of his fellow ensign's body that Bran encountered was the
valentine-shaped head with its brilliant, multifaceted compound eyes, The
familiar glow in them had dimmed but not disappeared. Furiously he began to
massage the b-thorax above the neck joint in an operation designed to
stimulate the thranx's open circulatory system. He kept at it despite the
cloying wetness that insisted on floating into his eyes.
Throwing his head back at least made the blood from the gash on his forehead
drift temporarily backwards.
'Tru! C'mon, mate! Move, curse you! Throw up, do something, dammit!' The irony
of trying to rouse his companion so that he could then be conscious when the
Aann disruption beams scattered their component parts over the cosmos did not
interrupt his movements.
Truzenzuzex began to stir feebly, the hissing from the breathing spicules
below Bran's ministering hands pulsing raggedly and unevenly.
'Mmmfff! Ooooo! My friend, I hereby inform all and sundry that a blow on the
cranium is decidedly not conducive to literate cognitation! A little lower and
to the right, please, is where it itches. Alas, I fear I am in for a touch of
the headache.'
He raised a tmehand slowly to his head and Bran could see where a loose bar of
something bad struck hard after the body-field had lapsed. There was an ugly
dark streak in the insect's azure exoskeleton. The thranx organism was
exceptionally tough, but very vulnerable to deep cuts and punctures because of
their open circulatory system. When their armour remained intact they were
well-nigh invulnerable. Much more so than their human counterparts. The same
blow probably would have crushed Bran's skull like eggshell. The great eyes
turned to face him.
'Ship-brother, I notice mild precipitation at the corners of your oculars,
differing in composition from the fluid which even yet is leaking from your
bead. I know the meaning of such a production and assure you it is not
necessary. Other than injury to my immaculate and irresistible beauty, I am
quite all right ... I think.
'Incidentally, it occurs to me that we both have been alive entirely too long,
As I appear to be at least momentarily incapacitated I would appreciate it if
you would cease your face-
raining, get back to your position, and find out just what the hell is going
on.'
Bran wiped the tears from the corners of his eyes. What Tru said was perfectly
correct. He had been so absorbed in reviving the insect be bad failed to
notice that by ail reasonable standards of warfare they should both have been
dead several minutes now. The AAnn might be unimaginative fighters, but they
were efficient. He scrambled back to his seat and flipped emergency power to
the battle screen. What he saw there stunned his mind if not his voice.
'Oooo-wowwww! Pibbixxx! Go get 'em Sixth, baybee!'
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'Will you cease making incomprehensible mouth-noises and tell me what's taking
place? My eyes are not fully focused yet, but I can see that you are bouncing
around in your seat in a manner that is m no way related to ship actions.'
Bran was too far gone to hear. The scene on the screen was correspondingly
weak, but fully visible none the less. It resembled a ping-pong game being
played in zero gravity by two high-
speed computers. The AAnn force was in full retreat, or rather, the remainder
of it was. The bright darts of Commonwealth stingships were weaving in and out
of the retreating pattern with characteristic unpredictability. Occasionally
a brief, terse flare would denote the spot where another ship had departed the
plane of material existence. And a voice drifted somehow over the roaring,
screaming babble on the communicator, a voice that could belong to no one but
Major
Gonzalez. Over and over and over it repeated the same essential fact in
differing words.
'What happened what happened what happened what...?' [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]