Voices Of Reason
Chapter 11
Jool hurried into Command followed closely by D’Argo, who slowly lowered his Qualta rifle as they reached the
safety of the chamber. They both opened their mouths to say something, but stopped as they saw the obvious
tension between the couple. John was wearing his most stubborn expression but D’Argo thought there was an
underlying desperation that was pleading with Aeryn. She looked ready to resort to physical violence, driven as
much by anxiety as anger.
“Aeryn, what choice do we have right now?” John asked her in a near whisper.
“What’s going on?” D’Argo asked also in hushed tones, afraid to set something off.
“She’s inviting you to explain the situation to the others, John,” came the voice inside his head. He watched
Aeryn flinch as he listened to the internal noise.
“Either you give it to me absolutely verbatim Hood-Head, or you’re fired.”
A long sigh preceded the second translation. “Why don’t you go ahead and tell them what you’re proposing to
do, John?” The hair on the back of his neck stood on end as Scorpius’ voice did an uncanny imitation of
Aeryn’s inflections.
She was still waiting, nearly irate. There was a painful block of ice in his chest, frozen in place by her anger
and concern. He knew there was love behind it, amplifying her emotions, but he couldn’t back down. They had
to do something -- anything -- to improve the overall situation. He looked primarily at D’Argo and said simply,
“Scorpius is Sebacean.”
It took Jool less time to figure it out, and she gasped when she realized what he was already doing. She hadn’t
been there for the full emotional wrenching of the days when the neuro-chip hijacked his brain, but she had
heard about the outcome and what it had cost Crichton -- and everyone else on board. She’d been carefully
warned about what he still carried in his mind, words of caution intermixed with the tones of compassion.
D‘Argo broke in before she could object. “John, you can’t be serious. You’d be giving up control again!” His
entire body went rigid at the thought of even the residual Scorpius personality having any influence on
Crichton’s behavior. “How would you even know if he was translating correctly?” He remembered that John
couldn’t understand his objections, and looked in confusion between the two of them, seeking another way to
translate his fears.
John saw D’Argo’s muscles contract, saw him draw himself up in what looked like anger. He got ready to either
speak or run, but Jool was talking to them all emphatically. He didn’t relax, keeping one eye on D’Argo, but he
tried to watch Jool and Aeryn for reactions as well.
“This may all be unnecessary. Perhaps we could all act like civilized beings for just a microt. I called D’Argo
and asked him to bring me to see Crichton because I’ve modified some translator microbes and there’s a
chance they might work.” Everyone seemed to be watching everyone else at the same time. Jool was trying to
keep an eye on Aeryn for her reaction, but was trying to stay turned toward John so he might have a chance to
infer what she was telling the others.
Awkward silence reigned when she finished. The room seemed to hold its breath. It was John who moved first.
He looked at Aeryn, saw that she knew she would need to repeat whatever had just been said and was simply
refusing. She shook her head at him.
Ever since John had first encountered Scorpius, it seemed as if his entire life had been filled with torture of
various types. Even when he hadn’t been suffering physically, those around him had been forced to watch his
gradual personal destruction. She didn’t want him relying on any portion of that half-breed’s mentality. There
had already been enough screams in the night from his room without inviting the apparition to visit all day.
Jool watched the standoff for only microts before her patience wore thin. She broke the deadlock by stepping
next to Crichton and holding up an injector for him to see, hoping he could form the entire bridge to a
conclusion without more information.
“What are the chances that this will work?” Aeryn asked. Her leaping hopes provided a chink into her armor of
uncooperativeness.
“What will work?” John cued in almost immediately. Aeryn relented slightly and told him what Jool was offering,
and grudgingly repeated the rest.
Jool -->Aeryn-->Scorpy answered Aeryn’s question. “I don’t know enough about transgenic manipulation of
microbial forms to predict whether this will be successful. I’ve tried to adjust the microbes with enough of John’s
DNA that they won’t set off the immune reaction, but it meant radically altering the microbes themselves.”
“Do you know anything about this stuff, Harvey?” Scorpius’ genius couldn’t be denied, only its motivation and its
application.
“No, I don’t,” the voice sounded bored and put-out.
“Go ahead and give it a try, Jool.” She was still standing beside him, so she let her hand drop and punched
the injector into the side of his thigh.
“Nice technique,” he complained, rubbing the muscle, feeling a tingle run up his leg and then disappear. He
waited for one of the expectant faces to utter something, hope springing up unbidden to overfill his chest and
banish reason from his mind.
After several microts of waiting, Jool answered his complaint, “The microbes colonize better if they can draw
nutrients from a muscle mass before they move into the brain stem.” They all watched his face and knew it
hadn’t worked.
“Anything, John?” D’Argo stepped closer and laid a hand on his shoulder, offering what comfort he could,
trying to make a connection.
“Hey Big D. Not even a syllable,” his voice shook a little then steadied out. “Let’s get back to the other
problem.” He shoved the huge mass of disappointment down inside and stepped toward the strategy table,
intending to look at the new data. A huge bolt of starlight exploded in his head, accompanied by what felt like
an implosion of his skull, crushing his brain. He felt his knees and palms hit the deck, and hunched there
hanging on to consciousness by a thin strand. It began to pass and he wheezed, painfully dragging air back
into lungs which had emptied explosively when the bolt hit. It was gone almost as quickly as it had come.
“Are you all right, John? What happened?” The bored voice parodied the high-pitched concern in Aeryn’s
voice.
“Help me up, I’m better now. It’s just that Jool got it right this time.” D’Argo grabbed him under his arms and
hauled him to his feet. John reflected that his big friend had been doing that a bit too often lately. He’d have to
see about cutting back. His head still spun and a silly laugh escaped him as he was brought unsteadily to his
feet.
D’Argo didn’t let go until John was propped on a seat, half lying on the table. He looked up at Aeryn. “Try it
again.” The same clipped, jumbled consonants as before, with no attempt to hide the concern. “Sorry kids, still
no change.” He looked down at the slow drip of blood onto his forearm and realized his nose was bleeding.
“But those little dudes sure tried real hard. Man, those were the Pro-Bowl linebackers of all microbes.” He
hiccupped once as his nervous system stopped shivering.
Jool stood frozen, aghast at what she had done to him. “See I told you this was how it was done. Much better.”
He tried hard to make a joke out of it. He looked around and Aeryn was gone. Jool’s shocked answer would
have to be inferred. “Don’t worry about it, keep working. If you could find another line of research though, I’d
appreciate it.” He grabbed the sleeve of his T-shirt, intending to wipe the blood off, but Aeryn reappeared at a
half run carrying some clean cloths and handed one to him.
D‘Argo-->Aeryn-->Harvey said, “D’Argo is going to take Jool back to the lab and then he’ll come back up here.”
John nodded at them over his fistful of towel.
Chiana entered Command before anyone could leave, spotting the stained towel held by Crichton right away.
“What happened? Did you hit him again, D’Argo?” Aeryn raised her voice and aimed a quick volley at the
Nebari.
“Did you want the entire soap opera, John?”
“You know I don’t like ad-libbing, Scorpy. Either stick to the script or shut up.” The clone went quiet.
“Pilot, can we get back to business and take a look at that latest data from Moya?”
The hologram appeared, with Moya in the center this time. The singularity appeared as a fixed point off to one
side. Multicolored bands represented gravitational flux patterns and shifts in spatial distortions wove an
intricate mesh around the Leviathan. John noticed thin and thick patches in the arrangement, mimicking the
spiraling funnel of debris. Several were quite close to their present location. He stuck his finger into a
holographic rift.
“Pilot, is that a drop in gravity?” He didn’t take his eyes of the slowly shifting pattern as he listened to an
extended flood of Pilot‘s musical voice, but Aeryn’s voice didn’t chime in after Pilot’s. He looked up and she
looked like she had mental gas pains. Whatever Pilot had said it had been too much for her. “Pilot, is that a
drop in just gravity?” No. He didn’t need a translation for that answer. “But the gravitational force does drop
off there?” Yes. The tiny green leviathan was almost touching a gap in the swirling display as Moya stayed in
one place and the forces spun around her.
“I think everyone ought to grab on to something quick.”
* * * * *
Captain Hasman crouched in the open door to a storage area. His desperate jump had paid off, but he had
paid a steep price. He had tried to relax and roll when he landed, but had heard a sharp crack accompanied by
a skewering pain, and knew that he had broken an arm. He considered himself lucky that it hadn’t been a leg
instead. He was carrying the half-finished rifle in his good hand, the damaged one tucked into his belt. He had
added splint materials to the bottom of his list, but since he didn’t expect to survive his next offensive, he didn’t
care as long as his arm didn’t get in his way.
He hadn’t found any more weapon parts, but he had located a workshop that appeared to be used for
machining mechanoid components. He had found two more items that could be modified to add to his mutated
weapon. He listened carefully for DRDs as he one-handedly cobbled the strange looking rifle together. He did
a mental inventory. He needed a triggering device to act as an igniter, a stock or grip of some sort, and the
weapon would need a chakan oil cartridge. Then he could go hunting on more even terms.
He got up to leave and was thrown back into the shop, crashing down amidst rattling debris. Dren, what was
that? It was almost as bad as the first shockwave. Whatever was going on, this group of bandits seemed to be
in trouble, perhaps he could take advantage of that. He only needed to kill the pilot or mutilate its neural
connections and he should be able to destroy this ship and everyone on it.
* * * * *
“Is Moya all right?” D’Argo had to shout a little over the din as the last series of metallic shrieking began to die
away. The gravitational shock wave had not been as bad as the first one, but there had been two phases this
time. Moya had seemed to skip for a moment, like a thrown stone across water. Then she was jerked back
again, shackled before she could make a move toward freedom.
“There have been several ruptures in subsidiary neural connections, but she is otherwise unharmed.” Pilot’s
hologram appeared in the corner, and despite his calm tones they could see that his eyes were bugging out
more than normal, and his arms were flying about madly as he worked to stabilize the functions of his massive
host.
“Was there any change in Moya’s proximity to the singularity?” John was looking at the display again, his voice
a mixture of hope and conjecture. He looked at Aeryn but rather than repeat the answer, she held up her hand
with her thumb and forefinger barely apart. “Improvement?” Nod.
She wasn’t going to make this easy for him. She wasn’t going to let him use the clone any more than absolutely
necessary. “We’re not moving around the hole; it’s the distortions in space-time and the gravitational field,
which are being pulled and warped by the singularity. They’re like heavy twisted cables of force being dragged
by the spin in the middle. If we can hold out until another one hits … ” He knew it wasn’t enough to get loose,
but it might help.
The poltergeist thought teased him again. “Frell!” He needed time to think, to hunt down whatever his
subconscious was trying to tell him. “Let’s go repair those ruptures.” He wanted to let his mind focus on
something else. He had to trap that idea, and he hoped when he did it would turn out to be something useful.
“Someone want to come with me?”
* * * * *
Jool barely remembered to say anything to D’Argo as he made sure she was secure in the lab. Her attention
returned to the matter of helping John. This was the first opportunity for intellectual challenge she’d had since
waking up on board this floating collection of riff-raff. She had frelled up the first part by not anticipating the
reaction of Crichton’s immune system; she was determined to prove she could resolve the current difficulty.
She had done her best to change the structure of the microbes, but had only managed to render them
incapable of doing anything except cause the seizure she had witnessed only microts ago. The sample of
modified microbes slipped out of her shaking hands and smashed on the floor as she replayed the scene in her
head. She had assumed he was kidding yesterday when he had said everything around here hurt. She hadn’t
taken it seriously.
So if changing the microbes hadn’t worked, she would have to change John’s physiology instead … for the
second time. But eliminating the problem would mean completely erasing his immune responses and starting
over. She looked around the infirmary she had somehow inherited and didn’t see the kinds of equipment or
sterile safeguards that would make that a realistic approach.
* * * * *
John eased down out of the cramped shaft where he had been making another repair. He still couldn’t see
where he had left the small pile of tools, but prepared to toss the laser sealer in that general direction to free up
his second hand. It was suddenly removed from his grip, and he looked down to see Aeryn waiting for him.
“All done with yours?” he asked. She just nodded. She still wasn’t giving in. He wasn’t sure if it was that she
didn’t want him using the clone, or whether she herself didn’t want to talk to Scorpy. Aeryn would only translate
when there was no alternative, and the conversation passed beyond the capacity of hand signals. Her
reluctance had still been obvious when she had begun describing what repair was needed at this location.
He swung out of the shaft and landed with a thump next to her. “Anything else?” Head shake. He chewed on
his lower lip, trying to think of a way to convince her to communicate with him verbally. He finally shrugged and
said, “I still haven’t found my random thought. Let’s get back up to the others.” He had explained to her about
his elusive sprite, which was still flitting around the edge of his mind.
John paused to raise both arms over his head and stretched, leaning over backwards, easing cramps in his
shoulders and arms. The access shafts weren’t really built for someone his size. He didn’t know how big The
Builders had been, but it was a good bet they weren’t over six feet. He couldn’t imagine how D’Argo got into
some of them. He finished stretching and tucked his shirt back in where it had pulled loose. He picked up the
rest of the tools and looked up to find that Aeryn had already left.
He ran after her, and saw that once again she was angry. He’d had just about enough of this garbage for one
lifetime. He still didn’t understand what was setting her off. He tossed the tools into a corner and caught up
with her, grabbing her arm to swing her around.
“Aeryn, I’ve had enough of this bullshit. Tell me now what the frell is going on.” Head shake. She looked like
she was ready to hit him … or cry. He couldn’t tell which. “Aeryn, I can’t think straight about what’s going on
with Moya because I’m worried about what’s going on here.” He managed to stuff the frustration back down
inside, and got his voice back under control. “Please tell me why you’re angry at me.”
“I’m not angry at you, John, I’m mad at myself.” The laconic voice came nowhere near the impassioned
outburst from Aeryn. She turned her head away from him, refusing to watch as he shifted to listen to the clone,
but at least she didn’t move to leave.
“Harvey, take ten.”
“I beg your pardon, John? Take ten what?”
“Get lost. Hit the road. Take a long walk on a short wharf. Go away.”
The space in his head was empty. “Aeryn, he’s on a lunch break. He’s not here, I promise.”
She still didn’t say anything, just turned back to face him, tears beginning to slide down her cheeks. She didn’t
make any move to wipe them away, and he pulled his shirt loose again and gently wiped her face with the hem.
She ran her fingertips gently across his abdomen and he peered down to see that she was tracing the edges of
the huge blackening bruise that covered his entire midsection.
“THAT? That’s what you’re upset about?” his voice went up nearly to a squeak in amazement. “You think you
had something to do with that?” He was stunned. She took him by the wrists, extended his arms and turned his
palms up and then down, exposing all sides of his arms. He looked down, saw the mottling, and shook his
head. He pulled his hands loose and placed them on her shoulders, giving her a little shake.
“Aeryn, you did not do anything to cause that.” She shook her head, disagreeing. He tried to find the right
words. He had never been good at just admitting he was wrong, not even to Aeryn. “How many people do you
know who would deliberately choose to try to talk a Luxan out of hyper-rage?” She held up one finger and
began to look like she might be able to smile again. He could practically hear her saying, ‘All you ever do is
TALK!’ He still couldn’t bring himself to just say he had fouled up. “You didn’t do anything to cause this.”
He gave her a hug. “Can we finish …” she looked up with a gleam in her eyes, “… DISCUSSING this later?
When we aren’t about to get flushed down the world’s biggest porta-potty? … never mind that last one. It
doesn’t translate.” She nodded, still smiling even if a bit weakly, and they continued toward Command. John
mused that he had just had one of his better talks with Aeryn, but maybe that was because he was listening to
her so much harder now.
* * * * *
“Pilot, can you estimate how much longer before we get hit by the next gap in the field distortions?” John had
decided to divert to Pilot’s chamber instead of Command. Although Pilot’s expressions were difficult to read,
watching his reactions sometimes eliminated the need for translations.
Pilot-->Aeryn-->Scorpy replied, “An accurate estimate is not possible, Crichton, but the sensors indicate
approximately five arns.” Aeryn wasn’t flinching every time he listened to the clone now, but he was increasingly
unhappy with how accustomed he was becoming to the voice inside his psyche. He was beginning to
subconsciously merge the tone of the speaker’s voice with Harvey’s translation, forming a more accurate
gestalt of the conversation, and he didn’t like how fast he was adapting to the process.
“And how much longer before Moya runs out of steam?”
“Seven arns.”
He looked at Aeryn. “That doesn’t leave us any time for a second try.”
“Have you found the idea?” By resolving her own inner dilemma, Aeryn seemed to have found the strength to
allow him to use the clone to hear her.
“No, it’s still buzzing around at about Hetch A Million.” He rubbed his head with both hands, feeling the fatigue
beating at him from all sides. “Where are D’Argo and Chiana?”
He waited while she commed them and listened to the replies. “They just finished the other repairs and are
coming up here.”
“Good. Let’s see if some collective thinking can turn up something new or kick start my imagination. Should we
get Jool or Stark up here to kick in ideas?”
* * * * *
Hasman crept into the maintenance bay where his career had effectively ended. The place was a shambles,
parts and tools scattered everywhere by the blast of the shock grenades. He listened carefully but couldn’t
hear any DRDs. He scanned the walls and the ceiling for the yellow limpets but it all looked clear. He wove his
way through the jumble, watching for his last two parts. He was looking for anything that might let him finish his
weapon, no matter how ugly the result.
He saw a heap of cast off wooden scraps in a corner, swept his foot through them and immediately discovered
a block about the right size and shape for a stock and a grip. He grabbed some cabling off a bench to secure it
in place. He only needed one more part plus the chakan oil cartridge, and he was in business. A clear thought
struck him and he smiled. He knew where he could get that last component, and it was going to be poetic
justice.
* * * * *
John rolled over the consoles to rejoin his comrades as Jool and Stark entered the Den. He had been taking
another look at the sensor data, examining the thickening strands of gravitational and temporal distortions. It
had gotten worse in the past three arns, as the blackhole continued to reestablish its grip in the sector. The
total pull on Moya was the same, but the ride was only going to get rougher. She wasn’t going to survive
another shockwave if they didn’t make out with the help of the next break.
“Where’s Sparky?”
“He said he was busy, and not to disturb him again. I suspect he is cleaning out the food stores in preparation
for our destruction,” said Aeryn-->Scorpy.
“Who cares what the slug is doing. Why are we all here? Have Pilot or John thought of anything yet?”
D’Argo’s patience was being put to the test, and he had begun to pace from Pilot’s station to the edge of the
abyss.
“Chill out, big guy,” John watched the frustrated figure and its restrained need for physical expression. “I need
some brainstorming from the rest of you. I’m trying to kick start an idea here, and I figured just bouncing the
situation around again might help.”
Aeryn looked at him closely. She hadn’t had a chance to repeat D’Argo’s questions before he had answered.
John didn’t appear to have realized what he had just done, and was still deep in thought. He hadn’t quite
answered D’Argo’s question, but he had been frelling close.
“We need to get out when that gap arrives in five arns. That’s all the time we have left. We’re going to have a
split-microt break in the pull like the last shockwave. We need to find some way to get an extra kick in the
butt.”
He listened to the babble around him, the ebb and flow of discussion from his friends. His brain had finally quit
trying to pry sense out of the noises. It was becoming a little more like the familiar rumble of a tuned engine, or
the whine of power tools. It was a sound that meant something to him without specific details. They finally
turned back and Aeryn shook her head. She wasn’t refusing to translate -- there just wasn’t any information to
provide.
Power tools. Woof, woof, woof. Bigger, stronger, more voltage, more horsepower. A memory from his life on
Earth tackled his brain and he almost got a grip on the elusive thought. ‘Thank you, Tim Taylor,’ he thought to
himself, remembering a turbo-charged lawn tractor smashing through a fence.
“Pilot … ” He was torn between the developing image in his mind and the need to form words. “Is there anyway
we could … supercharge Moya’s drive system? Give her a way to generate a momentary extra bit of thrust to
break her out through the gravity rift long enough to starburst?”
John waited while Pilot gave a brief answer and Aeryn relayed it. “Pilot doesn’t understand your question.”
“I don’t know exactly what I’m looking for here either. Can we give her Geritol-extra, One-A-Day-Plus-Dilithium,
install an Oscillation Overthruster … ” John saw the faces around him change from thoughtful attention to
puzzled annoyance. He tried again, but without sounding like an infomercial. “Is there some sort of energy
charge or chemical or,” his voice rose with the frustration of trying to express something he could now envision
clearly but couldn’t explain to the others. “ … something like a Leviathan version of that drug from the gauntlet
worn by the Tavloids.”
Several voices barked at him at the same time. Aeryn turned towards him with a half disguised look of glee, but
he cut in before she could give it to him, “Tav-LEKS. Thank you, I got that one.” Everyone smiled at once. It
was a nice sight after so many arns of stress and depression.
D’Argo and Jool were the first to turn to Pilot and begin discussing whether they could implement John’s idea in
any way, but soon the others were involved and they all drew closer to Pilot’s consoles. John allowed himself to
be maneuvered away from the heated discussion. Even with the clone’s help he couldn’t keep up. Trying to
stay involved would only slow them down.
He ended with his back against one of Moya’s main support ribs, which arced from the invisible height of the
chamber’s ceiling down into the gloom of the central neural cluster below. He slid to the floor as he waited,
sitting with one foot tucked under the other leg, trying to remember if he had ever felt more exhausted. He
dumbly watched the discussion, observing the play of emotions, listening to the rise and fall of their voices.
Yes, come to think of it, there had been a time when he had hoped he would die from exhaustion, but the
beating had been almost entirely mental that time.
“They aren’t a particularly cohesive group, are they John?” The unprompted interjection startled him. It was
the first time the clone had spoken to him directly, outside of translating, in arns. It was almost as if his stray
thought had summoned him.
“Harvey, no one’s talking to you or me right now, leave me alone.”
“I am not a translator microbe, John. I am willing to be of assistance, but I will not simply disappear because
you chose not to partake in the discussion or need me to Take Ten.”
“Harvey, I’ve pushed you out once, I can do it again. If you want another shiner like the first, just stick around
and keep bugging me. I’m more than willing to try and cope with this without you, and if we spin into that black
waste hole it’ll just be one more spatial phenomena I get to observe on this sleigh-ride through Wonderland.”
“John, I don’t understand why this situation with the microbes is disturbing you so much -- “
“I am not disturbed by this, Harv.”
“ -- after all, you learned to cope without your eyesight for a few days when you were twelve didn’t you? After
that boy Russell Croughts injured you.”
“Russell didn’t injure me, it was an accident and he never meant for it to happen that …”
John’s mental discussion with the clone was left unfinished as he slid back to the incident he had just
mentioned. Deep in his mind the recalcitrant idea beckoned to him, eager to be resolved but not making it
easy. He dove into his memory, searching for the answer. It had been the summer after he turned twelve, and
he’d begun hanging out with a kid who lived a couple of blocks over.
Russell -- the other kids teased him and called him “Brussel Sprouts” -- was pretty much a nerd, but John had
found out that he had an uncanny knack for taking any toy or gadget with an engine or motor and boosting its
output. This was fantastic as far as he was concerned, since he wanted every one of his model rockets to go
higher, and between them they sent some really sailing. And Russell hadn’t been all that much of a geek once
he had gotten to know him.
The accident had happened when they had tried putting a new outlet valve on a water bottle rocket. Their
grade school calculations showed that it should have boosted the rocket over four times as high as the original
design, but it had gone off at an angle and somehow managed to nail him right between the eyes. He
remembered the desperate scramble to get clear, the impact, the panic. He’d been lucky they were working
with a water pressure design, instead of one of their solid fuel models, but he had still been without vision for
almost a week, waiting for the bruising and swelling to ease.
John had learned the sounds of his family during that interminable week. Learned to hear who was in each
room and what they were doing by aural input alone. He had lost a week of his summer vacation, but gained an
insight into perception instead. After that he could always tell exactly where his mother was and what she was
doing just by listening, which made the silence of that house all the more painful years later.
It wasn’t the sensory deprivation that had put his mind into high gear; it was the modified nozzle on the rocket.
It was the power boost of the Boeing 707 taking off when he was ten. It was taking one power output and
stuffing it into another form until it multiplied. The clone continued to talk, made it hard for him to visualize the
new image being created in his mind. Distracted at both ends, he was having trouble silencing the voice.
“Shut up Harvey, I’ve got a grip on that idea now and I need to think.”
“John, this situation is beyond …”
“Be quiet. I can’t think about this with you yammering away at me.”
“ -- and I really think you need to turn your mind toward …”
“Harvey, SHUT UP!”
It was only when everyone else turned to look at him that John realized his last bark at the clone hadn’t been
just in his head. He shook his head for a moment, a silent acknowledgement to the others of what he had just
done.
“Any luck with a solution so far?” he asked as he struggled back to his feet. Chiana and Stark were the closest
to him and they both moved to pull him up. John focused on the expressions worn by Pilot and D’Argo as he
moved back into the group. ‘The Duo of Doom,’ he thought, ‘the Permanent Pessimists -- sounds like a
wrestling tag-team,’ and their expressions did, in fact, reflect that the group had not come up with any ideas.
“Okay, I’ve got a really and truly bad idea this time, even for me. Pilot. Moya can’t starburst right now because
she’s using all of her energy just to stay in one place, right?”
His answer was clear without a translation.
“What would happen if we deliberately create a blockage in her amnexus system? She’d be forced to
decompensate, but would she be able to create and use starburst energy?”
Pilot -->Aeryn-->Harvey said, “She would be able to produce the energy and could release it into the starburst
chamber, but she still might not be able to coalesce the energy around her hull in order to create the entry into
starburst.”
“All right, here is where my idea is going to get a little hairy,” John rubbed his lower lip, continuing to examine
the process he saw in his mind. “What if we block the outlets from the starburst chamber and force that energy
into Moya’s energy conduits … ”
“The stress would tear Moya apart, Commander!” Pilot’s emphatic tone was enough to give John his answer,
and he held up his hand towards Aeryn before she could repeat whatever had been said.
“We time it to the next gravity gap, and we give her just enough of a kick to pop us loose. Look, this is not my
area of expertise. I do wormholes, not blackholes. I’m just thinking that all we need here is just a little
movement away from that big honkin’ storm drain and then Moya will be able to starburst. So as soon as Pilot
tells us we’ve moved just a little bit further away from the event horizon, we use detonated charges to blow the
blockages out of the way, and let the starburst energy flow normally. Hey presto, we blow this pop stand!”
John looked at each person in turn, waiting for their reactions to his plan.
“This could literally rip Moya apart, we would all be destroyed,” Pilot-->Aeryn-->Harvey still objected.
“And if we stay here? Sooner or later Moya is going to get tired and slide into that thing like a gutter ball
anyway.”
“The timing would be very critical, and I don’t even know if we have anything which can contain starburst energy
to create the blockages. Moya was designed in a manner that would prevent this from happening. She cannot
do this herself.”
“Okay, first big hurdle to clear. What have we got on board which might do the job?”
“Rygel’s butt is pretty tough,” Chiana offered.
“Funny Pip, but not a lot of help.” Waiting for punch lines sucked, he thought. He felt like the idiot at the party
who always laughed five seconds after everyone else. He almost told Aeryn not to bother feeding him the
jokes, but knew it wasn’t going to matter if they didn’t solve this problem soon.
“This is all very fascinating,” Jool interjected, “but I really don’t think I’m going to be much help on this subject.
Even if I understood all this mechanical plockt, you don’t really think I’m going to help you crawl around in
Moya’s access shafts welding those things into place do you?”
“Wouldn’t want you to get your hands dirty, Princess.” Chiana watched her carefully for the reaction.
Jool simply turned her back on her and spoke to the others. “Don’t you really think I’d be of more assistance if I
get back to my lab and work on solving John’s translator microbe problem?”
“All right, Jool, you’re probably right. But take a pulse rifle with you and keep your comms open. We still have
that frelling commando crawling around here somewhere, and you’ll be of no use to any of us if it’s your throat
he slits with a knife next time.”
“Thank you for that lovely parting thought Ka D’Argo,” Jool hissed, but she took the pulse rifle which he held out
to her, and after checking the status of the pulse chamber walked away across one of the bridges, holding the
rifle under her arm more like a purse than a deadly weapon.
“So what about something tough enough to stop Starburst energy?” John returned to the subject rapidly, since
he had been left out of the quick exchange. Silence fell as they all turned their attention to the question.
“I have an idea.” This time it was Aeryn and D’Argo who spoke at the same time.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
Chapter 11
Jool hurried into Command followed closely by D’Argo, who slowly lowered his Qualta rifle as they reached the
safety of the chamber. They both opened their mouths to say something, but stopped as they saw the obvious
tension between the couple. John was wearing his most stubborn expression but D’Argo thought there was an
underlying desperation that was pleading with Aeryn. She looked ready to resort to physical violence, driven as
much by anxiety as anger.
“Aeryn, what choice do we have right now?” John asked her in a near whisper.
“What’s going on?” D’Argo asked also in hushed tones, afraid to set something off.
“She’s inviting you to explain the situation to the others, John,” came the voice inside his head. He watched
Aeryn flinch as he listened to the internal noise.
“Either you give it to me absolutely verbatim Hood-Head, or you’re fired.”
A long sigh preceded the second translation. “Why don’t you go ahead and tell them what you’re proposing to
do, John?” The hair on the back of his neck stood on end as Scorpius’ voice did an uncanny imitation of
Aeryn’s inflections.
She was still waiting, nearly irate. There was a painful block of ice in his chest, frozen in place by her anger
and concern. He knew there was love behind it, amplifying her emotions, but he couldn’t back down. They had
to do something -- anything -- to improve the overall situation. He looked primarily at D’Argo and said simply,
“Scorpius is Sebacean.”
It took Jool less time to figure it out, and she gasped when she realized what he was already doing. She hadn’t
been there for the full emotional wrenching of the days when the neuro-chip hijacked his brain, but she had
heard about the outcome and what it had cost Crichton -- and everyone else on board. She’d been carefully
warned about what he still carried in his mind, words of caution intermixed with the tones of compassion.
D‘Argo broke in before she could object. “John, you can’t be serious. You’d be giving up control again!” His
entire body went rigid at the thought of even the residual Scorpius personality having any influence on
Crichton’s behavior. “How would you even know if he was translating correctly?” He remembered that John
couldn’t understand his objections, and looked in confusion between the two of them, seeking another way to
translate his fears.
John saw D’Argo’s muscles contract, saw him draw himself up in what looked like anger. He got ready to either
speak or run, but Jool was talking to them all emphatically. He didn’t relax, keeping one eye on D’Argo, but he
tried to watch Jool and Aeryn for reactions as well.
“This may all be unnecessary. Perhaps we could all act like civilized beings for just a microt. I called D’Argo
and asked him to bring me to see Crichton because I’ve modified some translator microbes and there’s a
chance they might work.” Everyone seemed to be watching everyone else at the same time. Jool was trying to
keep an eye on Aeryn for her reaction, but was trying to stay turned toward John so he might have a chance to
infer what she was telling the others.
Awkward silence reigned when she finished. The room seemed to hold its breath. It was John who moved first.
He looked at Aeryn, saw that she knew she would need to repeat whatever had just been said and was simply
refusing. She shook her head at him.
Ever since John had first encountered Scorpius, it seemed as if his entire life had been filled with torture of
various types. Even when he hadn’t been suffering physically, those around him had been forced to watch his
gradual personal destruction. She didn’t want him relying on any portion of that half-breed’s mentality. There
had already been enough screams in the night from his room without inviting the apparition to visit all day.
Jool watched the standoff for only microts before her patience wore thin. She broke the deadlock by stepping
next to Crichton and holding up an injector for him to see, hoping he could form the entire bridge to a
conclusion without more information.
“What are the chances that this will work?” Aeryn asked. Her leaping hopes provided a chink into her armor of
uncooperativeness.
“What will work?” John cued in almost immediately. Aeryn relented slightly and told him what Jool was offering,
and grudgingly repeated the rest.
Jool -->Aeryn-->Scorpy answered Aeryn’s question. “I don’t know enough about transgenic manipulation of
microbial forms to predict whether this will be successful. I’ve tried to adjust the microbes with enough of John’s
DNA that they won’t set off the immune reaction, but it meant radically altering the microbes themselves.”
“Do you know anything about this stuff, Harvey?” Scorpius’ genius couldn’t be denied, only its motivation and its
application.
“No, I don’t,” the voice sounded bored and put-out.
“Go ahead and give it a try, Jool.” She was still standing beside him, so she let her hand drop and punched
the injector into the side of his thigh.
“Nice technique,” he complained, rubbing the muscle, feeling a tingle run up his leg and then disappear. He
waited for one of the expectant faces to utter something, hope springing up unbidden to overfill his chest and
banish reason from his mind.
After several microts of waiting, Jool answered his complaint, “The microbes colonize better if they can draw
nutrients from a muscle mass before they move into the brain stem.” They all watched his face and knew it
hadn’t worked.
“Anything, John?” D’Argo stepped closer and laid a hand on his shoulder, offering what comfort he could,
trying to make a connection.
“Hey Big D. Not even a syllable,” his voice shook a little then steadied out. “Let’s get back to the other
problem.” He shoved the huge mass of disappointment down inside and stepped toward the strategy table,
intending to look at the new data. A huge bolt of starlight exploded in his head, accompanied by what felt like
an implosion of his skull, crushing his brain. He felt his knees and palms hit the deck, and hunched there
hanging on to consciousness by a thin strand. It began to pass and he wheezed, painfully dragging air back
into lungs which had emptied explosively when the bolt hit. It was gone almost as quickly as it had come.
“Are you all right, John? What happened?” The bored voice parodied the high-pitched concern in Aeryn’s
voice.
“Help me up, I’m better now. It’s just that Jool got it right this time.” D’Argo grabbed him under his arms and
hauled him to his feet. John reflected that his big friend had been doing that a bit too often lately. He’d have to
see about cutting back. His head still spun and a silly laugh escaped him as he was brought unsteadily to his
feet.
D’Argo didn’t let go until John was propped on a seat, half lying on the table. He looked up at Aeryn. “Try it
again.” The same clipped, jumbled consonants as before, with no attempt to hide the concern. “Sorry kids, still
no change.” He looked down at the slow drip of blood onto his forearm and realized his nose was bleeding.
“But those little dudes sure tried real hard. Man, those were the Pro-Bowl linebackers of all microbes.” He
hiccupped once as his nervous system stopped shivering.
Jool stood frozen, aghast at what she had done to him. “See I told you this was how it was done. Much better.”
He tried hard to make a joke out of it. He looked around and Aeryn was gone. Jool’s shocked answer would
have to be inferred. “Don’t worry about it, keep working. If you could find another line of research though, I’d
appreciate it.” He grabbed the sleeve of his T-shirt, intending to wipe the blood off, but Aeryn reappeared at a
half run carrying some clean cloths and handed one to him.
D‘Argo-->Aeryn-->Harvey said, “D’Argo is going to take Jool back to the lab and then he’ll come back up here.”
John nodded at them over his fistful of towel.
Chiana entered Command before anyone could leave, spotting the stained towel held by Crichton right away.
“What happened? Did you hit him again, D’Argo?” Aeryn raised her voice and aimed a quick volley at the
Nebari.
“Did you want the entire soap opera, John?”
“You know I don’t like ad-libbing, Scorpy. Either stick to the script or shut up.” The clone went quiet.
“Pilot, can we get back to business and take a look at that latest data from Moya?”
The hologram appeared, with Moya in the center this time. The singularity appeared as a fixed point off to one
side. Multicolored bands represented gravitational flux patterns and shifts in spatial distortions wove an
intricate mesh around the Leviathan. John noticed thin and thick patches in the arrangement, mimicking the
spiraling funnel of debris. Several were quite close to their present location. He stuck his finger into a
holographic rift.
“Pilot, is that a drop in gravity?” He didn’t take his eyes of the slowly shifting pattern as he listened to an
extended flood of Pilot‘s musical voice, but Aeryn’s voice didn’t chime in after Pilot’s. He looked up and she
looked like she had mental gas pains. Whatever Pilot had said it had been too much for her. “Pilot, is that a
drop in just gravity?” No. He didn’t need a translation for that answer. “But the gravitational force does drop
off there?” Yes. The tiny green leviathan was almost touching a gap in the swirling display as Moya stayed in
one place and the forces spun around her.
“I think everyone ought to grab on to something quick.”
* * * * *
Captain Hasman crouched in the open door to a storage area. His desperate jump had paid off, but he had
paid a steep price. He had tried to relax and roll when he landed, but had heard a sharp crack accompanied by
a skewering pain, and knew that he had broken an arm. He considered himself lucky that it hadn’t been a leg
instead. He was carrying the half-finished rifle in his good hand, the damaged one tucked into his belt. He had
added splint materials to the bottom of his list, but since he didn’t expect to survive his next offensive, he didn’t
care as long as his arm didn’t get in his way.
He hadn’t found any more weapon parts, but he had located a workshop that appeared to be used for
machining mechanoid components. He had found two more items that could be modified to add to his mutated
weapon. He listened carefully for DRDs as he one-handedly cobbled the strange looking rifle together. He did
a mental inventory. He needed a triggering device to act as an igniter, a stock or grip of some sort, and the
weapon would need a chakan oil cartridge. Then he could go hunting on more even terms.
He got up to leave and was thrown back into the shop, crashing down amidst rattling debris. Dren, what was
that? It was almost as bad as the first shockwave. Whatever was going on, this group of bandits seemed to be
in trouble, perhaps he could take advantage of that. He only needed to kill the pilot or mutilate its neural
connections and he should be able to destroy this ship and everyone on it.
* * * * *
“Is Moya all right?” D’Argo had to shout a little over the din as the last series of metallic shrieking began to die
away. The gravitational shock wave had not been as bad as the first one, but there had been two phases this
time. Moya had seemed to skip for a moment, like a thrown stone across water. Then she was jerked back
again, shackled before she could make a move toward freedom.
“There have been several ruptures in subsidiary neural connections, but she is otherwise unharmed.” Pilot’s
hologram appeared in the corner, and despite his calm tones they could see that his eyes were bugging out
more than normal, and his arms were flying about madly as he worked to stabilize the functions of his massive
host.
“Was there any change in Moya’s proximity to the singularity?” John was looking at the display again, his voice
a mixture of hope and conjecture. He looked at Aeryn but rather than repeat the answer, she held up her hand
with her thumb and forefinger barely apart. “Improvement?” Nod.
She wasn’t going to make this easy for him. She wasn’t going to let him use the clone any more than absolutely
necessary. “We’re not moving around the hole; it’s the distortions in space-time and the gravitational field,
which are being pulled and warped by the singularity. They’re like heavy twisted cables of force being dragged
by the spin in the middle. If we can hold out until another one hits … ” He knew it wasn’t enough to get loose,
but it might help.
The poltergeist thought teased him again. “Frell!” He needed time to think, to hunt down whatever his
subconscious was trying to tell him. “Let’s go repair those ruptures.” He wanted to let his mind focus on
something else. He had to trap that idea, and he hoped when he did it would turn out to be something useful.
“Someone want to come with me?”
* * * * *
Jool barely remembered to say anything to D’Argo as he made sure she was secure in the lab. Her attention
returned to the matter of helping John. This was the first opportunity for intellectual challenge she’d had since
waking up on board this floating collection of riff-raff. She had frelled up the first part by not anticipating the
reaction of Crichton’s immune system; she was determined to prove she could resolve the current difficulty.
She had done her best to change the structure of the microbes, but had only managed to render them
incapable of doing anything except cause the seizure she had witnessed only microts ago. The sample of
modified microbes slipped out of her shaking hands and smashed on the floor as she replayed the scene in her
head. She had assumed he was kidding yesterday when he had said everything around here hurt. She hadn’t
taken it seriously.
So if changing the microbes hadn’t worked, she would have to change John’s physiology instead … for the
second time. But eliminating the problem would mean completely erasing his immune responses and starting
over. She looked around the infirmary she had somehow inherited and didn’t see the kinds of equipment or
sterile safeguards that would make that a realistic approach.
* * * * *
John eased down out of the cramped shaft where he had been making another repair. He still couldn’t see
where he had left the small pile of tools, but prepared to toss the laser sealer in that general direction to free up
his second hand. It was suddenly removed from his grip, and he looked down to see Aeryn waiting for him.
“All done with yours?” he asked. She just nodded. She still wasn’t giving in. He wasn’t sure if it was that she
didn’t want him using the clone, or whether she herself didn’t want to talk to Scorpy. Aeryn would only translate
when there was no alternative, and the conversation passed beyond the capacity of hand signals. Her
reluctance had still been obvious when she had begun describing what repair was needed at this location.
He swung out of the shaft and landed with a thump next to her. “Anything else?” Head shake. He chewed on
his lower lip, trying to think of a way to convince her to communicate with him verbally. He finally shrugged and
said, “I still haven’t found my random thought. Let’s get back up to the others.” He had explained to her about
his elusive sprite, which was still flitting around the edge of his mind.
John paused to raise both arms over his head and stretched, leaning over backwards, easing cramps in his
shoulders and arms. The access shafts weren’t really built for someone his size. He didn’t know how big The
Builders had been, but it was a good bet they weren’t over six feet. He couldn’t imagine how D’Argo got into
some of them. He finished stretching and tucked his shirt back in where it had pulled loose. He picked up the
rest of the tools and looked up to find that Aeryn had already left.
He ran after her, and saw that once again she was angry. He’d had just about enough of this garbage for one
lifetime. He still didn’t understand what was setting her off. He tossed the tools into a corner and caught up
with her, grabbing her arm to swing her around.
“Aeryn, I’ve had enough of this bullshit. Tell me now what the frell is going on.” Head shake. She looked like
she was ready to hit him … or cry. He couldn’t tell which. “Aeryn, I can’t think straight about what’s going on
with Moya because I’m worried about what’s going on here.” He managed to stuff the frustration back down
inside, and got his voice back under control. “Please tell me why you’re angry at me.”
“I’m not angry at you, John, I’m mad at myself.” The laconic voice came nowhere near the impassioned
outburst from Aeryn. She turned her head away from him, refusing to watch as he shifted to listen to the clone,
but at least she didn’t move to leave.
“Harvey, take ten.”
“I beg your pardon, John? Take ten what?”
“Get lost. Hit the road. Take a long walk on a short wharf. Go away.”
The space in his head was empty. “Aeryn, he’s on a lunch break. He’s not here, I promise.”
She still didn’t say anything, just turned back to face him, tears beginning to slide down her cheeks. She didn’t
make any move to wipe them away, and he pulled his shirt loose again and gently wiped her face with the hem.
She ran her fingertips gently across his abdomen and he peered down to see that she was tracing the edges of
the huge blackening bruise that covered his entire midsection.
“THAT? That’s what you’re upset about?” his voice went up nearly to a squeak in amazement. “You think you
had something to do with that?” He was stunned. She took him by the wrists, extended his arms and turned his
palms up and then down, exposing all sides of his arms. He looked down, saw the mottling, and shook his
head. He pulled his hands loose and placed them on her shoulders, giving her a little shake.
“Aeryn, you did not do anything to cause that.” She shook her head, disagreeing. He tried to find the right
words. He had never been good at just admitting he was wrong, not even to Aeryn. “How many people do you
know who would deliberately choose to try to talk a Luxan out of hyper-rage?” She held up one finger and
began to look like she might be able to smile again. He could practically hear her saying, ‘All you ever do is
TALK!’ He still couldn’t bring himself to just say he had fouled up. “You didn’t do anything to cause this.”
He gave her a hug. “Can we finish …” she looked up with a gleam in her eyes, “… DISCUSSING this later?
When we aren’t about to get flushed down the world’s biggest porta-potty? … never mind that last one. It
doesn’t translate.” She nodded, still smiling even if a bit weakly, and they continued toward Command. John
mused that he had just had one of his better talks with Aeryn, but maybe that was because he was listening to
her so much harder now.
* * * * *
“Pilot, can you estimate how much longer before we get hit by the next gap in the field distortions?” John had
decided to divert to Pilot’s chamber instead of Command. Although Pilot’s expressions were difficult to read,
watching his reactions sometimes eliminated the need for translations.
Pilot-->Aeryn-->Scorpy replied, “An accurate estimate is not possible, Crichton, but the sensors indicate
approximately five arns.” Aeryn wasn’t flinching every time he listened to the clone now, but he was increasingly
unhappy with how accustomed he was becoming to the voice inside his psyche. He was beginning to
subconsciously merge the tone of the speaker’s voice with Harvey’s translation, forming a more accurate
gestalt of the conversation, and he didn’t like how fast he was adapting to the process.
“And how much longer before Moya runs out of steam?”
“Seven arns.”
He looked at Aeryn. “That doesn’t leave us any time for a second try.”
“Have you found the idea?” By resolving her own inner dilemma, Aeryn seemed to have found the strength to
allow him to use the clone to hear her.
“No, it’s still buzzing around at about Hetch A Million.” He rubbed his head with both hands, feeling the fatigue
beating at him from all sides. “Where are D’Argo and Chiana?”
He waited while she commed them and listened to the replies. “They just finished the other repairs and are
coming up here.”
“Good. Let’s see if some collective thinking can turn up something new or kick start my imagination. Should we
get Jool or Stark up here to kick in ideas?”
* * * * *
Hasman crept into the maintenance bay where his career had effectively ended. The place was a shambles,
parts and tools scattered everywhere by the blast of the shock grenades. He listened carefully but couldn’t
hear any DRDs. He scanned the walls and the ceiling for the yellow limpets but it all looked clear. He wove his
way through the jumble, watching for his last two parts. He was looking for anything that might let him finish his
weapon, no matter how ugly the result.
He saw a heap of cast off wooden scraps in a corner, swept his foot through them and immediately discovered
a block about the right size and shape for a stock and a grip. He grabbed some cabling off a bench to secure it
in place. He only needed one more part plus the chakan oil cartridge, and he was in business. A clear thought
struck him and he smiled. He knew where he could get that last component, and it was going to be poetic
justice.
* * * * *
John rolled over the consoles to rejoin his comrades as Jool and Stark entered the Den. He had been taking
another look at the sensor data, examining the thickening strands of gravitational and temporal distortions. It
had gotten worse in the past three arns, as the blackhole continued to reestablish its grip in the sector. The
total pull on Moya was the same, but the ride was only going to get rougher. She wasn’t going to survive
another shockwave if they didn’t make out with the help of the next break.
“Where’s Sparky?”
“He said he was busy, and not to disturb him again. I suspect he is cleaning out the food stores in preparation
for our destruction,” said Aeryn-->Scorpy.
“Who cares what the slug is doing. Why are we all here? Have Pilot or John thought of anything yet?”
D’Argo’s patience was being put to the test, and he had begun to pace from Pilot’s station to the edge of the
abyss.
“Chill out, big guy,” John watched the frustrated figure and its restrained need for physical expression. “I need
some brainstorming from the rest of you. I’m trying to kick start an idea here, and I figured just bouncing the
situation around again might help.”
Aeryn looked at him closely. She hadn’t had a chance to repeat D’Argo’s questions before he had answered.
John didn’t appear to have realized what he had just done, and was still deep in thought. He hadn’t quite
answered D’Argo’s question, but he had been frelling close.
“We need to get out when that gap arrives in five arns. That’s all the time we have left. We’re going to have a
split-microt break in the pull like the last shockwave. We need to find some way to get an extra kick in the
butt.”
He listened to the babble around him, the ebb and flow of discussion from his friends. His brain had finally quit
trying to pry sense out of the noises. It was becoming a little more like the familiar rumble of a tuned engine, or
the whine of power tools. It was a sound that meant something to him without specific details. They finally
turned back and Aeryn shook her head. She wasn’t refusing to translate -- there just wasn’t any information to
provide.
Power tools. Woof, woof, woof. Bigger, stronger, more voltage, more horsepower. A memory from his life on
Earth tackled his brain and he almost got a grip on the elusive thought. ‘Thank you, Tim Taylor,’ he thought to
himself, remembering a turbo-charged lawn tractor smashing through a fence.
“Pilot … ” He was torn between the developing image in his mind and the need to form words. “Is there anyway
we could … supercharge Moya’s drive system? Give her a way to generate a momentary extra bit of thrust to
break her out through the gravity rift long enough to starburst?”
John waited while Pilot gave a brief answer and Aeryn relayed it. “Pilot doesn’t understand your question.”
“I don’t know exactly what I’m looking for here either. Can we give her Geritol-extra, One-A-Day-Plus-Dilithium,
install an Oscillation Overthruster … ” John saw the faces around him change from thoughtful attention to
puzzled annoyance. He tried again, but without sounding like an infomercial. “Is there some sort of energy
charge or chemical or,” his voice rose with the frustration of trying to express something he could now envision
clearly but couldn’t explain to the others. “ … something like a Leviathan version of that drug from the gauntlet
worn by the Tavloids.”
Several voices barked at him at the same time. Aeryn turned towards him with a half disguised look of glee, but
he cut in before she could give it to him, “Tav-LEKS. Thank you, I got that one.” Everyone smiled at once. It
was a nice sight after so many arns of stress and depression.
D’Argo and Jool were the first to turn to Pilot and begin discussing whether they could implement John’s idea in
any way, but soon the others were involved and they all drew closer to Pilot’s consoles. John allowed himself to
be maneuvered away from the heated discussion. Even with the clone’s help he couldn’t keep up. Trying to
stay involved would only slow them down.
He ended with his back against one of Moya’s main support ribs, which arced from the invisible height of the
chamber’s ceiling down into the gloom of the central neural cluster below. He slid to the floor as he waited,
sitting with one foot tucked under the other leg, trying to remember if he had ever felt more exhausted. He
dumbly watched the discussion, observing the play of emotions, listening to the rise and fall of their voices.
Yes, come to think of it, there had been a time when he had hoped he would die from exhaustion, but the
beating had been almost entirely mental that time.
“They aren’t a particularly cohesive group, are they John?” The unprompted interjection startled him. It was
the first time the clone had spoken to him directly, outside of translating, in arns. It was almost as if his stray
thought had summoned him.
“Harvey, no one’s talking to you or me right now, leave me alone.”
“I am not a translator microbe, John. I am willing to be of assistance, but I will not simply disappear because
you chose not to partake in the discussion or need me to Take Ten.”
“Harvey, I’ve pushed you out once, I can do it again. If you want another shiner like the first, just stick around
and keep bugging me. I’m more than willing to try and cope with this without you, and if we spin into that black
waste hole it’ll just be one more spatial phenomena I get to observe on this sleigh-ride through Wonderland.”
“John, I don’t understand why this situation with the microbes is disturbing you so much -- “
“I am not disturbed by this, Harv.”
“ -- after all, you learned to cope without your eyesight for a few days when you were twelve didn’t you? After
that boy Russell Croughts injured you.”
“Russell didn’t injure me, it was an accident and he never meant for it to happen that …”
John’s mental discussion with the clone was left unfinished as he slid back to the incident he had just
mentioned. Deep in his mind the recalcitrant idea beckoned to him, eager to be resolved but not making it
easy. He dove into his memory, searching for the answer. It had been the summer after he turned twelve, and
he’d begun hanging out with a kid who lived a couple of blocks over.
Russell -- the other kids teased him and called him “Brussel Sprouts” -- was pretty much a nerd, but John had
found out that he had an uncanny knack for taking any toy or gadget with an engine or motor and boosting its
output. This was fantastic as far as he was concerned, since he wanted every one of his model rockets to go
higher, and between them they sent some really sailing. And Russell hadn’t been all that much of a geek once
he had gotten to know him.
The accident had happened when they had tried putting a new outlet valve on a water bottle rocket. Their
grade school calculations showed that it should have boosted the rocket over four times as high as the original
design, but it had gone off at an angle and somehow managed to nail him right between the eyes. He
remembered the desperate scramble to get clear, the impact, the panic. He’d been lucky they were working
with a water pressure design, instead of one of their solid fuel models, but he had still been without vision for
almost a week, waiting for the bruising and swelling to ease.
John had learned the sounds of his family during that interminable week. Learned to hear who was in each
room and what they were doing by aural input alone. He had lost a week of his summer vacation, but gained an
insight into perception instead. After that he could always tell exactly where his mother was and what she was
doing just by listening, which made the silence of that house all the more painful years later.
It wasn’t the sensory deprivation that had put his mind into high gear; it was the modified nozzle on the rocket.
It was the power boost of the Boeing 707 taking off when he was ten. It was taking one power output and
stuffing it into another form until it multiplied. The clone continued to talk, made it hard for him to visualize the
new image being created in his mind. Distracted at both ends, he was having trouble silencing the voice.
“Shut up Harvey, I’ve got a grip on that idea now and I need to think.”
“John, this situation is beyond …”
“Be quiet. I can’t think about this with you yammering away at me.”
“ -- and I really think you need to turn your mind toward …”
“Harvey, SHUT UP!”
It was only when everyone else turned to look at him that John realized his last bark at the clone hadn’t been
just in his head. He shook his head for a moment, a silent acknowledgement to the others of what he had just
done.
“Any luck with a solution so far?” he asked as he struggled back to his feet. Chiana and Stark were the closest
to him and they both moved to pull him up. John focused on the expressions worn by Pilot and D’Argo as he
moved back into the group. ‘The Duo of Doom,’ he thought, ‘the Permanent Pessimists -- sounds like a
wrestling tag-team,’ and their expressions did, in fact, reflect that the group had not come up with any ideas.
“Okay, I’ve got a really and truly bad idea this time, even for me. Pilot. Moya can’t starburst right now because
she’s using all of her energy just to stay in one place, right?”
His answer was clear without a translation.
“What would happen if we deliberately create a blockage in her amnexus system? She’d be forced to
decompensate, but would she be able to create and use starburst energy?”
Pilot -->Aeryn-->Harvey said, “She would be able to produce the energy and could release it into the starburst
chamber, but she still might not be able to coalesce the energy around her hull in order to create the entry into
starburst.”
“All right, here is where my idea is going to get a little hairy,” John rubbed his lower lip, continuing to examine
the process he saw in his mind. “What if we block the outlets from the starburst chamber and force that energy
into Moya’s energy conduits … ”
“The stress would tear Moya apart, Commander!” Pilot’s emphatic tone was enough to give John his answer,
and he held up his hand towards Aeryn before she could repeat whatever had been said.
“We time it to the next gravity gap, and we give her just enough of a kick to pop us loose. Look, this is not my
area of expertise. I do wormholes, not blackholes. I’m just thinking that all we need here is just a little
movement away from that big honkin’ storm drain and then Moya will be able to starburst. So as soon as Pilot
tells us we’ve moved just a little bit further away from the event horizon, we use detonated charges to blow the
blockages out of the way, and let the starburst energy flow normally. Hey presto, we blow this pop stand!”
John looked at each person in turn, waiting for their reactions to his plan.
“This could literally rip Moya apart, we would all be destroyed,” Pilot-->Aeryn-->Harvey still objected.
“And if we stay here? Sooner or later Moya is going to get tired and slide into that thing like a gutter ball
anyway.”
“The timing would be very critical, and I don’t even know if we have anything which can contain starburst energy
to create the blockages. Moya was designed in a manner that would prevent this from happening. She cannot
do this herself.”
“Okay, first big hurdle to clear. What have we got on board which might do the job?”
“Rygel’s butt is pretty tough,” Chiana offered.
“Funny Pip, but not a lot of help.” Waiting for punch lines sucked, he thought. He felt like the idiot at the party
who always laughed five seconds after everyone else. He almost told Aeryn not to bother feeding him the
jokes, but knew it wasn’t going to matter if they didn’t solve this problem soon.
“This is all very fascinating,” Jool interjected, “but I really don’t think I’m going to be much help on this subject.
Even if I understood all this mechanical plockt, you don’t really think I’m going to help you crawl around in
Moya’s access shafts welding those things into place do you?”
“Wouldn’t want you to get your hands dirty, Princess.” Chiana watched her carefully for the reaction.
Jool simply turned her back on her and spoke to the others. “Don’t you really think I’d be of more assistance if I
get back to my lab and work on solving John’s translator microbe problem?”
“All right, Jool, you’re probably right. But take a pulse rifle with you and keep your comms open. We still have
that frelling commando crawling around here somewhere, and you’ll be of no use to any of us if it’s your throat
he slits with a knife next time.”
“Thank you for that lovely parting thought Ka D’Argo,” Jool hissed, but she took the pulse rifle which he held out
to her, and after checking the status of the pulse chamber walked away across one of the bridges, holding the
rifle under her arm more like a purse than a deadly weapon.
“So what about something tough enough to stop Starburst energy?” John returned to the subject rapidly, since
he had been left out of the quick exchange. Silence fell as they all turned their attention to the question.
“I have an idea.” This time it was Aeryn and D’Argo who spoke at the same time.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
