The Dark

"One millicycle to launch." Came the amplified voice from control.

Twister Calmflow ran through the preflight check again, carefully viewing the pulse displays for any structural variances. The engines seemed stable, fuel containment was good, and the guidance was running through the course adjustments due to prominence flux overhead. He looked up, through the translucent hull and saw the dull yellow swirl streaming overhead. Twister always enjoyed watching prominence, he'd even flown through them before. THAT was an experience!

"One quarter millicycle to launch." Intoned control. "Releasing primary holding fields, all tender crew confirmed clear of launch site."

"Well," Twister muttered to himself "here we go!"

"Eighty micra.... seventy micra..."

Reflexively Twister went over the displays again, now the sixth time he'd done so.

"Forty micra..."

He flickered, shifting a little in the magnetic restraint. Nearly there...

"Twenty micra..."

With a flick of a tendril he engaged the auto systems, over-riding the surface cut outs.

"Ten, five... Engines on!"

Even though he was tensed for it, the sudden surge thrust him down, the tingle of the restraint biting into his underside. Then he focused on the scenery outside and on the screens and couldn't suppress a shudder. This was it, he was heading into space! The first Plasmid to leave the star!

He shifted his view under him, watching the collection of buildings at the launch site shrink as his ship thrust skyward. This rocket system was a lot different than his magnetic sky-riders, and he could see the bright hydrogen and helium exhaust beneath him, slightly transparent, fading to a dull brown against the softly glowing ground beneath him. The trail snaked down, and as he watched the flare prominence flashed past his ship, now disappearing downwards with his exhaust trail spearing through it.

"Flight from control, Local prominence cleared and navigation is on track. You have one more surge above you at seven hundred pulses. Expect turbulence from it in....two hundred micra."

"Control from flight, understood." Twister replied, having to engage the amplifier now to be heard across the enormous distances between him and home. He'd never been far enough away from everyone to need an amplifier before, his own voice had always been enough, even at high altitude on his sky-rider. For a moment a trace of fear crept into his mind, but training and the wonderful view beneath him banished it.

He glanced skywards for a moment, checked his controls, then looked down again. Now the launch center was just a dot down there, nestled in the Cyanthor region's main basin, now visible in it's entirety. Only remote devices had ever seen views like this before and Twister began to fidget again with excitement, reflexively flicking against his restraint field.

Tracing his view across the basin as it shrank beneath him he saw the huge stabilizers around the rim, the buildings just visible even from this height, marking the dark region it held clear of helium pollution from the rest of the star. There were the main shipping lanes, the giant Ocars must be down there, but were too small to see now. That put him in his place, when an Ocar was considered SMALL!

A shudder brought his senses back and he glanced up and gasped as the bright second prominence flashed towards him. His ship bucked twice more as it caught wisps of secondary streamers in front, then he dove through the prominence itself.

"Warning warning!" came the automatic response from the ship controls "Hull contamination detected. Destabilization in forward upper port eighth. Layer Cutel five."

Cold helium seemed to fill Twister's body as he stared at the alarm. What had happened? That prominence shouldn't have affected the ship, it was barely denser than those he rode at low altitude himself!

"Flight from control! Flight from control! We read your outer hull has been compromised. Inner sections are holding and internal fields read strong. Can you confirm readings?"

Frantically Twister peered at screens, even tried to see the upper front port section of the hull with his own senses, but the control systems were in the way, their glowing coils of light blocking the view of the dimmer, translucent hull beyond.

"My readings here seem to confirm that Control." he said, surprised at the calm tone in his voice. "I'm already beyond the Photo-sphere though, I don't think it will affect the remaining section of launch. Can you run tests on re-entry profiles? And try and figure out what caused that?"

"Flight from Control, we are already checking. We'll get back to you. Further readings show no more predominance to orbit so you should have no trouble there. Current indications show no follow-on degradation in hull containment fields, so you don't seem to be in immediate danger. Stay with us out there Rider."

The formal use of his rank and the 'Flight from Control' formality brought him back. Calm he may be but the current situation was no excuse for messing up protocol.

"Control from Flight. Understood. Two thirds through the burn and course looks good."

'Course looks good'... well, at least he could say that, but the threat of the weakened hull worried him. What if a layer failed completely? Would the ship be able to maintain integrity? Would it keep out the deathly cold of space? Hell, it might even just rupture erratically and the pulsing fields tear him apart!

"Get a grip." he muttered to himself, making sure the amplifier was off. Slowly he felt himself regaining control, his pulse slowing to a more steady pace. Didn't want to get a helium seizure out in the middle of nowhere! No one to do an infusion or filtration on him here.

Now he was focusing forwards on the trajectory and only glancing back when he could. But the view behind him was worth it. Now the Cyanthor basin was just a dark brown spot on the star's surface, one of many that made up the Entandon Archipelagos, now the first nation on the star to put a Plamsid in space!

Apart from the brief glances backwards he focused on the flight now. He daren't let himself get swept up in the beauty of the scenery. Who knew what other dangers were out here?



****************



Lester was bitching again. You had to give the guy credit, he could talk faster than almost anyone Andrew knew, and most of the time you could actually make out what he was saying too!

"But it was only the small thing, ya see, that this was going on and on when the large 'un caught up, ran in and took him out with this swirling thingy, ya know what them techies call Proton rams and..."

Andrew phased him out. He'd heard this one before, a tale of woe, poor management and people messing up. When Andrew had been in New Delhi last summer he had checked up on the details of Lester's story and the ship he'd supposed discovered had been lost, had even had some odd battle damage marks on the hull when it was recovered, but there was no trace of the chemicals Lester said had been dumped from the hold into the crew quarters.

Lester only had about four or five main stories he used, and twisted them so each could be an example of whatever it was that he wanted to get across to someone, usually that they had royally screwed up. Andrew just wished Lester wasn't the captain.

"...so all that was left was the stink, ya see, and they just peeled the remains off inta buckets and shipped 'em out so the hull could be reused. Hey, you listening ta me boy? Ya ain't gonna learn yaself anything ifn'ya don't listen."

"Yes sir, I understand the problem sir." ie you, Andrew thought to himself. "I just don't understand how following the loading protocol can cause something like that. That's the whole point of the protocols, they've been checked out thoroughly at the yards on Earth so such... accidents, don't happen."

"Yeah, protocols are perfect ain't they?" and he spat into a bucket by the command chair "Like hell they is! Those lab coated dunders ain't never been out here, ain't never seen what goes on away from their precious planet. I doubt any of those goobers have been to another star system afor."

Andrew had to force a smile down inside him. Some day he really should tell the captain what exactly a 'goober' was. He didn't think he meant to call the Flight Engineers some sort of twentieth century confectionery.

"Yes, well, what exactly is it that isn't covered by the protocol that can cause... whatever it is you are talking about captain?" he managed

That wrinkled face peered at him, eyes squinting, as if trying to peer into the back of Andrew's eyeballs.

"That," he said, pausing for effect "is the whole dang point you ejit. You don't follow blind to these damn protocols, ya im-pro-vise." You could almost hear Lester spelling 'improvise' in his head as he said it "Ya think on your feet, and ya can't do that if ya so bound down with these damn protocols!"

The thump as Lester threw the TESA manifest handling protocol document down on the table echoed round the small cabin.

As the two men stared at each other in the silence after this outburst they both began to notice a small beeping. They turned as one to stare at the console.

"FLARE!" Lester shouted and jumped for the pilot seat, flicking switches on the panel in front of him. Slowly the transport ship began to respond, but the indicators were that the flare was far too close, and travelling far too fast.

As Andrew strapped himself into the co-pilot's seat he wondered why in hell the auto nav hadn't noticed this before now? It was practically on top of them! Then Andrew blinked. As he stared at the nav console the indicator seemed to show the flare changing course, accelerating! That was impossible! Lester obviously hadn't noticed, but this was all moot, it was far too late to do anything except hold on, and maybe...

Andrew flicked the radio on.

"Rosy Tramp, 0552AB to Suldan control. Rosy Tramp 0552AB to Suldan control. We have an incoming flare on intercept. Cannot avoid, request emergency assistance, repeat request...."

Suddenly the dark tinted windows brightened and Andrew and Lester both froze. Anything that could show through those windows must be bright! It was designed to block out the sun at this close distance.

A second later the glow grew to fill the window.

"Where is THIS in ya damn protocol!" Lester managed, just before they hit.



***********



"Emergency, Emergency! Control from Flight, do you read me! Massive shock damage, reading complete collapse of forward section integrity fields. I've collided with something incredibly dense. My sensors showed nothing! Control, come in please!"

The controls in his messed up cockpit were flashing erratically. The engines seemed to be intact, but the navigation systems had been destroyed when the front of the ship had collapsed. Somehow the system was holding together, though Twister hadn't the faintest idea how. With the front caved in like that the fields should have collapsed, making the structure just fall apart and be so much free hydrogen.

From his readings the ship was being forced to drain a lot of power just to maintain working temperature, and some forward sections were getting dangerously cool. Much more and the fields wouldn't be able to hold them!

Tensely he watched the readouts, but slowly things seemed to stabilize. Things were still way cooler than they had any right to be, and the reactor was being forced to run at 115%, but the ship was holding together.

Finally he gave up shouting as the amplifier had obviously been destroyed. He briefly tried to flick the engines again, but still it seemed to do very little. It was as if he suddenly had a Ocar strapped to his ship. What had he collided with that was so heavy?

Tentatively he raised himself up in his restraint. He knew that the situation was too tentative for him to remain here like this. If there was a blowout he'd be sucked out into space where he'd just bleed his heat away till he couldn't keep himself together and become a few expanding puffs of hydrogen and helium. Slowly he pulled the VCS (Vacuum Cold Suit) from it's recess behind him, expanding the plasma seal and pushing himself into the field.

This would take a while, and he wouldn't exactly be very dexterous like this, but at least he'd be safer till he figured out what to do. Plus he could move around outside, maybe check out what he'd crashed into. Chuckling to himself he went over the EVA checklist. It hadn't exactly been planned this early on in the mission, but then with the reactor running this high he'd only have maybe a half a cycle before it destabilized. Well, he'd only need maybe fifty or a hundred millicycles to get back to the surface again from here, though without navigation it would be touch and go. He just hoped he could cobble something up to fix the nose of his ship for re-entry and get free from whatever it was he'd collided with in time!

"I hope there aren't any more invisible hazards out here!" he muttered as the VCS started to regulate the internal atmosphere and temperature.

In maybe five cycles time, when the suit was ready, he'd head out and try to see what was going on. He just hoped his ship would last that long!



*************



"Lester, get off me!" Andrew muttered, but only got some mumbling back in response.

Somehow in the confusion they'd been thrown across the floor and Lester was laying over him, seemingly unconscious. The artificial gravity was still on unfortunately, though either the computer was out or the microphones in here were. Andrew had already tried to order the computer to shut the gravity off in here so he could get out from under the bulk of his captain, but had no response.

"I swear you are going on a diet after this Lester!" he muttered, but slowly managed to twist away from the wall. With a bit more effort Lester tumbled off him to the floor.

Andrew slowly stood upright, then stopped halfway up. He squinted, then tipped his head to one side slightly. The gravity was off by about ten degrees from vertical! Damn they must have taken a hit to engineering.

He straitened up and staggered to the control panel. Surprisingly there were some displays still lit. He scanned them slowly, reading all sorts of problems, but surprisingly little hard radiation. He had thought a flare like that would have bombarded them with all sorts of solar radiation. Then his eyes slowly rose upwards to the forward window. A large crack ran from one corner to the other across the tinted surface, the crack highlighted by the intense sunlight on the other side, making it look like a glowing filament was stretched across the window's surface.

"Oh shit!" he muttered and staggered back away from the window. "We gotta get out of here!"

"Damn right!" came Lester's response from behind him. "Head for engineering and we'll use the secondary systems to control the ship."

Andrew turned to see Lester struggling to his feet and turning to the exit from the bridge. Why couldn't he have woken up before when he was being crushed? Timing was always lousy on this ship.

"I don't know how secure the ship is." Andrews managed as he followed. "Most of the displays up there were out and the main computer is down. We need to head for one of the emergency lockers and get into suits. There may be sections of the ship in vacuum right now."

"That in ya protocols?" Lester managed with a sneer as he opened the door.

Andrew winced, waiting for the whistle of wind that would mean vacuum on the other side of the door, but it opened quietly. At least the main corridor was still pressurized.

"Can we leave that for heaven's sake? You saying you can breath vacuum all of a sudden? No? then we need suits, simple as that!" and then beneath his breath as he turned away "And we'd have had them here on the bridge if you followed the damn safety regs!"

They dashed down the corridor to the suit locker half way down the 'neck' of the ship. The neck was no such thing, being internal, with cargo containers completely surrounding it. Early space ships had tended to extend living quarters and bridges away from cargo and reactors for safety leaving a thin 'neck' there. Nowadays this corridor tended to be called that, even when it was completely walled into the ship and no longer visible from outside. The 'Rosy Tramp' wasn't exactly a delicate looking ship, having been described as a flying cinder block several times.

As they reached the locker, near one of the cross corridors to the cargo areas, Andrew felt his ears pop.

"Damn! Get in your suit!" he yelled throwing the locker open and grabbing his from it's rack. Lester started to say something, then thought better of it and grabbed his own suit. Perhaps he'd felt the drop in pressure too.

Despite the fact that Andrew had started suiting up first Lester was already checking down the corridor by the time he'd fastened up and switched on the rebreathers. There was something to be said for experience Andrew had to admit. He just wished Lester wasn't so set against the TESA protocols.

Any further thoughts on the matter were stopped by a grinding sound, making both Andrew and Lester spin around to look for the source. The sound died away before they could tell more than which corridor it had come from. Slowly they glanced at each other, and without comment both edged towards the source.

Poking their heads around the corner they looked down the access corridor and gasped. Half way down the blast doors had slammed shut, probably to contain the air, but they hardly looked normal. They usually didn't glow cherry red and bulge. Three foot thick doors of hardened steel weren't supposed to do that!

As they gaped a small indicator on Andrews suit systems caught his attention. Electrostatics? He glanced up just in time to see the huge electric arc dance across the corridor, bright blue flashing white like lightning.

"JEESUS!" yelled Lester, almost deafening Andrew despite the suit's insulation. "What the hell was that!"

Both men started unconsciously backing away from the corner as a second arc spasmed across from left to right. The 'activity' all seemed to be far down the corridor, but still...

BANG, SWOOSH, SLAM!

It happened so fast Andrew had to replay it in his mind for a second; The glowing bulkhead door cracking open, a spray of blue-white steam spraying in, then the next bulkhead towards them swooshing down and sealing the corridor off from them.

"Well, at least the safety systems are working." Andrew managed, his voice cracking a little and the corner of his mouth beginning to twitch.

"Snap out of it ya twit!" Lester said, grabbing him by the shoulders. "We gotta get down to engineering and stop whatever the hell that thing is before it melts it's way into the rest of the ship!

With a stagger Andrew managed to get control of himself and the two stumbled on towards engineering. With any luck engineering would still be there when they reached it!



*************



Twister stared. It was incredible.

Admittedly, the sight when he'd left the ship was incredible. The VCS had to amplify the light, but still the stars twinkled in space and the depth was entrancing. Now though he was staring at the front of his ship where it disappeared into.... something as large as his whole ship. 'It' was dark, almost as dark as space, but his suit's amplification managed to highlight it's surface enough for him to see it... just.

"Who'd have thought I'd ram a dark-burg out in space!"

He'd seen dark-burg from the back of an Ocar on an ocean trip some time back. The whirls of magnetic fields made a dark patch that wandered the seas. You had to be careful to avoid them or you'd plummet into the ocean quite a ways. Sometimes Ocars would head too far down and not be able to get back up again. More modern alternatives like the swifts didn't have that problem, but the Ocars would likely always be around as long as people kept breeding them. Technology never quite replaced living creatures in some areas.

Slowly he jetted closer, his own heat and light beginning to reflect off the dark surface before him. The thing was odd, maybe a simple lump of material, but how could something stay together like that? It was so cold it can't have any charge at all. What held the structure together?

Now he was only a few spans away from it he could make out some detail. Lumps here and there, scores in the surface, and in some places regular, circular holes. Then he looked where his ship was buried against this 'thing'. The 'thing' was a bit warmer there, probably heat bleeding away from his ship, but not much. This thing must be the perfect heat sink!

He edged closer to the join, checking his ship. The nose was completely gone, crumpled away into nothingness against this incredibly hard surface. How was the ship holding together. Slowly he used the VCS sensors to probe the join between his ship and the 'thing'. The readings were off the scale mostly, odd tightly bound magnetics around it, as if it ate the magnetic fields. He realized that the surface must somehow bind the containment fields that held his ship together, making a breach of some sort.

That was what had saved him, but as to how... maybe he could rig some sort of containment field to keep this stuff cold and bring samples back with him? That would be a heck of a coup! Think of the possibilities!

Slowly Twister came back to reality and the problem of how to disentangle himself from this thing without his ship falling apart. He wasn't sure he could figure out how to do it. Maybe if he got a closer scan of it?

As he approached the surface his sensors started to show some oddities about the material. It appeared to be hollow!

"Hollow? What in the star?" he muttered, barely able to hear himself... Then he realized, he'd been consciously damping out the noise here. This thing shouldn't have been noisy, it was cold and had no magnetic fields of it's own. How could it generate noise? Maybe his ship's magnetic field was reacting with it somehow to make noise?

Sighing he gave up trying to figure it out, he needed more data.

"So many problems, so little time." he said as he approached and tried to find some way into this thing's hollow interior. He was sure that was where the answers lay.



****************



With a clunk the blast door descended behind them, sealing engineering off. As Lester and Andrew had moved through the ship they had been manually closing all the bulkhead and blast doors behind them (though mostly they were only in the outer corridors), hopefully hindering that heat and lightning from spreading... whatever it was.

"OK, so where here." Andrew said, slumping against the door they'd just sealed "What do we do first?"

"Why ain'cha lookin up yur protocols for the answer huh?" Lester said without turning. Before Andrew could reply he continued. "Well, anyway, first things gotta be figrin out what tha' thing is. Can't dump it till we know how to dump it."

Andrew was rather surprised at this assessment. Lester didn't strike him as the 'check it out' kind of guy. More the 'if it moves, blast it out the airlock' kind of guy he'd have said. Maybe he'd misjudged him. After all the guy HAD got his captains licence....

" 'Corse we can always just spin the ship to throw it off, or maybe just jam the engines at it and blast 'em full throttle. Heh!"

...or maybe not.

Sighing Andrew turned to the internal sensors and was surprised to see most of the cameras and radiation mappers working. He flicked through the different cameras around the ship one by one.

"Well now." Lester was saying, ignoring Andrew for the moment, just talking at him rather than to him "We we're bein' hit by a flare, right? Sooooo, maybe this thing is just the outer hull super-heated? Naw, the cooling systems still on and would've stopped this ages ago if'n that're the reason. Hotter? Vaporized? Naw, would've just blown off the hull."

While Lester pondered Andrew kept cycling through the cameras, seeing the extent of the damage. It seemed that the port side of the ship, just next to the neck, had been partly melted. The cooling systems did seem to be holding, but slowly systems were failing and then the heat would wash through and melt the next bulkhead. What he was worried about were those electric arcs. What was causing those?

Surprisingly, some of the areas already succumbing to the heat had working cameras. It seemed the flood of heat was filling the corridors and the wall insulation was holding it back a little longer, stopping it from reaching some electronics in the walls, ceiling etc. Still, about a third of those cameras were out and more were failing by the second.

Then he froze. The camera that had just come up was in one of those hot sections, actually down that corridor they'd seen the thing first hand, arcs and all. The shot showed the outer corridor, the continuation of that corridor on the other side of the cargo bay it led to. That area had been melted so bad it was open to space and the walls looked as if they were dripping. Lord knows how hot it was there.

What had caught Andrew's attention was the bright orange blue ball floating across the view. He saw little electric sparks fly down from it to the surface, as if it was riding them to move across the floor. The thing looked incredibly intricate, and it slowly swirled as if it were on of those wax candles that was made in water, twirled around and in on itself in light spindly tendrils, but each one glowing like the sun.

"The sun... my god!" Andrew said, looking at the sensors. "That things a mobile plasma field!"

"What?" Lester said, suddenly appearing over Andrew's shoulder "Holy mother of god!" he muttered.

The two of them stared at the screen as the thing crept up to the buckled, glowing bulkhead door. Slowly tendrils spun out of the glowing mass, themselves bright as fire. Gently they traced across the surface of the bulkhead, then it jerked back as an electric arc whipped between it and the metal. After a second it reached forwards again and felt around the door once more, but careful to stay a little away from the surface.

"God damn Aliens!" Lester muttered. "Some sort of space-borne plasma thingies! Must be swarming all over us. How in hell 're we gonna get rid of 'em?"

"You don't know what they are Lester..." he said, the flinch in Lester's face obvious when he used his name rather than his rank ".. I mean Captain. Look, protocol in situations when unidentified aliens are detected is damn clear. We have open up the airways to get some message to them so..."

"Bullshit!" Lester yelled, practically in his ear. "They blast our ship to pieces, half melt the rest, and now they is poking around in the remains and you wanna go chat? Me? I'm digging out the physics text on plasmas and how we can fight 'em!"

Andrew turned to his captain, his face suddenly drawn in shock.

"What? No, you can't! We don't know what is going on out there. We don't know they did this on purpose. Besides TESA command forbids hostile actions against unknowns by civilian spacers..." but Lester butted in quickly.

"..Except in self defense, and this damn well qualifies in MY book! They try and take out my ship and I intend to fight back. You try and stop me and I'll break your damn nose goober!"

The two men stared at one another, the anger seething between them. Then a flicker from the camera display got their attention and they both turned to it.

The alien's tendril had flicked over the door control and arcs had sparked. It looked like the thing had shorted out what was left of the melted system and the door had half jerked open. Slowly the alien floated forwards, squeezing through the new gap in the half melted door, it's body squashing and folding up to fit through.

"Damn you! You ain't getting in my ship!" Lester shouted and jumped over to the security controls. He started switching on the over-rides, trying to shut or lock the bulkhead doors.

"Captain, you can't lock them out. They're designed to be overridden manually at the doors themselves to avoid people being trapped during a power-down!"

"But maybe they don't know that, eh? If'n I can lock it up, maybe they'll give up afor they figure out there IS an over-ride hmm?"

While they were talking the alien opened the next bulkhead, which was almost intact except for a single breach in the middle of the door.

"Aha!" Lester muttered and slammed a control.

The open door the alien was drifting through suddenly descended and then the screen filled with sparks and arcs of electricity. When the camera view cleared the alien was drifting inside, beyond the now closed door which was now melted all up it's front, sealing it. As Andrew looked at the alien he noticed some flickers that weren't there before, and discolorations, brighter patches. Maybe it had been injured by the door slamming down?

"Gotcha!" yelled Lester.

"It still got inside, and now the auto systems are pressurizing the corridor while that door holds. You've just let it in Captain."

Lester glared at Andrew but didn't say a word.

Another flash from the screen drew their attention. The alien was fiddling with the next bulkhead door. After a few seconds this one too opened. This time the alien shot inside too quickly to be hit when Lester slammed the door shut again.

"Blast it!" he muttered "I'll get you on the next one."

"There are only two doors in that section, then the cargo bay, then two before the main corridor, one in the corridor, then that one there." Andrew said, pointing at the Engineering entrance. "Think it'll take long for him to get through those?"

The two stared at each other for a moment. At first in shock as the possibilities sank in, then the familiar irritation with each other came back.

"Look, I'm going down there to try and talk to it. You can seal the corridor up behind me as I go."

"Hah!" Lester said, a contemptuous glare on his face, then his gaze hardened. "Well, I doubt I is gonna stop you, no matter how dumb it is. Still, I'm going to try and figure something to kill that thing and the rest of them outside. I just hope we got something I can knock up quick enough. We ain't got time for me to build something special."

The two stared at each other the reality of the situation fighting with the disparity between themselves. Then Andrew extended his hand.

"Well, good luck. Just don't be too hasty with any improvised guns eh?"

Lester chuckled and grasped his hand back, the space suits making the gesture not quite as close as it could be.

"Yeah, and don't you let your guard down ya hear?"

After a brief pause Andrew grabbed a pocket comlink and opened the blast door.

"See you round Lester." and the door slammed shut behind him.

"That's Captain ya goober." Lester muttered after him.



***************



"OK, so this is a little more than I'd bargained for." Twister muttered, reading the error reports from his VCS.

The suit had taken quite a beating from that impact. He still wasn't quite sure what these things were, but he had a nagging sensation that they were 'made'. What that meant was staggering, and his mind hadn't quite grasped the idea. At least he'd been able to negotiate further inside the thing. They seemed to react to certain magnetic fields quite well. Maybe they were designed that way? Best not think of that just yet.

He was still trying to get used to the idea that this whole 'dark-burg' might actually be a ship of some sort. What sort of life could be so cold was something he was trying not to think about. Frankly it scared the heck out of him! Tales from childhood of Monsters From Under The Sleep Field sprang into his mind, taunting him with their childishness. Could this be real?

With a jerk he made another magnetic field and the wall slid away. As he had done previously he jerked forwards quickly, his suit jets working in combination with his magnetic traction to make him move very quickly. Actually the traction was exceedingly good here, and he scarcely needed the jets at all. This material was very reactive to magnetics, and he had to be careful to avoid touching it directly.

He glanced around. It looked like he was in some large area, his illumination scarcely reached the other side enough to see. The darkness gave the room a spooky air that did not help his mood.

Slowly he followed the floor. At first he'd been surprised when he could feel gravity return. How could there be gravity out in space? But, if this was a 'construct' perhaps the creators could somehow create gravity too? A startling prospect, and worth even more if he could bring back the secret of it.

All this ruminating managed to take his mind off the dark and dingy chamber, but it also caused him to not pay attention to where he was going. With a zap he felt the contact as he hit a dark box that tumbled forwards when he hit it. It looked ornate, so sharp and blocky, perhaps some sort of sculpture? A box was a fairly uncomplex sculpture true, but still...

The tumbled shape looked odd, and it took a few tens of micras before he realized there was vapor rising from it, partially refracting the limited light in here, making the image wobble. Actually, the base of it was slightly warmer than the rest. He'd assumed it was just where he'd hit it, and that was where he'd connected, but surely it should have cooled in the last few micras? Instead it was getting slightly hotter, not a lot admittedly, but noticeably hotter. Weird!

Eventually he gave up on the interesting sculpture and crossed to the far side of the chamber with little further incident. There yet another sealed opening (He was avoiding the word 'door' in his mind still). The same response got him through without a scratch and he was in a corridor again, another sealed opening ahead. With a sigh he repeated it and....

Ahead of him was a short corridor that then split like a cross roads. At the join of the crossroads was an object. This was a bit more utilitarian than that squarish sculpture back there, it was rounded in places, no sharp corners. He knew from experience how difficult it was to make such things. He'd failed art at school, but he'd always likely sculpture, the folding of fields, the pinning of cores, twisting, locking, setting flows under the surface. Some effects could be quite beautiful...

He stopped. That thing it had.... moved! Suddenly noise filled the corridor. Wincing he tried to filter it out, but was rather loud... in fact it came from that thing. What was it?

Twister inched forwards, then stopped as the thing raised a.... Tendril?!? Suddenly Twister panicked and darted backwards, his tendril slamming against the controls, flailing to open the door behind him. He jerked through and it slammed down in front of him again, block the sight of the.... the.... creature!

Yes, it was alive. He didn't know how he knew, but he did. It looked like nothing he'd ever seen before but.... that thing was definitely alive. And if it was alive, and making noise, and it was here around all this..... he focussed and got control of himself.... around all this 'technology', maybe it had built this? Could that... thing be intelligent?

Shivering despite his suit's temperature regulation he huddled back towards the door behind him just as the door he had just come through opened up again and the 'alien' came forwards.



**************



Andrew was sweating buckets.

Of course most of it was psychological, but the thing was also damn hot! His suit protected him somewhat, but he knew he shouldn't get too close or he'd get fried!

The bulkhead door swished up into the ceiling and there, ahead, was the alien, hovering near the further bulkhead, slight arcs sparking against the wall and door. Andrew raised his commlink and tried again to talk to it.

"Testing, testing. Can you hear me?" he managed.

Then he once more triggered the prime number sequence on the commlink's computer, sending on multiple radio frequencies. This time he also remembered to engage an audio version in case the creature talked in sound (Which he doubted as it seemed to survive in space. More likely radio waves).

The creature seemed to not even move. Andrew didn't know what to do. How should he proceed? He didn't know the procedures for this and the book was still on the bridge. He was sure someone would have thought of such first contact protocols before.

"OK, well, maybe I should just talk hmm?" He said, using the radio to do a straight AM conversion of his voice on numerous frequencies. "Can you hear me?"

There did seem to be slight movements from the creature every time he spoke now and suddenly he saw it. The thing was pressed right back into the corner, as far away from him as it could get. This had started when he switched on the comlink!

"Oh hell! I must be deafening you!" he muttered and flicked the comlink off.

He leaned down as he fiddled with it to lower the power. As he did this the creature opened the hatch behind it and moved backwards.

In engineering Lester had almost got something ready when he caught the movement out of the corner of his eye. In a flash he slammed the door control before dashing down the corridor with his new toy.... unfortunately it was the wrong door.

"AAARRRGGGHHHH!" Andrew managed as he was dashed sideways, the door scraping down his front then crushing his left leg under it. He heard the crunch as the door came to rest on his flesh.

The suit seal was gone now of course but Andrew was lucky that there still air here at the moment. He didn't feel very lucky though. The pain was incredible, a lancing jet across his leg just below his knee. He didn't dare look down to see how far the door had crushed it.

Then he noticed his leg on the far side heating up. Oh god, were his nerves damaged? There was a sudden rise in heat, his leg sweltering, then suddenly the door rose.

Before him the alien floated, it's heat radiating at him like a mini-sun. As he lay there gobsmacked the thing reached down to his leg.

"EEEAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGG!" he yelled as the thing seared him, and it jerked back as he flailed.

They stayed there, a few feet apart for a few moments, then slowly the thing got closer. He felt the heat seep through his suit, getting unbearable, then it stopped. Instead he felt little tingles in the hairs on his leg. As he looked down he saw little sparks flying from his suit. The thing was using magnetics to pull the metal insulation in his space suit!

"M... My god!" he muttered, still sweating from the heat this thing radiated. "You really are intelligent aren't you?"

The thing carefully lifted his leg clear of the door space, presumably in case the door shut again, then let him down and drifted to one side, the same side of the door as Andrew.

Just at that moment Lester dashed around the corner holding some sort of mechanical device with a cable that he'd presumably just plugged in a little ways up the corridor.

"Eat magnetism alien scum!" Lester scream and lifted the 'weapon'.

Andrew had never liked those stories that said 'Time slowed to a crawl as...', but now he was in such a situation and it really DID seem to slow down to nothing.

As Lester raised his improvised weapon he saw the alien swoop in from his side. What? Then he got it. The alien thought this new comer was threatening Andrew! It was trying to protect him!

"Lester, NO!" he yelled, but too late. A hum filled the air and a crackling trail of ionied air traced a path straight into the heart of the creature, jerking it backwards to crash against the second bulkhead in a shower of sparks.



************



One 'day', or a third of a Cycle, later Twister hovered in the 'cargo bay' on the alien's ship. The two creatures were here in their protective suits having just come back inside. He'd watched them slide the plate between his ship and theirs, making a magnetic seal on the front of his ship. It looked a little heavy, but he thought his ship could handle it, and it would certainly hold up well on re-entry.

"I just *crackle* to apologize again." came the crackly translation over their hand device from the one called 'Lester' "*crackle* mean to *crackle*"

Maybe the translation system could be improved later, but just the fact that they could talk at all was incredible!

"Don't worry, you're just lucky I was wearing my suit, or that thing would have torn me to bits!"

Apparently this Lester had thought Twister was 'invading' his ship and was attacking him, not the other alien (though from what he could tell they could hardly be called friends). It had taken quite a bit to persuade him that he was friendly. They had some sort of display system (a square display was something he'd never get used to!) that replayed his helping the other alien 'Andrew' out from the door and this had persuaded him, finally.

"Yes, well *crackle* well and good but *crackle*" he said.

Twister sighed, this translator could get on your nerves! Then the Andrew alien spoke up.

"Don't worry, we will contact *crackle* people after. They'll be *crackle* interested. I'm *crackle* sorry you couldn't stay *crackle* longer. The rescue *crackle* will be here soon."

"I wish I could, but my reactor won't last much longer, I have to go, but I will be back as soon as my government will allow. At very least we can communicate."

"Yes, well take care Twister. Good *crackle* on your journey." said Andrew.

The Lester being waved an appendage in what Twister thought was a farewell gesture. Twister tried to smile as he retreated, massaging his midriff where the magnetic pulse had struck him. That thing packed quite a wallop!

As he returned to his ship and slowly pulled away from the alien he examined the plate with it's magnetic machinery on it. He wondered if they realized what they were giving him? This thing that kept his ship intact needed no fields to keep it intact, it didn't age, it didn't require power to just exist, only to operate. You had to keep it cool, but that could be worked on. This technology would be a giant leap for his people and make them the most technologically advanced on the star.

Softly he hummed to himself as he soared back home, the hero's welcome he'd receive vivid in his mind, but he kept seeing the soaring prominences of home. After all this time in a dark box it would be nice to get back to some real LIGHT!