Jack Williamson Eldren 01 Lifeburst

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with nothing from Jason Kwan, nothing from any alien. Slowing faster than any
ship could, the object crept upon the computed position of the wreck. The two
points merged. The single image brightened.
He saw no more till a gong called him to the holocom station. The holo tank
came to life. He saw the skeletal wreck of the
Spica
. Almost in line with Brun s ship, they were picking up the probe s signal
beam.
Near the camera, the wreckage spun very slowly in the starry dark. Somehow, it
had grown luminous.
Lit, he saw, by the object they had followed out of the north. When he found
it, his breath stopped.
Something enormous, though oddly hard to see at first. Its dim loom was ten
times the length of the skeleton ship. Maybe twenty. He made out a faint
barrel shape. A jet of violet fire blazed out of it,
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Jack Williamson - Eldren 1 - Lifeburst (v1.1)
lighting the wreckage. Where it struck, the old ribs and plates and beams were
glowing red, turning yellow, finally shining white.
That glow lit a creature!
No starbird, no skyfish. Slowly revealed, it dazed him. The head had bulging
armored turrets placed like eyes, glowing dully red. Nightmare jaws yawned
wide. That massive barrel was its body, tapering into a bright-plated tail
that had arched as if to sting the wreck with that incandescent jet.
It was winged, he thought, though the wing-shapes were folded into the great
body s shadow and almost impossible to see. The light revealed limbs. Four of
them, jointless as snakes, slenderly powerful, darting to seize the wreck with
immense black talons.
It consumed the hulk.
In that jet s blue blaze, the old ribs and plates and scraps flowed into hot
white blobs. Hovering closer, dark wings spread now as if to catch the gases
exploding into space, the creature opened its appalling jaws. A thin-seeming
tongue stabbed out to suck up the molten metal.
He stared till the last bright blobs were gone. No longer lit, the creature
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faded back into the dark, until only its red-glowing eyes were left among the
stars. They seemed to swell. They spread apart. Its shadow blotted out the
stars. Its jaws loomed near. Like a great snake striking, its tongue stabbed
into his face.
The tank blacked out.
He had shrunk back from it, hands flung up. Trembling now, he stared into the
empty tank. It had all happened too fast, so fast it seemed an evil dream. Yet
it was too strange, too terribly real, to have been imagined.
Dazed and shaking, he tried to call Charbon. A sleepy-sounding yeoman told him
the captain was unwell and unfit to be disturbed. Nobody had been left in
charge. The yeoman turned surly when he kept insisting, and finally told him
to take a dive into the sky.
He went back to the lidar scopes. The moving point had vanished. The red shine
of those vast eyes
had they been searchlights? Looking for food? Dark now, because the creature
had fed?
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Jack Williamson - Eldren 1 - Lifeburst (v1.1)
Still shivering inside, he kept his own search gear going. Nothing more came
in. Nothing from Jason
Kwan. Nothing from the position of the alien base. Nothing from where the
wreck had been. At last the far Sun struck across the cratered ice. The
Martian Kwan came into line of sight. Braking to land, now only a few hours
out.
We ve lost our drone, Vira Brun told him. Do you have additional data on
that object?
Light still took nearly a second to reach her, nearly another to return.
Waiting for her responses, as she waited for his, he saw a long pale scar that
ran beneath the Sunmark on her leathery cheek, saw scattered black bristles
along her upper lip.
I saw what happened to the wreck. Though I can t He had to shake his head.
Can t quite believe
can t believe such a thing could be alive.
Alive? Her hard face reflected nothing. What was alive?
Feeling breathless and none too steady, he tried to describe the thing he had
seen. Her eyes narrowed warily. He couldn t tell what she thought, but he felt
a flash of admiration for her iron calm.
Captain, he finished, didn t you see it?
I was not on duty. She paused, peering sharply at him. Our technician
reported that the unknown object seemed to strike the wreck and our drone in
an extraordinary triple collision, which stopped transmission.
Didn t he see its shape?
He reports a malfunction in our equipment. He got no details.
I think I know I saw something alive. He tried to seem as cool as she was.
A creature of space.
Shaped a little like an insect. Red-glowing eyes. A blazing jet for a sting.
It s big! Bigger than any spacecraft. It eats metal it fused the wreck and
sucked up the hot metal. Moving faster than anything should, it came on to hit
the drone.
Waiting again for her reaction, he saw none at all.
Captain He had to catch his breath. Don t you believe
That hardly matters. She shrugged, frowning out of the tank. I m sure the
event was extraordinary.
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Jack Williamson - Eldren 1 - Lifeburst (v1.1)
The technician seems to have seen something that left him disturbed and
incoherent. We have him under sedation now.
Captain! He kept trying to match her calm. That creature s real. Real and
frightening. Now flying blind, I imagine, without the search beam it used to
locate the wreck. It could attack Janoort. It could hit your ship.
More long seconds of her impassive frown.
Mr. Dain, we re all at risk. She seemed to be reproving him. A time may
come when the human species is at home in space. If we survive. If we adapt.
But that s not yet. Out here, we re meeting circumstances new to us.
Circumstances we must accept if we care to stay.
Captain, he protested, if you d seen that creature
I hope I never do.
For a moment, almost smiling, she looked likable.
There s a rule of the Fleet s you ought to be aware of. Rather, a rule of the
Chens. Her stern calm had returned. You ll be in trouble with the censor if
you try to report what you say you saw. Better forget it, she added. For
your own sake. Maybe for mine.
Why? he whispered.
Solarpolitics. An old and bitter issue. The Kwans hold that space aliens do
exist. The Chens hold that they don t. They accuse the Kwans of fabricating
evidence to support the Revelator, with his crazy claims of demons in space.
The skyfish is no fabrication. My own mother took it back Sunside.
Your mother? Her hard face showed slight surprise. Dr. Nadya Dain?
Nodding, he waited again.
I know her. I advised her once to drop the skyfish whatever it is before the
Chens wrecked her career.
Are they so powerful?
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