Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

past my hand.
    As we laboured I became aware I was getting uncomfortably hot. The
light that seeped into the tangle from that caged sun seemed to be
getting stronger by the minute. But as we worked those uneasy
thoughts soon dissipated.
    At last we got the Ghost under control. Briskly Jeru stripped it
of its kit belt, and we began to cram the baggy corpse as deep as we
could into the surrounding tangle. It was a grisly job. As the Ghost
crumpled further, more of its innards, stiffening now, came pushing
out of the holes we’d given it in its hide, and I had to keep from
gagging as the foul stuff came pushing out into my face.
    At last it was done - as best we could manage it, anyhow.
    Jeru’s faceplate was smeared with black and red. She was sweating
hard, her face pink. But she was grinning, and she had a trophy, the
Ghost belt around her shoulders. We began to make our way back,
following the same SOP as before.
    When we got back to our lying-up point, we found Academician Pael
was in trouble.
     
    Pael had curled up in a ball, his hands over his face. We pulled
him open. His eyes were closed, his face blotched pink, and his
faceplate dripped with condensation.
    He was surrounded by gadgets stuck in the tangle - including parts
from what looked like a broken-open starbreaker handgun; I recognised
prisms and mirrors and diffraction gratings. Well, unless he woke up,
he wouldn’t be able to tell us what he had been doing here.
    Jeru glanced around. The glow of the fortress’s central star had
gotten a lot stronger. Our lying-up point was now bathed in light -
and heat - with the surrounding tangle offering very little shelter.
’Any ideas, tar?’
    I felt the exhilaration of our infil drain away. ’No, sir.’
    Jeru’s face, bathed in sweat, showed tension. I noticed she was
favouring her left hand. She seemed to come to a decision. ’All
right. We need to improve our situation here.’ She dumped the Ghost
equipment belt and took a deep draught of water from her hood spigot.
’Tar, you’re on stag. Try to keep Pael in the shade of your body. And
if he wakes up, ask him what he’s found out.’
    ’Yes, sir.’
    ’Good. I’ll be back.’
    And then she was gone, melting into the complex shadows of the
tangle as if she’d been born to these conditions.
    I found a place where I could keep up 360-degree vision, and offer
a little of my shadow to Pael - not that I imagined it helped
much.
    I had nothing to do but wait.
    As the Ghost ship followed its own mysterious course, the light
dapples filtering through the tangle shifted and evolved. Clinging to
the tangle, I thought I could feel vibration: a slow, deep
harmonisation that pulsed through the ship’s giant structure. I
wondered if I was hearing the deep voices of Ghosts, calling to each
other from one end of their mighty ship to another. It all served to
remind me that everything in my environment, everything, was alien,
and I was very far from home.
    During a drama like the contact with the Ghost, you don’t realise
what’s happening to you because your body blanks it out; on some
level you know you just don’t have time to deal with it. Now that I
had stopped moving, the aches and pains of the last few hours started
crowding in on me. I was still sore in my head and back and, of
course, my busted arm. I could feel deep bruises, maybe cuts, on my
gloved hands where I had hauled at my knife, and I felt as if I had
wrenched my good shoulder. One of my toes was throbbing ominously: I
wondered if I had cracked another bone, here in this weird
environment in which my skeleton had become as brittle as an old
man’s. I was chafed at my groin and armpits and knees and ankles and
elbows, my skin rubbed raw. I was used to suits; normally I’m tougher
than that, and again I felt unreasonably fragile.
    The shafts of sunlight on my back were working on me too; it felt
as if I was lying underneath the elements of an oven. I had a
headache, a deep sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, a ringing in
my ears, and a persistent ring of blackness around my eyes. Maybe I
was just exhausted, dehydrated; maybe it was more than that.
    I counted my heartbeat, my breaths; I tried to figure out how long
a second was. ’A thousand and one. A thousand and two…’ Tracking
time is a fundamental human trait; time provides a basic orientation,
and keeps you mentally sharp and in touch with reality. But I kept
losing count.
    And all my efforts failed to stop darker thoughts