Fire with Fire(131)

“That’s pretty far off if something goes wrong,” muttered Hwang.

“Doctor, if something goes wrong, there is probably squat-all we can do about it, anyway. I’m sure you folks have been chatting about the ship that just came in so you’re probably guessing the same thing I am: that if these Dornaani wanted to put their foot up our ass and wriggle their toes out our nostrils, I doubt there’s a thing in creation we could do about it. On the other hand, if they mean to harm us, they’re going about it in an awful neighborly way. If I was you, I wouldn’t worry about any problems during the transfer—or after.”

Flannery edged back toward the door. “Now, I’ve got a ship to run and a transfer to effect, so I must politely insist that you get your asses into your module, button up, and batten down. You’ve got twenty minutes.” He paused, then saluted. “Do Earth proud, folks.” One long, lanky step had him out the door and gone.

ODYSSEUS

Caine checked his watch—just about fifty minutes since Flannery’s brusque farewell—and then felt a reasonable amount of gravity pushing him down into the acceleration couch once again. Trevor’s voice came out of the ceiling speakers a moment later. “Okay, folks. That bump you felt a few minutes ago was indeed the Dornaani connecting to us via our intership coupling node. Instruments now indicate a spin-generated equivalent of 0.97 gees. Be careful if you get up—we don’t know our rotations per minute yet, so we can’t be sure how bad the inner ear or Coriolis effects are going to be.”

Visser’s voice followed Trevor’s: “Might the gravity be natural? Could we have already shifted, and come out near a planet?”

Caine felt a sudden flush of embarrassment for Visser, was glad that Le Mule did not jump down her throat. It was fairly common knowledge—even for someone who had been asleep for fourteen years—that you couldn’t come out of shift near a planet. The proximity to a gravity well would deform the ship’s re-expression pattern and—pffffftttt: you came out as a whole lot of nothing. And as for the possibility that they might have felt a shift . . .

Caine toggled his own comm link. “I doubt we’ve experienced shift yet, Ms. Visser. You feel a little jolt when you shift. Not painful, just a start—like when you wake up from a falling dream.”

Movement at the entrance to his stateroom caught the corner of his eye: Opal, in a low-cut T-shirt and shorts. Which looked very fine on her. Caine tapped the commlink which was dragging awkwardly at the neckline of his own tee, rose, smiling—but then saw that her face was as rigid as a mask. He moved past her, closed the door, and steered her toward the acceleration couch on which he had been sitting. She didn’t resist or speak.

He sat down next to her, put a hand on top of hers. She clutched his fingers so quickly and so tightly that he almost cursed. “Opal, what’s wrong?”

Without looking at him, she spat words. “You heard that braying jackass, Le Mule. Shifting is just a nice way of saying that we’re going to be torn into trillions of tiny, subatomic particles.”

“It is a pretty strange concept,” Caine started agreeably.

Opal shut her eyes. “It is suicide.”

He studied her face, started at what he saw there. “Why are you crying?”

She blinked, looked even more surprised than he was, and yelped out a short laugh. “What? I’m what? Crying?”

Caine only nodded: clearly, this was more than just fear.

Opal waved an airy hand. “Oh, that’s nothing. I was just—”

Caine reached out and drew her close slowly, gently. She exhaled and put her arms around him. She was in that position, unmoving, for so long that he wondered if she might have gone to sleep. “Opal, are you—?”

She let out a long sigh. “I’m sorry. I’m—God, I’m such a coward.”

“You?” He held her back to look at her. “You? This is a joke, right?”

“It’s this whole shift business.”

He doubted that, but asked, “What about it?”

“Well, the mere thought of being shredded into subatomic particles—didn’t it scare you, the first time?”

Caine shrugged. “It couldn’t: I was in cold sleep. And by the time they woke me up, I had already been through three shifts. I guess some part of me accepted that if shifting was going to kill me, it would have already done so. But instead, here I am.” He smiled.

And then, she was grabbing his head in both hands and was kissing him. He also felt her shaking, as if she had started crying again, but a moment after he began to respond—eagerly—she stopped trembling. And by that time, he had stopped thinking.