"Earl!" Ysanne rose, ignoring the blood, the dead man on the floor. "He shot you!"
The heat had missed his face, his hands, burning instead a narrow swath across his tunic, searing the plastic and revealing the metal mesh buried within the material. This protection had absorbed the energy and saved him from injury.
"No harm," she said. "Thank God for that." Then, looking at the dead man, she added, "But what do we do now for a captain?"
CHAPTER EIGHT
Every ship carried ghosts and a slaver more than most; whispers, sighs, cries of pain and grief, the slurry of restless movement. Vibrations caught and transmitted through the structure to fade and die in murmuring susurations. But, in the Moira, the ghosts Dumarest heard were things of silence.
The ship was too quiet. In the engine room Jed Craig tended the humming generators and in the control room watchful mechanisms studied the space through which they drove but here, in the cabin, he heard nothing but the small sounds created by the woman at his side.
She moved as he glanced at her, one hand lifting to touch his arm, her lips smiling as her fingers met his flesh. She was newly awake as he could tell from the altered tempo of her breathing yet remembered a recent passion which, slaked, had left them satiated.
A single point of light illuminated the cabin with a soft, pink glow and he remembered another room, another woman revealed in a similar illumination.
As if reading his mind Ysanne said, "Regrets, Earl?"
"No."
"Memories, then? Of someone you left behind in Zabul?" Her hand moved over his naked torso. "Someone who loved you?"
A question he left unanswered even as he wondered why he found it so hard to remember Althea's face. Copper hair and emerald eyes-familiar coloration, but she had lacked the raw energy which filled Ysanne. The same burning individuality which had made Kalin so precious.
"Earl?"
"Nothing." The past was dead and ghosts should be left in peace. Now, at this moment, only Ysanne was real. The woman and the ship and the dangers they faced.
"I was thinking," she said. "About you and Maynard. I thought you'd relied on luck to avoid getting hurt but now I know better. You planned the whole thing from the very beginning. Watched and waited and moved when the time was right. And, by God, how you moved! I've never seen anyone so fast."
"It's over. Forget it."
"Aren't you curious? About him and me?"
"No."
Her hand tensed on his chest then relaxed. In the light she looked wild, barbaric. An animal yet to be tamed, broken, fitted with a yoke. She had come to him with an unabashed directness and his response had matched her own.
"You're different," she mused. "From the very first moment we met I recognized that. We're two of a kind. What you want you take. What you need you go after. Like me. You can understand how it is; to see something and know you must have it. Must have it. Once, when I was very young, I saw a kalifox. It had fur which changed color in different lights and I wanted it. I wanted it so bad I hunted it for seven weeks. I chased it over the plains and into the hills and up into the snow and never gave it rest. I caught it in the end."
"Did you enjoy the fur?"
"We both enjoyed it." She laughed with a soft amusement. "I didn't kill it, Earl. I fed it and kept it for a pet until winter came and it ran off to mate. I used to hear it barking from the hills at night and, sometimes, I would bark back." She snuggled a little closer. "Can you understand that?"
"Yes."
"Did you ever have a pet? On Earth, Earl? Did you?"
There had been no time for pets, no time for softness of any kind. To catch an animal was to gain a meal and to feed one was to invite starvation. Trust, love, affection, generosity-all were luxuries he'd never known.
She seemed to sense this and she didn't press the question, talking instead of her own world.
"You'd like Manita, Earl. We live simple lives close to nature. Hunting, fishing, growing crops. No one tells another what to do. There are no pressures. A man doesn't have to prove himself. To live. To share. To help when help is needed."
"But you left."
"I said we lived simple lives not that we are ignorant. To keep what we have we must be as educated as those who might want to take it from us. So I learned. I was always good at finding my way around and it was natural I should become a navigator. I like it so I do it. When I stop liking it I do something else."
"Like hunting down a legend?"
"Of course. But it isn't that to you, is it? It's real and you want to go back home." Her tone gentled. "At times I feel the same. I remember the open plains and the hills and the nights when the sky glowed with stars. The meetings and pairings and the fun. The hunts, too, and the fishing, but most of all, I think, the freedom. That's when I begin to get restless."
"And move?"
"Yes."
"And when you stop liking what you're doing now?"
She said, "What you're really saying is what happens when I stop liking you. Isn't it obvious? We stop being lovers. We stop being companions. You want more?"
"I wasn't talking about us. I'm talking about our partnership. Does that end too?"
For a long moment she stared at him then, smiling, she said, "Earl, you fool, for us there'll be no ending. We'll go on until we find a new beginning. Then, maybe, you'll go running into the hills and, at night, I'll hear you barking."
"And will you bark back?"
"Maybe. That's for you to guess." She grew serious. "Don't worry, Earl, I'm no quitter. Once I start a thing I see it through. If Earth exists we'll find it."
"It exists."
"Then we'll find it." She stretched like a cat on the soft comfort of the bed. "Now kiss me before I go and check the controls."
Maynard's death had robbed the Moira of experienced command. Seated in the big control chair Dumarest checked the instruments and studied the screens, going through a routine which he had learned from service with various freetraders, knowing it wasn't enough. To stand a temporary watch to relieve a tired captain was a different matter from accepting the full responsibility of a ship and all it contained.
As yet they had been lucky. Space was clear and the automatics capable of maintaining flight and safety, but space was also deceptive and odd vortexes of energy lay in unexpected places. Swirling maelstroms of force could take a ship and rip it apart with opposed energies. Nodes held within their parameters the fury of dying suns. In these areas the instruments couldn't be trusted and only an experienced hand and eye could guide a ship on a safe route.
Experience Dumarest lacked and he knew it.
"Earl?" Ysanne spoke from the intercom. "How is it going?"
"All right as yet. Are we on course?"
"The same as I set. Barely any deviation."
Proof of the superior efficiency of the Moira's equipment but enough to have missed their target had it been distant.
"Change," ordered Dumarest. "Set a new course."