Dark Running (Fourth Fleet Irregulars Book 4) Read Online Free PDF Page A

understand.
    Spacers believed in ghosts, Jermane knew. Most spacers, anyway, even if they’d deny it. It was something that had always fascinated him. Spacers were, by definition, high tech, hard science people, techs and engineers. Yet they were notoriously superstitious, prone to belief in jinxes, hauntings, banshees and gremlins. There’d been a lot of talk on the Embassy III, lately, about the Fourth’s operations at Novamas, and the strange, beautiful ceremony that had honoured the Alari, a lost race long ago entombed beneath the ice of that world.
    ‘No, don’t think about ice, stop thinking about ice!’ Jermane told himself, severely. ‘You’re getting completely wound up and freaked out about this, it’s just gas , it freezes, it thaws, it freezes again, it’s just gas , it’s not doing anything on purpose .’
    All the same he wished, with increasing desperation, that he could shut out the view of that encroaching ice. They ought, he thought angrily, to have thought of that when they designed this dome, and provided a blank-out function or at least some kind of blind. He even thought about trying to improvise one, perhaps by taping a sleeping bag over the window. But then, when he really thought about that, he realised that not being able to see the ice would not make things any better. On the contrary, he would feel as if it was creeping up on him unseen. He would have, he knew, to keep checking it, lifting the improvised blind to have a look. And besides, if he once gave way to his fears  like that, giving them solidity by acting on them, they would only get worse. He might well end up cowering in the shower, driven out of his mind by sheer terror.
    He was dreading, with a kind of sick horror, the day when the ice touched the dome. He told himself fifty times a day that it was nothing, nothing , it would be a little glitter of frost crystals over the dome, if indeed they formed at all. The dome’s insulation was very good, but its outer temperature must surely, he thought, be a bit warmer than the surrounding ground. The system interface, though, was unhelpful on this point, since it would only give him the external ground temperature. Perhaps it would be warm enough so that no ice formed on the dome at all, or even for a little way around it – it might move on, leaving the dome in a safe little island of warmth.
    Or it might not. And however illogical he knew it was, some part of him was sure, but sure , that when the ice began to creep over the dome, those ghostly wisps would form, not just outside, but here, within.
    He tried to keep his mind off it. He tried to work, delving into the files he’d brought with him, forcing himself to concentrate. Time seemed to play tricks, though. He would feel as if he had been working for an hour, and look to find that only ten minutes had passed. Sometimes he found himself sitting there reading the same passage over and over again, oblivious to its meaning.
    He was losing it, he knew that. He was hysterical, panic-stricken, even becoming delusional. He saw something from the corner of his eye one day – a small, quiet, sliding movement with a soft little sound. He froze rigid, not breathing, his heart beating so hard that he thought he might actually have a cardiac arrest. It was at least ten interminable seconds before he was able to work out that it was just a cushion which had slid off the couch, the one he’d tossed there casually as he’d got up a few minutes ago. Even then, it took him all his willpower to force his head around and look, and he was almost sobbing with relief as he went and picked it up, still hardly wanting to touch it even then.
    It was after that that he got as far as opening the medical box. There were, indeed, anti-stress pills in that which would have eased his symptoms. Even as he picked up the packet, though, he knew he wasn’t going to take them. The Diplomatic Corps had firm policies on stress medication for those on front