The Abyss Beyond Dreams Read Online Free PDF Page B

confirmed. Five greens on clamp release. Regrav units on line.
Initiating lift.’
    The red docking bay lights turned purple, signalling vacuum, and the outer doors slid back, to reveal a midnight-black universe outside. The shuttle wobbled slightly as it rose from its docking
cradle. Rojas eased it out through the airlock.
    Despite herself, Laura craned forward for a better view through the windscreen. The weird space she’d only seen on
Vermillion
’s holograms unveiled for real as Fourteen
emerged from the bay. Somehow, Void space managed to appear darker than ordinary space. It was the contrast, Laura reasoned. On the Commonwealth worlds there were always so many stars visible at
night, from the faintest wisps of the Milky Way up to the sharp specks of white giants. They were all around and forever. Here there were so few stars visible, probably no more than a couple of
thousand. But the nebulas made up for their absence. There must have been hundreds, from the great smears of luminous plasma dust sprawling over lightyears to fainter smudges glowing in the unknown
depths.
    Gravity fell away over a long moment as they glided clear of the
Vermillion
. Fourteen began a slow roll, and Laura saw the massive cliff of foam-coated metal slide past as if they were
falling parallel to it. It wasn’t an elegant structure, more like heavy-duty industrial modules bolted together and sprayed in the ubiquitous foam, which had bleached and pocked from its long
vacuum exposure. Things poked out of the coating on spindly poles: sensors, comlinks, molecular force screen nozzles . . . Bright orange-neon lines glowed in deep fissures that were the seams
between modules, the thermal-dump radiators energetically beaming the starship’s excess heat out into the vacuum. Regrav and ingrav propulsion units were clusters of stumpy cylinders as big
as the shuttle, made out of dark glass shot through with green scintillations.
Vermillion
’s rear third was all segmented cargo tubes, like a geometrical intestine. They contained
everything you needed to establish a technologically advanced human civilization on a virgin world.
    All useless here
, Laura thought bleakly.
    Rojas applied power to Fourteen’s main regrav drive units, and the shuttle started accelerating away from the
Vermillion
. Laura’s sense of balance shifted rapidly as the
gravity built to one third standard. To her perception, the shuttle was now standing on its tail, putting her flat on her back in the couch while the floor had now become the wall. Rojas was above
her, his couch creaking as it absorbed the new weight loading.
    ‘Are you all right?’ a smooth mental voice asked her.
    Laura didn’t need to be told this was the Skylord. The mentality she could sense behind the thought was massive and intimidatingly serene.
    ‘Er, yes, thank you,’ she replied, instinctively tightening her own thoughts so her emotional leakage was minimal. Judging by the stiff postures all around her, the others were
taking part in identical telepathic conversations.
    ‘You are leaving,’ the Skylord said with a tinge of concern. ‘Is my guidance no longer acceptable? We are so near a world where you will flourish and become
fulfilled.’
    Rojas held up a hand, stalling anyone else’s reply, and opened up his own telepathic voice. ‘We thank you for your guidance, and anticipate joining our friends on the world you have
brought us to very soon.’
    ‘I am glad for you. But why do you delay?’
    ‘We wish to explore the nature of this world and everything close to it. It is the way we reach our fulfilment.’
    ‘I understand. Your current trajectory will take you close to our parturition region.’
    ‘Do you mean this clump of objects?’ Rojas sent a mental picture of the Forest.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Is this where Skylords come from?’
    ‘Not this parturition region. We came from another.’
    ‘What are the objects in the parturition region? Eggs?’
    ‘The parturition