The Dark Beyond the Stars : A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

weakly and she helped me to my feet.
    “Easy does it,” a voice said. I turned to find Crow steadying me. His skin was shiny with sweat, his eyes as worried as Pipit’s. Others had stopped their workouts with the spring-bars and the exercise cycles to stare at me. I felt foolish, even more so when I noticed the pale-faced crewman among them. Crow and Pipit helped me back up to the hatch. My body ached where I had struck the handholds on the way down and I winced with every movement.
    Reentering sick bay, I forgot to brake. I grabbed frantically at something to stop myself,then crossed my arms in front of my face as I sailed toward one of the beds close to my own. I braced myself for a jarring collision with the patient in it, my mouth already forming apologies. The bed and its occupant turned out to be as insubstantial as the air itself. I didn’t stop until I struck the opposite bulkhead, slipping through two more beds and their patients. They winked out of existence as I passed through,then flickered back into view as I receded.
    I froze, concentrating on the other patients as they talked among themselves or sat on the edges of their cots while they ate their meals. None of them seemed aware of my sudden entrance or, as usual, that I even existed. I reached out to touch the nearest one and my hand passed through him with no resistance whatsoever.
    I had watched them for weeks but never noticed their obvious lack of reality. They slept in beds with no restraints to hold them in, they ate from standard food trays and they sat as flat upon their mattresses as if the sick bay were planet-bound.
    I glared at Pipit,then made the connection with the crewmen in the corridor who had been wearing masks.
    “Give me a mask,” I said in a voice blurred by anger.
    A dozen strips of transparent plastic were tied to a nearby bulkhead peg and Pipit handed me one without a word. I clipped it around my head, staring openmouthed as the familiar surroundings disappeared.
    The sick bay was actually a small, almost empty compartment that held half a dozen beds. I was the only patient. The bulkheads were dull and oily looking; I could never have seen my reflection in any of them. The deck was a beaten sheet of metal worn by the passage of generations of magnetic sandals. A few of the glow tubes flickered where the bulkheads and the overhead met; two of them had burned out. The anatomy charts were discolored and chipped; one light panel was broken, the other was dark. There was no glassteel partition through which I could see banks of shining machinery in a spotless operating theater. In fact, there was no operating theater. Nor were there any ports through which I could stare at the stars or watch a planet revolving majestically a thousand kilometers below. I had been looking at the ship as it once had been, not as it was now. Beneath the images formed by the intersecting planes of light, the Astron was old, old past anything I could imagine. Pipit stood there, biting her lip as she searched for words to calm me. I ignored her and dove for the outer passageway.
    On my tour with Pipit, the ship had been spacious and clean, sparkling with chrome and stainless steel. Now it was ancient and cramped, the passageways shorter, the compartments tiny, the bulkheads stained with blotches of rust. The sight and feel and taste of aging metalwas everywhere; the stink of oil was like a fog. I wondered why I hadn’t noticed it before, then realized my eyes had blinded my other senses—I hadn’t smelled the stench or noticed that the bulkheads were damp with generations of human sweat. Communications was a small, cluttered compartment with three crewmen who stared at me curiously, then went back to idly checking their instruments. A writing slate with the latest communication from Earth—a brief message of encouragement—scrawled on it, hung on the bulkhead outside. It was dated from the year before.
    The racks of hydroponic tubs were real, though not