…I worried I would not retain consciousness.

There. I have said it. Though I told Festina I was fine and resented her suggesting otherwise, I feared my mind would go blank if I allowed myself to relax. Perhaps it would happen even if I did not relax. Nomatter how hard I fought the Tiredness, I still was most terrified I would sink into the cozy carpet and my brain would cease to function. Mental emptiness had swallowed me too often in the past few hours; it seemed as if I could not spend an idle minute without slipping away from the world. Being forced to sit in a comfy place was almost a sentence of execution… but of course I could not say that for fear of being called a coward.

So I sat and cringed and shivered.

"Excellent," Lady Bell said as the others also claimed sections of carpet. Festina sat right beside me, probably wishing to be within reach in case my brain dribbled out my ears: a gesture which infuriated me greatly.

"Now," said Bell, "we’ll record everything before we broadcast, so we can edit out slips of the tongue, and perhaps passages of testimony that don’t work… though I don’t want anyone to be self-conscious, just say whatever you want and let me decide whether you’re being tedious and pedantic. By the way, I hope you can all take direction. And perhaps it would be best to do vocal warm-ups right now: run through some tongue-twisters, practice speaking from the diaphragm. You all have diaphragms, correct? Except for you, cloud man, I don’t know what you have. Why don’t you practice holding a nice solid shape rather than wavering about. Try to look like a person instead of a pukka -ball. And make your arms bulgy to suggest muscles. Viewers like muscles. Taut lean muscles gleaming with sweat. Perforated with tight puckered orifices and preferably highlighted in at least two of the primary colors. Umm, well… work on that, do your best. Meanwhile, I’ll call a newsbroker I know on Jalmut — have him put out the word that we’ll soon have some hydrogen-hot footage for sale."

She raised her voice slightly and said something in Cashlingese. I did not know whom she was addressing; but a moment later, a gusty voice whooshed and fribbled an answer from the ceiling. Either the words came from another person elsewhere in the ship, or it was the voice of Unfettered Destiny itself: what humans call the "ship-soul." I have been told that in the Technocracy navy, the ship-soul is intentionally given a mechanical-sounding voice so it can be distinguished from humans. On Unfettered Destiny, the voice sounded more windy than Bell or Rye, as if it were powered by huge ship-sized lungs instead of the many little lung-ettes of real Cashlings.

The ship-soul spoke briefly, then fell silent. Lady Bell seemed waiting for more; I suppose she had instructed the ship to contact her newsbroker and was now expecting a reply.

In the meantime, I squirmed in my too-comfy seat. Uclod and Lajoolie still appeared bleary after their nausea in the receiving bay; Nimbus hovered near them while Festina whispered to Aarhus in confidential tones. I disliked my friend speaking in a manner I could not overhear… but it seemed a great deal of trouble to move into a position where I could eavesdrop, especially when she and the sergeant were probably just discussing tiresome navy topics.

It was all too much bother to pay attention. In fact, everything in the world seemed excessively complicated. I remember thinking, Why can’t I just sleep for a while? Then I snuggled into the soft woolly floor.

Enough To Wake Me Up

Lady Bell said something sharp in Cashlingese. I sat up abruptly, unsure how much time had passed since my last conscious thought. As far as I could tell, no one had changed position at all. Perhaps it had only been a few seconds.

But I did not know how long I had blanked out, and that terrified me.

"Is something wrong?" Festina asked. I opened my mouth to say, I am very very scared… but she was looking at Bell, not me.

I pushed myself up to look at Bell too. Even though the Cashling woman had no face, it was clear she was most upset. In fact, his. Prophet was wheezing indignantly from a dozen orifices at once.

"This stupid ship!" Lady Bell said. "The most important day of my life, and wouldn’t you know, the communication system breaks down. We can’t raise a peep from Jalmut; no trans-light communications at all."

As the human phrase goes, a chill went down my spine. In fact, it felt more as if the chill moved upward from my stomach to my shoulders and thence to my face, but perhaps chills behave non-traditionally in artificial gravity.

"Uh-oh," muttered Uclod. "I hate to say it, missy," he told Bell, "but it sounds like you’re getting jammed."

"Jammed?" Aarhus repeated. "Oh crap."

"Quick!" Festina said. "We need a long-range scan right now!"

"No, we don’t," Nimbus answered quietly.

He waved a foggy arm, pointing behind our backs. We all whirled to look through the glass bulkhead.

There, looming across half the sky, was the stick-ship.

Big Bully

"Damn, that’s a big sucker," Festina whispered.

The Shaddill had appeared alongside Royal Hemlock, a vast brown forest beside a single white tree. Every stick in the Shaddill ship seemed larger than the entire Hemlock: longer and wider, like oaks crowding in on a paper birch. There were hundreds, maybe thousands, of the brown sticks, one of which telescoped lazily toward the dwarfed navy vessel.

"What are the odds," Uclod asked, "those bastards will just grab Hemlock and fly away?"

"They don’t want to fly away," Festina said. "They want to capture everyone who knows too much. You. Oar. Anybody you might have talked to."

"Which means the whole damned crusade."

"Right. They want to nab every last ship."

"How the hell will they do that?" Uclod asked. "We’ve got dozens of little ships. If we scatter in different directions—"

"They won’t let us," Festina said. With sudden urgency, she rolled to her feet. "Lady Bell, is there any way to opaque this ship’s hull?"

"Why would I want to do that?" the lady asked.

A flash of blue brilliance burst upon us like lightning. For a moment, Festina’s face was reduced to pure black and white: white eyes, black pupils, white skin, black birthmark, white anger, black "I knew this would happen" expression. Then her body crumpled limply to the floor.

Everyone else was already lying down.

Another Ship Bites The Dust

I am such a one as thrives on bright light. I did not feel invigorated by this particular light, but I did not slump over unconscious either. Perhaps, as the Pollisand had joked, many types of light just pass right through my body. At any rate, I am not so weak as opaque persons, so it takes more than a garish flash to subdue me.

The others, alas, were unconscious… everyone but Nimbus, who still hovered mistlike above the unmoving bodies. It annoyed me that he too had remained awake; one enjoys being special, or at least more special than an entity made of fog. Nevertheless, I could guess why he had not succumbed: a creature consisting of tiny floaty bits might not be affected by Sinister Weapon Beams in the same manner as creatures made from meat… and of course he was nearly as transparent as I, not to mention he too had been designed by the Shaddill.

Perhaps we had both been constructed immune to Shaddill weaponry. If so, the stick-people were greatly foolish — if I were designing artificial beings, I would make them especially susceptible to my favorite weapons, so I could quell rebellions with dispatch. But then, the Shaddill were villains; and if I had learned anything from the fictional writings of my people, it was that Villains Always Make Mistakes.