"What shall we do now?" I whispered to Nimbus. "If the Shaddill think we are unconscious, this is an excellent time to take them by surprise."

"Don’t be too hasty," the cloud man replied. "They know you’re here, right? Catching you seems to be a priority for them. And they must suspect their stun-beam doesn’t work on you — it didn’t work when you were in Starbiter, so why should it work now?" He drifted across the floor a short distance, then drifted back again: the cloudish equivalent of pacing. "Maybe they’re hoping you’ll do something noticeable so they can tell where you are."

"Ahh," I said. "That is astute reasoning." I looked up at the glass roof. "Of course, they will see me as soon as they look in this direction. I am harder to notice than opaque persons, but I am not invisible."

"Don’t worry about that," Nimbus told me. "In a Cashling ship like this, the hull is only transparent one way; you can see out, but no one can see in. The Shaddill won’t spot you that easily."

Which meant that with so many ships in the crusade, the Shaddill faced great difficulty determining where I was. Our trying to flee or attack would be a mistake, since it would catch the Shaddill’s attention… but then, I doubted that we could flee or attack. Unfettered Destiny would almost certainly refuse to take commands except from the Cashlings themselves. Indeed, I did not know if I could even leave the studio — without Lady Bell’s or Lord Rye’s permission, the ship’s security systems might not open the door for me.

That is often the way with mechanical devices — they are most exceedingly mulish. Back in my village on Melaquin, many buildings contained shiny equipment with display screens showing excellent three-dimensional curve-graphs in bold fluorescent colors. The village’s maintenance robots kept these devices free of rust, and presumably in perfect running order; however, no one knew what the machinery did. According to tales from my mother (who received the tales from her mother and so on back through the centuries), the equipment would only respond to commands spoken in the ancient language my ancestors used more than four thousand years ago. That language was not the tongue we had learned from the village’s teaching machines; therefore, my sister and I could only stare at the waves of color constantly painting themselves on the monitors, and dream of what excellent deeds we might do if only we learned the correct words to say.

Was I not in the same position now?

Reflecting gloomily on my inability to control the Cashling ship, it struck me that once again I had boarded a vessel, only to find it rendered inoperable shortly after my arrival. This was not an amusing pattern of starship behavior. Moreover, the trend was accelerating. I had lasted seven hours on Starbiter, before she ripped herself apart; then an hour on Royal Hemlock before the dreadful act of sabotage; and finally, only ten minutes on Unfettered Destiny before the attack on the Cashlings made it impossible to command the ship to do anything.

Perhaps I should endeavor to board the Shaddill craft. If I managed to do that, the stick-ship might explode instantly into a cloud of radioactive dust.

Hah!

The Fate Of The Hemlock

Thinking about the stick-ship, I raised my head to the glass ceiling and stared at the alien vessel. A hollow tubelike stick now extended from the Shaddill ship’s belly: reaching out slowly like a snake slithering up to its prey, the stick thwacked against the Hemlock’s hull. Of course I heard no sound through the vacuum of space; but the navy craft shuddered and shook silently with the impact. The collision must have been forceful enough to knock people in Hemlock off their feet — if any of them were still standing after the beam weapon’s attack.

For a moment, the pair of ships just floated there, as if the white navy cruiser were impaled on the big brown stick. Then a thousand tiny vines sprung from the end of the stick, some circling the Hemlock widthwise while others streamed out along the ship’s length, and still more wrapped around the hull in long weaving spirals. In places, the vines crisscrossed each other; in others, they sprouted side tendrils that intertwined and appeared to fuse together. Considering how far we were from the two vessels, the vines must have been quite thick — perhaps as wide around as my entire body; otherwise, I would not have been able to see them at such a distance. But they moved with the speed and flexibility of much smaller strands, until they had completely bound the Hemlock in their great sinister web.

The telescoping stick began to retract: back into the body of the Shaddill ship, dragging with it the trussed-up Hemlock. Two nearby sticks snaked out of the woodpile as if they were interested in having a closer look at the captured prize. They drifted lazily outward, skimming their heads along the length of the navy ship in opposite directions; then they struck simultaneously, jamming their open mouths onto either end of the cruiser. Once the Hemlock had been capped fore and aft in this fashion, it was quickly pulled down into the weaving brown forest. I lost sight of it as dozens more sticks slithered up and over the ship, like a mass of brown snakes squirming onto a single white one.

So that is the end of the Hemlock, I thought. And how long before the Shaddill gather up the crusade ships as well? Even as the words crossed my mind, a new stick telescoped from the Shaddill vessel, reaching for one of the crusade’s smaller craft.

Our own ship had pulled a goodly distance away from Hemlock; therefore, if the Shaddill began scooping up the nearest crusade ships, they would not get to us for a few minutes. However, it was only a matter of time before they swallowed us all.

A Gargantuan Sneeze

I turned to say something to Nimbus — I do not know what it was going to be, I simply wanted to speak and hear his voice in return — but the cloud man had vanished. I blinked and peered around the room. There was no sign of him, not even a little bit. I was about to cry out in anger and fear when I noticed baby Starbiter resting in the pit of Festina’s stomach.

That was a strange place indeed for an infant Zarett.

I moved nearer for a better look. Festina had fallen into a twisted three-quarters position, her bottom half lying sideways on her right hip, but her top half slumped over so her chest and arms lay almost flat on the floor. This left a covered nestlike area under the shelter of her belly, a dark little cave where a small Zarett person could rest safely. Nimbus must have placed Starbiter there in the shadow of my friend’s body, where the little girl would be protected while her father was busy with other activities.

But what was the foolish man doing? Where had he gone?

I looked around frantically. The recording studio possessed numerous air vents in its floor and ceiling; a creature made of bits could have left through any one of them. Perhaps he planned to seek Unfettered Destiny’s bridge, hoping to take control of the ship. Nimbus might well speak the Cashling tongue — he had, after all, served on ships owned by Cashlings, and had demonstrated an ability to learn languages quickly. If he could give orders to this ship in Cashlingese, he might… he might… I did not know what he might do, since we had already agreed not to draw unwanted attention. But the bridge was the only place I could imagine the cloud man might go…

…until I saw wisps of mist dribbling out of Festina’s nose.

"Nimbus!" I cried. "Are you inside my Faithful Sidekick? It is very very wrong to enter a woman when she is unconscious and helpless!"

The cloud man did not reply; but Festina made a choked "Uhh" noise that sounded as if her entire head was congested with mucous. One arm moved and her body shifted. Seeing the potential for a horrible occurrence, I snatched up little Starbiter and clutched her to my breast there moments before Festina groaned and rolled over. (Festina rolled onto her back, so she would not have crushed the baby after all. Still, I felt heroic for my lightning-quick reaction. With heroism, it is the thought that counts.)