Grogan's man, Fiaccone, had managed to bring back a half-dozen s.p.a.cesuits from spinlock storage before Captain Boyle had vetoed any further forays. He'd reported dead bodies floating around everywhere.

"I don't know," Maggie said, brushing back a strand of wilted hair. It was warm and steamy in the bridge. "It's stalemate, I guess. We're under house arrest. We can't get out, and those creatures don't seem to want to get in. G.o.d, look at them! They move like weasels! They're never still!"

Maybury followed her gaze to the gla.s.sy curve of the outside wall. It was covered with sleek six-legged shapes that stared and darted away, to be replaced by others. By this time most of the crew had moved uneasily away from the observation wall, leaving a clear s.p.a.ce of about ten feet.

"They're afraid to come inside," Maybury said. "After what happened in hydroponics"

On his last trip for s.p.a.cesuits Fiaccone had been pursued by Cygnans coming through the breached spinlock. He'd barely made it through the improvised air lock into the farm. One of the Cygnans had gotten through after him before Kiernan managed to slam the lid shut. Other Cygnans were coming through, leaving the outside hatch open, but Kiernan barricaded it before too much air whooshed through. He turned to find Fiaccone hanging on to slippery thing that was twisting and squirming in his embrace. Kiernan stabbed it with a spading fork. It writhed on the three tines, oozing an orange ichor, and expired. Its friends were rattling the inside lid of the lock. Against Dmitri's anguished protests, Kiernan and Fiaccone opened the lid and, aided by the outward explosion of air, tossed the body outside and slammed the lid shut again, leaving a Cygnan finger inside.

There had been no further attempts by the Cygnans to get through the lock. Dmitri had had to be content with the severed finger. He and Louise Phelps were dissecting it now in the observatory.

"There's something going on up on the balcony," Maggie said.

Boyle was conferring with Hsieh. After a moment he came to the rail and rapped for attention. The bridge became silent. Everybody looked up, waiting.

The Cygnans are through into the farm," Boyle said without preamble. "The instruments show vacuum there."

There was a confusion of voices. Kiernan, just behind Maggie in the jostling crowd, said, "The wingbeans! The algae! Everything! If only the captain had let me work down there for another half-hour I, could've saved more..."

Boyle rapped for attention again. "You might as well know the worst," he said. "The air plant's gone.

We're living on reserves now."

Maggie looked up at the ventilators. The little ribbons on the grilles had stopped fluttering. Somewhere in the crowd a woman became hysterical.

"Somebody get the people out of the observatory," Boyle went on. "We'll have to make a last stand here. Seal off all the exits. Gifford, break out some emergency patches and stick.u.m and get them ready."

"Captain!" a voice boomed from the floor. One of Grogan's men. "We've got seven suits. Let me and some of the boys get out there now. We can do it without losing too much air. We'll go through the door fast, and Gifford can slap a patch on after us. We can hold 'em off as long as our air lasts."

Boyle conferred in whispers with Hsieh. He turned back to the rail, and said: "It's no good. You wouldn't have a chance. You saw what happened to Jameson and Chief Grogan and Comrade Yeh.

We'll use the suits in here."

"Captain," the man said, standing his ground. "Seven suits aren't going to go very far with seventy people."

"Seven people will have a chance to stay alive a little longer," Boyle said firmly. "We're going to draw straws. Only crewpersons are eligible."

Beth Oliver stood up, straight and beautiful. "Captain," she said in a clear voice. "Once upon a time, 'crewpersons' meant people of both s.e.xes. Well, I think I'm speaking for the rest of the 'crewpersons'

when I say we won't have anything to do with that s.e.xist nonsense. The men will have an equal chance with us."

A female murmur of agreement came from the crowd. Sue Jarowski yelled, "d.a.m.n right!"

Boyle held up his hands for quiet. "All right," he said. "I'm proud of you all. The men will be in the drawing. But of course any man who wins a suit will be free to decline it and throw his chance into the pot again."

There was a groan from the women. Throughout the crowd, men were looking stubborn, nodding agreement with the captain. Klein stepped forward, waxy-faced. "Captain," he began in a strained voice.

A horrifying whistling sound came from the observation wall. Everybody fell silent and stared at the bubble. A woman screamed.

The Cygnans had cleared a twelve-foot circle at the center of the port. Their packed bodies darkened the rest of the Lexigla.s.s. At the fringes of the circle a dozen of the creatures were busy with glowing cutting tools. Plastic was melting and bubbling along the entire twelve-foot circ.u.mference.

There was a sudden rush toward the exits. But before anybody had gone more than a few steps, the heavy circle of plastic tumbled with nightmare slowness to the deck and a ring of long-snouted Cygnan faces was around the edges of the opening, peering in at the humans.

Maggie sucked in a last desperate lungful of air before it was gone, and waited to die.

Chapter 16.

There was a grating sound at the door. Jameson scrambled to his feet. He backed off to give clearance, ready for anything.

The door opened in an unexpected fashion. It was a five-foot recessed circle with a k.n.o.b set low at one side. He had imagined it might swing in or out, or-in view of the recess-slide open. Instead it rolled like a cartwheel on a hidden track, the k.n.o.b revolving with it until it caught against the frame, leaving an opening the shape of a circle with a bite out of it.

An alien stepped in, standing upright and holding a shotgun-sized tubular object in its middle pair of limbs. It was dressed in a crinkly transparent envelope, evidently to protect it against Earthly microorganisms. The tubular thing was obviously an energy weapon of some sort. It had a trumpet bell at the business end with a stamenlike structure projecting from the focus. Instead of a stock or pistol grip, the weapon was equipped with a bulb adapted to the Cygnan grip.

Jameson raised his hands and took a step backward to rea.s.sure the creature. Perhaps the Cygnan didn't understand the human gesture. It squeezed the bulb, and Jameson was blind.

He was worse than blind. He was deaf, dumb, and paralyzed. He couldn't tell where his limbs were or what his body was doing Kaleidoscopic flashes exploded through his visual pathways. There was a red-red?-roaring in his ears. His nerves jangled with an excruciating discomfort that made him want to scream, to be free of his body, as if he were experiencing some hideously magnified episode of drug withdrawal.

Worst of all, he couldn'tthink! There was a trapped knot of consciousness thatknew he couldn't think, and that was what made it a nightmare. His thoughts circled round and round uselessly, unable to track.

The sensation lasted only a moment. Or an eternity. Then, mercifully, he was himself again. He found himself sprawled on the floor, clammy with sweat in his s.p.a.cesuit. He was still a little disoriented. He had lost control of his bladder during that brief h.e.l.l, but the suit's plumbing had saved him from disgrace.

His cell was full of Cygnans-half a dozen of them, all dressed in the same clear protective suits. Some of them were standing erect on their hind legs, tails hanging straight down. Some were on four legs, their torsos upright so that they were shaped like little low-slung centaurs. They were jabbering at one another in a cacophony of quarter-tone scales and queer atonal chords, sounding like an orchestra of bagpipes warming up. Their actions all seemed pointless to Jameson, but then, he thought, perhaps a laboratory rat thought that the conversation of the lab workers was pointless.

The Cygnan holding the neural weapon was still there. Jameson kept very still. A Cygnan scuttled up to him, fixed him with three quivering eyes, then scuttled back. There was more bagpipe conversation.

Encouraged, he sat up, moving very slowly and keeping his hands down.

Did the Cygnans react nervously? It was hard to tell. Theyalways seemed nervous. There was a lot of atonal chittering and much shuffling and twitching, but his nervous system remained unscrambled. He lifted his eyes to the helmet dials. How could he make them understand?

"Air," he mouthed. "Dammit, don't you understand? I've only got a couple of minutes worth of air left."

Raising his gloved hands to his helmet, he made raking-in gestures with spread fingers. He let them see his open mouth sucking in air.

No discernible reaction came from his audience. Even on Earth, body language was different between Arabs and j.a.panese, Scandinavians and Mediterraneans. Maybe his pantomimes couldn't work with creatures that had six limbs, radial symmetry, brains in their torsos, and, for all he knew, no lungs.

He tried again. This time he pointed to his air tanks and traced his hoses to their gaskets in his helmet.

They seemed bored with him. A couple of them skidded around on four legs and left the cell. The ones who were left lost interest in him entirely. Two of them had started holding hands. Another was scratching itself with a hind leg. Another had taken an object that looked like a bright yellow plastic asterisk out of a pouch and was showing it to a companion.

Jameson struggled recklessly to his feet. The trumpet bell of the weapon flicked in his direction. He ignored it. "Your air!" he roared. "Can I breathe your air?"

It was doubtful that they even understood his anguished cry as speech. Their own communication, Jameson had guessed depended on the pitch of speech components rather than anything resembling consonants and vowels-and those fragments of reedy tone were too quick and transitory for even his gifted ear to follow.

His lungs heaved, and he realized with despair that he was now rebreathing the stale air in his helmet. He staggered forward, arms outspread. The Cygnans scampered out of his way. The energy weapon tracked him but didn't fire.

The Cygnans were gone, no longer in his path. Instead, they were behind him. He felt a myriad of little three-fingered hands running all over his s.p.a.cesuit, hugging his legs, pinioning his arms. He was being held immobile. He struggled, but his lungs were burning and his senses were growing dim.

Then he realized that they were removing his suit.

A transparent membrane, insubstantial as a soap bubble, was stretched across the twelve-foot circle the Cygnans had opened in the hull. That's why she still could breathe.

Maggie gawked at it. A lot of gawking was going on around her. Why didn't the air pressure inside the ship bend that membrane outward? Why didn't it burst?

"Look!" Maybury said, grabbing her arm.

Not only was the membrane not bulging outward, it was bulginginward! Stunned, the seventy people in the control room watched it stretch, ballooning itself until it filled the center of the chamber.

n.o.body went near it. n.o.body dared touch it. It looked too fragile. It looked as if it might burst at any moment.

A movement over by the row of empty s.p.a.cesuits draped over a console ap.r.o.n caught Maggie's eye. It was Klein. He was lifting up the sleeve of one of the suits.

"Leave that alone!" Boyle's voice thundered.

"I was just-" Klein began.

"Gwan-cha, gwan-cha!" a Chinese voice screamed.

Five or six Cygnans had dropped lightly to the floor. They stood, quivering, inside the ship, looking alertly through the bubble at the humans. They all looked upward at the same instant and started backing away from the center of their bubble. One of them was against the transparent skin itself, poking it outward.

The temptation was too much for one of the Struggle Brigade bullies. He s.n.a.t.c.hed up a steel bar and swung it two-handed at the Cygnan's head.

"Don't!" Boyle yelled, but he was too late. The bar connected with a sickening impact. The Cygnan had tried to skip out of the way, but hadn't had enough warning, even with its speedy reflexes.

A gasp went up from the a.s.sembled crew, but the bubble held. The bar rested in a sagging indentation on the bubble. Slowly the indentation filled itself and the bar slid to the floor.

The injured Cygnan, incredibly, was still on its feet. It writhed in evident agony, its body twisting bonelessly like some fat worm that had been stepped on. Its head was orange pulp. One stubby eyestalk waved above the mess, blinking horribly. A couple of its friends pa.s.sed it up to waiting sets of hands.

The other Cygnans in the inverted bubble began darting their heads like angry geese at the nearest humans. You could see the cheese-grater mouths gaping and the tubular rasp of a tongue flicking in and out inside the inflated sheaths they wore over their heads. But they all stayed well away from the boundary of the bubble.

Now there was movement above, and the Cygnans were lowering a strange device on a stand into the ship. The Cygnans inside the bubble steadied the thing and set it in place. It looked like a squat bra.s.sy pyramid with three flaring horns sprouting from its apex. One of the Cygnans did something to it, and the apex started rotating. The horns rotated with it, waving up, and down like crazy semaph.o.r.es.

The Cygnans jumped on one another's shoulders and scrambled out of the bubble fast. The anchoring alien stretched and flowed, becoming a foot taller, and caught the dangling hand of a living chain. Then they whisked it out of the hole.

"Smash that thing!" Boyle yelled from the balcony. "See if you can get at it through the bubble!"

Half a dozen willing hands poked at the revolving device with bars through the resilient material, but they couldn't reach it. The blister dimpled just so far, then resisted.

"I feel so strange," Maybury said.

Maggie, for no reason, began to feel edgy. It was like hearing a fingernail sc.r.a.pe along a blackboard, except that there wasn't any sound. Her teeth were on edge All across the bridge people were starting to behave strangely. Somebody staggered and fell. A woman with a contorted face was squeezing her head with both hands. Then a man, his mouth open, began clenching his fists in front of his chest and trembling violently.

Somebody stumbled against her, as if off balance. It was Dmitri, his boyish face shiny with sweat. "They couldn't gas us," he said between clenched teeth. "They don't know enough about terrestrial biochemistry yet. But any kind of a nervous system can be interfered with by modulated electromagnetic fields. They must have used their gadget before on all kinds of life."

Maggie's vision was disappearing, as if her face were swelling up in the worse allergy attack she'd ever had. There was a ringing in her ears, drowning out Dmitri's words. There was a dreadful spine-crawling sensation and the illusion of rapid flickering through her entire body. Then she was suspended in a senseless horror, while her mind scrabbled round and round, trying to get out.

She was not aware of it when a horde of aliens oozed somehow through the transparent membrane without breaking it and stuffed her and the other helpless humans into airtight sacks. When her senses returned, she was floating in a giant soap bubble beside a metal cliff that seemed to stretch on forever.

She was part of a chain of bubbles rising through the dark of s.p.a.ce while a flock of shiny demons swam alongside, prodding them with broomsticks.

Jameson's ears popped. The air was thin, but rich in oxygen. It had an oily, industrial smell to it. But after what he'd been expecting, it was marvelous. He took deep, grateful breaths.

They had him pinned to the floor while they stripped off his pressure suit and skivvies. It was no good struggling. Too many of those three-fingered hands were holding him down, shifting their grips with blinding speed while they pulled off sleeves, undid fasteners, shucked him out of the rest of it. By the time he realized that an arm or leg was free, they'd peeled it down and imprisoned it again. In a few brief seconds he was naked and shivering with cold.

His belongings went into a sealed sack. He guessed that he was in biological quarantine. All of the Cygnans handling him were encased in transparent envelopes. He saw nothing resembling air filters; perhaps the entire envelope was permeable to gas molecules but not subviruses.

He tried to talk, but they ignored him, talking instead among themselves with all sorts of chirps and whistles and concertina humming. Once or twice, when his ear was fast enough to catch a fragment, he tried humming it back to them in perfect pitch, but the effort seemed to make no impression.

All at once they began probing him all over with rubbery fingers and little metal instruments that were cold on his bare skin. A three-fingered hand walked along his spine, tracing it. Another counted his ribs.

Another probed elbows and kneecaps while they flexed his arms and legs. They forced his mouth open with a bellowslike instrument and shone a light into it. He gagged as a swab poked down his throat, but then it was over and they withdrew the bellows. The swab went into a little oval container.

Next came a tray of little pipettes with suction bulbs at one end. He struggled as they inserted these into every body orifice they could find, from nostrils to urethra. His struggles didn't do him a bit of good. They got their samples and whisked them away, leaving him sneezing, itching, and smarting.

There was a tricky moment when one of the Cygnans tried to force a slim metal tube into his navel, evidently under the impression that it opened. Jameson howled in protest. He had visions of being skewered. But after a moment the Cygnan gave up and contented itself with a swab.

They took their tissue sample in direct, brutal fashion. One of the Cygnans pinched the flesh of Jameson's thigh and sliced off a piece of meat as thick as a piece of bacon. Blood welled up and ran down his leg. The Cygnans seemed excited by this. There was a chorus of harmonica music, and they siphoned off several cc's of blood with a pipette. While he lay pinioned and bleeding, a Cygnan sprayed the wound with something that burned like fire. Almost instantly the spray hardened into a rubbery, transparent skin that sealed the wound and stopped the bleeding. Jameson was thankful the Cygnan's blade hadn't severed the femoral artery.

After several more tests, including running something like a metal detector over the surface of his body, the Cygnans gathered up their paraphernalia and left. The circular door rolled in its groove and thudded shut.

They left him in his cell without food or water for what seemed to be about twenty-four hours. He spent most of that time huddled in a ball, trying to keep warm. The Cygnans seemed to like low temperatures.

When the door rolled open again, three plastic-wrapped Cygnans entered the cell. The guard with the neural scrambler was with them. Jameson tried to pantomime his need for food and water, but they roundly ignored him. Before he knew what was happening, one of the Cygnans stabbed him in the belly.

He yelped and leaped backward. There was a raw circle about an inch in diameter just below his navel, studded with bright jewels of blood from a dozen pinp.r.i.c.ks. He caught a glimpse of the instrument the Cygnan had used, something like half a golf ball with short needles projecting from the flat side. He'd been given injections of some kind.

The Cygnans left. An hour later he was feverish and getting sicker. He spent the next day feeling miserable. For a couple of hours he was delirious. But he had a blanket now, a square of some soft synthetic textured like overlapping orange scales that he was able to wrap around himself for warmth.

Eventually his warder brought him a bowl of flat, tepid water, which he lapped up eagerly, getting down on his hands and knees, not daring to lift it to his lips for fear of spilling some of the precious liquid. There were no sanitary facilities. He used the far corner of the cell, feeling humiliated. Nothing was ever done about cleaning it up.

When the fever had pa.s.sed, Jameson felt ravenous. Still shaky, he pounded on the door for attention.

No one came. He waited it out for another twelve hours. Then the door opened. A Cygnan skittishly set something on the floor in front of him and fled.

He pounced on it. It was a prepared meal from his own ship's galley, a thawing block of stew still in its original foil warming pan. He ignored the implications ofthat while he wolfed down the food, ice crystals and all. It was the first food he'd eaten in forty-eight hours.

He pushed the pan aside, satiated, and looked up. Two Cygnans were standing there, watching him.

They were the first ones he'd seen without the transparent protective suits since he'd been taken out of his sterilized sack and isolated here. So he was at last out of quarantine! They were safe from his germs now-or he from theirs.

The two aliens were holding hands, Cygnan fashion. The middle pair. One of them was carrying a foot- long implement in one of its primary limbs that resembled a two-p.r.o.nged toasting fork with blunt tines.

The other Cygnan uttered a clear, chimelike sound composed of two tones. Jameson recognized it as a tetrachord: a perfect fourth. The first Cygnan let go of the other's hand and high-stepped over the rim of the door, holding the forklike object in front of it like a weapon.