Kate Wilhelm in Orbit - Volume One Read Free

constantly shifting their positions, now having one of the door-lined walls “down,” now the floor, then the ceiling. They went single file with Staeen between them. Conly led them through the ship, corridor after corridor of the oval doors, up the stairs when they found the elevators were not working, more corridors. Everything they saw appeared in working order, neat and clean, except for one or two places near portholes, where Malko picked up a chess piece and a plasti-book. Only where meteorites had struck and entered, some lodging, some passing through and out again, was there actual disorder.
    Finally they approached the control room. Conly’s radiation detection unit clicked angrily. “Malko, keep watch. I’ll go in.” he said.
    “And I,” Staeen said. He could not see either of their faces, but they were sending washes of courage and bewilderment. He wished he had hands with which to pat and soothe them. He caught a wave of regret from Malko who pushed himself backward to hang, drifting gently, away from the hot area of the door.
    Conly motioned to Staeen to follow and passed through the doorway into the control room. Staeen could feel the radiation like a warm yellow sun against his mantle; presently there was a change in the makeup of the covering and he could no longer feel anything through it.
    “What the—?” Conly muttered. A fire had raged through the control room. Black dust dotted the space they moved through, the flakes stirring when they were touched. Conly studied the control panel that was left, cursing under his breath. “Like I thought,” he said. “The sons of bitches didn’t even set it on automatic, just walked away from it. None of the safeties operative… damn fools. Explains the radiation in here.”
    Staeen floated from him toward the next door that led into a safety corridor surrounding the engine room. He was stopped by another flow of radiation. The change to his mantle was longer in coming this time, the feeling of sun warmth stronger. Conly followed him.
    “No,” Staeen said, “it is too hot even for the suit.”
    Conly worked a panel back from the wall and they both looked through the thick window that had been bared, through the corridor and into the engine room. A large meteorite lay in the corridor, lodged between the two walls, smaller ones had hit in the engine room. The ship turned, and one of the rocks slid from its resting place, moving very slowly to stop against the ruined machinery of the engines. Staeen felt a flare of warmth as it hit. He touched Conly gently with his rippling mantle, and they backed away from the window together.
    Three days later, after their fifth trip inside the ship, as Staeen relaxed in his special cubicle where a five percent saline-ammonia mist played over his mantle, he listened to Conly and Malko talking.
    “You can put it together,” Conly said. “Something happened and they left, just ran out, leaving everything exactly as they were using it. No safeties on, no automatic control, nothing. The ship was empty when the meteorite hit the engine. The alarm system went off, but no one was here to do anything. It’s still in alert condition. Another meteorite knocked out the controls for it, shorted the wiring and caused the fire in the control room.”
    Staeen sighed. A layer of his mantle sloughed off and was flushed away. He turned off the mist then and joined the Flonderans. He felt very well and healthy. His mantle was a shiny black now.
    “You okay?” Conly asked. He was standing at the port; he turned when Staeen came in, and at Staeen’s affirmative ripple of his mantle, he again directed bitter eyes toward space as if hoping to see the answer there. “Why? Why would the captain order the ship abandoned? Did he order it even? Not a sign of attack. No weapons out…?”
    “Capture of the entire crew?” Staeen said.
    Conly shrugged again. “They would have put up resistance. You’ve read our psychology books, and our