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She stared before her, and the slim fingers gripped the
chair arms until the knuckles stood white. "It was all at once," she whispered. "It came, pulsing, as if
something lay
unde a pool and moved up, and then sank back into dark.
A shiver went across her. Sean started forward, but Joachim pushed him back. "It was of power, and
scorn, and hugeness," she told them. "A hand gripping a universe, like iron. But slow, patient, watchful.
And there was a shiningness against sky-black, a field of light, stars all around. They curved like a sickle
to reap the field. And there was one star brighter than all, high and cold, and there was another sbining
coil which was so far away that the farness made me want to scream and-" She shook her head. "No,"
she breathed shakily. "No more."
"I see." Trevelyan clasped his bands and leaned forward, elbows on knees. "Do you think you could
draw a picture of those stars?"
"A-picture? Why-"
"I'd Eke to put you under hypnosis, Ilaloa," he said. "That's just a sleep. I want total recall. You won't
know it. And by that means I, can take the fear from you."
She looked down, then up again, and her mouth quivered. "Yes," she said. "You may do that. I want to
help you."
The hypnotism didn't take long. Ilaloa went under fast. Sean winced at the violence of her re-enactment,
but the peace that followed was worth it. Trevelyan gave her a pencil and she sketched a star-field with
snvift assurance, adding the forms of nebulae and a section of Milky Way. The Coordinator took the
paper and brought her out of the trance. She siniled sleepily, got up, and came into Scan's arms.
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"It should be all right," said Trevelyan. "I think I removed the associated panic. It was due to sheer
strangeness,
not to personal menace." Then be turned away, and his features hardened with thought.
"Wbat've we got?" asked Joachim.
"Well," said Trevelyan, "apparently these X beings
think on a varving band and wave-form; Ilaloa caught only such fragments as were similar to her race Is
pattern. The
fact may tell us something about the thinker-I'm not sure yet. What's more important is this star picture.
It represents another region of space-presumably the home sky of X."
"Ummm, that's obvious." Joachim considered the drawing. 'We've got a damn good clue, then. Let's see.
The sbiningness is a bright gaseous nebula, of course, and the remote spiral is probably the Andromeda
galaxy. That very bright star could only be Canopus, if you're in the Cross region, and here's the same
dent in the Milky Way you can see from here." He gestured to a viewscreen overhead, blackness and the
ghostly bridge of stars.
"In short," said Trevelyan with a note of triumph, "we've got a pretty good idea of where the enemy
lives."
"Uh-huh. I think more can be done with this. Hey,
Manuel!"
The young astrogator looked up. Joachim folded the drawing into a paper airplane and shot it over to
him. "Find me this part of space as accurately as you can," directed the captain. "Use all our star tables
and computers if you have to, but identify it within a centimeter of its life."
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CHAPTER XI[
The Storm
'nME WAS LOST.
Within the ship, there was always light, cool glow in
the halls and public rooms, someone walking by on an er-
rand or Sitting and waiting in patience. Darkness came only when switches were turned in the homes.
Outside, a night of stars, enormous and eternal.
There was no time. Clocks rounded a weary cycle, telling off the meaningless hours and days, but for
man there was only waking and sleeping, eating, working, idling, waiting. The old dreamed of what had
been and the young of what was to be, but the now was forever.
A few incidents were sharp in Trevelyan's memory. There were some of the talks be had had with
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Nomads, Joachim before all, tales of faring in the cold Galactic splendor. There were his trips with Nickil
prowling the labyrinthine corridors of the ship.
There was the time a dark young man with unhappy eyes, Abbey Roberto, had searched out the
Coordinator and warned him that Ilaloa was a witch. Trevelyan remembered Sean's account of Roberto
having overheard something about telepathy. There had been mutterings and sidelong glances when Ilaloa
passed by. And the mounting tension aboard ship as they plunged into mystery could unsettle stabler
rninds than these.
At least the Peregiine had a fairly definite goal now. The point in space from which the sky should look
as Ilaloa's vision said could be identified within a few tens of lightyear,-. At full crusing speed, it lay about
six weeks' journey from Erulan.
A month passed. It could have been a week or a century, but the clocks said it was a month.
They were in the park, four of them together talking and wanting companionship. Nicki sat cross-legged
beside Trevelyan, linldng an arm with his. Opposite them was Sean, Ilaloa leaning against his side.
The park was the largest division of the ship aside from cargo space and, after the byper-engines, the
most impressive. It filled ninety degrees of hull curvature on the outermost deck, and its length reached a
hundred and twenty meters from the bows. But that was necessary.
rand or sitting and waiting in patience. Darkness came only when switches were turned in the homes.
Outside, a night of stars, enormous and eternal.
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