UNIVERSAL TURBULENT

VII - SOMEWHERE ON THE GALAXY

There were fewer asteroids now, a fact that allowed Jyro to see his pursuer for the first time. It filed the main screen. He fell through the pit of his stomach. The situation was worse than he had supposed. This construct was as alien as the drifter that occupied his hold, only a lot more frightening!

The oncoming vessel had the free-form bulk of a ship never meant for atmospheric use. It consisted of three cylinders, all mounted side by side, and surrounded by a framework of metal. The force field that protected the hull shimmered as rock fragments made contact with it.

The human watched aghast as still another asteroid exploded and the alien vessel pushed its way through the resulting debris field.

The Pelocan shuddered as alien tractor beams locked onto her hull. The drives screamed as they fought to pull the ship free, and junk avalanched off the control panel.

Jyro sat transfixed as garbage tumbled into his lap. The Shem ship, for that's the name he had assigned to it, was unstoppable. It became even larger as a rectangle of light appeared answer the Pelocan was drawn inside.

Enormous foot-thick doors started to close; the star field narrowed into a vertical bar and disappeared from sight. Someone or something forced the drives to shut down, the control panel went dead, and the lights went out. Herbert had just switched to backup energy banks when a self-guided cable snaked out of its metallic lair, slithered down the ship's side, made modifications to the way the terminal end was configured, and entered the appropriate socket.

The AI was still evaluating this development, still still searching for guidance, when it was seized, translated, and downloaded to a bubble-matrix prison.

The storage media held other AIs as well, many of whom were so alien that Herbert couldn't communicate with them, but at least one had human origins. It had been part of a long-range probe ingested two years before. It spoke first. "Hello, mate! And welcome to the cosmic trash bin. I hope you like three-dimensional chess, because there isn't much to do".

Confident that it had evacuated the food's onboard intelligence, the scout ship cleared the meal for digestion and put the nano to work.

Jyro fumbled for the emergency lighting switch and toggled it to the "on" position. The overall level of illumination was lower than usual but sufficient to his purposes. "Why did the power go down? What happening?"

There was no reply. The navcomp should have been online but wasn't.

The human freed himself from the chair, hurried down the main corridor, and into the lock. It took five minutes to close his visor, check his suit seals, and cycle through. The readout on his heads-up display claimed there was no need. Though slightly richer in oxygen than humans normally required, the atmosphere inside the alien vessel was quite breathable. Why? What kind of creatures were they? And where were they from?

Jyro opened his visor and looked around. What little light there was came from the Pelocan's navigational lights. He saw beams, like the ribs of a whale, and gently curved hull plates. There was no sign of his hosts, or captors, as the case might be. "Hello, is anybody out there?"

Silence. It was disconcerting, but preferable to a horde of blood thirsty aliens. There was a loud creaking noise followed by the sounds of metal on metal at the Pelocan collapsed onto the deck.

Startled, and more than a little surprised, Jyro hurried to inspect the damage. There wasn't any. Not in the normal sense, anyway. Most of the landing skids were missing! The margins were smooth, with no sign of the tool or tools used to create them.

That was when the human noticed what looked like a river of metal snaking away from the ship and into the surrounding gloom. A hastily conducted investigation revealed numerous rivers, all headed in the same direction! The Pelocan was being disassembled at the subatomic level and hauled away.

There was a groan as still another structure gave way and the Pelocan settled onto the deck. That was when Jyro realized the importance of salvaging whatever he could. Food, water, and medical supplies, all were aboard his ship. The prospector ran for the lock.

The next two hours were a race against time. As Jyro struggled to remove the things he needed, the nano took the vessel apart.

The prospector wondered about the supplies at first, fearful that the microscopic robots would claim those too, but the machines showed no interest in anything beyond the Pelocan herself.

Logically, he supposed, lest the nano attack their own ship, and eat themselves out of house and home. That being the case, Jyro was able to secure a considerable amount of food, all the water he could find containers for, medical supplies, and, since there was no one to object, his flechette thrower.

Once those materials were safely stowed, the human turned his attention to a box full of emergency light wands, a portable generator that might be coaxed into life, and a reasonable powerful data comp. That was when the lights went out. The nano, voracious creatures that they were, had burrowed into the emergency power stacks.

Jyro played a beam over the wreck, cursed his captors, and backed away.

There were dozens of nano streams by that time, all wending their way through the same portal and into the darkness beyond. Jyro followed the intertwining rivulets through the arch and down a funnel shaped corridor. It narrowed alarmingly and barred his progress.

The metal was like an enormous snake by then, a silvery pseudopod that pulsed as if invested with a life of its own. Jyro watched as his ship, and the drifter that might have put him in the black, were sucked into the funnel.

Frustrated, angry, and more afraid than he would have cared to admit, the prospector returned to the hold and what remained of his vessel. "Okay, you win. So what now?"

The scout ship heard inarticulate sounds and sensed movement deep within its belly. The sensation was easy to ignore. The vessel had fuel, a purpose, and the means to fulfill that purpose. What more could any living creature want?