D A Novel (George Right) - By George Right Page 0,125

different number of legs?"

"I told you that long ago!"

"I mean even those that seem to belong to one specie. And this one has even legs but of different lengths. What evolution could generate such things? And paired extremities are after all not a casual whim of Earth’s nature. It is really convenient, it is the expediency fixed by generations of natural selection for species absolutely dissimilar to one another. What must such a world look like where such clumsy beings with unpaired limbs of different length achieve evolutionary advantage?"

"As the world of nightmares," Adam muttered and, after some thought, added, "of a schizophrenic. Listen, maybe we haven't come to our senses at all? Couldn't it all be hallucinations? I would give anything to wake up now in a cozy mental hospital."

"Then you are also a hallucination," noticed Eve, "from my point of view, of course. And I am from yours."

"It is better to be a hallucination than worm-eaten from within. I... I am afraid of cockroaches," he said almost plaintively. "And spiders, too. And I do not favor worms much either." He helplessly looked at his body stuck here and there by bandages adhering tightly, as if expecting to see something moved and creep under his skin. And maybe the bandages cover exactly this, the holes gnawed by larvae. "Why the hell did you suggest a hypothesis which we can't check up on? As if it weren't already sickening without that."

"Aha, and who just said forewarned is forearmed?" Eve reminded him, but without any acrid celebration in her voice. The anxiety and fear gnawed at her from within worse than any worms. "Let’s go further and do anything, or I will indeed go mad."

They went into a corridor which was bending around the lift shaft, and moved to the door beyond.

"By the way, did you notice one other odd thing?" Adam asked. "In such a big ship the doors have no labels. Certainly the crew should know what is where, but nevertheless here it is easy to mistake a door, especially in ring corridors."

"Yes," she agreed, "it was unlikely designed this way."

He drew his face near to a door, carefully exploring it with a flashlight.

"Just as I thought, the label was here," he ascertained. "Its traces still can be distinguished. Someone has torn them from all the doors. What for?"

"And why was the equipment destroyed?

"You think to prevent our return? Well, the absence of labels is not much compared to the destruction of the control panels. All the same, sooner or later we will explore all premises. My version about mad fury is more likely true. Or..."

"Or what?"

"Or someone wanted us to take in the situation as late as possible. Not never–he should have understood that the absence of inscriptions on the doors wouldn't stop us–but as late as possible. I don't know. Folly. Nonsense."

"Perhaps not such nonsense," objected Eve. "The longer it takes us to understand, the farther we will fly in this direction and the less will be our chances to return. So, there are such chances all the same!"

"Do you believe in it?" Adam heaved a deep sigh and took the door handle. "Well, let's look in here."

There was nothing good.

Adam heard a painful squeezed throat sound behind him and understood what it was. He had been in such situations himself before. Eve's stomach was wrung with an emetic spasm, but nothing left her mouth, except this sound. In this room light shone, and even bright enough. Here were neither devices, nor furniture, except the remains of a broken chair on a floor. The room was semicircular. Its concave wall, opposite to the entrance, as Adam has guessed, was a panoramic screen made with the same technology as the starmap in the control room. Possibly this premise was a hybrid of a library and cinema hall. For certain, when everything was working here, access to the information resources of the ship was possible from other places, too, but here the conditions for watching were the most comfortable. A slit in a wall at the left, from which ragged white tatters hung out, now associated mostly with an aperture for toilet paper, but obviously there was a time when it has been possible to receive listing of the necessary data here. No control panels were visible anywhere. Probably vocal or other touch-free interface had been used here.

But Adam and Eve paid no attention to all these technical details at first. Their eyes were struck by numerous blots of