about it. Ships. I adjusted our course, pointing toward the station. Beneath us a platform revolved in its orbit, cutting off my sight of the shrinking shape of Detritus. Could I get back? Did I even care?
I could hear them louder, the voices of the stars. Chatter that didn’t come through the radio, and didn’t form words. The call of the stars . . . it was . . . it was Krell communication. They used that place between heartbeats to talk to one another, to communicate instantly. And . . . and the minds of thinking machines somehow relied upon the same technology to process quickly.
It all required access to that not-place, that nowhere.
We drew closer to the station. “Don’t they know it’s dangerous?” I whispered. “That something lives in the nowhere? Don’t they know about the eyes?”
Maybe that’s why we only use radio. I thought. Why our ancestors abandoned this advanced communications technology. Our ancestors were frightened of what lived in the nowhere.
“I’m confused as to what you mean,” M-Bot said. “Though the Krell are using some normal sublight communications in addition to the superluminal ones. The ordinary ones, I can crack and listen in. Working to translate.”
I slowed M-Bot, passing ships that turned toward mine. These didn’t appear to be fighters; they were boxy, with large open windows at the front.
In that moment, something hit me, like a physical force. It crawled inside my brain, made my vision fuzz. I screamed, sagging in my straps.
“Spensa!” M-Bot said. “What’s wrong? What is happening?”
I could only whimper. The pain. And . . . impressions. They were sending images. They were . . . they were trying to overwrite . . . what I was seeing . . .
“Engaging stealth and jamming!” M-Bot said. “Spensa, I’m reading unusual signals. Spensa?”
The voices vanished. The pain evaporated. I let out a long, relieved sigh.
“Don’t die, okay?” M-Bot said. “If you do, I’ll probably have to make Rodge my pilot. It would be the most logical move, and we’d both hate it so much.”
“I’m not going to die,” I said, leaning back, tapping my helmet against the seat’s headrest. “I do have a defect. A hole inside me.”
“Humans have many holes in them. Would you like me to provide you with a list?”
“Please don’t.”
“Ha ha. That was humor.”
“I have a hole in my brain,” I said. “It can see into the nowhere, but they can use it against me. I think . . . I think my father was shown some kind of mind hologram. When he flew back down to Detritus, he saw what the enemy wanted him to.”
I remembered what he’d said. I will kill you. I will kill you all . . . He’d been so mournful, so soft. He thought the humans had lost—that his friends were already dead. What he’d seen hadn’t been reality.
“When he blew up his friends,” I whispered, “he thought he was shooting down the Krell.”
A small number of the boxy ships approached M-Bot in the blackness. They struck me as couriers or maybe towing devices. Through the wide glass fronts, I saw creatures that looked vaguely like the drawings we had of Krell. Dark forms in armor, with red eyes.
Only here, they were bright colors—a perky red and blue, not dark at all. They reminded me a little of the pictures of crabs I’d seen from Old Earth, during my ancient biology courses. And the “armor” they wore seemed more like some kind of living apparatus, with open plates on the “head” portion for the creatures to see out of.
The sides of the little ships were stenciled with what looked to be words in a strange language.
“Ketos redgor Earthen listro listrins,” M-Bot said, reading the words. “Roughly, in English, that means ‘Penitentiary maintenance and containment of Earthlings.’ ”
Scud. That . . . sounded ominous. “Can you tell me what they’re saying?”
“There’s some radio chatter nearer the station,” he said, “but I suspect these ships are communicating using faster-than-light cytonic devices.”
“Relax whatever you’re doing to shield us,” I said, “but don’t put it down entirely. If I scream again, or go crazy, put it back up.”
“Okay . . .,” M-Bot said. “You already seem crazy to me, but I guess that’s nothing new.”
Awareness returned to me, the voices in the darkness of space. I could hear their words, the ones they were sending through the nowhere. I knew them, even without needing a translation, because in that place all languages were one.
“It’s looking at me!”