Eloise

The room changed before the other could answer, the walls expanding, filled with eye-bright luminescence; the instruments changing into cones, cubes, tesseracts of brilliant crystal, rods of lambent hue. The mind and eye baffled by the impact of wild radiation, trying to make sense from distorted stimuli. Or an actual, physical change in which familiar items altered to fit new laws of perspective and construction.

No man had ever lived to determine the truth.

Dumarest dropped into the control chair as the room returned to normality. Beside him Shalout muttered as he checked his instruments, reading dials he no longer trusted, readings which carried little sense.

"There, I think, Earl. No, there!"

"Make up your mind!"

"I can't! The sensors are all gone to hell. Earl!"

Dumarest was not a captain, yet he knew something about ships. He had ridden in too many, worked in more, not to have learned something of what needed to be done. Seated in the chair, he gripped the controls. To turn the Styast needed delicate manipulation of the field. Lights blazed on the panel as he adjusted the levers and a dial flashed an angry red.

"The engines. They're losing phase. Damn Beint for a drunken fool. Arbush, see what you can do!"

The minstrel had followed them. He turned at the command and headed towards the engine room. Dumarest didn't see him go. Every nerve, every particle of his concentration was aimed at the controls.

Again he adjusted the levers. The screens flared, changed, showed the familiar universe.

"You did it!" Shalout babbled his relief. "Earl, you did it!"

"Maybe." Dumarest wasn't so sure. "We could have barely touched an extension of the warp. We must have, or we could never have pulled out of it."

And they weren't clear yet. Other ships had suffered narrow escapes, still more were lost after reaching apparent safety. Dumarest looked at the instruments, the scanners and sensors which should have guided them safely through space. Would have done, had Eglantine been at his post in order to read their warnings. Yet, perhaps, he could not wholly be blamed. A warp distorted all space in its immediate region. Instruments would have been delivering false information, and yet, a trained and skilled man might have been able to avoid the trap.

"Shalout?"

The man remained silent, shaking his head, a thin line of spittle running from the corner of his mouth.

"Shalout, damn you! Give me a course!"

The man changed. His arms vanished, his legs, his head became a truncated pyramid of gleaming facets; his body a mass of divergent angles glowing with red and blue and emerald. Beyond him the metal of the hull sprouted frosted icicles, the instruments soft and pouting faces.

Again the screens showed nothing but a Lambent confusion of writhing brilliance.

And then, again, things returned to normal.

"Dear God!" The navigator had found his voice. "We're trapped! We can't escape! We're dead!"

Ship and men, the vessel caught in a maelstrom of irresistible forces, swept like a chip of wood caught in a tumultuous stream; to be ripped and torn and crushed to individual molecules.

If the force was resisted.

It was natural to resist, to use the relatively minor power of their engines to pull away, to escape if there was a chance. But the engines of the Styast were almost useless, hovering on the edge of becoming lifeless lumps of metal and wire; ready to collapse and take with them the Erhaft field which was their life.

Dumarest said, tightly, "Get hold of yourself, Shalout We've still got a chance. See if you can determine the flow of the warp, its node."

"But-"

"Do it!"

For a moment the man hesitated, a victim of his terror, then he remembered the dead man lying in the salon, the blood, the knife which had reached his heart. Saw the hard, set line of Dumarest's features, the cruel line of the mouth.

Death would come, of that he was certain; but death delayed was better than death received at this very moment.

He studied his instruments, checking, noting; hard-won skills diminishing a little of his fear.

"Up and to the left," he said. "If these things can be trusted that is the direction of flow. Not that it means anything. Who can tell what happens in a warp? But you asked and that's the answer."

"And the node?"

"Anywhere. Directions don't mean anything."

"Try harder."

"Ahead, maybe. How can I tell?"

With instruments which could lie and eyes which couldn't be trusted-no way at all. Yet his instinct remained. That and luck.

As the screen flared again with the alien brilliance, Dumarest sent the vessel up and to the left. Towards the line of flow, riding with it instead of resisting it; sending the ship which was the Styast moving inward closer to the heart of the warp, the node it must contain.

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