Spectrum of a Forgotten Sun

Dumarest folded it, held his hand before the staring eyes, moved it from side to side. The pupils remained stationary, looking at the point where the paper had lain. In imagination the navigator was a living participant in what the design had portrayed. Until the drug he had absorbed had been neutralised or had run its course he would remain deaf and blind to external stimulae.

From the door Charl said, "Earl, there is something you should see."

"It must wait. The captain wants Mayna to report to him immediately. Did you provide him with his amusement?"

"A simple thing, Earl, and harmless. Life can be hard and lonely for those who live in space and who can begrudge them a dream? You care to try one? I have patterns and compounds to induce illusions of love, of adventure, of unbridled luxury and domestic bliss. Oddly the latter is the one in greatest demand. A loving and faithful wife, children, the sweetness of contained passion. Or-"

"Get him out of it."

"Earl, I can't! The dream must ran its course." Charl leaned forward and touched the man's temple, the great arteries in the throat. "It won't be long now. The acceleration of the heart, the growing warmth of the skin-soon it will be over and he will wake. But this I can do." His plump hands moved with sure dexterity as he scrawled a message with a crayon on the back of the pattern. "There, when he wakes he will see it and obey. Now, Earl, please come with me."

"Harmond?"

He lay supine on his bunk, his face relaxed, his body naked from the waist down. Bandages covered his ankle and the air held the taint of charred flesh. A drain had been set in the lanced swelling of his groin; a thin, plastic tube held with sticky tape to permit the escape of accumulated fluids. The thing had a professional look about it as did the bandage.

"Did you have to burn deep?"

"Almost to the bone but I think we caught it in time. But that's not what I wanted to show you." Charl lifted the edge of the shirt and drew it upwards over the stomach and the lower ribs. "There, Earl. There!"

Dumarest followed the guide of the pointing finger, seeing a small, ebon blotch, a patch of velvety darkness rimmed with a thin band of angry red.

Chapter Six

Throwing back her hair Dephine said, "So Fren's got it. Well, I guess we can't all be lucky. How bad is it, Earl?"

"It's too early to tell."

"And you were close to him. Earl-you fool!"

"Charl was there too."

"I don't give a damn about Charl! You're different. I need you."

"Why?"

"Why?" Her voice rose as she echoed the question. "How big a fool are you that you can't guess that? Who else on this ship can I turn to? Who-Earl!"

"Stay away from me!" He backed as she came towards him, arms extended in open invitation. "Dephine!"

Her bare arms fell to her naked sides, the slap of her palms clear in the hold. Stripped she stood beneath the UV lights, taking her turn at the prophylactic precaution. One which Dumarest doubted would be of much use but at least it had a psychological benefit.

"All right, Earl," she said, bleakly. "So I mustn't touch you. But at least you can look at me. Does it help?"

She was like a child, he thought, wanting confirmation of her charm. A small girl asking strangers if they thought she was beautiful. But there was nothing childish about her body, lean and lithe though it was. The breasts and hips were those of a mature and feminine woman. The clear musculature revealed beneath the skin added to rather than distracted from her appeal. There was life in her, a vibrant urge to experience it to the full, a heat of primeval passion. One which had abruptly revealed itself when she'd heard the news as if nature itself was trying to compensate for imminent death by a burst of biological activity. An urge he had recognised and felt even as he had denied its logical outcome.

Death could be riding on his hands-he must not pass it on.

"Give yourself thirty minutes," he ordered. "Then call Allia to take your place. Make her strip if you can."

"That's impossible, Earl."

"Try, but don't touch her. Don't touch anyone or anything unless you have to."

She turned, slowly, arms lifted above her head in order to accentuate the thrust of her breasts, stomach indrawn. Her legs, long and slender, looked like marble as she stood on her toes.

"Am I beautiful, Earl?"

"Beautiful."

"You mean that?"

He said, bluntly, "Of us all you will look the best in a coffin. Don't fall in love with yourself so deeply as to forget that. Thirty minutes, remember, not a second less."

Charl Tao called to him as Dumarest passed the door of his cabin. He sat, a bottle of unusual design on the table before him, glasses to hand.

"Earl, come and join me."

"You know better than that, Charl."

"We were both with Fren and if one of us has contacted the disease then so has the other. We were both exposed. Which isn't to say that either of us needs to suffer. Sit and I will explain."