53 Ghost Walker by Barbara Hambly

Author:Barbara Hambly [Hambly, Barbara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Fiction, Science fiction; American, Science Fiction, Space Opera, Life on other planets, Kirk; James T. (Fictitious character), Star Trek fiction, McCoy; Leonard (Fictitious character), Interplanetary voyages, Spock (Fictitious character), Media Tie-In
ISBN: 9780671643980
Publisher: Pocket Books
Published: 1991-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

Spock, don't do this to me! Even in the bowels of the Engineering hull James Kirk felt the sweep start, a nerve-jarring vibration in the molecules of air and metal that made up the bones of his body now, and knew that it would be his death. God damn you, Spock!

He wanted to rage, wanted to scream, as he had wanted to scream at him all through last night, while he'd patiently, fumblingly, moved and hidden every tool and piece of equipment he could manage to lift. He was close, he sensed, to dissolution already, his consciousness straining under the sheer weight of hours stacked onto hours, of consciously recreating the parameters of the body he remembered: hands, feet, ears, toenails, the hair on his head ... the sheer grinding eternity of keeping his mind alive. Now he felt in his shadow bones the chill shudder of the standing wave as the generators kicked in on the bridge and that first deck of the Science labs immediately below it, and knew there was no escape.

He had early found he could pass through walls only by his consciousness of their composition and of precisely what lay upon their other side--he could, he supposed, have passed through the outer skin of the ship itself. But beyond that skin lay the disorienting blackness of space, and that would destroy him as surely as the polarizing disorientation of the standing wave would.

Can't you see what's happening? he shrieked soundlessly, hopelessly, toward the groups of men--his own men, his own crew, his own friends-- who would be milling around on the bridge and the Science deck below. Haven't you caught on yet?

And Laundryman Brunowski, checking the remix settings of one of the particle shakers that refabricated clean new uniforms out of the recycled molecules of the old ones, swung around sharply at the sudden drop in temperature and shivered, hearing, from among the vast banks of recyclers in the giant food-fab chamber beyond, the pounding begin, desperate, furious, and helpless.

Kirk fled upward, through the faint, shining pain of the superconductor cables and the wires within the walls, to sickbay on Deck 7. Being that close to the decks where the field had been set up terrified him--even with four decks between, he could sense it, like a piercing scream that shatters concentration and thought.

Frenzied, he called out to Helen, lying in her fitful sleep. Helen, please ... Helen, listen to me, can't you hear? She heard him, saw him in her dreams, but he felt her mind flinch away in repugnance and terror as his face loomed mistily into her consciousness, felt her shoving him from her thoughts.

No, he felt the slurred and sleepy whisper of her dreams. Not him. Not him ... And he felt, too, all the bitter and soul-deep hurt of that monstrous betrayal, and with it, her dark fear of madness, the horror she felt at the thought of the horror she tried not to know was true. Somewhere close

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