A jolt stirred Josepha in her sleep. She fell and cried out, then opened her eyes and found herself floating off the bed. She grabbed the edge and held on. A distant vibration continued for five or six minutes, and was followed by a more powerful shock.
Still half-asleep, she ordered the lights to go on, but they did not respond. She looked around in the night glow of the walls, then remembered that Ondro had left very early to visit the forward engineering level, where he wanted to help examine an old starship hulk that was being brought in. The invitation had intrigued him, because this was the vessel that had carried the first Cetians from Old Earth.
She had tried weightlessness downstairs in one of the exercise areas. It was not unpleasant, but the unexpected falling sensation had surprised and frightened her.
She pushed off, drifted over to the partly open window, and saw that there was no light on the residential level. A few lights shone, and seemed to be gathering, as if they were all going to the same place, like schools of fish in a black lake.
So much was strange here, she thought for a moment, that it might be nothing at all—but the sudden weightlessness seemed very wrong.
A figure moved in from her right. She tightened her hold on the window, then saw it was Jason, who had been given the apartment down the hall.
“What is it?” she asked. He reached out to the window and pulled himself closer. She tried to see his face in the shadows as he held on to the frame.
“Doors don’t work,” he said.
“What is it?” she asked again.
“There’s been an explosion of some kind,” he said, “in the forward area fifty kilometers away.”
“How do you know?” Josepha asked, looking more closely at him. As her eyes adjusted to the glow from the walls behind her, she saw that there was a vacant look in his face. “What is it?” she demanded.
He covered his eyes with one hand. “All of the habitat’s forwards is destroyed,” he said, “and the blast has altered our sun orbit…we’re heading directly for Ceti.”
“How do you know this?” she asked again.
“My neighbor down the hall,” he said. “You met her yesterday—Avita Harasta. Through her Link she’s learned mat we are all to go to the rear docks at once.”
“Ondro!” Josepha cried out, feeling weak. “He went forward this morning.”
“There’s nothing there, nothing at all. That’s what Avita said.”
“Maybe he didn’t get there,” Josepha said, rejecting the possibility that he might be dead.
Jason reached out to her with one arm and steadied her motion. “He would have been there within an hour of leaving here. When did he leave?”
“Three hours ago, at least,” she said.
“Maybe,” Jason started to say, but the word caught in his throat.
“What?”
“Maybe he left to come back before the destruction.”
“Please,” a voice said behind them.
Josepha turned her head and saw a slender shape floating in the doorway to her bedroom. After a moment she recognized Avita Harasta.
“Please excuse my coming in,” the woman said, “but all the doors have now opened, and we are being warned to leave at once, before the effects of the explosions make it impossible.” Avita touched her head as if in pain. “You may follow me. I know where to go. There are vehicles on the engineering level just above us.”
“I almost went with Ondro,” Josepha said, “but he insisted on not being treated as an invalid.” If he was dead, she thought, then it had all been for nothing.
Jason was breathing heavily, clearly upset and undecided about what to do.
“Maybe he’s alive somewhere,” she said, holding back her own tears.
He pulled her to him with his free arm, and they hung in the window for a moment. Josepha heard a strange, distant howl.
“Please,” Avita Harasta said again, “you must come with me now, or you will not know what to do.”
“What has happened?” Josepha asked.
The woman said, “Large detonations in the forwards. Disruptions in our power and gravitational systems.”
“Did we strike something?” Jason asked.
“No,” Avita Harasta said. “It was in the ship that was taken in for study. Large bombs. That’s what the Link is telling me.”
“But why?” Jason asked. “Was it an accident?”
“I don’t think so,” the woman said, and Josepha knew that the old ship had brought the bombs, and that they would not have gone off by accident.
She looked at Jason, and knew that he had also guessed that it was her father’s hand that had reached after her into the sky.