There are forces in this universe that cannot be accounted for, and cannot be analyzed, at the risk of setting them loose. The only safe thing to do is to avoid them, or find a sure way of destroying them.
—Billy Jeeling, one of his unspoken and unwritten thoughts
Skyship floated in the atmosphere at an altitude of eleven kilometers, directly over Imperial City. It was nighttime on board the great vessel, as it was in the sprawling metropolis below.
Billy was on the high walkway, riding his maglev chair back and forth, thinking and worrying. He had sent electronic signals to disable all access to this area, shutting off the highlifts and blocking the doorways. For extra security, Starbot and the other five robots in the series stood sentinel nearby.
The Master of Skyship paused to stare at himself in a mirror wall, and was terrified to see the silver glow still in his eyes, like bright, shiny spotlights gleaming from the depths of the universe. And as cold as he was, it didn’t seem to alter his skin color. Something not of AmEarth had taken hold of him, something that Tobek had described in his journals—a collective entity that killed the inventor, and could very well do the same to him. They stirred within, and he felt a strange rush of cold pleasure. It was unsettling to him, in an extremely odd way.
This power, these creatures of light that combined into a single deadly organism and now occupied his body, acted of their own deadly volition. They had destroyed half of the Imperial fleet and sent the survivors fleeing. They had killed General Rivington Moore VIII and the fabulously wealthy Jonathan Racker. Only minutes ago, Billy had seen the men die in vivid images that flashed in full color through his brain, as if he were watching a video production. Then, their horrific task completed, he’d seen the gleaming creatures of light—a long thread of them connected to Billy—retreat from Racker’s headquarters and go to Sonya Orr in her room on AmEarth, hovering there for a few moments, but not harming her. Why they’d shown this brief interest in her, he didn’t know. Moments later, the long thread of light returned to Billy on Skyship, merging entirely into him.
During the frenetic activity when the creatures were in their murderous attack mode, Billy had gotten colder and colder, so that he didn’t think he would ever get warm again. Icy winds had raged through his body, freezing him all the way to his soul. Eventually the heightened activity had subsided and Billy had warmed somewhat, but he shivered at the memory of how impossibly cold he had been. It seemed unimaginable to him that he was able to survive anything like that.
Now he continued to look at himself in the mirror, as if that would provide him with the information he needed. It was terrible to realize that he was so contaminated.
The alien presence is entirely inside my body now, he thought. It is peering out through my eyes.
And he realized, too, that the creatures could fire their deadly silver blasts from Skyship itself, while linked to Billy’s body. The great flying vessel, and Billy as well, seemed to provide them with safety and security. Maybe Billy gave them more than the ship, because they had moved into his body.
Curiously, the creatures described in Tobek’s journals had decided to use Billy as some sort of a horrific conduit for their destructive energy. Maybe he somehow amplified them, or otherwise enabled them to gain more power for their deadly, macabre weaponry. He felt trapped, didn’t know what to do. He felt violated, too. Years ago Branson Tobek, though not physically possessed by the space devils, had wanted to destroy them, but they had gotten him first. Billy didn’t want that to happen to him. He would cooperate to the extent necessary, would do whatever they wanted him to do, for his own preservation.
In the mirror, the twin orbs were the brightest silver he’d ever seen, so bright that his eyes were like metallic suns in the heavens. He shouldn’t be able to gaze upon such brightness in a mirror, such raw and primordial intensity, without going blind. But he had special eyes that were permitting him to do so anyway. He hated the alien presence, wanted desperately to be free of it.
A wayward, dangerous thought intruded, that he should make his own attempt to kill the creatures himself, no matter what had happened to the old inventor. Tobek had been his mentor, the greatest man Billy had ever known, or ever expected to know. Branson Tobek was one of a kind in the whole history of mankind; of that there could be no doubt.
Maybe it would be better if I died, too, he thought.
At least then he would be free of these creatures. He let the dangerous thoughts sink in, allowing them to permeate the chemistry and neural passageways of his brain. As he did so, he expected everything to go black at any moment—or explode in a freezing, last flash of silver.
Seconds passed. He felt his pulse hasten and cool, and he tried to prepare himself for the gruesome inevitability, his sudden and horrific death. But how could one prepare himself for something like that?
A minute passed, then two and three, without anything happening. Yet he did not breathe a sigh of relief. Instead, Billy leaned into the potential storm. He intensified his antagonistic thoughts, his hatred of the alien presence.
Alien presence. It made his skin crawl. He filled his brain with loathing toward the creatures, with thoughts of how much he wanted to destroy them—every last one of them.
Moments passed, then minutes ticked away—and he still counted himself among the living. But he knew the monsters remained inside, hadn’t gone anywhere. He sensed their presence, felt a slight, ever-so faint tickling now when they moved around, and their ever-existent, inexplicable coldness.
Why were they allowing him to live? Did they need him alive for their destructive purposes, and know that they could prevent him from destroying them? Would they keep him going indefinitely, as a host organism for their frightful purposes? Why had they shifted from the safety of Skyship to him?
The possibility that he was hosting something that had killed Tobek was terrifying, but more than that, it enraged him. He wasn’t going to let them use him as a conduit, wasn’t going to tolerate that!
I’m not dead, he thought, and he realized that he was still in front of the mirror wall, and that he must have been staring into his own silver eyes for all the time he’d been thinking.
But they killed Tobek for such thoughts.
Then Billy considered two possible differences. First, Tobek had written of his hatred in his journals, of his desire to destroy the creatures. When he wrote of this, he had them trapped on Skyship, and was performing experiments on them, and devising a way to get rid of them. Second, Tobek had apparently not been possessed by the creatures, for whatever reason. Not before nor after his death.
The creatures could read Tobek’s journals, but not thoughts?
It was all very confusing to Billy, but he was beginning to think that they could not read his thoughts, although they could recognize—and prevent—any overt attempt to destroy them. Somehow, they had discovered that Tobek was planning to get rid of them, and they had gotten him first. Maybe it was when Tobek was building the mysterious device that still remained unfinished on a laboratory table. The overt action of building something to kill them was what sent them into a killing frenzy against the brilliant old man.
Billy resolved to come up with his own way of annihilating them, to the very last one—doing it in such a manner that they would not know it was coming.
To his dismay a strange sensation came over him, and he grew very cold quickly, similar to the way he’d felt when the silver light sought out and killed Moore and Racker. The silver creatures were on the move again, extending themselves from his body all the way to AmEarth, stretching out, seeking and preparing to destroy. He grew colder and colder, couldn’t stop shivering. And in his brain he saw the Imperial Palace of Prime Minister Yhatt, as well as the elegant Prime Minister himself, standing at a window—as if watching for what was about to assassinate him. He was dignified and heavy, with a prominent nose and an intense manner about him.
The silver thread of light streaked close to the palace, but went around to the rear and entered a different portion of the massive building, a slender beam of illumination that passed through the corridors, then under the door and into the parlor where the Prime Minister was standing at the window. Behind him, the light began to pool in the center of the ornate room, as if it were an army gathering its forces, preparing to attack. Billy felt the coldness of the thread still connected to them; it was as if the creatures in his body were shooting from him to the palace, and concentrating there.
Billy struggled to withdraw the terrible force, but it was too strong, and kept doing what it wanted to do. It was going to kill the Prime Minister of the AmEarth Empire!
In the images that filled his mind he saw five people in the parlor, and heard the Prime Minister’s wife Lorissa scream in terror, a shrieking, terrified sound. Servants in white tuxedoes entered and stood by the doorway. Then two men in dark uniforms hurried in past them, security officers with their ion-pistols drawn.
The pooling light began to extend across the floor toward Renaldo Yhatt now, while the others watched in terror and shouted warnings to him. The Prime Minister turned to face the threat but remained stoically where he was, as if he had accepted his horrible fate and was not going to make any foolish attempt to escape it.
While the light advanced slowly and inexorably toward him, spread wide on the floor to prevent his escape, Renaldo Yhatt spoke in his resonant, leader-of-the-empire voice, with a calmness that astonished Billy. “Leave this room,” he said to his companions. “All of you. Now.”
His wife and the security officers refused to move, but the servants left. Then Maureen Stuart and the long-haired man—Billy wasn’t sure who he was—went to the door, with the man pulling her away. Another man with a blond moustache accompanied them. A servant opened the door for them, and they stood there looking back in horror as the bright stream of silvery creatures advanced toward its prey.
On Skyship, Billy Jeeling focused with all of his might, attempting to withdraw the murderous light, trying desperately to save the life of the Prime Minister, and perhaps the others in the room as well. He remembered that Maureen Stuart had been with Racker earlier, and had not been killed. The combined creatures had allowed her to run and warn the Prime Minister, and they did not seem interested in her now. They had not killed Sonya Orr, either, and Billy still didn’t know why they had visited her.
Now as Billy struggled for control, he felt a subtle shifting, like a change in pressure at altitude, and the silver light on the floor of the remote dining room began to retract, becoming a point of light at the end of a long beam that had snaked its way into the room. To his relief, Billy saw that everyone in the room was still alive.
Abruptly, the light went into a blur of reverse motion, and in a few moments it was back on Skyship, slipping back into Billy’s body.
He felt a sensation of extreme coolness from the activity. He also realized that he was breathing hard, and as odd as it seemed he was even perspiring. And somehow he seemed to have had an effect on the creatures, convincing them not to kill the Prime Minister. Could there be any other explanation? Possibly. But he realized one thing for certain. The creatures were going after people who opposed Billy Jeeling—the force that attacked Skyship, General Moore, Jonathan Racker, and—very nearly—Prime Minister Yhatt.
Why were they doing that?
And they didn’t destroy all of Billy’s foes, it seemed; only the ones who presented the most danger. Maureen Stuart had been part of the conspiracy against him; of that he was certain. But she had not been killed. And neither had Yhatt, despite reports reaching Billy said that he was also involved in the conspiracy against him. The two of them must have been secondary in the plans against him, not the prime movers.
A week ago, Maureen had not known about Moore’s feigned peace delegation and the attempt to kidnap Billy, and she hadn’t known about the later military strike force, either. The crazed General had orchestrated both assaults on his own, and somehow the creatures felt that Moore and Racker were more culpable in trying to destroy Billy than Prime Minister Yhatt or Maureen Stuart had been. Perhaps that had made it easier for Billy to convince the organisms not to kill the Prime Minister.
And it might explain the brief interest the space devils had in Sonya Orr, without killing her. It suggested that she was not entirely loyal to him, but was not a serious danger. In any event, Sonya was no longer on board Skyship.
The images in Billy’s mind were gone now, as if they had slipped away and vanished into deep space.
He was still in front of the mirror, gazing into it with silver eyes as if it were a window into everything, into the events on AmEarth and into the vastness of space. Finally, he looked away from his reflection. The horrible creatures were inside his body; he felt their cold stirring, speeding this way and that in their nano-realm, sending chills of fear down his spine. And when they settled down, ceasing most of their motion, his body grew warmer.
But he didn’t feel at all settled. The creatures had motives, and they had made him an unwilling participant in their strange scheme, whatever it was.