Dela just stared. The static pulses kept on. I held to Lance’s arm and felt him shivering too.
“Answer it,” Griffin said to Percivale.
“No,” Dela said, and Griffin stared at her, frowning, until she made a spidery, resigning motion of her hand.
“Go on,” Griffin said to Percivale. “Can you fine it down, get something clearer out of that?”
The whole crew looked round at their places, in Dela’s silence. And finally she nodded and shrugged and looked away, an I-don’t-care. But she did care, desperately; and I felt sick inside.
“Get to it,” Griffin snapped at them. “Before we lose it.”
Backs turned. Percy and Modred worked steadily for a few moments, and we started getting a clear tone.
“Answer,” Griffin said again, and this time Percy looked around at Dela, and Modred did, slowly and refusing to be hurried.
“Do whatever he says,” Dela murmured, her arms wrapped about her as if she were shivering herself. She rolled her eyes up at the screens, but the screens showed us nothing new.
And all of a sudden the com that had been giving out steady tones snapped and sputtered with static. It started gabbling and clicking, not a static kind of click, but a ticking that started in the bass register like boulders rolling together and rumbled up into higher tones until it became a shriek. We all jerked from the last notes, put our hands over our ears: it was that kind of sound. And it rumbled back down again—softer—someone had gotten the volume adjusted—and kept rumbling, slow, slow ticks.
“Not human,” Griffin said. “Not anything like it. But then what did we expect? Send.Answer in their pattern. See if it changes.”
Hands moved on the boards.
“Nothing,” Percy said.
Then the com stopped, dead silent.
“Did you cut it?” Griffin asked, ready to be angry.
“It’s gone,” Modred said. “No pickup now. We’re still sending.”
The silence continued, eerie after the noise. The ventilation fans seemed loud.
“Kill our signal,” Griffin said.
Percy moved his hand on the board, and the whole crew sat still then, with their backs to us, no one moving. I felt Lance’s hand tighten on mine and I held hard on to his. We were all scared. We stood there a long time waiting for something ... anything.
Dela unclasped her arms and turned, flinging them wide in a desperately cheerful gesture. “Well,” she said, “they’re thinking it over, aren’t they? I think we ought to go back down and finish off the drinks.”
Her cheer fell flat on the air. “You go on back,” Griffin said.
“What more can you do here? It’s their move, isn’t it? There’s no sense all of us standing around up here. Gawain and Modred can keep watch on it. Come on. I want a drink, Griffin.”
He looked at her, and he was scared too, was master Griffin. Dela had let him give us orders, and now whatever-it-was knew about us in here. I felt sick at my stomach and probably the rest of us did. Griffin didn’t move; and Dela came close to him, which made me tense; and Lance—Griffin might hit her; he had hit me when he was afraid. But she slipped her white arm into his and tugged at him and got him moving, off the bridge. He looked back once. Maybe he sensed our distress with him. But he went with her. Percy and Lynette got up from their places and Lance and Viv and I trailed first after Griffin and my lady, getting them back to the dining hall.
They sat down and drank. We had no invitation, and we cleaned up around them, even Lynette and Vivien, ordinarily above such things, while my lady made a few jokes about what had happened and tried to lighten things. Griffin smiled, but the humor overall was very thin.
“Let’s go to bed,” my lady suggested finally. “That’s the way to take our minds off things.”
Griffin thought it over a moment, finally nodded and took her hand.
“The wine,” Dela said. “Bring that.”
Viv and I brought it, while Lance took the dishes down and Percy and Lynn went elsewhere. My lady and Griffin went to the sitting room to drink, but I went in to turn down the bed, and then collected Vivien and left. We were free to go, because my lady was not as formal with us as she had us be with her guests. Whenever sheleft us standing unnoticed, that meant go.
Especially when she had a man with her. And especially now, I thought. Especially now.
We went back to our quarters, where Lynn and Percy and Lance had gathered, all sitting silent, Lynn and Percy at a game, Lance watching the moves. There was no cheer there.
“Go a round?” I asked Lance. He shook his head, content to watch. I looked at Vivien, who was doing off her clothes and putting them away. No interest there either. I went to the locker and undressed and put on a robe for comfort, and came and sat by Lance, watching Lynn and Percy play. Viv sat down and read—we did have books, of our own type, for idle moments, something to do with the hands and minds, but they were all dull, tame things compared to the tapes, and they were homilies which were supposed to play off our psych-sets and make us feel good. Me, I felt bored with them, and hollow when I read them.
We would live. That change in our fortunes still rose up and jolted me from time to time. No more thought of being put down, no more thinking of white rooms and going to sleep forever; but it was strange—it had no comfort. It gave us something to fear the same as born-men. Maybe we should have danced about the quarters in celebration; but no one mentioned it. Maybe some had forgotten. I think the only thing really clear in our minds was the dread that the horrid banging might start up again at any moment—at least that was the clearest thought in mine: that the hammering might start and the hull might be breached, and we might be face to face with what lived out there. I watched the game board, riveting my whole mind on the silences and the position of the pieces and the sometime moves Lynn and Percy made, predicting what they would do, figuring it out when expectation went amiss. It was far better occupation than the thoughts that gnawed round the edges of my mind, making that safe center smaller and smaller.
The game went to stalemate. We all sat there staring blankly at a problem that could not be resolved—like the one outside—and feeling the certainty settling tighter and tighter over the game, were cheated by it of having somesort of answer, to something. Lynn swore, mildly, an affectation aped from born-men. It seemed overall to be fit.
So the game was done. The evening was. Lance got up, undressed and went to bed ahead of the rest of us, while Viv sat in her lighted corner reading. I came and shoved my bed over on its tracks until it was up against his. Lance paid no attention, lying on his side with his back to me until I edged into his bed and up against his back.
He turned over then. “No,” he said, very quiet, just the motion of his lips in the light we had left from Viv’s reading, and the light from the bathroom door. Not a fierce no, as it might have been. There was pain; and I smoothed his curling hair and kissed his cheek.
“It’s all right,” I said. “just keep me warm.”
He shifted over and his arms went about me with a fervent strength; and mine about him; and maybe the others thought we made love: it was like that, for a long time, long after all the lights but Viv’s were out. Finally that one went. And then when we lay apart but not without our arms about each other, came a giving of the mattress from across Lance’s side, and Vivien lay down and snuggled up to him, not because she was interested in Lance, but just that we did that sometimes, lying close, when things were uncertain. It goes back to the farms; to our beginnings; to nightmares of being alone, to good memories of lying all close together, and touching, and being touched. It was comfort. It put no demands on Lance. In a moment more Percivale and Lynette moved a bed up and lay down there, crowding in on us, so that if someone had to get up in the night it was going to wake everyone. But all of us, I think, wanted closeness more than we wanted sleep.