Navigator 3 E-Book

Regis Jeanin

• Herausgeber: novum publishing
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 329

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Escape to the front. On the way to his next destination, Mayï's spaceship is attacked and he himself is captured. The members of the original community want to turn him into a powerful weapon that will destroy their worst enemies: the warriors of the schools. Mayï's freedom is at stake, as are the lives of his friends. When Mayï manages to escape, a chase through the cosmos begins, during which he becomes increasingly desperate to find a way home and warn his friends. The primordial community gives him an ultimatum, and whatever Mayï decides: The road to ruin seems pre-programmed.

Leseprobe

1.

***

The end of a journey

Mayï crouched down, bared his teeth and bit down on the shard of glass sticking out of his right palm. With his other hand, he clung to the edge of the folding table. The ship shook and shuddered and he could barely stay on his feet. He braced himself against the pain and pulled the shard out with a jerk, grimacing as he did so. He groaned. That hurt like hell! But there was no helping it, the thing had to come out as quickly as possible. A wiping cloth fell from the table to the floor next to him; he carefully spat out the shard, grabbed the cloth with his injured hand and put one end in his mouth. He wedged the other end into the fold between his thumb and forefinger and, twisting his wrist quickly, wrapped the cloth around his hand until it covered the wound. The debris from the shattered glass rolled clanking across the floor to the wall; then they changed direction and skittered back to the center of the small galley. The ship's ground gravity was defective; instead of staying under the belly of the ship, it now shifted from side to side at irregular intervals. It seemed as if the jumper was desperately trying to shake something off. Something that had penetrated through its magnetic field and was distressing it. There was no other way to explain what was happening.

Crawling on all fours, Mayï moved towards the door that led from the galley to the corridor. He tried to protect his injured hand as best he could and used the inside of his wrist for a support. At one point, a violent jolt threw him against the wall and he cursed. The silence was eerie, the only sounds coming from the galley: the clinking of broken glass, the clatter of appliances, the rattling of the few dishes in the small cupboard. No screeching metal, no creaking ribs - his jumper was a living being, its structure organic and yielding. Nevertheless, it was obvious that something was very wrong - if his ship occasionally behaved stubbornly, even bucked, its gravitational field always remained constant.

He stretched out an arm and pressed the door's opening mechanism; it disappeared into the wall, and now he could hear his pilot screaming down in the control room, a shrill squeal coming from the saltwater tank where he lived. As if that wasn't bad enough, the translation system boomed through the corridor, shaping the squeal into words: "Mayï! Help! It hurts so much!"

His mind raced. What in all the worlds had happened? Just a few moments before, he had been in the middle of his evening routine, getting ready for bed in a ritual that was so familiar to him that he was able to rest his mind completely. Movements that had become automatic after the many days he had been spending on the jumper: he had made himself a glass of warm milk in the tiny galley and finished it, then gone to the hygiene station on the other side of the corridor to fetch his teeth-cleaning tray. He had returned to the galley while chewing on the gently vibrating, soft apparatus. Just as he was about to put the used glass in the dishwasher, a violent blow knocked him off his feet and hurled him against the wall of the galley. He hadn't been prepared for this in the slightest and had reflexively stretched his arms out in front of him to soften the impact. He had completely forgotten about the glass in his hand until it shattered on contact with the metal casing of the food processor and a shard dug deep into his palm.

Mayï pulled himself up by the door frame, rushed to the stairs and staggered down the steps to the navigation console, where he dropped into the armchair. The jumper shook like a rudderless ship on a stormy sea.

"Pull back! I'll take over!" he shouted.

"Huuurting!"

"Withdraw from the neural pathways! That's an order!"

Hastily but with precision, his fingers flew over the console controls. He couldn't afford to panic now. All the alarm lights were flashing, and the displays next to them all reported bad news. Magnetic field integrity: compromised; gravity equalization: fluctuating uncontrollably; air and water pressure: dropping rapidly; hull breach at hangar deck level.

Mayï sealed the bulkhead to the hangar from the console so that no more oxygen escaped through the damaged hull. This meant that the supplies and the small spacecraft were out of reach. Despite all the panic, his pilot had reacted quickly and had already sealed the water-filled sliding conduits that led to the hangar deck.

"Something hit us!" he heard Piper shout behind him, he seemed to have calmed down a little now that he had withdrawn his highly sensitive thread tentacles from the jumper's nervous system and was no longer experiencing the primitive sensations of the organic ship unfiltered. "That was neither a celestial body nor a cosmic phenomenon, our instruments would have struck long before the impact."

"We weren't just rammed, something penetrated the magnetic field and slashed the hull," Mayï shouted. Now that he was sitting in his accustomed place and trying to assess the situation, his body reacted: the initial dull throbbing in his hand increased to a searing pain and he felt sick as the shock set in with a slight delay. With sheer force of will, Mayï pushed back the approaching wave of nausea; now was the worst possible time to faint.

"No natural object is capable of this. The magnetic field can only be penetrated with a neutral quantum field modulator. That was intentional! But how could this happen?"

How could it indeed? After all the precautions they had taken to prevent unpleasant surprises of this sort?

***

Mayï's parents had spent a lot of time and care planning his itinerary, which was to take him to a number of selected solar systems to meet friends, learn new things and gain experience. But after he had been attacked on Earth, his second leg, by his parents' old enemies, his guardian and mentor, Grandmaster Ni, had decided to set a new route; only he and the jumper's team knew its course. Mayï and his pilot had to transfer messages and reports to small, encrypted communication buoys and drop them at agreed coordinates, because direct connections via the Community's communication network - even coded ones - were too insecure and could have given away their jumper's position.

In this way, Ni hoped, Mayï would always be one step ahead of his pursuers and would have already left a stage destination by the time they arrived.

This plan worked perfectly for about a hundred days.

He had visited Sar, the home planet of Pao, one of his father's master students - a beautiful world, pristine and wild. The peoples on the colonized continents still lived as hunters and gatherers, always following their prey. They dragged their tents and equipment on wooden sledges; they had no riding or pack animals. No settled civilization could be found on the entire planet. For his study, Mayï had picked out a tribe that had set up camp at the edge of the forest near a lake. He kept a respectful distance but made no attempt to conceal his presence from them. The locals were aware of the existence of the Community Mayï himself belonged to, anyway, and not just because of the recruiters who roamed their home world in search of potential new members, just as his father had once recruited Pao; occasionally ferries would land to pick up fresh water for the tanks of the long-range ships or to recover a rare metal that none of the indigenous peoples had any use for. Recruiters and ground crews proceeded discreetly and carefully so as not to be perceived as intruders, let alone enemies; after all, the planet was a valuable source of raw materials, its inhabitants excellent fighters and ideal for the schools of the Community. The strangers were more of a nuisance to the tribes than a threat, and Mayï was no exception. He had kept his distance, given their sacred sites a wide berth and studied their way of life, while the hunter-gatherers had kept an eye on the strange boy and otherwise gone about their business. Neither side had tried to make contact.

He had been on Herim, the home world of several of his friends and, together with Paadir, Num and Hamhaddith, one of the oldest founding worlds of the Community. He had attended pilot school there and learned a lot - he secretly hoped that he could even amaze Hedda, Herima and the Community's best pilot, with his newly acquired tricks. She had always considered him to be an above-average but not outstanding pilot, and he couldn't wait to see her astonished face. He was supposed to meet a jumper under her command in a few days' time; Ni was coordinating from Earth, he was teaching the base's warriors and had to rely on Mayï and his pilot to stick to the schedule.

After they had left the orbit of Herim and were on the agreed zigzag course to their next destination, Mayï had become increasingly listless; the last few days before the attack he had gone through his work program, which his teachers had given him, routinely but without the usual enthusiasm. On the morning of the autumnal equinox, his mood was at its lowest and he wanted to pull the covers over his head and stay in bed. On the exact day one year ago, he had lost his parents in an incredibly brutal way and nothing had been the same since: he had gone from being a carefree and sheltered child to being the hunted, catapulted within moments into a cruel reality in which he had to ensure his own safety. To make matters worse, his parents' original plan to send him on the journey so that he could gain as much distance as possible from their enemies on the Core World had failed. Several of them had followed him to Earth, had even shot at him as a warning that they could destroy him any time they chose. And even though Ni and the crew of the base, led by Commander Sun, had managed to capture this one gang, the danger was far from over. Ni could not hold on to members of the Community forever; moreover, there was no doubt that the pursuers were part of a larger group that would pick up where their comrades-in-arms had failed.

Yes, Mayï had every reason to be depressed. But he was first and foremost the navigator and responsible for the safety of his team, he couldn't withdraw every time he felt like it, because out here they had to be able to rely on each other. So he had done what he always did in these situations: he had swallowed his grief, got up like every day and carried on, persistently, doggedly, never slacking off.

His pilot had been subtle enough not to mention his dampened mood to him; Mayï had told him everything that had happened months ago, the raw, unvarnished truth, and Piper had an idea of how the boy must be feeling these days.

Now they were both staring through the jumper's large front porthole, the boy from his console, his pilot from his saltwater tank, watching the communication buoys, dozens of them, which had been torn out of the hangar deck through the hole in the hull and were now drifting uselessly.

Mayï had sent out a distress call as soon as he reached the console, but he didn't know if there even was a ship of Community nearby that might come to their rescue in time. Hedda and her team were still too far away. The signal might be intercepted and dispersed before reaching anyone so that no one would know about the attack. If the little jumper and its crew didn't arrive at the agreed coordinates in the next few days, Hedda would worry and go looking for them. But what would she find? A wrecked jumper, oxygen leaking through the ruptured hull, floating in a cloud of frozen water droplets? A pile of debris?

Blood dripped from his hand onto the console, the dirty cloth was already soaked. He wiped the console with the sleeve of his pyjamas, spreading the blood even more; wide streaks obstructed the view of the displays. He cursed again.

Another tremor seized the jumper, Mayï's head spun as the restless ground gravity briefly intensified.

"He's trying to escape!" reported Piper. "He's going to jump!"

A full-grown jumper could cover huge distances by "hopping" from one point in space to another, past the spatial structure. To do so, it bent its body, simultaneously increased its gravitational field many times over before flipping back; the energy thus released catapulted it out of standard space directly to the pre-programmed location. The prerequisite for a technically flawless jump was a stable water pressure inside the walls of the jumper - and an experienced pilot, a Chloeopsid, who could log into the jumper's nervous system with his fine threads and control the ship in this way. During Piper's very first jump, Mayï had gotten a bloody nose, but by now his pilot had mastered the small ship so well that they were able to cover long distances effortlessly.

But a jumper was also an organic ship, a living being, brainless and controlled solely by instinct; now its primitive instinct for self-preservation told it to get out of here as quickly as possible. But with a crack in the outer wall and without the optimum water pressure in the conducts necessary for a jump ...

"No way, its hull is damaged. A jump would tear it to pieces! You must stop it. Try to restrain it! I'll try the same thing from here."

Together they brought the jumper back under their control; it bucked and staggered, but did not attempt to jump again. The ground gravity dropped back towards normal but continued to shift unpredictably from one side of the hull to the other and back again.

A hard thud threw Mayï out of his chair. The unknown attacker had rammed into them again. The jumper would not be able to withstand these attacks any longer.

"You must leave the ship immediately!" shouted his pilot. "Take the craft and get to safety."

Mayï laboriously climbed back into his chair.

"Negative! The hangar deck is sealed."

"I'll put a portal directly into the cockpit!"

"No! Do you seriously think I would leave you here alone?"

"Separately, our chances of survival would be better."

"They'd be just as lousy as they are right now. Whoever's out there hunting us would catch me anyway."

"Do you sense anyone? Anything? Are you picking up more than the ship's sensors?"

Mayï wished he did; from the very first collision, he had focused his senses on the area around his jumper and scanned the space; but he felt nothing, no presence, no thoughts. How was he supposed to defend himself against an attacker he couldn't even sense?

"No, they must have improved their methods since we last met."

"Do you think that's Tosch Wi-Par and the others? They were locked up and sent back to the Core World."

"I think they were released as soon as they got there; they have many supporters there, those must have put pressure on some of the Council's members or made promises to get their buddies released. And they in turn must have warned the supporters that I could track them down. If I know what to look for."

"So they followed us. What are they up to?"

Before Mayï could reply that he had no idea, there was one final collision and the small jumper's magnetic field collapsed completely. Lightning appeared out of nowhere, twitching across the floor and walls, snaking around the console, overloading its circuitry and causing it to spark; the thin metal glass of the displays deformed from the heat and pressure of the tiny explosions; the large porthole that occupied the front of the control room, through which Mayï had been able to see the dark and - except for the drifting cargo from the destroyed hangar deck - empty space just a moment ago, became statically charged and milky. Gravity failed, and Mayï felt himself lift off. Without gravity, the blood smeared across the console was able to reassemble its cells, small red droplets formed and began to float through the air.

The console was live, he couldn't hold on to it. He groped for the back of his chair, but it was already out of reach. Still in shock, it didn't even occur to him to use his Potential to control his drifting body, it all happened far too quickly.

His pilot screamed in agony as the energy flow found its way through the walls into the water channels. The lightning detached itself from the surface of the objects and flashed through the room of the control center. Mayï had to avoid them if he didn't want to get fried, he had to keep away from them. He rowed with his arms, kicked with his feet, twisted and turned. His reflexes were quick, but the lightning bolts were everywhere, forming a crazy twitching pattern; several of them hit Mayï's extremities sumultaneously. He cried out briefly as the current ran through his body; every single muscle fiber tensed under the energy surge, his body froze, his breathing stopped. He could feel his heartbeat losing its rhythm.

Then he lost consciousness.

2.

***

The project

For each stage destination, Mayï's parents had recorded a small message in which they described the special features of the upcoming destination and gave lots of - and in his opinion completely superfluous - advice and admonitions. The files played automatically in a fixed order, but since the unscheduled route change, Mayï had to call them up individually. One day after he and his team had left the Earth's solar system and Mayï was searching the database of the console in his cabin for the recording of his next destination, he had noticed a call signal that came from the same file collection. Astonished and curious, he had entered the playback command.

"Mayï, this message has been stored in a separate file for you; it activates automatically in the event of an unscheduled course change or can be programmed to play manually. In both cases, it means the same thing: you are in great danger. You know that by now, don't you?"

His mother had stood in his cabin in full life-size, just as he had known her: silky hair that reached almost to the floor, black and shiny, large eyes so black that the pupils were unrecognizable, skin white as snow; her ears - cat-like, he had thought, for he had recently become familiar with the nimble mousers from Earth - pointed forward. She had seemed tense, her familiar voice had sounded unusually serious; there was an urgency in every sentence she spoke that he had never heard before, not even in the very first recording he had played at the beginning of his journey, which had also been her farewell message to her son.

Mayï loved the recordings, although the inescapable advice at the end sometimes annoyed him - it was always the same as in real life: "Be careful, look after yourself, don't do anything stupid", that sort of thing. He felt a mixture of anticipation and unease every time before he played a recording. He looked forward to seeing his parents again, to listening to them; it was almost as if they really were here, with him. But as soon as he saw their life-size holograms, he felt the pain of loss, that hole deep in his heart, because he knew they wouldn't be coming back, they were gone forever. And he had played his part in that. Ni and Hedda and all his friends could talk and explain to him that he was not to blame for what had happened. That only the Group of Ten around Tosch Wi-Par, Persch and Lainiri Prat were responsible for the deaths of Old-Master Lerean and Toï. He wanted to believe that so much and yet he couldn't; if he, Mayï, had reacted faster, earlier, more decisively, if he had disregarded the instructions of the adults, perhaps they would still be alive.

He had let them down.

His mother had continued: "Your father and I discussed at length how we should convey this message. Since you are a psyche like me, this task falls to me and your father is off the hook. Oh, how I wish that you never see this recording, that your journey goes on smoothly." She paused, collecting herself. "You know how to handle weapons, you're a good fighter. But when you face a threat, it's usually not primarily about force of arms; it's about mental strength, it's about what makes you who you are at your core: your Potential. Whoever is pursuing you, they will not let go of you until they have you. There is a group in the Community that wants to control us psyches more strictly. They seek to monitor our Potential so extensively that if they were allowed to, we would be nothing more than puppets in their hands. They have tried repeatedly to get hold of you, they have demanded that your father and I hand you over to them so that they could analyze your abilities and your psychic strength. They must have suspected that there was a possibility of inheritance. If we had given in, they would not have missed your immense strength. They would have taken you away from us and brought you to their new training center to shape you according to their ideas. They would have determined your life and your future. And probably destroyed you as soon as they were no longer able to control you. Because you should never forget one thing: The members of this group are convinced that they are acting on behalf of and for the good of the Community. If they must resort to torture and killings to achieve their goal, they will do so without hesitation. We have given you the best possible training and prepared you for situations like this. You know how to defend yourself. But what we haven't taught you is to take a life, to destroy the enemy. Because we didn't want you to become like us."

Toï had smiled wistfully as she continued: "I remember that you preferred to starve on trips lasting several days rather than kill a wild animal when your provisions were used up. You didn't even want to catch a fish. Mayï, you have such a wonderful, gentle nature, your vocation is to protect and save life, not to destroy it. But that is exactly what I expect of you now. Your own life is at stake, you must defend yourself. Your opponent is willing to enchain you and, if they do not succeed, to kill you without hesitation; it will not do to merely push them back and put them out of action for a short time, because you will only give them the opportunity to come back with reinforcements and better prepared. If you strike, do so to destroy. You have never killed before, and I very much hope that you never have to go through that experience. But right now you are at war, so you will act like a warrior: quickly, well-aimed and irrevocably. Don't let your conscience tell you to be merciful. Leniency is the very last thing you can afford at the moment. Be on your guard, be ready. Fight."

Mayï remembered every single word when he came to.

***

And, remembering Toï's warning, he did not move, despite the panic and the pain; aftershocks from the electric charge raced through his body, making his muscles twitch spasmodically, the wound that the shard of glass had cut into his hand throbbed and burned. He had woken up abruptly, without the slow transition from sleep to wakefulness, when the boundaries between dream and reality are fluid and have no contours. He kept his eyes closed, forcing his burning muscles to remain relaxed, allowing the convulsions that had been shaking him since he had passed out - to suppress them would arouse suspicion. He pretended he was still unconscious and carefully examined his surroundings, trying to find out what had happened and where he was. The ground beneath him was hard and cool, not organically pliable and lukewarm like in his jumper. He heard a low, continuous hum, far away, as if from large machines, and the soft whisper of ventilation above him. A mechanical ship? In that case, a very large one, judging by the vibrations. They were the only sounds that reached him. Still pretending to be asleep, he concentrated and sent out his thoughts, scanning the floor, the walls. He was in a tiny cabin, without furniture, completely empty except for him, there wasn't even a bench in here. And beyond the walls was ... His senses hit an energetic barrier and couldn't proceed any further. Mayï instinctively flinched - probing too vigorously might well trigger an alarm. He carefully probed: the barrier ran through the walls, the ceiling and the floor. It enclosed the cell like a cocoon, without any gaps. This barrier was designed to withstand even the strongest Potential. He was trapped. It was exactly the same kind of trap that his mother had fallen into.

One year and four days ago, at the autumnal equinox.

What had happened to her then? What had been so terrible that his father had readily let himself to be killed, without resistance, slowly and painfully, just to shorten Toï's suffering? Not that it would have made any difference.

Mayï continued to lie motionless, but he was seething inside. The fear was still present, but underneath it, dark anger was trying to break through. He forced the anger back into its dungeon, he had to keep a cool head.

"Your bio-data is constantly being checked," said a voice behind him. "I know you're awake, so stop this mummery."

Mayï opened his eyes and stared at the bare cell wall. He knew the voice, not so long ago he had spoken to the man who owned it. It had not been a pleasant conversation.

In a single smooth movement that betrayed a lifetime of hard training, he stood up and turned around. One wall of his cell was transparent, he had not been able to feel the opening because of the energy barrier; the entrance was secured by a second strong energy field through which solid matter could not penetrate, the static charge made the space behind the barrier field appear optically grainy, as if viewed through a wafer-thin layer of swirling sand. Not only was his mind unable to overcome this cage, his body was also trapped in the cell.

His blood started circulating again and a dull pain shot through his right hand, Mayï pressed it protectively against his body. Someone had removed the bloody wipe while he was out and replaced it with a clean bandage.

"Thus, we meet again," said the man behind the barrier. He was slightly shorter than Mayï, shrunken by age. Small red eyes gazed at him from a pink face, watchful, appraising.

Mayï stared back in silence.

"You do understand that we couldn't just let you go like that. Not after what happened."

Mayï rubbed his throbbing hand and said nothing.

The Num Hudi grew impatient. "You threatened to attack us. Your people have imprisoned us, me and my comrades-in-arms, like lawbreakers. Yet it is you who seeks to destroy the values of the Community, not us."

"Tosch Wi-Par, the famous spaceman," Mayï said, unable to contain himself any longer. This guy was presenting himself as a victim. "Tosch, the fearless hero who incites others to murder."

Tosch Wi-Par's face took on a rich red color. "Be quiet! We've discussed all this before, you know we didn't kill anyone. We don't want to harm anyone."

Mayï looked around his cell demonstratively. "Oh, really?"

Tosch watched the boy in the cell with growing displeasure. Slender, lean on the verge of skinny, not muscular, but sinewy. Tea-leaf shaped eyes, the eyeballs as green as fresh grass, brown irises with golden flecks, wild red curls. And that gaze: unbending, stubborn, challenging. Aristocratic, as if he thought he was something better. Just like his father, the source of all the trouble. And not yet seventeen. Tosch studied his eyes and could see nothing childish in them. They were cold and hostile, the eyes of a caged predator.

"What about my team?" asked Lerean's son.

"We'll take care of them, don't worry."

The boy held up his hand, looked at the fresh bandage and asked, "As well as you take care of me?"

Tosch thought he recognized a cheeky smile on the boy's face. They had picked up the jumper floating helplessly in space and secured it to the docking ramp with retaining clamps. At this very moment, a crew was sealing the crack in the outer hull. It would take decades for the wound to heal, the damage to be repaired and the ship to be operational again. All internal controls had been cut so that the pilot could no longer operate them as soon as he regained consciousness. Nevertheless, to be on the safe side, they had not compensated for the loss of water to bring the water pressure in the ship's hull back to normal. Old-Master Lerean was said to have personally selected the pilot, and the Gauch - a damned Gauch, in their midst! - had never done anything without a reason. Who knew what the Chloeopsid was capable of? He was probably lurking for an opportunity to escape or contact his allies. He would try to log into the communication network. No, they had to isolate the pilot, cut him off from the outside world completely.

They had transported the unconscious boy directly into the cell using a sliding portal. A crew member with basic medical knowledge - all the sympathetic medics and healers had refused to accompany them on their mission for fear of being expelled from their guilds - had treated the cut and administered an anti-inflammatory to the boy. He dared not use anesthetics for fear that the wrong dose could harm the boy. They needed him alive and, if possible, in good health. It had had to be done quickly, medicine in, bandage on and out of the cell again – better not imagine what could happen if the boy woke up without his Potential being kept in check by a barrier. Tosch had heard reports of what had happened on Earth; he himself had been present during the mission in the Void. This unassuming youth could handle Dark Matter like only a Gauch could, he had single-handedly overpowered a creature from beyond the known universe without being harmed by its immense psychic attacks. He could fight like a warrior, even at this moment his sinewy body was taut as a spring, ready to strike. Oh, yes, the way he stood there, in his bloodstained pajamas and bare feet, he looked young and lonely and vulnerable, but Tosch knew better. He was a deadly weapon, an unpredictable monster, just like his parents.

They had finally succeeded in catching him.

"You'll find bandages in the floor compartment next to the hygiene station. You know how to use them."

"They'll be looking for us," the boy said.

Tosch shrugged his shoulders. "Yes, they probably will, but by the time they get to the coordinates, we'll be long gone."

"A travel sphere, then," said Lerean's son.

Tosch nodded. "The only one we could acquire. As if we were the enemies of the Community. Ha!"

"Tosch, a word," a voice rang out from behind the Num Hudi. It came from an area that Mayï could not see from his cell. With a final reproving look, Tosch left the room. In an adjoining room or corridor, Tosch and the stranger were talking quietly; Mayï listened, trying to follow the conversation, he thought he heard the words "talk too much".

Tosch Wi-Par, the hero of his childhood. He had devoured every story about the pioneer with enthusiasm; it was thanks to his expedition reports that Mayï had embarked on a career as a navigator. He had desperately wanted to go on a voyage of discovery like his role model, the intrepid space traveler. Until he learned that Tosch not only had his parents on his conscience, but was also partly responsible for the dastardly attack on him duringhis stay on Earth. If the shot had missed its target by just a few fingers' breadths, Mayï would not be here now.

He heard footsteps approaching. A man Mayï had never seen before appeared in front of the barrier of his cell. A compact body, purple skin, short black hair. A Paasch. Like Tosch, he wore a silver-grey boarding uniform. He held a small device in his hand. Mayï didn't like the device at all.

"You will do what we ask of you," the man said without introducing himself. "If you refuse, then..." Instead of continuing, the man pressed a button on his device and a sharp crack sounded, immediately followed by incredible pain that raced through Mayï's bare feet and up his legs. His muscles went limp and with a gasp he went to his knees, fighting the rising nausea. His slightly too long hair fell into his face, and he stared angrily at the man through their veil. Conductors were built into the floor of his cell, which gave him blows at the touch of a button. Mayï was sure that hadn't he been barefoot when he was captured anyway, this man would have removed his shoes before imprisoning him. So that the electricity could flow unhindered.

"And should you try to break out of your cell..." the man said, and again Mayï had to watch helplessly as his finger slowly lowered itself onto the button on the remote control and pressed it. This time, lightning flashed from the ground, passing through Mayï. Everything went black.

***

The smell of ozone was still in the air when he regained consciousness. His whole body ached, and he felt sick. He rolled onto his back and waited for the nausea to subside. He slowly opened his eyes and looked around. The Paasch was gone, the room where he had been standing was dark, the light in his cell had also been dimmed.

Mayï had no idea how long he had been unconscious. Hundredths? Hours even? He had lost his sense of time. When he felt a little better, he sat up and looked around. There were two metal glass containers next to the barrier, one filled with water, the smaller one with liquid food. He stood up stiffly and walked up and down in his cell for a while to loosen his cramped and aching muscles. Then he took a closer look at his surroundings. He hadn't had a chance to do that earlier, first he had been completely focused on Tosch wi-Par, then the unknown Paasch had stunned him - and hadn't he seen something like satisfaction in the man's eyes when he activated the remote control?

The walls were made of a faintly shimmering metal alloy, as were the floor and ceiling. And the energy barrier ran right through the material. He was familiar with the structure of the spheres from his training, even if he had never set foot on one. They were used to transport large volumes of cargo or to take the Community's ships to their destinations in far-flung regions of the universe when time was of the essence. Their range far exceeded that of the jumpers, but they were not equipped for missions. Of course there were security areas, with cells to house prisoners, but Mayï was sure he had never heard of containment fields comparable to this one. Potentially dangerous prisoners were monitored and kept in check by psyches. But if the prisoner was a psyche himself ...

Set into one wall was a man-sized plate made of a darker, glass-like alloy - a hygiene device for removing excrement directly from the body, almost identical to the one on his jumper. A sliding compartment in the floor contained, as Tosch had said, a sanitary kit. Otherwise, the room was completely sterile: no chair, no bed, no blanket. Just a hard floor and smooth walls. He was supposed to stay alive, no more, no less.

But why? What were they planning to do with him? They couldn't approach him without stunning him first, because otherwise he would attack them, both physically and mentally with his Potential. He would strike at the slightest moment of inattention! They would have to assume that. Which meant that every time they deactivated the field to provide him with water and food, they would have to use the device and run more current through his body. How long would he be able to endure that? Sooner or later his heart would fail. If he didn't want the electric shocks to kill him, he would have to comply and cooperate with Tosch and his crony, whatever it was they were up to.

Or he could deliberately provoke the Paasch so that he repeatedly electrocuted him until he killed him - Tosch's companion had not given the impression that he would be particularly distressed by this.

Mayï immediately dismissed the idea. That would not help him or his team. He had to find a way to get to the jumper and get himself and Piper to safety. He had to find out how the energy field around his cell worked and what its weak points were. And he had to study the crew of the sphere, if he could see any of them; perhaps some of them could be manipulated.

Above all, he had to train his body to withstand the power surges and control his heartbeat. His father had been able to do this, had once held out long enough on a mission to maneuver a jumper out of an energy field while the rest of the crew had writhed on the floor, shaken by convulsions and surrounded by lightning - so why not he, his son? After all, their genes were identical. But Mayï was not a Gauch, was not, like them, almost invulnerable.

But what else could he do but at least try? The only person who could get him out of this situation was himself. Mayï took a sip from the water container and lay down on the hard floor with his back to the wall, his eyes fixed on the barrier. He needed a clear head and a body he could rely on to get through this. He was tired and exhausted, he hurt all over, but at the same time he was so tense and worried about his friend Piper that it was a long time before he finally fell into a restless sleep.

***