This is the opening scene from Fireglass, a science fiction romance novella. Dr Linara Vey decides to enter the Prism Nebula and encounters a n extraordinary creature.
The Nebula
The Prism Nebula hung in the ship’s 3D display, a vast cloud of dust and ionized gas lit from within by hundreds of stars. Their light fractured through the mass, creating shifting bands of color that shimmered as though the whole nebula were alive. From one angle it was a deep violet veil, from another, a blaze of blue and purple rippled across it. Darker knots of dust drifted inside the glow, outlined by sharp rims of light like islands in a burning sea.
“That looks downright dangerous, Linara.” Eron’s fingers were so tight on the arm rests on his seat Linara thought he’d leave marks.
It did indeed. It looked like an angry amoeba, something with a life of its own, not just an accumulation of galactic debris. Her nerves had tingled at the sight of it and they were still billions of klicks away from it. Scary as hell.
“We have to take a look, Eron. The Institute is pushing me for results. We’ve been here for two months with very little to show. They sent us out here to push the boundaries.” And they sent him because he could pilot the Institute’s elderly research vessel, optimistically named Pioneer. He was a nice boy—young man. But he was so cautious, so risk averse. He was driving her nuts. She felt the irritation rising and pushed it away. It wasn’t helping. At least the ship’s AI was state of the art. Well… nearly.
“Take us closer, Eron.”
His mouth hung open, his eyes widened. “Linara… Doctor Vey. They told us at the station the nebula’s uncharted. Nobody’s gone in there. It’s dangerous full of… of,” he flailed his hands around, “peculiar gravimetric anomalies.”
Time to get tough. She leaned toward him. “People have gone in there. And come back with stories.” She took a calming breath. There was no point in getting him offside. “Look, Professor Elmani suggested we take a look. We don’t have to go a long way in.”
“The locals warned us.”
“Did they?”
“Yes.” He nodded once, emphatic. “Kael Reece told us it’s dangerous. Remember the story about the ship that disappeared?”
Kael Reece. She certainly remembered him. Tall, dark hair worn a little too long, eyes as black as space itself, and a wonderful smile that lit up his otherwise rugged features. The thought of him sent a delicious shiver through her. But she wouldn’t trust him as far as she could throw him and wouldn’t believe a word he said. He was an ‘independent trader’ who took on casual jobs. He’d been just one of a group of space jockeys they’d shared a drink with at the Airlock club on Vega station. She’d asked about the fabled nebula and some of them had told woo-woo stuff about ghosts and malfunctioning controls. And the ship that disappeared.
She grinned. “That one about the researcher who vanished seventy years ago? The one who was sure some kind of energy being lived in the clouds in there?”
“Yes. Everyone at the table laughed and called it nonsense.”
Reece hadn’t argued—just smiled that smile of his and said maybe some things were better left unexplored. Though she was sure she’d seen a twinkle in those deep, dark eyes.
“But what if he was right?”
Eron stared at her in total disbelief.
“Well, why not? I looked up the media stories at the time his ship disappeared. His name was Omar Khalid, an amateur explorer who was constantly taking risks and getting some interesting results. He was the first person to find Yrmak relics on Plaistow Seven, although the experts said it was impossible. Why should all life be carbon based. Or silicon based?”
He shook his head. “Sometimes I worry about you. Besides, the place is dangerous. The fellow’s ship disappeared.”
She cocked an eyebrow. “That older captain… Wetherton or something. He said he’d been in there a little way and that it was weird but it wasn’t that bad. And they all agreed.”
She raised a finger. “Except Kael Reece. And you’d trust him, would you? He’s just as likely to be protecting a prospect for himself.”
Eron scowled. He hadn’t liked Reece. Understandable. Reece made Eron look second rate.
“Anyway, I’m leader of the expedition. Take the ship closer to the nebula. And that’s an order.”
The scowl deepened. “I want that on record. I don’t like this move.”
“Sure.”
“Pioneer, take us closer to the nebula. And note that’s an order from Doctor Vey, against my better judgement.” Eron’s tone echoed his reluctance. “But only to the edge of the gravitational fields.”
“Acknowledge. Prepare for shift space.”
Linara suppressed the eyeroll. Talk about covering his butt. Her harness deployed out of her chair, over her shoulders and around her waist. She suppressed the churn of excitement and maybe a tinge of fear. But it would be all right. They’d go in carefully. If she could persuade Eron.
“Calculating…” Pioneer said as instruments flashed and the nav system reset. “The Prism Nebula is basically uncharted and is likely to have hazardous gravitational anomalies. I will bring the ship close enough to give you a better view without being drawn into its gravitational influence.” The AI’s voice was soothing, the tones of someone like a sympathetic doctor.
“Shifting in three… two… one.”
The display went blank. The sound of the engines changed from the constant throb of ordinary space to the whine of shift space as the ship moved out of the usual three dimensions into another region that provided a short cut through spacetime.
Linara sat in her seat with her eyes closed and hoped she’d done the right thing.
“What do you think you’d find in there, anyway?” Eron said. “It’s full of radiation, enough to kill most things.”
Her eyes snapped open. It was a good question. “Eron, think about it. Every surveyor who’s come near the Prism has dismissed the anomalies as interference. But what if the biosignatures are there, chains of molecules too complex to be chance? If the refractive fields really are shielding them, we could be looking at life forming in conditions no one thought survivable.”
He frowned. “Or we could be looking at static on a scanner.”
She shook her head. “No. Static doesn’t repeat in patterns. I think these do. And if we can prove it, even once, it would be the first real breakthrough in xenobiology in decades. Not microbes clinging to rocks. Life, Eron. The start of it. If we walk away now, someone else will claim it. If we go in, carefully, we make history. We might even get a Galaxy Award.”
She let the words hang. His reluctance was still there, but his grip on the armrests eased.
“Think of it. Appearances on the vids, interviews, biographies. We’ll be famous.”
He sat back, trying for thoughtful and not quite managing it. “The Galaxy Award comes with a grant, doesn’t it?”
She nodded. “Oh yes. Five million credits.”
His eyes narrowed. She could almost see him doing the arithmetic.
Eron made a show of resting his chin on his fist. “History doesn’t mean much if we don’t make it out again.”
“Which is why we’ll take it slow,” Linara said. “No blind dives, no unnecessary risks. Pioneer can chart the outer currents, and we’ll plot a safe path in. I’m not asking you to gamble our lives. I’m asking you to help me prove what’s possible.”
He studied her for a long moment but it was all for show. Then he gave a short nod. “All right. We’ll take a closer look. But if it starts pulling us apart, we’re gone. No argument.”
Linara managed not to grin, but her pulse quickened. “Agreed.” She stood and stretched. “I’m going to my cabin. I want to look through some notes.”
And she wanted to get away from Eron Dask. He wouldn’t have been her first choice for an assistant but she hadn’t been given a choice.
Her cabin was her safe space, not much more than a cubicle with a sofa that reconfigured as a bed, a closet, and a desk. But it was hers. She glanced through the notes she’d taken so far on the trip. It didn’t take long. As she’d said to Eron, they hadn’t found anything significant at all.
Professor Elmani had suggested she look there. That was reason enough. But now they were here, with the nebula filling the display and the thought of it prickling under her skin, reason didn’t feel like the whole answer.
She opened the survey readings again. Nothing definitive. Nothing she could point to and say, there, that’s why.
Still, she couldn’t look away.
It was absurd. She was a scientist, not some mystic in a marketplace tent. Yet the place seemed to tug at her, not with gravity, not exactly, but with expectation. As though something inside that coloured mist had noticed her.
Linara closed the file.
“Ridiculous,” she muttered.
She slid down on the sofa and listened to music until Pioneer’s calm voice filled the cabin. “Returning to normal space in two minutes.”
Linara hurried up to the cockpit and strapped in, her heart racing.
Eron adjusted his harness and shot her a sidelong look. “Let’s see what’s worth all this trouble.”
Linara counted down the seconds. And with that, the Prism Nebula loomed ahead, a ghostly cloud filled with light sources.
Gee. She’d expected more than this. Up close it felt like being in a gentle mist, not a peasouper fog. Sure, the stars inside the nebula weren’t the hard points of light she’d come to expect in space. They looked blurry, misty, the way the lighthouse looked on the headland at home when the sea mist rolled in.
“Huh. It doesn’t look so bad from here.” Eron pointed at a star on the main display. “This is a G-class star that’s mentioned in the star chart. They called it Prism A. Not far in and stable. Let’s head for that.”
Linara dragged her attention away from a faint energy source showing on her screen and looked at the star Eron was referring to. “Good idea.”
“Plot a course, Pioneer,” Eron said.
“It appears to be a safe destination. It will require a series of short jumps. Calculating…”
Each jump was only minutes long. Each time the star was brighter. Distant stars blurred to pale smears, their edges bent by shifting fields. Pioneer’s hull shuddered now and then, the inertial dampers fighting unseen forces.
And each time that anomalous energy source increased in intensity. Linara tensed. This was something important, but it could also be something very dangerous.
“What’s that energy source, Pioneer?” she asked the AI.
“I have been tracking it. It appears to be a wreck in orbit around the star.” The display zoomed in on the object as it approached. It resolved into a ship not much different to Pioneer. It looked more or less intact but battered. Its running lights were long dead, no drive emissions, no signal appearing on the screen. A derelict, caught in an endless waltz around a star.
Linara’s heart rate spiked. It was the source of the signal she’d spotted.
Eron swore under his breath. “That’s an Arkadia-class surveyor. Haven’t seen one in service for fifty years. I wonder if that’s the ship that disappeared?”
“Is it?” Linara asked the Ai.
“It is. As Doctor Dask said, it is an Arkadia-class surveyor named Explorer 5.”
“Didn’t they come looking for it?”
“What I have in my database indicates the ship entered the nebula and was never heard from again.”
“No distress signal? Nobody came looking?”
“No distress signal. And yes, they came looking. That is why this star appears on a chart. But they found nothing.”
Linara frowned. “But it’s in orbit.”
“It is now. Perhaps it was drifting in the nebula and was captured when it came to close to the star.”
That made sense. Back home one of the moons in orbit around Santa Christina was said to be a capture. Oh well. Count that as lucky. They’d found a historic ship.
The ship moved past, following its track around the star until it receded to a distant dot.
“Pioneer, go after it. Put us in the same orbit and match speed,” Linara said.
“Calculating…”
“You know, it’d be worth something to just bring that ship back. Wouldn’t it?” Eron said.
Linara noted the speculative glint in his eye. And why not? It might be worth something as salvage. “Could be. I’d still like a closer look.”
Eron didn’t argue. They both watched the screen as Pioneer turned to follow the derelict, speeding up for a while, then using the bow thrusters to slow down and match the other ship’s speed.
There was a ragged hole in the vessel’s side, as though it had been hit by something. A meteor?
Eron had Pioneer project the ship on the 3D display. “Looks like one large hit, then lots of others over the years.”
“And yet here it is, still broadcasting energy strong enough to cut through this interference.” She highlighted the repeating waveform. “Something is alive in there.”
“That is not possible on a ship in this condition,” the AI said. “I have scanned it for known biological material. There are corpses. Nothing alive.”
“Well, what’s this then?” Linara asked, jabbing her finger at the console.
“An energy signal. Not life.”
“Energy from what, though? Could the engines be… I don’t know… leaking power or something?”
“It is not from the engines. There is insufficient data to determine what it might be but it is a powerful energy signal.”
She shivered. An energy being that lived in the clouds. Maybe the vanished researcher had found something. The AI was wrong. She knew it. Something in her gut was telling her so. “I’m going to have a look.”
Eron stared at her. “Are you mad? It could be anything. We should at least get some help.”
“Like Kael Reece? Maybe this is what he doesn’t want us to find. Salvage rights, maybe?”
That hit home. Eron’s gaze shifted.
Linara retracted her harness and stood. “We’ll never know if we don’t look. You stay here and monitor. If anything goes wrong…” He could what? Leave her here. But it would be okay. She knew it. Deep in her soul she knew it.
Eron was shaking his head. “You’re nuts. Make sure you keep in contact all the time,” he shouted after her as she headed for the cargo bay. She stepped into the exosuit, lower half first, then up around her shoulders, slipped the hood over her head and secured the fastener.
“Vitals green,” Pioneer’s AI confirmed.
Linara flexed her gloved hands. “Opening inner lock.”
The airlock chamber opened, red lights pulsing overhead. Inside, she pressed the button on the control panel on her chest to deploy the helmet from the neck piece and checked airflow. She’d be okay for two hours. That should be plenty. “Good to go Pioneer.”
“Ten seconds to vacuum.”
Her heart kept time with the countdown.
Eron’s voice crackled through the comm, flat and restrained. “Don’t stay long.”
At zero, the outer door rolled back. Swirls of mist surrounded distant stars, hazy and distorted.
The derelict loomed ahead, silhouetted against the glow of the star it orbited. Linara pushed off Pioneer’s lock and drifted toward the dead ship, firing the suit’s jets in short bursts.
The numbers on her display tracking the energy source climbed with every meter she closed—signal strength rising, frequency resolving into a cleaner pattern.
The hull’s plating was pitted with micrometeor strikes, but apart from that it looked intact. Faded lettering still clung to one flank EXPLORER 5.
“Reading you at fifty meters,” Eron’s voice broke through the comm.
Linara cut her jets, drifting on inertia until she was parallel with the wreck. The suit’s lamps snapped on, twin cones of light cutting across the hull panels. She rotated slowly, looking for the large hole in the ship’s side.
“You need to go further to your right. Not very far,” Eron said.
She drifted along the starboard side, firing short bursts to steady herself until she reached the breach, about half her height in diameter, the edges scoured. On her suit’s instrument panel the energy source ticked higher, almost in rhythm. Whatever emitted the signal was inside the wreck.
“Found the hole,” she said. “Suit shows pressure inside is zero, but structure looks sound enough.” She steadied her breathing. “Going in.”
She’d have to be careful. The suit was supposed to be indestructible, but she wasn’t going to test it. Using very low power on her jets she floated through the hole into the ship. Her instruments pulsed again, brighter, sharper. The source was directly within.
Her headlight beam swept across scorched walls and ruptured conduits, the interior ribs of the ship twisted by the violence of the breach. Frost crusted every surface, glittering faintly in the light. Nothing moved except the slow, weightless dance of debris. The only sound was the steady rasp of her own breathing.
She reached what must have been the crew common room, a small, functional space with bolted seats, a galley niche, and a cracked holo-table. Three shapes floated strapped to their chairs, their ship suits dulled with age. A deck of cards drifted around one corpse like a macabre halo. Another had tried to reach a wall panel before the air sucked out; his arm was still outstretched, gloved fingers stiff.
Linara’s stomach churned. Seventy years, and still they sat where they’d died.
Her light picked out a sealed pressure door at the far end, the status lamps dim amber. The ship’s AI had done what it could—sealed the breach, isolated the section, and gone silent. She brushed frost from a wall console and touched the activator.
Static flared. Then, faintly:
“…core integrity… stable… seventy years… no crew detected…”
The voice was thin, fragmented, barely a whisper of code still running in some frozen corner of memory. Somewhere behind that door, the ship’s heart still ticked. She gave the silent figures one last glance, then pushed gently away, heading for the hatch.
Frost coated the access panel beside the blast door, its surface crazed with hairline fractures. Linara scraped the ice away and keyed the activator. Nothing. She tried again.
A pulse of static flickered through her comms, then the same halting voice she’d heard before.
“…core integrity… nominal… lockdown protocol… active…”
At least it was still talking.
“Explorer 5, this is Linara Vey, independent salvage. I need access beyond this bulkhead.”
A long pause followed—so long she thought the system had frozen again. Then:
“…authorization… unrecognized… crew status… deceased…”
“I know. But you sealed the breach. You did your job. I need to see what you were protecting.”
More static, a flicker of power in the wall lights. Something deep in the ship stirred, hesitant, like a long-dormant heart struggling to beat.
“…containment… priority… override… manual assist required…”
The amber indicators beside the door blinked weakly, one after another. Linara felt the faint vibration of unlocking servos behind the panel, half-seized after decades of cold. The first seal released, the second stayed firm.
She unshipped the multi-tool from her belt, found the manual access plate, and cranked the handle. It resisted, but the exosuit’s servos gave her leverage. The wheel turned a quarter revolution, then another.
The final lock gave with a jolt that vibrated through her boots. The blast door slid aside on grinding runners, releasing a thin mist of vaporized frost. Her headlamp lit a narrow passageway lined with conduit bundles and frost-coated displays, a faint red glow pulsing at the far end. Using her suit’s jets she floated down a corridor lined with conduit bundles and status panels dulled by frost. Emergency strips along the floor flickered in uneven pulses, casting the passage in alternating bands of amber and shadow.
At the end, another hatch waited, manual this time, the kind that belonged on an internal lab rather than a pressure barrier. A faded sign above the frame read CONTAINMENT.
Linara tried the release. It protested, then gave. The hatch swung inward on stiff hinges.
She entered a small, functional laboratory. Two rows of consoles lined the bulkheads, their displays dark, edges furred with frost. An examination table occupied the center of the room, tethered equipment floating slightly above it in the near-weightless gravity. Sealed cases along the walls held neatly arranged instruments—specimen tools, diagnostic scanners, collection jars.
She moved slowly between the benches, her lamp sweeping across consoles and cabinets. Most were dead, but one unit still glowed faintly, a single green indicator stubbornly alive. As she brushed past, she noticed a data crystal slotted into an old-style reader, an antique even when this ship was new. She eased it free and slipped it into a pouch on her suit. You never knew, there might still be something on it.
Beyond the far wall she found another heavier door. Its access panel looked familiar, an earlier model of Pioneer’s containment chamber, strong enough to hold something volatile, maybe alive. She and Eron hadn’t had to use Pioneer’s chamber.
Her suit display spiked. Whatever she had been tracking was right there in front of her. She hesitated, every nerve in her body telling her to turn back. The thing in there was strong, it had to be alien, it could be deadly. She needed help. Pioneer was still there, retreat was possible.
And leave whatever it was there? Waste all the effort so far? Come on, Linara. You can do this. Her heart pounding, she forced the hatch open.
A wash of golden pink light spilled out. Carefully, using the hatchway for handholds, Linara pulled herself into the chamber. A containment pod hung at its center, its glass frosted but intact. Within, a creature drifted, tentacles unfurled, glowing with a pulse that quickened as she entered.
Fear clutched at her chest, replaced by calm so sudden it startled her. The connection was wordless but real, an echo of welcome threading through her nerves.
Linara swallowed, her breath slowing. She’d never seen anything like it. Wait, she had, back in the warm seas around the Murry River where she grew up. It looked like a jellyfish, but with large, dark eyes that stared at her with deep intelligence. Its tentacles brushed faintly against the inner surface of the pod.
She stepped into the chamber. The rhythm of the creature’s light matched her own pulse, then steadied it, slowing her breath, until only a strange calm remained.
“Linara.” Eron’s voice burst through the comm, ragged with static. “You’ve gone silent. Report.”
She blinked, the sound jarring in the quiet. “I’m here. I’ve found the source. It’s… contained. Alive.”
“Alive?” His tone sharpened. “Get what data you can and come back. Don’t push your luck.”
Her gaze stayed on the pod. The creature’s luminous tentacles appeared to reach toward her, steady, patient.
“I’ll bring it across,” she said.
“Negative. That wreck’s unstable. You haul something heavy through, and it could come apart, trap you.”
Linara touched the pod’s casing. The metal was cold but solid, its mounts still fixed to the deck. “It’s secure. Portable. And it’s worth the risk.”
Static filled the pause. When Eron spoke again, it was quieter. “Then be fast. Pioneer says he’s analyzed the wreck’s orbit. Something must have hit it recently and it’s starting to decay. If you’re not out of there soon, you might end up in the star.”
Bloody hell. She’d better move. At least in zero gravity the pod wouldn’t be heavy.
A cradle attached to the floor held the pod in place. The release mechanism was frozen shut. Just as well she always kept a laser cutter in her suit. She sliced through the release, taking care not to damage the pod itself. The creature’s eyes followed her every movement. She pulled the pod free of its cradle, then stopped it from going any higher. It drifted in the zero-g. She needed a harness, something she could tow it with. What did she have? What was in here? There’d be something in the lab.
She looked at the creature… the lumnith. Where had the name come from? Never mind. It suited. “I won’t be long.”
She went back into the lab and searched the cupboards. On Pioneer they kept tethers in the locker near the door. Hopefully they did that seventy years ago. She pulled open the cover and heaved a sigh of relief. Some things never changed. She selected a flexible tether. She could hook one end to her belt and fasten the other to the pod.
The floor lurched under feet and her heart hammered. But only for a moment.
Calmness washed over her. She returned to the chamber. “See? I’m back. We’re going to get you out of here.” She attached one end of the tether to the base of the containment pod and the other to her suit. It wasn’t wonderful but it would have to do.
She stepped out of the chamber.
The containment pod drifted behind her, tethered to her belt. Linara dragged herself along, careful, efficient, conscious of the clock ticking down.
A tremor ran through the ship. Dust crystals scattered into the beam of her lamp, drifting like sparks. Ahead, a length of conduit broke free and began to tumble slowly across the corridor, trailing a ribbon of frozen coolant.
She stopped herself with a quick burst of her jets, pulse thudding. The drifting pod hit her back. The deck plates were twisting under orbital stress. Whole sections of the ship must be flexing as Explorer 5 sank deeper into the star’s gravity well.
A bulkhead panel tore loose and spun past, catching her shoulder. She ducked, caught herself against a wall strut, and pushed the tethered pod aside before it was struck. The corridor ahead rippled. A structural beam bowed inward, cracking at the joint. Panels floated free, and a drift of fine debris began to fill the passage, glittering in the lamplight.
Her exit lay beyond that mess.
She shoved at the beam, felt the vibration through her gloves, saw it shift.
Come on you can do this. She braced her boots against the wall and pushed, slow and steady.
With a jolt the beam came away then drifted aside, leaving a gap just wide enough for her and the pod. She pulled the tether forward and kicked through, momentum carrying her down the corridor past the ship’s crew and their endless card game.
Behind her, another section tore loose — a slow cascade of wreckage tumbling weightlessly through the airless dark.
She didn’t look back. Panic clawed up her throat. If the floor went entirely, she’d be pulled down into the hollow of the wreck, tether tangled, lost.
A gentle pulse brushed through her mind. Calm, like cool water. She blinked, forcing her grip to steady, forcing her chest to loosen. The lumnith floated just behind, its light flickering soft and slow, as though urging her to breathe in rhythm.
“I hear you,” she whispered.
The comm crackled. “Linara, you’ve got to move.” Eron’s voice was tight with strain. “The wreck’s orbit is decaying. Ten more minutes and Pioneer can’t hold position.”
“On my way.”
With one final shove she propelled herself and the pod into clear space. Using her jets she crossed over to Pioneer’s open airlock. With the pod nestled against her chest she started the air cycle. “I’m in, Eron.”
Linara’s legs trembled as the indicator lights cycled to green. The hatch slid aside. Eron stood waiting, his eyes bright.
Linara stared at him. “What the hell are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be on the bridge?”
He waved a hand. “Pioneer’s in control. I’d just be sitting there anyway.” His gaze went at once to the pod. “So that’s it.”
He crouched, studying the pod and its occupant. “I heard about something like this at school. I wonder if it lives in an ocean, wherever it comes from?”
Linara removed the tether, drawn to the eyes in the pod looking up at her. “Meet the lumnith.”
Eron raised an eyebrow. “You named it. It’s pretty, isn’t it? Do you think they’re eyes?”
Linara shook her head. For her, the glow was steady, almost comforting, as though a heartbeat had joined with her own. Maybe it… she… picked who to link with?
Pioneer shifted under their feet as the engines fired, carrying them away from the dying hulk.
“What do you think it is?” Eron said, his gaze fixed on the pod.
It. She wasn’t an it. Before she could berate him, Pioneer interrupted. “Please return to the cockpit and strap in. We must get out of the star’s gravity well before we can go to shift space.”
“You go. I’ll be right there. I’ll place her in our specimen chamber.” Specimen. The word jarred.
With a last reluctant look at the lumnith, Eron ran up the ladder to the cockpit. Linara lugged the pod to the lab, so similar to the one on Explorer 5. “You’ll be safe in here. And I’ll be back soon.”
The rumble of the Pioneer’s engines rose as she ran up to the cockpit to strap in.
Eron shot a glance at Linara. “We’re hardly moving, Pioneer. What’s happening?”
“I’m applying full thrust. We need more power.”
Eron swore. “We don’t have more power.”
Linara’s pulse pounded. After all that they’d be sucked into the star’s heart along with the wreck. She’d promised the Lumnith they were safe. Oh well. A feeling of calm spread over her like a blanket. It would be okay.
“What the hell?” Eron barked the words. He sat in the pilot’s chair with his mouth open.
“The ship is moving. We will be out of the gravity well in two minutes.” Pioneer sounded as if this was quite routine.
“Where’s the power coming from? You said you were at full thrust?” Eron asked.
“Unable to identify source.”
“From the lumnith,” Linara said.
Eron raised his eyebrows at her. “How?”
“I don’t know. I mean I don’t know how but I do know it was her.”
The man leaned back, chewing his lip. “It can power a ship,” he muttered.
So it would seem. But that hardly mattered. She couldn’t wait to tell the university about the find. It was incredible. She and Eron should surely get a Galaxy Award for this. It was likely to be a whole new lifeform.
Pioneer counted down the move to shift space and Linara removed her harness.
A soft snore broke into her thoughts. Eron had fallen asleep in his chair. It wasn’t a bad idea. But she wouldn’t be able to sleep. An energy being. Nothing like that had ever been found before. She leaned back in the seat and shut her eyes.
