Search for a Sister, Chapter Two

4-H-N heard not a word about her secret mission around Headquarters over the following days, so had to conclude either Mini-Flash Phytolith hadn’t been listening in after all, or she’d misjudged him. She hoped it was the latter, as she wanted the pair of them to get on, even if he wasn’t going out of his way to make it easy for her.

Grindo robots lowered the forcefield-cage and its tenant into the Star-Fighter Mark II, which was built on a more commodious scale than its slender predecessor lost at Limb Four. 4-H-N, Dylan and Phoenix assumed their stations on the bridge, and it was the last-named of the trio who took them up and out.

“So, um, how’s this going to work, Phoenix?” asked 4-H-N, as Grindotron dropped behind. “I didn’t think you had any sort of telepathic bond with Phoenix Prime.”

“No convenient psionic location-finder by which to ascertain ’er whereabouts at such a time as zis, certainment,” was the reply from the pilot’s chair. “Yet my fellow clones and I were connected to each othair, and she was aware of us in turn. It is my theory zat to make of zis ze, ’ow you say, one-way street was something Phoenix Prime taught ’erself during ’er long years alone, presumably aftair she ’ad resolved to slay ze likes of me to ze last duplicate.”

“That’s over, hon,” Dylan reminded her gently. “Whatever road Phoenix Prime has decided to follow since Nereynis, there’s no reason to believe she’s fallen back on that.”

Phoenix was entering co-ordinates for the hyperspace jump.

“So I must presume upon you both to put your faith in me,” she continued. “Per’aps because a vestige of some psychic link remains, or per’aps merely because I know Phoenix Prime.”

“Better than you know yourself?” interjected Dylan.

“From one point of view, it is a question of knowing myself,” Phoenix said.

The star-drive kicked in, and every molecule of the voyagers and their ship spontaneously stretched the span of solar systems. 4-H-N couldn’t help but fear for her knicker-elastic when she travelled at hyperspeed, but everything including these much-discussed secrets snapped snugly back a breathless second later. The populous galaxy was now light-years away, and if Phoenix’s intuitions were correct, the first step on the road to which Dylan had alluded sprawled beyond the windshield’s frame.

4-H-N stared, and so did he. She had been here before, and the other must surely have known where this was. It was more than either of them had engaged for to gaze on it today.

Green cosmic gas-swirls were the sum of the universe, their boundlessness swathing wrecks and hulks as far as the eye could see. These derelicts had long ago been locked in vast unsightly rings of neglect, there to rust and rot. Amid this diorama of decay hung lumpen reddish asteroids and other space-junk which had drifted there over the course of eons, as if drawn by some mysterious gravitation which acted on all the galaxy’s forgotten. The silence was staggering, even for a vacuum, and maybe most of all to Earthern ears which strained involuntarily after a lonely moaning wind.

These were the Junkyard-Belts of Nebula Seven.

“Where it began,” pronounced Phoenix.

As the interceptor commenced a crawling progress through the overcrowded clouds towards its destination, 4-H-N slipped out and went to de-stuffy in the one sonic shower cubicle. She needed it, even though the atmosphere on the bridge wasn’t what it ought to have been for reasons besides her.

Hopefully Phoenix was onto something, because this would be a lot to put the three of them through for the sake of a wasted journey.

So much trouble had come about because of the last time they were here. Phoenix with a single deed had widened every imaginable divide, between The Four Heroes and within her own family. The blame Phoenix heaped on Phoenix Prime for acts against Dylan in darker days was no doubt a factor in the nomadic life the latter female led to this day. Even Phoenix, 4-H-N knew, had come to regret taking away Scientooth’s freedom in a manner that ran contrary to The Four Heroes’ cause…and yet it was right that Dylan should be well again. 4-H-N would never have argued otherwise. It was all so complicated.

Maybe Joe shouldn’t be harbouring a robot who refused to use his talents to help others and serve the greater good. That kind of behaviour was against the cause too.

Only, where did that line of thinking end? With The Four Heroes incarcerating every sentient being who happened to disagree with them?

Oh, it was complicated.

The ship may have needed careful manual steering, but 4-H-N had undressed on autopilot. Now she switched the sonic shower on.

It still seemed strange that sound should be a physical thing that did duty for hot steamy spray. Not that you could fault the vigour and efficiency of this galaxy’s method. 4-H-N only wished there was a shower half as good at blasting clear the kind of thoughts that preoccupied her. True, it made your skin feel a little like an overstretched tarpaulin from which bounced hammerings of curious dry rain, but no girl was going to object to being kept springy.

Limb Four had sounded intimations of change. The factions had fought side-by-side that day. Maybe some sort of healing process was already starting to happen.

Time for a nice lather. 4-H-N held out widely-spaced hands to encompass some of the deluge, trapping excited soundwaves that ricocheted from palm to palm and made her fingertips tingle.

You had to admit, there were advantages to doing it this way.

Ooh…!

Massaging agitations of the high-frequency band into every nook and cranny was an experience alright. Especially there.

Maybe a sonic shower was capable of cheering you up after all. 4-H-N at any rate hoped she could be forgiven for smiling, when she finally reached out to shut off the thunder.

That was as long as her contentment lasted.

Sonic showers were by nature noisy, and the hush that followed one conspicuous.

This however was the wrong kind of hush.

Back on Earth it would have had 4-H-N clutching at once for a bath-towel, to bury herself in as if it were an overcoat. The absence of such a thing made it worse. All of a sudden she was shooting her glare at the high corners of the cubicle, angry from fright and frightened from anger. There were many ventilation gratings and grilles, all of them mere black unoccupied oblongs.

Now.

But 4-H-N had had to indicate her alarm by looking. Anyone there would have been given ample seconds to withdraw, while her eyes were flitting from hatch to hatch.

She drew a deep breath.

Certainly, there was nobody now.

If however there’d been nobody from the start, it wouldn’t account for her still feeling like this galaxy’s answer to Janet Leigh.

There was a difference between being watched and not. Every girl knew that. When you felt as if someone was tailing you down the street, their eyes pinned to your little bumping hemline, it was usually because someone was.

What was more, 4-H-N’s instincts were good. Back the Solidity War, long ago as it seemed, she’d been right about Mucidor following them all through the darkened tunnels.

Not that Mucidor was a topic 4-H-N much relished springing to her mind just now.

Barefooted and pink she made all deliberate haste from the shower, leaving her crumpled beige and her underwear on the floor where they lay.

TO BE CONTINUED