Dark Star

Dark Star by Alan Dean Foster Read Free Book Online Page A

Book: Dark Star by Alan Dean Foster Read Free Book Online
Authors: Alan Dean Foster
they have to opt for radiation shielding over toilet paper. I think that's all."
    He reached up and switched off the screen recorder, feeling pleased with himself. It was a good log entry, a substantial log entry. It would never get him promoted, of course, but it was sobering to think that someday what he had just recorded might be broadcast to reverent billions all over Earth.
    The music was beginning to grate in its familiarity, both of sound and conjured-up image. He swiveled around to glance at the silent corporal. "Put something else on, Boiler. Something less descriptive. Something more . . . abstract."
    Boiler mumbled something unintelligible, nudged the dial a fraction. Immediately, responsive electric guitars, drums, trumpets, and theremin filled the tiny control cabin, swamped it in an orgy of amplified rhythm.
    Pinback and Boiler began to move in their seats, drawn together by their single, common point of interest—jumping, rocking, snapping their fingers, shaking in time to the music.
    Doolittle tried to join them, to complete the triumvirate. He tried to force himself, but for all his will to subsume himself in the music, all that moved was his head, slightly. Inside, he wondered that he could respond to the music at all.
    Something made him different from even Boiler and Pinback. Yet again, he wondered what it was that he was missing.
    The music reached Talby over the open intercom. He frowned slightly until he identified the source of the interruption and turned it down. It would be unprofessional as well as potentially dangerous to switch the intercom off entirely. He hardly heard the music anyway.
    That music.

2
    T HEY CONTINUED ON that way through space—the Dark Star 's drive engines eating up the light-years, each man occupied in his own thoughts. So no one monitored the detection instruments, no one saw the thing appear.
    Talby was intent on the stars behind them, and his three fellow crewmembers concentrated on the music inside them. So they didn't see the initially faint, still incredibly distant luminosity that had appeared in the path of the ship. Didn't see the twister of free energy that danced and leaped and frolicked among a million-kilometer-long cluster of uneven fragments. Fragments of a long-dead world in a long-forgotten system, perhaps even a system set in a galaxy other than this one.
    Some of these fragments carried a strong negative charge, others positive. Some were neutral, and some possessed electrical properties that would have driven an energy engineer to hysterics. Gigantic discharges of brilliantly colored energy played about the millions of solid components that formed the vortex.
    It was the sixth member of the Dark Star 's crew, the one immune both to astrophysical daydreaming and to electric rock mesmerism, who finally noticed the rapidly approaching threat. And it was this sixth member who cut off the music to the control room.
    Pinback, Boiler, and Doolittle slowed, stopped their in-place dancing. At first Doolittle thought that it was just another of the seemingly endless series of mechanical malfunctions. A soft female voice corrected him moments later.
    "Attention, attention, ship's computer calling all personnel. I have been required to disengage your recreational music. Repeat. Ship's computer to all personnel, this is an emergency override. All systems must stand by for emergency directive. Information for procedure will follow."
    "What the hell?" muttered Doolittle.
    Pinback looked over at him wide-eyed, questioning. Boiler just sat and muttered. "Better be something damned important to break into my music."
    "Extrasolar concatenation of solid matter of uncertain properties is approaching at point nine-five light-speed on collision course. Predictions indicate that the body of matter is fairly dense, yet still spread too widely for us to avoid it without risking permanent structural damage to all noninorganic personnel on board."
    "Why can't you call it an asteroid

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