Gatherer of Souls
by Scot Noel

Together the vibrations and the music conveyed nuances of information. They told Christine that the prespace channel in which she found herself was narrowing, coming to a bottleneck

A camera view of the dimensions outside her ship would have shown a whirling maelstrom of light, the inside of a spectral tornado, with Christine's little ship caught tight down the middle. Each of Jericho’s four engine pods were now less than a meter away from annihilation within the walls of the channel, their cowlings alive with glimmers of violet and burnished bronze, the Saint Elmo's Fire of faster-than-light travel.

For Christine, it had been a far different experience upon first entering the channel, for what she saw in that moment had proven… overwhelming. Her instruments had not prepared her for the experience, or perhaps she had been too keyed on the promise of wealth her instruments foretold.

This prespace tunnel was the largest ever found by man. Or woman. The sheer power of the maelstrom had invaded the safe walls of her ship by its concept alone. Its size had stripped away the anchors of her skill and beat down her confidence, until, with eyes closed and fists clenched over the flight controls, she let Jericho go. It slipped down a sloping tear in the fabric of space-time, a faster-than-light tunnel so huge the Titanic of legend could have done barrel rolls inside. This was the kind of tunnel that made careers, if you survived it.

The ride itself had terrified Christine. There was no chance to map it, to catch her breath, to attempt to isolate her position. Only when the swirling energies began to constrict, funneling down to the average diameter for a prespace channel, had Christine regained control.

Unfortunately, the channel continued to narrow, to constrict toward a choking point, one growing small enough to bring Jericho to a dead halt.

"Journal," Christine said softly into a wire wrapping from her headset to her lips. "Prepare a buoy. I want to fly it from here, so I'll need you for station keeping. And watch for ships, anything foreign. We're in a tight spot. Aliens might not read our position beacon until they're too close to pull out."

"Ready," answered a child's voice. This, for ease of understanding, was the ship's computer. It answered to "Journal" and in many respects acted as one, though it performed neither as a simple record keeper nor a device of ordinary computational skills. For one thing, it worried about its master.

"If the channel doesn't close ahead," Christine mused, partly to herself, and partly for the benefit of the Journal, "I'll fly the buoy past the constriction. We duck out, lock on the buoy, and renter the channel past the narrows."

"Why?" asked the Journal with a child's bluntness. "Not even Buspecki dwarfs could use this for mail runs. If the tunnel had only stayed big, then you'd be rich. The constriction makes it worthless.”

"My luck," Christine answered, her words slightly clipped, betraying as much irritation with her own fear as with the words of the Journal. "But now that I'm here, I'll sell it somehow. Where goes a buoy, so go messenger drones. They need communications lines too, you know."

Silence.

At first Christine thought her Journal was displaying a new found stubbornness, but then a bar of red light came to life in the darkness. Crawling above it, sine waves of green sputtered into existence accompanied by the pulsing rhythm of an emergency beacon.

"Problem," said the Journal in its prepubescent voice. "Somebody is pretty scared. I'll see if I can find them."

Christine grumbled and took off her headset. Almost absently she began to back Jericho away from the bottleneck. The channel opening and its roller coaster descent to the bottleneck had been, far and away, enough adventure for a single day. More than anything, Christine wanted the comforting walls of the familiar about her now, or at least what passed as familiar to a cartographer who spent her days plotting way points in the prespace channels between the stars.

"Are there any other vessels in range to respond to that beacon?" asked Christine. With a slow rotation of her wrist, she turned Jericho about.

"Nobody," answered her Journal. "Just us." It then read carefully from an incoming transmission log: "Pilot in trouble. Immediate medical and evac assistance required."

"Damn," Christine swore, sighing. In a pocket at the side of her chair rested a pair of sunglasses. She put them on. Taking a toggle between thumb and forefinger, she opened the viewing ports of her small craft, flooding the cockpit with light as the panels across the nose slid into hiding. Brilliant and close, the walls of the prespace channel outlined the controls in neon purity. Ahead lay the interior of the winding, twisted path down which her ship had hurtled at faster-than-light velocities.

"You're right," Christine said to her Journal after reviewing the controls. "This problem is nearby. It's ours. Doesn't seem to be anybody to talk to, though; that's an auto beacon we're hearing. Can you identify the ship?"

"Yeah. . . ." This time the Journal definitely hesitated. "Star Reiver."

"Not. . . Willis!"

"Sorry," said the Journal.

"Damned, not. . ."

"He seemed like a nice guy," the Journal said innocently. "You said he didn't hurt you."

"Don't talk about it," Christine responded, her words sharp and final.

A feeling of vertigo, as overwhelming as that which had waylaid her upon entering the channel, welled up from her beneath her breasts to make the cockpit spin. She sighed, then bit her lips hard. In her mind's eye Christine imagined walls, protective walls that were part of a long practiced mental discipline. It was enough to restore a semblance of professional focus.
 

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