"Mara, c'mon, gimme a sign here!" Scotty swore under his breath, patting Mara's cheeks lightly. It had no effect on her trancelike state.
He looked up as the door opened and was relieved to see Selémahs there. "Lady Selémahs, something's wrong!"
"I know," she replied. "Come, we need the Guardian in Giandrah."
"What's going on?" Scotty said, helping Selémahs pull Mara from her chair and hoisting her awkwardly in his arms.
"The Great Crystal is in turmoil. Somewhere a great catastrophe is about to happen," Selémahs said, leading him out into the corridor.
"At Pharo?" Scotty demanded, going cold with fear.
"Who can say?" Selémahs replied after a moment. "That is outside the Crystal's sphere of influence."
Scotty bit his lip, glancing down at Mara's face, creased with concentration. "That's it, isn't it? She's tryin' to reach Tirq, and she can't!"
"We cannot know until we get her to Giandrah and look into the Crystal," Selémahs said.
Scotty shifted Mara in his arms and began to run.
____________
"How long do we have?" Sabrina panted, pulling herself hand over hand down the stair rail to the brain core.
"A minute at most," Asnefer said. "Do not worry about subtlety; disconnect everything!"
They launched themselves at the glowing globe, which was flickering and sparking in agitation, and began pulling at the leads connecting Khediva's brain to the controls.
"It's not working!" Asnefer exclaimed in surprise. She pounced on the nearest console with such force that her feet hit the ceiling. "The controls are locked independently of her!"
"What can we do?" Sabrina cried desperately.
Asnefer put her feet against the ceiling and launched herself at the floor near the far wall. Sabrina gasped as she realized what the High Tirqwin was trying to do.
"You'll destroy her!" Sabrina protested, aiming herself inexpertly at Asnefer and slamming into the wall above.
Asnefer yanked the metal panel free and tossed it up at Sabrina. "She will destroy herself! Hold onto this; do not let it float!"
Sabrina caught the panel; it hurled her against the ceiling. As she bounced back toward the floor, she reached out her free hand, trying to grab Asnefer.
"This should have been done before you got here," the High Tirqwin panted, tugging unsuccessfully at the crystal matrix. With a muttered curse, she planted her feet against the wall and pulled with her entire body. A few seconds later, she was flying across the room, an inanimate crystal matrix in her hands. Sabrina let out a shout of panic as Asnefer cracked her head against the far wall and her insensible hands let go of the fragile matrix.
"Sabrina?" Tassan called from the entryway.
"Tassan, catch the matrix! Don't let it hit anything!" Sabrina shouted, slamming the wall panel back into place as best she could. When it was firmly wedged, she propelled herself back toward the control console. It was still locked, so she turned and flung herself forward to catch Asnefer's body as it drifted by. "Asnefer? Wake up!"
The back of the High Tirqwin's head was sticky with blood, but she was breathing. Sabrina looked for something to tie her to for her own safety. Tassan floated nearby, holding the matrix gingerly and looking confused. "It's okay; that powers the Way engines," she said. "Khediva can only travel in normal space without it." She looked down at Asnefer and then back at Tassan, who was staring at the matrix in amazement. "And you never saw it, do you understand?"
"It's beautiful," he breathed.
"You never saw it!" Sabrina insisted. With belated realization, she demanded, "What are you doing here?"
"What do you think?" he replied, looking up at her.
"Next time," Sabrina muttered, maneuvering herself and Asnefer over toward him, "remind me to order you to do the opposite of what I want you to. Maybe that way, for once, I'll be obeyed!"
Tassan grinned, and she shook her head in fond exasperation. But in the next moment their expressions changed as they heard Tirqwin yell angrily, "Sabrina!"
They moved out of the way of the entrance as Tirqwin catapulted through, catching himself expertly on the nearest protrusion. "What do you think you are doing?" he demanded. "Give me that!"
Tassan handed over the matrix. "What, this? I never saw it," he said.
"Tirqwin," Sabrina protested, "she was powering up the Way engines! It would have killed us all!"
"That is no reason," he said through gritted teeth, "for an assault on Khediva!"
Sabrina, guiltily aware of the disconnected leads behind her, tried to change the subject. "Why didn't you evacuate?"
Darice, just floating in, said, "We couldn't get the airlock to operate, and then the Tirqwin woke up and refused to go."
Sabrina peered into the gloom behind the bodyguard and saw Chavadanafra standing there in the magnetic boots Darice had been wearing earlier. "Lady Chavadanafra, could you take Asnefer up to the infirmary and strap her in?"
"Yes," Chavadanafra said, holding out her hands. Sabrina pushed Asnefer at her, floating in the opposite direction in reaction. Tassan reached out to catch her but only managed to send them both in a slightly different direction.
"Where's that other pair of boots?" Sabrina wondered.
"I have them, and I am keeping them," Tirqwin said. "These repairs are too delicate to be done without them." Carefully righting himself and balancing the matrix in one hand, he reached down and switched the boots on.
"Tirqwin," Sabrina said, protesting his cold tone, "I didn't do that. Asnefer did."
"And you helped her!"
"No, I didn't!"
"Well, at any rate, you did not try to stop her! You profess to be fond of Khediva—you should not have stood back and let anyone do this to her!"
Sabrina drew breath to protest again, but Tassan said softly, "He's beyond reason, Sabrina; let it go."
She swallowed hard. "What can I do to help, Tirqwin?"
"Take your bodyguard out of here, for a start," he replied. "Bad enough that this had to happen, without Homeworld accusing us of practically handing Wayship technology to Praxatillus!"
"I saw nothing, and understood less," Tassan declared.
Tirqwin gave a skeptical snort, half buried in the crystal matrix's housing. Sabrina pushed Tassan at the stairs. "Tassan, go and see if you can get the airlock working. Asnefer needs treatment and she's probably not going to get much of it here."
"Sabrina, I'm not leaving you—"
"Tassan!" Sabrina said in a low voice. "I may not speak with the Queen's voice right now, but I am warning you, I am only going to tolerate so much defiance. If you value my respect at all, you will get your butt out of here in the next ten seconds!"
He faced her for a moment, reading the expression in her eyes, then left. Sabrina, who was still drifting gently backward from the push she had given him, let herself float back toward the brain globe. One hand brushed it, and she got a mild shock. "Ow!" she exclaimed.
The globe was inactive for a moment, then came alive with streaks of electricity. "I'm sorry, Khediva," Sabrina said softly, catching herself on one of the consoles that ringed the globe pedestal.
From across the space, Tirqwin said grudgingly, "Khediva did not mean to hurt you. She knows you meant her no harm."
"What was she trying to do by powering up the engines and turning off life support?" Sabrina wondered.
"She did not," Tirqwin said. "At least...not of her own volition. Sabrina, get her connected again, if you think you can do it without causing damage. I need access to her sensors."
Sabrina, who had already begun carefully reconnecting the control leads, said, "Well, I spliced them together once before, when Malvarak cut them."
Tirqwin made no comment, and Sabrina worked for a minute longer in silence, struggling with the delicate work while trying to keep herself still in mid-air. "Tirqwin," she asked, "do you think this is a plot by Homeworld? To kidnap you both back?"
"No," Tirqwin said. "If it had been, it would have succeeded. Besides, if you had thought so, you would have stopped Asnefer coming down here. What exactly happened?"
Sabrina told him, mulling over the details in her own mind. "No, you're right," she concluded.
The lights came up in a blinding flash, and a moment later the gravity kicked in. Sabrina had reflexively dropped the cable she was holding to put her hands over her eyes, so fortunately she didn't damage anything when she fell to the deck. "Ouch! Dammit!"
"Good work," Tirqwin said, glancing over his shoulder at her.
"I...don't think I did that," Sabrina said uneasily.
Tirqwin's expression froze. "No," he said. "You did not. Khediva did not." He jumped up, unlatching the magnetic boots. "Someone's in control of the computer, and it is not Khediva." He threw himself at the nearest console, now fully active again. But it wouldn't respond to him.
Sabrina ran to his side, dismayed. "But who—"
"The engines are offline. But we are moving." Tirqwin's expression was as perplexed as his voice, and he spread his hands out on the console in frustration. Then he whirled around to the globe pedestal and began to reconnect it in desperate haste. "Watch the console. Tell me if anything registers," he ordered.
Sabrina obeyed, dredging up the symbols she had worked so hard to memorize while living on Khediva. "Tirqwin...." she said uncertainly after a moment.
"What?" he snapped, untangling control leads.
"I...I think we may be entering a Way."
"Impossible!" Tirqwin said. "For one thing, I have not reconnected the matrix completely, and for another, doing so in Pharon space would have destroyed us."
"I know, but...."
"Sabrina, you cannot have so completely forgotten everything I taught you!" he scolded. "Concentrate!"
"I am concentrating! Tirqwin, I know it's impossible, but I swear that's what these readings are!"
Her comlink pinged for attention, and she grabbed it. "Yes?"
"My lady," Darice's voice said, "we've just been cut off from the Eye of Miah. They were in the midst of reporting another Wayship in the system."
Sabrina turned to Tirqwin, whose head snapped up to return her horrified gaze. "We're under tow!" she exclaimed. "Darice, did the shuttle get away?"
"No," Darice said. "We've evacuated it; it doesn't seem very stable. High Tirqwin Asnefer is in the infirmary; Lady Chavadanafra is taking care of her. Bastureftu is working on the controls and reviewing the log download to figure out what happened. The Venerable Jaisen is helping him. Tassan is here with me. What are your orders, my lady?"
"Get suited up for combat," Sabrina said grimly. "Both of you. You'll find what you need in the sleeping quarters, in Scotty's room and mine."
"Yes, ma'am," Darice said, and signed off.
"But," Tirqwin said, getting slowly to his feet, "how could another Wayship emerge in this system, and then open a Way again with us in tow? Its crystal matrix should have been wrecked! There should have been a massive disruption to the space/time continuum!"
"I don't know," Sabrina said. "I guess we'd better work on Khediva's sensors and communications systems so we can find out who they are and what they want. Then we can ask them how."
"Go up to the control deck; I can finish here," Tirqwin said.
"No. I don't want you to be alone down here if somebody tries something," Sabrina said.
"And what do you imagine you can do if that happens?"
"Knock the crap out of them," she retorted. "I'm mad enough!" She knelt beside him. "Let me finish that. You go back and finish up the matrix. If we're away from Pharon space, we want to be able to get the hell away from wherever we emerge."
"Yes," he acknowledged.
"One good thing," Sabrina said as hope flared within her, "now that we're away from Pharo, Mara can come and rescue us."
Tirqwin shook his head. "Something is still wrong. My link with Mara is still suffering interference. I do not think she will be able to pinpoint us."
"Well," Sabrina said, disappointed, "I guess we'd better be ready to rescue ourselves, then."