The Worlds of the Sheaf

Escape - Part 3

     "We're under attack!" warned one of the felisians, staring in wide eyed horror at the display in front of him. "Four missiles, closing fast!"

     "Can we outrun them?" asked Tager Yee, moving to join him and looking over his shoulder at the display.

     "Not a chance. Even if we had full power, which we don't. Impact in five minutes."

     “We can teleport to the module in the ring where the silver ships were,” suggested Saturn. “You can repair one of them and we can set off again.”

     “We’ll just be attacked again the moment we set out,” replied the Commander. "All that work, and we're right back where we started! We'll have to teleport back to the planet surface."

     "Maybe not," said the elderly wizard, however. "Did you see where the missiles came from?"

     "That complex there," said the junior felisian.

     Saturn, joined by a curious Thomas, looked into the display and saw a magnified image of the ring. In the centre, surrounded by yellow crosshairs, was a habitation block larger than any of the others around it. It had to be half a mile across, with a conical central section surrounded by branching arms at the end of which brilliant points of light burned. It looked more alive than anything else they'd seen on or near the planet since they'd arrived.

     "Maybe we can teleport there instead," suggested Thomas. "If there're any survivors of this world's original civilisation, that's where they'll be. We can go there, reason with them..."

     "What if they're not feeling reasonable?" asked Matthew, staring up at him from below.

     "Then we can still teleport out. I'll teleport us all there, and Saturn can teleport us back to the planet surface if they're hostile. Teleporting so many people with one spell'll be tricky, but I think we can do it..." He glanced at Saturn, who nodded thoughtfully.

     "We'd be teleporting blind again," pointed out Matthew, however. "I now have first hand experience of how dangerous that is."

     Thomas nodded. "We've got a couple of minutes, we'll use that time to familiarise ourselves as much as possible with that structure. We've all still got our Necklaces of Vacuum Breathing, haven't we?" He looked around the upright oval chamber and saw the Tharians feeling around in their clothing and nodding, while one of the felisians opened a hatch to check that there were spacesuits in there.

     "We'll teleport to just outside the hull and disintegrate our way in," Thomas added. You've still got your wand of disintegration, Saturn?"

     The elder wizard nodded, looking annoyed at how his junior was taking charge but helpless to stop it. The Gown lad had hit upon a good plan, that was the really annoying thing.

     "Can you give me a better look at that thing?" Thomas asked the felisian.

     "I think so. The controls are a little different from what I'm used to, and there's a whole bank of controls I've never seen before..."

     The Commander came over to have a look and they discussed it for a moment while the Tharians fretted over the passing time and the approaching missiles. "Let's try this," suggested Tager Yee, touching a control. "If it doesn't work..."

     As soon as the control activated, though, the ship went dark and every display died, leaving it as dead and lifeless as when they'd first found it, three weeks before. "Spit!" cursed Tager Yee as Thomas and Saturn both hurriedly cast light spells. The two balls of light lit a scene of controlled confusion as one felisian searched for the hatch containing the power distribution node and another fetched a replacement. "What a time for this to happen!" cried Murrla as he removed the old node and pressed the new one in. "How long 'til impact? Have we got time?"